Post Tagged with: "Asus EEE Pad Transformer"

Acer Iconia A500 Android Tablet

Acer Iconia A500 Android Tablet

Pros:  Fast.  Pretty damn fast.  Very sturdy aluminum chassis.  Responsive touch screen.  Good battery life.

Cons:  Dumb front facing camera/speaker placement.  Screen picks up fingerprints like a mofo (common to all tablets, though).  Expensive at $400.  No 3G.  Text doesn’t appear as soon as you type it.  Sometimes the browser wouldn’t load pages properly, but when rotated to landscape things show up.  Lack of App compatibility

Decision: Test for yourself

 

Ok, so this was my first venture into Android and tablet PCs.  As I’m actually a game reviewer, I’m not really sure how to go about this review, but there will be minimum back story like I do with the games.

I’ve already outlined my thoughts on tablets and Android in another article, so onto the review!

It’s one sturdy bastard.  Between the gorilla glass screen and the aluminum chassis, I’m pretty confident that nothing is going to damage it accidentally.  It’s a very sturdy frame.  People on forums complain that it’s heavy, weighing in at a little over a pound and a half, but I don’t really see a problem with it considering the materials used in its construction.

Button placement is well done.  Other tablets, Asus EEE Pad Transformer in particular, decided to place the volume rocker switch right next to the power button, which can be sort of annoying if you’re not paying attention.  The A500 doesn’t have that problem, as the power is on the top of the left side, while the rocker is on the left of the top side.  No problems there.

Next up is the aspect lock.  The A500 has a gyro built in that lets you switch between landscape and portrait views.  Well, say you’re lying in bed on your side and you’re trying to look at something, but it keeps shifting views when you just want it to stay in landscape view.  Well this switch disabled the gyro, allowing you to do that.  I don’t know if it’s a common feature among tablets, but it’s a very good feature.

The SD card bay is in the middle of the top side and it’s covered up by a removable piece.  Keeps the card safe and helps it blend in with the frame.  It’s pretty convenient that they have an SD card slot considering the max space available is 32gb.  The extra space could come in handy if you’re into pictures, video, etc.

Also, it has a single USB port built in.  I didn’t have any need to mess with it, so there’s not much to say about it.  I’d assume it’s 2.0.

As far as hardware goes, it’s rocking a Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset, operating 2 cores at 1ghz a piece, complimented by a gig of RAM.  Those are some pretty decent specs considering it’s just a tablet running an OS that’s meant to be low-resource.  It actually shows, too.  Transitions between programs were very smooth, but there was a weird problem with the typing.  It wouldn’t keep up with the keystrokes for some reason.  Not a big deal, but it could get annoying.

Good review so far, but there are some problems with placement of a few things.  First off is the front facing camera.  It’s placed on the left side about ¾ of the way up.  I don’t know why they felt the need to put it there considering anyone who’s using the tablet for video chats is going to be holding it in a landscape view, so in order for the camera to get a good picture of you, the tablet has to be held at an angle.  There’s also no LED for flash or lighting, but that’s not really a problem.  Anyway, they should have put it on the top middle, but that space was already taken by the microphone, which should have been moved to the bottom middle.

Another fairly significant design flaw comes from the speakers.  Now, I thought the speakers were ok, and they were decently loud considering the size, but the thing that hurt sound quality the most is the fact that they were on the back of the chassis.  What the fuck is that about?  That’s like going to a concert, only instead of actually paying for a ticket, you sneak in, sit behind the stage, smoke weed, and try to steal the band’s equipment.  Ok, so maybe it’s not exactly like that, but you get the idea.  It’s a problem.  Put the speakers on each of the front sides.  It’s just common sense and it’s been done since laptops immemorial.

Next up on the problem list is the lack of what I consider to be key app support.  I wanted this tablet to do just a few things.  I have ADD and it’s getting significantly worse with time, so I wanted it to be able to hand-write or speech-stenograph notes, which it would organize for me, I wanted it to do Facebook and email, and I wanted it to do Netflix.  Guess which one of those it wouldn’t do?  If you said all of the above, you would be correct.  Not only does the Facebook app not work, but you also can’t pull up the full version on any browser, even after setting the stock browser to emulate a desktop PC running windows.  So to fix this, you have to use the site without chat, but open a new program that runs in the background to handle the chat part.

Next up is the Netflix thing.  Now, I know they have Netflix for Android phones, so this is a problem lying with scaling up the 2.3 Gingerbread-made app to the 3.1 Honeycomb OS.  The current version of Android is 3.2 Honeycomb, so I can’t help but wonder why Acer didn’t feel the need to stay current.  I get that you have to wait for Acer to do the updates unless you root the tablet, but I don’t know why they didn’t think it was a priority.  Google thought the exact same thing, apparently, so they got onto Acer’s case about it and forced them to crank out an update that was supposed to come out on August 25th.  Well, as of right now it’s August 28th and I was still running 3.1 before I took it back to the store for a refund.  Speculation was that the 3.2 update would have fixed the compatibility issues with both the Facebook and Netflix issues, because it’s supposed to scale up 2.x apps for use on tablets.  Well, they ended up pushing it back until September 10th, and I didn’t have until September 10th to return it, and I’m not going to keep it on the notion that it might work then.

Finally, the writing/voice-steno issue.  The only problem here is that all of the features haven’t been combined yet, but I expect that something like that will come along fairly soon.  I will say that it does have voice commands and speech recognition, but it’s sort of hit-or-miss.

So, after all of the above is said and done, I still think it’s a damn good tablet.  If they would just fix those few compatibility issues, it’s a keeper, and I believe that they will be fixed shortly.  Basically, if you want to get the tablet, make sure it’s updated to 3.2 and it should be set to go.  It has the hardware to do good things; it just needs the firmware to enable it.  Also, make sure to take a look at some of the Nvidia Tegra Zone games.  Galaxy on Fire 2 really showcases what the hardware can do.  Lag free space flight sim with graphics better than PSP?  Fuck yeah!

August 28, 2011 0 comments Read More
Upcoming Mobile Technology

Upcoming Mobile Technology

I used to be huge into technology.  I was always aware of what the new/best stuff was and when it was coming out.  Since I got out of high school, though, I sort of fell off the wagon.  Every time I needed to build a new computer, I had to look around and see what’s new, what’s compatible with what, and whether the next big thing is right around the corner, to determine whether I should buy now or wait.  It’s a hassle.

So there’s the iPad.  People love these fuckers.  I don’t know why, but they’re insanely expensive and selling like hotcakes.  Really, it’s just a big version of an iPhone that you can’t make calls on.  I’m not going to go into any detail about the iPad, as I haven’t even bothered to look into the specs on it, but I’ll say that it’s not ultimately that impressive, and you’d do better with a 500 dollar laptop.  It’s just a tablet and it’s nothing new.  People made it out to be something revolutionary, when in reality (where the rest of us non Apple-cultists reside) it’s a concept that’s been around since 2002 or 2003.

The idea behind the tablet PC is pretty simple.  It’s a laptop but only in one piece, so you ditch the keyboard in favor of a touch screen interface.  You used a stylus and did your own thing.  Ultimately, they ended up being heavier than laptops back then and didn’t have particularly good battery life, so they didn’t have very many practical uses outside of hospitals and factories.

Since then, however, manufacturers have managed to shrink everything down to the point that we now have tablets that are useful to everyone.  I want to point out that nobody actually NEEDS a tablet for anything unless your employer specifically requires it.  As weird as that sounds, I’ve read multiple times on different forums that employers are requiring employees to get them for work.

As far as what tablets do, they’re basically toned down laptops and they’re really still in their infancy.  Since I don’t have/haven’t used an iPad, I’m going to talk about Android tablets.  Actually, let’s talk about Android for a second.  I remember a few years ago when Android first got released on phones and I remember thinking that it had good potential, unlike WebOS.  Basically, Android is Google’s answer to Apple’s iOS.  Seriously, they’re almost exactly the same visually, only Android doesn’t restrict you from doing things and also supports flash.  The downside is that you do need a Google account in order to use an Android device.

Well, here’s the thing about Android phones and tablets.  They use a different version of the OS, which is preventing Android from overtaking Apple.  The iPhone and iPad use the same OS and the apps are compatible with each other.  The same can’t be said for Android products at the moment.  Phones typically use Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and tablets use Android 3.1 or 3.2 (Honeycomb).  The problem is that Gingerbread apps aren’t compatible with the 3.1 Honeycomb OS for the most part, at the moment.  I picked up an Acer Iconia A500 tab to play around with (check out the review), which was using 3.1.  Then Acer said that a 3.2 update was supposed to be released on August 25th.  Well, the 25th rolled around and they pushed it back until September 10th.  The reason I’m mentioning it is because 3.2 is supposed to fix some of those compatibility issues between operating systems.  Alas, I can’t wait around because my return period is nearly up, so I will never know whether it worked or not.  Fortunately, Google is going to be releasing Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) by the end of the year, rumor has it, which will completely solve that version issue.  Both phones and tablets will run it, which will allow apps to be compatible with both and make the process easier for developers.

Anyway, back to the tablets themselves.  The Acer tab that I picked up weighs in at about 1.5 pounds, which is on the heavy side, but it also has an aluminum chassis.  1.5 pounds is still pretty damn light, considering it’s considered among the heaviest tablets.  Back when they first came out, they weighed closer to 7 pounds.  Not too shabby.  The screens are now made of gorilla glass, which is extremely scratch/shatter resistant, which is an absolute must considering you have to touch the screen in order to use it.  Considering the fact that the screens are made of glass, it’s actually really impressive that the weight stays under 2 pounds.

Android tablets have an integrated Wi-Fi card and also tend to offer a 3g version, as well.  That means that you have connectivity pretty much wherever you go.  Can your laptop do that?  Not without a card or tethering to a phone, typically.

So basically you have the aforementioned “toned down laptop.”  Now it’s down to power and speed.  Typically tablets will have a 1ghz processor, either single or dual core, and will sport between 512mb and 1gb of RAM.  At this point, the specs are pretty much as good as any netbook.  Well, that’s just this generation.

The next generation of mobile chips is going to be fucking amazing.  I’m going to specifically talk about the NVidia Tegra “Kal-El,” as it’s currently slated.  From what I’ve read, it’s supposed to be released within the next month and it’s going to rock 4 cpu cores operating at 1.5ghz a piece, and the GPU is supposed to have 12 cores built in.  Holy shit.  As of right now, the Kal-El is supposed to be faster than an Intel T7200 Core 2 Duo operating at 2ghz, while also using less power than the current Tegra 2.  What that means for you is faster tablets with better graphics with better battery life.  And next year they’re going to be put in phones.  Fuck.  Yes.

When I first saw tablet PCs, I immediately thought of Star Wars and Star Trek; people walking around with their tablets containing all sorts of information and galactic network connectivity.  Well, I don’t know about the whole space thing, but I think we’re not far from our tablets being like something out of sci-fi.

Now don’t quote me on this, but I really think that there’s a solid chance that laptops will eventually be replaced with tablets for one simple reason:  portability.  It’s significantly easier to carry around a 10 inch tablet than it is a laptop with a 15 inch screen.  See, the way I look at it, the only thing that’s separating laptops from tablets at point (performance hardware excluded) is the keyboard and mouse.  It’s a big issue, too, because the touch screen can be sort of hard to use for extensive typing, and it’s preventing the tablets from going into potential laptop “office/productivity” territory.  Manufacturers saw this, too, and came up with a few nifty solutions.  For the moment I’m going to focus on Asus because they’re rocking this shit like a boss.  While most companies have a USB or Bluetooth keyboard, Asus said “fuck that, we’ll show you.”  So what did they do?  They invented the EEE Pad Transformer, a tablet/docking station combo (sold separately) that turns your tablet into what is basically an Android netbook, providing it with a keyboard, touch pad mouse, and boosting the battery life by something like 8 hours.

And Asus looked upon what it had created and determined that they were not quite happy with it yet.  The transformer was still sort of bulky, so they decided to fix that problem.  What did they do?  They made a mother fucking slider tablet.  You know those phones where you can slide the screen back to reveal a keyboard?  Yeah, they did that with the tablet.  And all was good yet again.  Well, not quite.  It hasn’t been released in the US yet, but I’m looking forward to its release.

Again, tablet development is still in its infancy.  There still isn’t an excellent office suite for Android yet, but once Ice Cream Sandwich’s unifying awe gets released, along with the next generation mobile chips, I think it’s not too far away.  What I’m hoping for is an app that lets you rest one hand on the unused part of the screen while you’re writing with a stylus, translates handwriting into text if desired along with allowing you to draw figures, and does voice stenography.  I think it will happen within the next year or two.

To sum everything up, expect to see quite a few of these tablets in the near future.  Tablets and smart phones are about to get even cooler.  If you’re a hipster, you might want to hop on the train now so you can say you were there before they were popular. 

August 28, 2011 0 comments Read More