Review roundup: Samsung's Galaxy Tab, the iPad's first "real" competitor - Page 2

What does this do that iPad doesn't? Flash doesn't work properly. What's the draw.? What's the killer app? What's the killer feature?

How do you spell sweet?

GALAXY TAB!

Just remember that the first Android phone wasn't all that at all, but has quickly matured into the powerhouse that it is now.

Glad you asked. For one, Java runs a Trash Collector that is deeply engrained into the Java code and therefore cannot be deactivated. So it has priority over all instances and therefore will stop any and all actions including the touch framework to resolve pointers and unused variables in memory. Apple has a much better solution than that. Trash collection is a good thing for desktop apps but not mobile apps, it takes way too many resources.

Moreover, Java is not even close to being as stable as Objective-C. I've developed for both platforms.

Exactly! All the spoon-clanging over how horrible the iPad was/is seems to have evaporated.

That's the weird thing. I ran a Flash benchmark* on a friend's MacBook Air 11" 1.4ghz and it scored a little better than a demo MacBook Pro 13" lying around (not sure what the MBP spec is) -- but you see, my friend's MBA 11" would have the latest version of Flash, the MBP 13" probably had a older version or even maybe Flash Version 9.

But yeah, Flash is fine on the MBA 11" 1.4ghz. Who would have thunk.

In the end for non-video Flash sites if the same version of Flash is on all Macs, then clock speed should be the primary determinator of speed. Unlikely the MBA 11" (very, very unlikely) has special optimisations for non-video Flash.

And that 320M GPU is pretty impressive for 11".

*http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/465908

There are still some really big Tab aficionados out there. Its actually a pretty accurate analogy. Its still available in Australia and the UK.

If someone want a 7 inch tablet this year, then this is probably the tablet to get. Some will buy because of the size factor and some will buy because it isn't an Apple device. It will have some success due to these factors. It will be interesting to see how much success it will really have. 1 other factor to take into account is upgradeability. Android has been real hit or miss on this. I wonder how easily this tablet will accept future upgrades. This may limit it's success to a degree.

For those that want a larger tablet at a better price without a contract, then the iPad is still without competition.

Neal

No, it is proof that people want to play video on their mobile devices, and that there is still a lot of video on the web that only plays if you have Flash. The solution is not to put Flash on every device, the solution is to offer alternative delivery methods for web video. Fortunately it seems that's exactly what's happening, and it is happening at a breakneck speed, availability of HTML5 video has increased 5-fold in just 6 months up to the point over half of the video's on the web also plays if you don't have Flash. Remember: it's not just Apple users who benefit from this, the vast majority of phones does not handle Flash video very well, a large majority of phones doesn't handle it at all, and no -I repeat: NO- mobile devices *at all* handle Flash video better than HTML5 video, if they support both. Flash for video = a bad thing.

Which leaves Flash for interactive content, for which it is kind of tolerable on workstations (and it has to be said: for which no viable alternatives exist as of yet), but most of said content doesn't work on a touchscreen phone anyway since it wasn't made for it. Interactive Flash on mobile = hardly a joy and not a dealmaker at all.

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As a content producer, wouldn't you be better served with a full sized laptop with rich applications as opposed to a Chrome netbook with web apps? Not a snide question, an honest one. (I've never used a netbook, nor do I really have a good grasp of what applications will be available on Chrome.)

Thompson

At <$400, there would not be many things you'd like about it.

I have to agree. The iPad's screen size is great reading magazines, newspapers and books. And given how much attention that use got at the release of the iPad, I think THAT was a primary driver for Apple to make the screen the size it is. Pure conjecture on my part, but I think Apple was hoping to lock publishers into their device before the competition got a chance to respond. That would have put Apple in the driver's seat for what online print distribution should look like. And one way for Apple to lure the publishers was a nice big screen to display their content.

Jobs said you needed that big of a screen to "express" the software. BS! Apple created software to use the screen they chose. If they had chosen a smaller screen, they would have "expressed" their software in that space just as easily. Maybe a couple fewer buttons, a little shorter list of email in my inbox. But nothing drastic that would have destroyed the usabilty of the device.

Apple chose a larger screen size to support their goal of taking over print distribution. And they chose a great screen size for the purpose. But for some, perhaps many, that is not a primary purpose. And they, including me, would gladly trade screen size for something a bit more portable.

Apple's chance of taking over print distribution is quickly fading. As more and more other (and smaller) devices hit the market, the publishers will have to take that into account in their plans. We'll soon see how people respond to the smaller tablets, especially once their OS issues are sorted out.



They even sell a Tab Engery drink for the older folks to keep up with the kids.

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While these are valid points, I think you're being a bit too harsh, I assume Google spent a lot of time optimizing their VM and the garbage collector to make it better suited for mobile devices.

The 'problem' with Java on a mobile platform is that Java (like other interpreted or byte-compiled languages) introduces an intermediate layer between the hardware and the OS and the applications running on it. This has one huge advantage, which is portability between architectures. It also has a pretty big disadvantage, which is overhead. In many cases Java will not necessarily be much slower than native code (like compiled Objective-C on iOS), and in some (rare) cases it can even be faster (due to runtime/dynamic optimizations that compilers cannot do). However, there are cases where Java really gets in the way of writing efficient code, and these cases aren't exactly rare at all. Games, for example, or applications that rely on predictable performance.

That said, Java has come a long way and it works quite well for most tasks without seriously affecting performance, but don't expect high-end stuff like the Epic Unreal engine for iOS to ever hit Android, since it is simply impossible to do that kind of stuff in Java, period. You'd have to resort to NDK's to make something like that for Android, which would mean it would only run on a subset of devices.

I love how people who have no knowledge of Apple's iPad prototyping process, and most likely no experience with, or understanding of, UI design, speak with such great authority on what they did, could have done, should have done and why they did it. Yeah, just leave a couple of buttons out, that'll do it.

More likely, and based on Jobs' own comments, they tested a whole range of sizes and UIs and found that at 7" you can't get a workable UI that sufficiently improves over a small phone UI to make it worthwhile. At 10", you have enough screen real estate to start to do interesting things that can be manipulated easily with a finger, but can be much richer than a phone UI. There's a threshold effect that requires a certain minimum size to properly accommodate usage. They probably did, during the many years the iPad was in development, make a 7" iPad prototype with a prototype UI, but it wasn't the device they wanted to make, so they didn't make it.

Where can i buy a kangaroo to use an iPad carrying case? BTW, that video is adorable.

Well, yes, price has always been one of the main selling points of netbooks. Size and weight are some others.

However, I thought that the context of tjw's post was that he would consider a Chrome powered netbook for content production. To me, "content production" implies a significant amount of time either developing code or multimedia stuff, or both. Can one really do that to great effect on a little bitty screen and with a Web OS, which seems like it was designed for content consumption? That seems strange to me, but I don't really know much about netbooks or Chrome, hence the question. For your part, MacRulez, do you actually use that netbook for content production? And if so, what does that even mean to you?

Thompson

Google has stated that the current version of Android is not designed for use on pads. The next version will be. These manufacturers are jumping the gun. There is no Google store for pad apps, and these pads are basically a blown up version of an Android phone, minus the phone.

Every review I've seen has said that there are serious shortcomings in this "iPad killer". No one has recommended buying one.

No OS X-powered netbook? I beg to differ... No, it's not $399, but what do you expect from Apple? Junk?

Well to be fair, according to his response, price is one of the defining characteristics of a "netbook". I would imagine that a screen size of 11 inches may also not fit into his definition.

Thompson

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Jobs is right but for the wrong reasons. The 7" tablet was a compromise. They brought out an iPad device with Android so not to make it look so bad as a 9" form factor would be. Samsung and the rest are really waiting for Chrome OS to come out then they'll abandon the 7" Android tablet market then. I pity the people that buy the Android tablets.

Actually, no. Both from a business and technology perspective, a very good decision. The primary programing language for phones for most of this decade has been Java ME, so there is a very large pool of experienced developers knowledgeable about developing for a small screen, limited power device.

On the technology side, any decent JIT JVM with dynamic optimization can out perform a statically optimized "native" application. The reason that Java has been slow on phone devices is that no manufacturer has bothered to put a decent JVM into their devices - and from a business perspective under the carrier dominant model, that actually made sense. Google on the other hand does have a reason to build a better JVM, and is doing so (slowly - possibly in part due to patent issues).

(Please do not claim C is a better high level development language - it is basically a variation of the PDP 8 & 11 assembly language with some syntactic sugar. As such, it is a great low level language, but has no high level language constructs.)

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Yes, you can write C/C++ for Android, but you'd need to compile and link against an NDK (native development kit), producing a binary that will only run on supported devices, and no NDK will support each and every Android device. You can't run armv7 code on older armv6 CPU's for example. The NDK would have to be compatible with the Android version running on the device as well, so if the vendor doesn't support it anymore, your application will be stuck at the last supported version. Last but not least all the Android SDK tooling is geared towards Java development, so writing C/C++ is a pretty rough ride. So in theory it's all possible but there will be all kinds of issues related to hardware compatibility, which is why a lot of professional game developers stay away from Android: too much effort, too many risks the investment won't pay off. I've evaluated Android as a target for a game I'm writing and even though I think I could easily get away just using Java, I decided not to risk wasting time on it only to find out the final product doesn't work quite like I intended it to, and/or doesn't sell because Android users appear to like free stuff a little too much.

Apple doesn't have this problem, because they are the only ones making hardware that runs iOS, they can ensure the devices are compatible and the development tools can target all of them without any effort from the developer (which is why iOS 3 introduced universal binaries to support armv6 and armv7 tuned code that runs on any device from the first iPhone to the iPhone 4 in the same binary, for example).

So long as I can write documents on a chrome OS netbook and touch type I will be happy. I also believe web browsing is better on any kind of laptop, simply because it is much faster unless all you are doing is clicking links.

I would love to have the ability to code on a chrome OS netbook, ie superfast device and a cloud based compiler and dev tools but I expect that is a long long way off.

"Powerhouse"? Seriously?

Android is never going to be finished and never going to be as good as iOS. It's always going to be what it was actually designed as, which is a "good enough" copy/alternative to iOS.

Android is open source. Open source is "design by committee," and has all the inherent problems of that methodology (i.e. - crap design). It will end up the same as it's open source desktop cousin in the Linux family. Desktop Linux always was and always will be "almost there" in terms of having a finished working UI, and "just around the corner" from true popularity. It will never be popular with "regular" folks who aren't interested in getting involved in the coding process. The only folks that truly *love* Linux are those that contribute to it's creation, the average person doesn't give a crap about it or Android.

Android is the same but for mobile devices. It will have all the same problems and it will all end the same way. The only reason people are buying Android devices in droves right now is that they are being marketed to them in huge numbers, (and given away for free), but mainly because the excitement around the new emerging mobile platform is driving sales of all similar devices. It's the same as when the desktop came out. There were many, many contenders that rode the initial wave of device types, but the IBM compatible won out. There is a lot of excitement right now, and a lot of different competing devices, but at the end of the day there will be either a standard (or a couple of standards), and most of the devices coming out now will be history in a few short years.

Android will always be like OpenOffice (a bad copy of Office), or Linux (a bad copy of Unix/Apple/Windows). It can't be anything else as long as it's open source software, and the average person doesn't buy, like, need, or get anything out of open source junk.

Yeah, 7" is probably about the maximum size the phone UI would not look totally stupid on, or maybe slightly larger than the maximum size. But, looking at what these things are selling for, I think it was also a cost based decision. 7" was probably the maximum size they could produce and be anywhere near the iPad price.

Android is really faux open source, with development tightly controlled inside Google. It's only open source in the sense that they can say, "Look, here's the code for the last version we released, for the non-proprietary, closed source parts, that is." The last part spoken in a quiet whisper.

The main problem is that Google doesn't seem to have anyone who knows anything, or even really cares, about UI design.

I don't understand why it would be smarter to market a 9 inch Chrome device than a 9 inch Android device, assuming Google does what it says it will do: make a version of Android that supports the larger size.

Thompson

And the iPad is "out" because of what you mentioned earlier: at the higher price, you would worry about it while on the go. Right? Also, perhaps it doesn't have the tools to do your "touch-up work"?

Thompson

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OK, based upon your answer, it seems like it's mostly about having a real keyboard. So that leaves me with the question: why are you specifying "Chrome" over "Android" or "Windows" or whatever other OS's will certainly be available on devices that would fit your requirements.

I'm struggling to see what benefits "Chrome" is going to bring to the landscape. Can anyone enlighten me why the consumer needs yet another OS, and why manufacturers should promote it? Looking at tjw's response here, I presume it has something to do with Chrome being more conducive to a "superfast" device. Because it is lightweight (from code footprint standpoint)? Because it can leverage the cloud better than Android or iOS? Note that Apple has done a great job of building an ecosystem upon which applications can run across numerous devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad). This is great for the user and the developer. By promoting Chrome along with Android, isn't Google failing to leverage a similar advantage?

Also, even if the dev tools and compiler reside in the cloud, the super small screen sizes of netbooks would drive me mad if I were doing actual development on them. Is this not something that would bother you, tjw?


Thompson

MacRules, you absolutely MUST get the Apple case if you have an iPad. It not only protects the iPad, but it also addresses the concerns you put here and others you didn't: multiple configurations and orientations, and easier to grasp without slippage. Also, slim, lightweight, classy.

Thompson

Yeah, lack of vertical screen real estate is a real productivity killer when working on code.

A colleague at work has explained to me his motivation behind wanting a "Chrome" netbook, and it goes something like this:

He wants a real keyboard and a screen bigger than smartphones, and he wants it to be really inexpensive. That forces him to a netbook. He is OK with the small screen (barely).

He has observed that current OS's seem to overburden the minimal hardware that comes with netbooks, and he thinks that Chrome will not.

That appears to be his complete motivation. It is driven by a requirement of real keyboard and low price, with some compromises made in order to have satisfactory (but not satisfying) performance. He has no desire to perform real content creation on it, and can't imagine how that would be satisfactory. (Nor can I.)

Thompson