Friday, September 10, 2010

Here come the Android tablets

There is the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and the Archos tablets, which are cheap.
I like that the 10-inch Archos is a lot lighter than the iPad. I just wonder if it's even close to being as speedy, responsive, and userfriendly. I suspect that's very hard to do, probably harder than to pile on the features. I hope it is, though, it would be cool to have several serious choices in the tablet arena.

The Galaxy Tab seems very responsive  (this video, despite poor quality in the beginning, is good and has a lot of info) (I wonder what camera and mic he used).



I sorta like the size of the Galaxy Tab. That you can hold across it with one hand. (And it's only 380 grams) (13.5 oz).  I wonder if people will feel silly making calls on it though.
But I guess all sizes have their pros and cons. The bigger a tablet is, the more user-friendly and full-featured it can. The smaller it is, the more portable it is. I can't see any perfect compromise.

Here is more about the Galaxy Tab (and here). I note they say "we can't and also don't want to compete with Apple, we're trying to attract different target groups". I can understand why they don't want to compete with Apple (!), but the question is, can they avoid it? Even if it's mid-sized, the GT is clearly in iPad's/iPhone's market space, methinks.

They don't know when the GT will be available, though, and it seems (at least in the US) that it will only be sold with a phone contract, boooh. 

2 comments:

Miserere said...

About talking on the phone with these tablets: Don't they have a jack so you can use a headphone/mic set? One of these came bundled with my BlackBerry so I can answer the phone while I'm listening to music and talk while the BB stays in my pocket. There are also bluetooth headsets, if these tablets have bluetooth, which they either do, or will do very soon.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, I'm sure you're right.
I don't use phones much, so I never even thought of getting such accessories.
Well... actually I do have a headset for my *landline* phone (Bang And Olufsen), and I really like having it for longer conversations, and having my hands free for typing or making coffee.