Five Things Android Tablets Need to Succeed: Editorial by Android Police

[Bateluer]

http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/0...ndroid-tablets-will-need-in-order-to-succeed/

If there’s one thing CES told us about the upcoming twelve months in technology, it’s that 2011 will be the year of Android tablets. And with noteworthy entries such as the Motorola XOOM, ASUS’ lineup, and the T-Mobile G-Slate, it looks like the tablets’ quality might be just as high as their quantity – at least hardware-wise.

But what about the software? After all, isn’t a device’s OS what makes or breaks it? And even if the tablets are good, will consumers care? Let’s take a look at the top five areas Android tablets will need to succeed in.

I agree with most of what he writes, but not so much in the Multi-Media area. Yes, Android doesn't have a Hulu or Netflix app yet. Hulu's easy enough to get working because we have Flash. The stock music app is bare bones, but it plays music just fine. If it doesn't suit you, then you've got a plethora of other music and video players to choose from on the Market, both free and otherwise. People rant about Android's alleged lack of Music/Video capability, but it always seems like a weak rant because the people ranting haven't tried more than the stock software. Sadly, that probably does describe the majority of people. I work in an IT centered department, and we're pretty much split half way between iPhone models and Verizon Droid models, but I'm the only one rooted and running and custom build on mine, and none of the iPhone models have even jail broke theirs. They all complain about AT&T's signal strength in the build though.

 

[Patranus]

So pretty much everything.

 

[QueBert]

I love how the article proclaims 2011 will be the year of the Android table, does a bunch being release = year of? I have my doubts about most of them. As far as unreleased tables go, I'll take a Playbook over any Android preview one I've seen. Android hasn't proven itself on tablets yet. And it has a long way to go before I'll believe the hype. The thought of the ugly ass app UI's on a 10" screen is horrifying to me.

 

[MrX8503]

I'm actually more interested in the Playbook than the Android tablets. My preference is the browser not so much the apps.

If you have the internet, that is the ultimate app.

 

[cheezy321]

It boggles my mind that android users are so fine with having to change all these stock apps just to get their phone at a comparable level with other phones on the market.

Text messaging app has bugs? Oh, just go download handcent, that will fix it.

Stock media player blows? Oh, go download THIS one.

The real question is why the hell do I have to download handcent? Why shouldnt it work just fine out of the box? The fact that you have to talk to someone in the know or do research to get your phone to work just as good as the other ones on the market is sad.

 

[TheStu]

It also doesn't change the fact that none of the other mobile OSes has iTunes and the iTunes store.

Love it or hate it, proclaim drag and drop the one true method until you are blue in the face, at the end of the day, millions of people have iTunes and iPods, and if they get a new phone and want to put music on there, they want to be able to just hook it up, have the music copy over and be done with it.

Zune gets that aspect right, and the ZunePass is pretty killer, but it is lacking in other areas that I won't get into.

Google doesn't have anything like this, certainly nothing officially supported that you can download from them directly. DoubleTwist apparently works pretty well (is it still device specific or will it work with any Android device?) but I can't go to music.google.com or whatever and download that.

 

[QueBert]

It boggles my mind that android users are so fine with having to change all these stock apps just to get their phone at a comparable level with other phones on the market.

Text messaging app has bugs? Oh, just go download handcent, that will fix it.

Stock media player blows? Oh, go download THIS one.

The real question is why the hell do I have to download handcent? Why shouldnt it work just fine out of the box? The fact that you have to talk to someone in the know or do research to get your phone to work just as good as the other ones on the market is sad.

but but but... it's open!

 

[Deeko]

It boggles my mind that android users are so fine with having to change all these stock apps just to get their phone at a comparable level with other phones on the market.

Text messaging app has bugs? Oh, just go download handcent, that will fix it.

Stock media player blows? Oh, go download THIS one.

The real question is why the hell do I have to download handcent? Why shouldnt it work just fine out of the box? The fact that you have to talk to someone in the know or do research to get your phone to work just as good as the other ones on the market is sad.

Apple fans have short memories. Back in the day, that's exactly what they said regarding things the core OS couldn't do. "That's ok, there's an app for that!"

 

[DivideBYZero]

Apple fans have short memories. Back in the day, that's exactly what they said regarding things the core OS couldn't do. "That's ok, there's an app for that!"

This x 11ty, but I'm still getting a PlayBook on day one.

 

[Bateluer]

RIM's Playbook seems to have a lot of trouble with its development, underwhelming performance, low battery life, uncertain release dates, etc. Where as we saw a number of VERY nice Android tablets at CES with Honeycomb, the Moto Xoom, the Asus models, the LG models, the T-Mo G-Slate, etc.

 

[cheezy321]

Apple fans have short memories. Back in the day, that's exactly what they said regarding things the core OS couldn't do. "That's ok, there's an app for that!"

Example? Are you talking about picture messages? Thats the only thing I can think of...

 

[jstekl]

Hi Bateluer,
I'm Jaroslav Stekl, the author of the article in question here.
I understand that there are several excellent third-party multimedia apps - I use Winamp as my music player on a daily basis - but there are two huge problems with these, especially in regards to tablets:
1. They weren't designed for tablets. Sure, their UIs look great on a phone, and they work well too, but the truth of the matter is that they just won't be nearly as much fun to use on the larger display, at least not if they're left unaltered.
2. Most consumers will only ever use the included stock music/video players - and I think we can all agree that these could definitely use some improvement.
Similarly, most consumers aren't going to be want to hack Hulu or Netflix onto their new tablets; instead, they'll want an official app that they can download from the Market in addition to an iTunes-like music/video store from which they can buy their favorite music/movies. Luckily, we know an Android-based Hulu app is in the works; however, the music/video store hasn't been worked out yet and is definitely something Google will need to pay attention to if they want to become a big player on the tablet scene. iTunes is one of the iPad's flagship features, and I don't think a tablet without something like it could become truly mainstream.

 

[Brian Stirling]

I'll start to get interested in a tablet when they get the form factor right. I may not be typical of most users but for me a 10 inch tablet is too large and a 7 inch tablet is too small. Split the difference at 8.5 inches and make it a high resolution display of 1366x896 or, even better, 1920x1200 and I'll begin to take it serious.

Give it 32GB of on-board flash with an SDXC slot so I can slap in a 64GB-2TB flash card. Dual-core of course and at least 1GB RAM with 2GB being preferred. Give it a battery that permits 8 continuous hours of use (eg. video playback). The only other thing I'd like to see is a pointing device like a mini track ball so that selecting entities in a program like AutoCAD is more practical. Yes, include the multi-tap selection/copy/paste but also include a hardware trackball.

I don't really care what OS it uses though Win7/8 should offer the possibility of running AutoCAD without much fuss.


Brian

 

[DivideBYZero]

RIM's Playbook seems to have a lot of trouble with its development, underwhelming performance, low battery life, uncertain release dates, etc. Where as we saw a number of VERY nice Android tablets at CES with Honeycomb, the Moto Xoom, the Asus models, the LG models, the T-Mo G-Slate, etc.

lol wut?

Want to tell me why Tegra 2 running Android is better than OMAP4 running QNX? Got any facts on development 'trouble'? Also, remind me what the xoom release date is again...

 

[zerocool84]

It boggles my mind that android users are so fine with having to change all these stock apps just to get their phone at a comparable level with other phones on the market.

Text messaging app has bugs? Oh, just go download handcent, that will fix it.

Stock media player blows? Oh, go download THIS one.

The real question is why the hell do I have to download handcent? Why shouldnt it work just fine out of the box? The fact that you have to talk to someone in the know or do research to get your phone to work just as good as the other ones on the market is sad.

Android fans have said this about Apple for years, but Apple fans would always say there's an app for that so it's no big deal or just jailbreak it so you can do that. Now that it's on the other foot it's all of a sudden not ok. It's funny.

 

[cheezy321]

Android fans have said this about Apple for years, but Apple fans would always say there's an app for that so it's no big deal or just jailbreak it so you can do that. Now that it's on the other foot it's all of a sudden not ok. It's funny.

This is filling in holes that the stock apps dont supply.

I am talking about completely replacing a stock app because it is lacking.

I still havent heard any examples...Only one i can think of is MMS messaging when the iphone first came out.

 

[foghorn67]

This is filling in holes that the stock apps dont supply.

I am talking about completely replacing a stock app because it is lacking.

I still havent heard any examples...Only one i can think of is MMS messaging when the iphone first came out.

Not waking up on time? There's an app for that.

 

[zerocool84]

This is filling in holes that the stock apps dont supply.

I am talking about completely replacing a stock app because it is lacking.

I still havent heard any examples...Only one i can think of is MMS messaging when the iphone first came out.

Why did you even need to bring this up? The article wasn't anything about this.

 

[DivideBYZero]

It also doesn't change the fact that none of the other mobile OSes has iTunes and the iTunes store.

Love it or hate it, proclaim drag and drop the one true method until you are blue in the face, at the end of the day, millions of people have iTunes and iPods, and if they get a new phone and want to put music on there, they want to be able to just hook it up, have the music copy over and be done with it.

Not correct. BlackBerry Media Sync with BB Desktop Manager does exactly this with iTunes without having to have an iOS device.

 

[TheStu]

Not correct. BlackBerry Media Sync with BB Desktop Manager does exactly this with iTunes without having to have an iOS device.

Yea, I forgot about that one. They released that... last year I think? My mom still had her Pearl at the time.

Or was it the Mac version that they released last year... I can't remember.

Do DRMed iTunes files (all videos and I think some music still) work with that software? And I am assuming that it does what the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Connector does, pulls the playlist information out of iTunes to get the file locations and names and what not.

And of course the Pre did (or still does) pretend to be an iPod to work with iTunes right out of the box.

 

[KDOG]

Whoa whoa. Where did this Playbook come from? I had not seen that. Interesting....

 

[Bateluer]

Hi Bateluer,
I'm Jaroslav Stekl, the author of the article in question here.
I understand that there are several excellent third-party multimedia apps - I use Winamp as my music player on a daily basis - but there are two huge problems with these, especially in regards to tablets:
1. They weren't designed for tablets. Sure, their UIs look great on a phone, and they work well too, but the truth of the matter is that they just won't be nearly as much fun to use on the larger display, at least not if they're left unaltered.
2. Most consumers will only ever use the included stock music/video players - and I think we can all agree that these could definitely use some improvement.
Similarly, most consumers aren't going to be want to hack Hulu or Netflix onto their new tablets; instead, they'll want an official app that they can download from the Market in addition to an iTunes-like music/video store from which they can buy their favorite music/movies. Luckily, we know an Android-based Hulu app is in the works; however, the music/video store hasn't been worked out yet and is definitely something Google will need to pay attention to if they want to become a big player on the tablet scene. iTunes is one of the iPad's flagship features, and I don't think a tablet without something like it could become truly mainstream.

Thanks for the post. I agreed that most people use use the stock apps. But knocking Android for not having a built in messenging app on par with Handcent is like knocking Windows 7 for not including Office 2010, Adobe Photoshop,and WinDVD in a stock install. Sure, you can use Wordpad, Paint, and WMP, and they'll work for most people, but the 3rd party apps offer a lot more. As they should. Google provides the basics, as does Microsoft, but both leave the highly featured applications to other developers(or other departments).

Still a good article you've written.

 

[Raduque]

I'll start to get interested in a tablet when they get the form factor right. I may not be typical of most users but for me a 10 inch tablet is too large and a 7 inch tablet is too small. Split the difference at 8.5 inches and make it a high resolution display of 1366x896 or, even better, 1920x1200 and I'll begin to take it serious.

Give it 32GB of on-board flash with an SDXC slot so I can slap in a 64GB-2TB flash card. Dual-core of course and at least 1GB RAM with 2GB being preferred. Give it a battery that permits 8 continuous hours of use (eg. video playback). The only other thing I'd like to see is a pointing device like a mini track ball so that selecting entities in a program like AutoCAD is more practical. Yes, include the multi-tap selection/copy/paste but also include a hardware trackball.

I don't really care what OS it uses though Win7/8 should offer the possibility of running AutoCAD without much fuss.


Brian

I still say you're insane for wanting an ultra-high resolution on such a tiny-ass display - talk about eyestrain! Horrible, horrible, eye strain.

 

[zerocool84]

I still say you're insane for wanting an ultra-high resolution on such a tiny-ass display - talk about eyestrain! Horrible, horrible, eye strain.

No device that small needs such a high resolution. I say the largest should be 1280×720 aka 720p.

 

[MrX8503]

A 10" 2560x1600 Retina display tablet would be jaw dropping.