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Opinions on Android 2.0 tablets?

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Vigo:

--- Quote from: brad808 on December 04, 2011, 10:08:58 am ---I just recently on Black Friday picked up an HP touchpad for $99 as a toy/ why not it's on sale. The tablet runs WebOS but has an android 2.0 port with 4.0 in the works. It definitely works good and I have no major complaints about it but you can tell there are certain things in android 2.0 that just aren't "right" on a tablet. The one concern I'd have about the cheap tablets is the specs of processor and ram. The touchpad has a dual core processor that was clocked at 1.2 ghz and it didn't feel lag free to me. I bumped it up to 1.5ghz using setcpu and now it feels nice and smooth. If going the cheap route I'd try and find one with at least a dual core processor in it because I imagine anything less would feel laggy.

--- End quote ---

I just got one of the HP touchpads on firesale as well. You just cannot beat $100 for a tablet with specs that are generally higher than the iPad2. They have just gotten an alpha of Android 4.0 working on it. I hear the Android 2.3 now runs pretty smoothly right now as well. On top of that, HP just open sourced WebOS. I might hold out and just use the touchpad's webOS exclusively for a little while, and see where the mod scene for the HP touchpad is at in a couple months.

brad808:
"I might hold out and just use the touchpad's webOS exclusively for a little while, and see where the mod scene for the HP touchpad is at in a couple months. "



You say that now... Android is just so tempting. Plus I can tell you from experience surfing the net on webos is garbage. Each new "tab" you open basically opens like another instance of the internet. In other words to switch "tabs" you have to go through the same process as you would to switch to another application you had open. For me it was a no brainer to install android/ dolphin browser.

The best part about android on the touchpad is the fact that you don't remove webos. When you boot up/ reboot, you have the option to either boot into webos or android. With that being said I'm yet to boot back into webos after installing android (the same day I got it), but it is nice to have the option should I ever desire to. Now that webos is open sourced there might be some interesting developments.

Vigo:
Haha, you are probably right. I think I will be lucky if I last through Christmas without trying to mod it.

I am pretty happy that you dont need to remove webos to run android. That is one giant hurdle cleared since this tablet is for my wife as well, she would probably freak if I altered beyond being able to use webOS anymore. From what I hear, webos being open sourced is about the only shot it has to actually be an all around good platform.

Howard_Casto:
Well I finally made my decision and I wanted to thank you guys for all the help.  I also thought I might share my opinions after spending an entire day going around town (UGH)  looking at every tablet available in the brick and mortar stores (DOUBLE UGH!). 

I looked at the sub-200 dollar tablets and played around with them.  The difference in quality is staggering.  It isn't so much the processor speed or anything else, but rather the screens... they are just terrible.  That's the sort of thing you can't really tell on the net.  The only sub 200 dollar tablet that seemed to be any kind of dela for the money was last year's model CRUZ tablet at Big Lots for 89 bucks.  I wouldn't reccommend it, it's a tad on the cheap side and there  is a newer model that has roughly double the specs for 150 bucks but hey... it's really cheap.

I also looked at the 250+ dollar tablets.  I've gotta say, I wasn't all that impressed.  Sure they were SLIGHTLY mroe responsive than the cheaper ones, but because most of your apps are designed for cell phones anyway, so it's kind of like using a high end computer to play angry birds.  Now that might change in a year or so, but much like computers in a year or so you'll probably be looking for a new tablet anyway if you are into that sort of thing.

Anyway, the three that kept standing out in terms of bang for your buck were the nook color, the kindle fire and the realitively new Vizio 8" tablet.  The Nook was the most boring tablet I've ever seen.  Mind you it was well priced (200-250) and was snappy, but the screen was bleh the case made it feel like a cheap toy and that missing corner just looked awful to me.  The kindle fire was easily the snappiest thing in that price range.  The screen was slighty better than the other two as well.  Unfortuantely it has to be, because it's the size of a postage stamp.  I've got a e-ink kobo at home and due to it's 4:3 ratio, it even has a bigger screen than the kindle.  Also the extra hardware is a bit lacking due to the fact that it's a e-reader.  No gps, no bluetooth, no hdmi out and more importantly the memory isn't expandable, so if you intend to put a lot of stuff on it you better be willing to "go to the cloud". 


The clear winner for me, once I go the thing in my hand, was the vizio tablet.  It's unique hardware features make it feel the least like a glorified smart phone, and that includes some of the pricer ones as well.  First off it's 200 bucks.  Try to find another tablet with it's specs for that price without having to deal with some kind of crazy sale.  Secondly the screen is 4:3 and it's 8 inch, not 7.  That doesn't sound like a big deal, but the extra inch coupled with a bigger aspect ratio gives you a much better screen than pretyt much anything out there save the 10 inch tablets.  The kindle fire looked like a toy beside it.  Also it's 1024x768 resolution, so that's nice and crisp for web browsing and the like.  I believe that's the resolution of the ipad.

This one's got a ton of features that you just don't see in that price range so rather than bore you with anther long paragraph, how about a list:

1.  Built in bluetooth, so it's OnLive ready.
2.  Gps
3.  Accelerometer
4.  Capacitive multi-touch display
5.  Capacitive buttons that appear in either orientation.
6.  Custom skin for android 2.3, which I prefer, but hey they've managed to root it anyway.
7.  A working usb port (used for charging as well)
8.  Hdmi out, probably the best in any class from what I've seen.  The tablet is capable of a full 1080p video playback and android is only supposed to supprot 720p.
9.  Three speakers, so regardless of the orientation you have stereo sound (which is actually quite good for a tablet). 
10.  The headphone jack is in the bottom corner instead of along a side, which sounds dumb until you realize that it is actually pretty clever... if you have headphones in and you need to rotate the tablet, it won't pull on the cord. 
11.  A forward facing web cam, which kind of sucks, but is servicable for skype and the like.

12.  A built in IR-Blaster with a custom Vizio universal remote app.  It's a little light on the features now, but even as is it's pretty bad ass and on par with a lot of the expensive touch screen remotes out there.  Couple that with access to tv guide and imdb and you've basically got a pretty special universal remote.  So even if you outgrow the tablet later on, it's still worth the money as a remote alone. 


Final notes... in terms of speed it was slightly slower than the kindle fire in terms of the interface, but once you got into the apps it actually performed better than some of the 300 dollar tablets.  I've been told that this is due to vizio's custom skin (I know their interface is slow on my tv as well) so if it annoys you too much you can just root it and put standard android back on there.  I think it's got one of those ghz class processors in there and 512 mb of ram.  It's not a powerhouse or anything but what I found out today was the specs aren't as important on these devices as is their implementation.  There were some dual core tablets that didn't seem to perform any better than this one. 


So anybody who's in the same boat as me (cheap as hell) I would highly reccomend the vizio.  Here's a random review off the net for more info.

Red:
Thanks for that, Howard. 

Where did you get your Vizio tablet?  Were you able to test it out hands on before you bought it?

What's the Rooting scene like for it?  Do they have many Custom ROMS to try?

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