Why yes, that is a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in my pocket | Hacker News Reader

Why yes, that is a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in my pocket

sethclifford.me

62 pointsddagradi25 comments

Decent article, but I guess I'll weigh in on the counter-points:

1. Uninformed consumers returning devices isn't unique to Android Tablets. It happens in basically every corner of the market. People buy Macs and wonder why their Windows apps don't work on them. There's really not much you can change about that, aside from trying to educate them slightly in whatever form of advertisement you have. I do think all the commercials for Android Tablets are terrible though. The iPad's wins by a landslide.

2. 16:9 vs 4:3 is really just personal preference. There are some apps that I really enjoy the 16:9 ratio for (like movies, books, and general internet browsing). For others, yes it does feel a bit wide or tall at times. This becomes a non-issue if you decide to go for a 7-inch tablet though, which I believe 3.2 just introduced support for.

3. There's a "Featured Tablet" application section on the market blatantly visible the first time you start the application. Unfortunately that's about where it ends, as there's no way to tell if an application is tablet-ready from its details page, and no way to filter for tablet-ready apps when doing a search. It's been said before, but the Market really needs an overhaul. I have noticed apps start to name themselves "HD" if they're tablet-ready, but that's not really consistent or a standard at this point.

4. Honeycomb's 3.2 version that released this past month now has the "app zooming" feature the author described missing.

5. It's been said before, but I'll repeat it here: the lack of tablet-ready apps is really just a matter of time. People tend to forget that it took iPad several months to get a decent selection of apps optimized for that screen size. This summer a good number started cropping up on the Market for Android, and now that more tablets are landing in the hands of developers (like the Transformer and Galaxy Tab), we'll no doubt see a ton of apps begin to flood us come Winter.

The iPad had 2,000 apps on launch day: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/02/best-ipad-apps-launch/

Hell, even the HP TouchPad had 300 at launch a month ago (which may even be more than Honeycomb had then, there's no way to tell due to that Market issue).

I don't know why there's so few apps for Android tablets, but I haven't seen any signs of the numbers getting much higher. And it's not like developers haven't had both 6 months to work and (for some) free Google I/O tablets to develop on.

Part of the reason for the paucity of tablet-specific apps may be that Android does a better job of scaling phone-sized apps to the tablet screen. My friend's Xoom, for example, appeared to run fantastically with the same ConnectBot SSH client as my phone right after the Xoom's release.

Edit: refute, please, instead of/in addition to downvoting. Seriously. Android does this.

Android does do this, but it only very rarely has worked for me. Like, take the Dropbox app, which is even listed under "featured tablet apps": you have file listings that are 8" wide, with no more content shown on a tablet than on a phone (which is just file name and icon).

A few, rare apps are usable scaled (ConnectBot is a good example), but almost nothing is ideal — or even usable — OOTB. At least with the ones I've tried.

Would you say the Android situation is better or worse than the pixel doubling seen on the iPad for iPhone apps?

Not really relevant, since there's enough iPad apps that it doesn't matter: I use one pixel-doubled app on the iPad (Facebook) and they're coming out with a native app very soon anyway.

> 1. Uninformed consumers returning devices isn't unique to Android Tablets. It happens in basically every corner of the market.

Sorry, but that's a Fox News style "counterpoint" when Android returns at 30% - 40% and iPhone returns at 1.7%. To say "there's not much you can change about that" is to dismiss what has been done to make iOS radically more approachable, comprehensible to, and usable by regular users than other platforms.

Funny you should say Fox News, because the 30-40% number was pulled out of thin air by a random TechCrunch writer with absolutely no sources or evidence. I've yet to see a single factual report showing Android's numbers being any higher than average for tech devices.

But sure, go ahead thinking that iOS is a radical change.

> I've yet to see a single factual report showing Android's numbers being any higher than average for tech devices.

Then don't read these, or you can't say that any more.

Here's the NY Post, citing two research firms, ITG Investment Research and iSupply:

The Galaxy Tab, Samsung's answer to the iPad, might better be called the boomerang as one Wall Street firm has found that an eye-popping 15 percent of those sold are being returned... The 15 percent return rate, which covers sales from its November debut through Jan. 16, compares to a 2 percent return rate for Apple's iPad...

Rhoda Alexander, an iSuppli analyst, said, "There are a lot of issues with Android tablets, not just Samsung. A lot of those products have difficulties with high return rates or with not moving off the shelf.”

http://m.nypost.com/p/news/business/galaxy_tab_dim_bulb_KbD4...

More detail from AllThingsDigital's coverage of the ITG report:

Buyer's Remorse: 16 Percent of Galaxy Tabs Are Returned – ITG Investment Research tracked point-of-sale data from nearly 6,000 wireless stores in the US from the Galaxy Tab’s November debut through Jan. 15 and found the device to have an unusually high return rate. According to its estimates, cumulative return rates for the Galaxy Tab through December of 2010 were about 13 percent. Worse, that percentage is growing as holiday purchases are returned. ITG figures cumulative Galaxy Tab return rates through January 15 were 16 percent.

http://allthingsd.com/20110201/16-percent-of-galaxy-tabs-are...

"Point-of-sale data from nearly 6,000 stores" and "unusually high return rate" sounds both "factual" and "higher than average" to me.

Okay, now that's an Android device with higher than average returns. I take back my previous statement.

That said, it's cute that you're comparing the Galaxy Tab to the iPad. For the unaware, both articles are referring to the original Galaxy Tab that released last winter, before Android's Honeycomb version came out, making the OS officially tablet-supported. It's a middle-ground device that's neither a phone nor a tablet, and seems to take after the worst of both. The actual Honeycomb Samsung Tablet is called the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and was released this summer.

> However, for the amount of marketing and push that these tablets are getting, there should absolutely be not only a wide range of options, but a clearly delineated path with which to reach them. Android Market has neither. You can search for "tablet", and you hit quite a few things, and you can search for "Honeycomb", and reach some others, but you have things like themes and wallpapers for phones in the Honeycomb style that make their way into your search. Apple has two sides of the App Store - iPhone and iPad - and it's completely obvious where the tablet apps are. I'm an experienced user, so I'm figuring things out, but I can't imagine someone who isn't comfortable with this stuff having much fun doing the same

Yet another example of how Google's Market app is slowly catching up to iTunes. The new market app is a big improvement.

It seems like writing tablet apps for Honeycomb are more an exercise for developers and their teams (I see distinct rivalries between iOS and Android dev teams at the same company) at companies that have Android apps to pad their resume and "feel cool" (look at me, we have a tablet app) than a practical economic market. I know four people who own Honeycombs, all of them were purchased by their employers so their company could get the "Tablet" achievement. As for iPads, I was shocked the other day to see not just one but two iPads being used (the glow is mega massive from the screen) from my nosebleed level cheap seat before an orchestral concert started.

Weird. My Asus Transformer has a section in the Market that's specifically for tablets.

And the market will only show apps that work on your device... So non-tablets will never see that section.

Unless people specify the devices wrong, of course.

I set up some new PC laptops recently for a few non-technical friends. It's been a while since I've touched a new PC laptop so it was a bit of shock to be reminded of how much clunky, ugly, slow, proprietary junkware was larded on top of Windows. It's a bad soup cooked by too many chefs.

From what I've seen of recent Android UI's, vendors seem to be following the same MO, with the same poor, inconsistent results. If Google doesn't start pushing hard for stock Android on tablets they're going to lose this race.

The problem with Android being open source is that Google hasn't really got much control over what happens with it. Everyone can tweak it for the better or worse, and lately its mostly been for the worse.

However, if you don't want to root or get a nexus, I've found that simply installing one of the many launchers available for free mostly does the trick of cleaning up your phone (touchwiz, blur etc get removed and you can hide apps completely if you like). Also, this seems worst in the US, where the carrier situation is -forgive me- completely fucked up. I haven't had issues anywhere similar with bloatware here in europe.

I can only hope, but if capitalism works and people don't like scins and crapware on their phone, the cunts in charge right now will eventually realize it's smarter to leave Android as it is because more people will buy it. I'm still waiting though.

Contrary to much received wisdom on the subject, I don't think that stock Android is significantly less user-friendly than iOS. But requiring users to be savvy enough to strip off carrier crapware is asking too much.

Consensus is powerful. Consistency is powerful. Google has to walk a fine line here but if they don't rein in the carriers soon I worry that Apple's discipline in design & execution is going to overwhelm them. I'm a little suspicious of recent claims that Android return rates are as high as 40% but I don't doubt that they're too high.

Google need to take a page out of the video-game emulation world and introduce filters and anti-aliasing at higher magnifications.

For example you can play a Gameboy Advance game at native resolution (ie tiny!) on the emulator Visualboy Advance or scale the video output 2 or 3 times and after enabling all the above settings, the output is much nicer than the originals.

It doesn't take all that much processing power to do either (the difference in power between phones and tablets more than makes up for it - many times over I suspect)

Anyone care to chime in? (and possibly destroy my argument)

2xSaI would be amazing on both Android and iPad. If it can breathe new life into SNES games, it would probably work nicely on apps.

If you've got a jailbroken iPad, there's a better option than 2xSaI. The iPad loads the low-resolution iPhone application nibs, presumably to make iPhone apps look worse on the iPad, but with RetinaPad off of Cydia you get the iPhone 4, high-resolution display of those applications.

I have played with my friends iPad 2's and just got the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. I think it's fine and now I prefer it over the iPad.

It's so much lighter which means I can be "that guy" who takes movies and pictures with it. It uploads to Google+ automatically and then I can choose to share or not. One of the big barriers to me sharing meda with friends is my laziness in taking the time to upload each file. This takes one step out of that process: I just leave a note and choose to share it or not.

The 16:9 form factor can be awkward for reading eBooks. I actually prefer that form factor overall because when I type in portrait mode I don't have to move my thumbs as far to type letters.

As for the apps one thing that I found is that due to the way Android apps manage layout instead of doing a simple pixel multiplication the applications scale fairly well. While there aren't a lot of pretty tablet-specific apps in the Android Marketplace at leas the apps are usable on the full-screen. I really appreciate the information density as opposed to running in an a small emulator.

I have no issue with people's personal preferences on screen ratio or social networking functionality but "so much lighter"?

It's 601g vs. 565g? That's 36g (the weight of 6 quarters), about 5%. Are you serious that that's a big deal?

I'm not sure why everyone keeps saying that Honeycomb tablets aren't there yet. Where are they supposed to be? I've owned a Xoom WiFi for a while now and it has quickly replaced my laptop as my "just surfing the net" tool. I still switch to type out e-mails, but my Xoom is always what I reach for when I'm sitting on the sofa and want to google something real quick.

I think that when they say they "aren't there" they mean in relation to the iPad. Having played around with both, I agree- the iPad is just a more put-together product. However, like like it did on phones, I fully expect Android to make quick strides to catch up.

Are apps really that important? I figure main use would be web browsing. I hardly ever use apps on my Android phone, except for the built in ones (maps, contacts).

I even consider to go web only on my future tablet to avoid privacy issues with apps.

Depends on the user. DHH wrote an interesting piece on it saying that almost everything he did on iOS using the 10 basic apps and that everything else was pretty irrelevant.

For me that's not true. Of the dozen or so apps I use most often about half are standard, about half downloaded/purchased, so for me it would be a big deal but if what you want to do is surf the web, read e-mail and use a basic media player for photos and video then apps probably aren't a selling point and there's a big enough market of people like that out there.

The stretch scale is fixed in the next version of Honeycomb.

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