Working on an Android tablet: first six weeks | Hacker News Reader

Working on an Android tablet: first six weeks

bergie.iki.fi

44 pointsbergie48 comments

Moving from a pair of 21" monitors to a 10" tablet screen with attached, terrible keyboard seems like a effort in trying to find a painful development environment.

There's been a large amount of research done on dual monitors and increased screen space and the effects on productivity - throwing that all out because it feels good seems like a ridiculous idea, let alone the ergonomics of hunching over a small screen.

Moving from 11" laptop to a 'retina' 10" tablet however is actually an upgrade screen estate wise.

I can see the appeal of multiple big screens, but that has never worked for me. I spend much time on the road, and want to have the same working environment in the coffee shop as I have in the office.

Why is remoting up to the dev machine in you office not an option then ? If the tablet is just used as a dumb terminal then it makes a bit sense. I do that all the time with mu surface.

You'd have to have fucking laser vision to be able to use that small of fonts crammed on a 10.1" screen.

Is far easier to zoom in a tablet. I use a 30" LCD for my main setup, but no problem when need to read code in a iPad 2. I simply put large fonts and zoom.

Also, with this pixel density and the desktop stand I can keep the tablet reasonably near my face.

Terrible keyboard? Android supports USB HID devices so just use whatever keyboard you normally use. I use my HHKB [1] when I am on the go which is 1000 times better than the on-screen keyboard. I also have two monitors at home and at work, so I agree that replacing a real setup with 10" is terrible. If you would connect that Nexus 10 to a 24" or so monitor at work that would be a much better solution.

[1] http://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=pfu_keyboards,hhk...

Could you direct me to some of this research you're citing? it seems really unlikely to me that dual monitors would have any kind of significant impact on productivity. in fact don't they encourage multi-tasking which tends to decrease productivity?

One of many: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/technology/for-multitasker...

How does it play on people who have ADHD? I've been on a single 13" for three years and I don't want to go back to two 21" again. Might go for an 15" just because of xCode, but that's it.

Jeff Atwood has lots of links here:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/does-more-than-one-...

agreed. the whole article is about masochism.

I can get pretty much a better environment just by flashing a decent ROM that has a good terminal/ssh client and/or a modern port of VIM.

...and then using VNC is just the conclusion that his setup is not even close to optimal.

Sorry, but a netbook is way more feasible and less masochist than that ever will be.

Android/ios are not useful for general purpose by design. it's not something that you can 'improve' gradually. And that's why instead of punishing me like that, i'm excited about the other 'mobile' OSes comming, like ubuntu, mozilla, etc.

The good thing about this decoupled setup is that switching costs (in time, not in money) are amazingly low.

If something new and interesting comes up, I can just switch to that device and reconnect to my existing tmux sessions. Maybe Ubuntu will deliver a great tablet, or Google ship that rumoured Chrome OS tablet? I could be up and running on one of those in minutes

I think the emphasis was on mobility. It is quite difficult to find a light enough laptop with a large screen estate. I don't think I could go around with a laptop larger than 15".

If you are a developer, why the hell would you make your daily life more complicated? Who cares if you save some money, this is your job! There are really two problems here.

1. Your life is now even more dependent on an internet connection.

- Someone needs to reset the wireless at the office. Down time.

- Cellular data get's bogged down at peak hours. Down time.

- Server Provider experiences down time. Down time.

- You're married to vim forever (not a bad thing, but there are no options).

- Latency, Latency, Latency.

2. You're restricted to your hardware, which is restrictive.

- Nobody has the right adapters to connect to the projector.

- Goodbye secondary monitor.

- Mobility is easier with a standard laptop.

I believe if you're a developer who loves to be mobile, then your best solution is to buy something like a MacBook Air or 13" Retina and a 3G card. Again, the argument shouldn't be "that costs too much," because this industry has a starting salary of $60k/yr. I think spending $2k every 2 years is appropriate and hardly a sacrifice considering that device is what makes you the developer you are.

Mobility probably also include weight and battery life. A macbook air/ultrabook probably have a ~5h of battery when streching it, a tablet could last a whole day ( and probably 2 ) without a sweat. And they both have the same weight.

There is a lot of work that can be done/ tested on android depending on your work ( botbrew provide gcc plus other scripting environment for example). Making you less dependent on the internet connection.

There is other options to code source editing on tablet ( droidedit being one good option ).

On the adapter issue, even on macbook pro/air people usually forget to bring adapter, and most projector in the wild still use the good old VGA adapter.

And while I agree with some points, I think this was mostly an experiment ( successful for him to some degree ) , like the guy who tried to work only with his iPad before. And like other experiments, results are open to discussion.

I think some of your stats are a little excessive, nonetheless, and to some extent, I agree. Still though, It really left a bad feeling when the author went on about how much money he was saving. My undertone (could have been more clear) was that, that is ridiculous.

The money saving part is obviously of little consequence, it was there mainly because people had asked about it several times, and also because I'm constantly amazed how cheap modern technology has become

Portability and battery life were certainly the main points, not hardware costs :-)

I'm explaining the reasons and the pros and cons better in the original post: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/

I use a MacBook Air paired with an LTE iPad. The combo gives me great speed and roughly whole workday battery life. If the MacBook dies after 5 or so hours, the iPad will still be at 90% charge and is fine for ssh/vim. This rarely happens though...

As a fulltime contractor with no office and lots of fun places to sit, I love it. But yes, it's $2k + $50/month for the LTE.

Someone needs to reset the wireless at the office. Down time.

There is 3G for that, and usually here in Europe the networks hold up quite well.

Not being able to do everything while on train or plane is the bigger real issue.

Server Provider experiences down time. Down time

That would be somewhat of an issue, though hasnt happened to me yet. And at least I can always fall back to Terminal IDE in that case.

You're married to vim forever

That isn't the worst thing that could happen. Could be Emacs ;-)

But seriously, I find value in settling on one editor you know and that works well.

Nobody has the right adapters to connect to the projector.

Just like when I had a MacBook. So, again I'm carrying a VGA dongle with me if I assume I have to present something.

* Goodbye secondary monitor.*

Never used or wanted one in my career stretching back to mid-90s...

Mobility is easier with a standard laptop.

Laptops are certainly more autonomous unless you go with a ChromeBook. But the tablet wins in portability and battery life

So he "switched to a tablet" and used another computer via SSH (or MOSH), and did his web testing via VNC to another computer.

Please explain to me how this is "switching to a tablet" rather than just "using a small screen".

"Using a small screen that has a ten hour battery life and can run programs locally", then?

Why I love notebooks: you barely need to move your fingers and can get a boatload of shit done. Just leave your hands on the keyboard and touchpad and you can control the universum.

Thinkpads with their red pointing sticks even top this: you can lie like dead in front of your Thinkpad and have even less finger movement -- your forefinger sits on the red pointing stick and your thumb lies on the left mouse key and again you control anything + you are damn fast.

Why do people try to use touch-based devices for productivity work where classic keyboard and trackpad/pointing stick setups and respective UIs/OSes are clearly superior? If people are using Android/iOS as productivity device they need also some kind of mouse pointer on the screen, otherwise finger movement exceeds the limit.

Finally, with current notebooks I get hours of battery time, Retina screens and total silence too (e.g. Macbook Pro Retina 15"). The cost is negligible since it's my working horse.

To be honest, the time I spent developing on my Transformer Prime, I found the touch screen to be much more efficient to use than the mouse pad.

Depends on the quality of the mouse pad too. Macbook touch pads with all the gestures and Thinkpad pointing sticks outdo the competition by far. And Androids UI is just not optimized for mouse pointing uses. But still I'd love to hear where you are faster than on a Macbook Pro with OSX.

Oh I'm much more efficient on the MBP, but not because it lacks a touchscreen. Simply because Android is not meant to do work, but to consume medias.

The touchscreen is useful because it's right next to your fingers, and you don't have to think about a pointers to click on something, you just unconsciously reach for it.

If you get your hands on a device with a good touchscreen and a mouse, try it. You'll find yourself going back to a regular laptop and reaching for the screen.

Reading Henri's post, I don't understand how the conclusion can possibly be positive. What's described there is a series of limitations and painful workarounds, with basically no advantages.

A couple of years ago I did a similar experiment of using an Eee Transformer as my main device for a couple of weeks. It was miserable in so many ways (http://jsnell.iki.fi/blog/archive/2012-02-22-android-on-a-ne...). The only good thing about it was that with a Transformer you could get 16 hours of actual usage. But a normal Android tablet wouldn't have even that benefit -- if I'm only going to get 9 hours of battery, I'll rather get it from my ThinkPad.

I tried this briefly with a Transformer Prime last year, and that didn't work. Keyboard and screen weren't good enough. That part is what has changed in a year :-)

This dream of freedom being brought about by purchasing "mobile" computers has remained nothing but that since I purchased my first laptop many years ago; a dream.

"I can work anywhere now!" I thought to myself.

I quickly realized that on sunny days it was much too bright out for me to see my screen, and on dark days it was too risky due to the chance of rain. Not to mention a massive pain in the butt to run out of electricity while away from an outlet.

I realized I only used my laptop in "do or die" situations where using a desktop computer was all but impossible. That trend continues to this day.

I had a similarly bad idea bouncing around my brain when buying my first Android tablet.

"I'm going to ssh into my servers and thwart attacks whilst laying back on my couch." Only to realize that my tablet was just as good as getting any real work done as my laptop, except for the fact that it didn't have a keyboard which actually made things more frustratingly slow than my first attempt at freedom.

tl;dr I imagine I will be using a desktop computer or some version of it to do my work for quite some time to come.

I work outside for a good chunk of spring and summer.

The trick? A mini van with a leisure battery and a phone to tether to. On those occasions where the sun to be so bright that I can't see the screen (not as common as you'd think) I can sit in the van and still have the fresh air, the view and the sun on some of me.

I for one am curious about a CPA that is using Google Docs to handle their customer's data. Are customers aware of this practice? Are they OK with their data being out there?

Consider the security risks that any other CPA would be under:

1. Non-Google POP3/IMAP accounts

2. Any off-site backup service they happen to use

3. Any company that services their computer and thus has physical access to it

4. Their home/office network security

5. Their home/office physical security

6. Their IT guy's access to the data

7. Malware/virus risks

How many CPAs have properly implemented strong encryption on their email and local storage?

Tin-foil hat brigade aside - is Google Docs really in a different league to all of these other potential threats to client privacy?

A while ago I considered getting a similar setup for traveling, but I am now very happy I did not: I've spent quite some time traveling lately, and finding good reliable wifi has been a constant battle. (Southern and East Europe)

If I had to be connected to get work done, I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to get very much done.

Reliable WiFi is indeed a problem, but in most European counties a prepaid 3G SIM costs maybe 10-15€ and works well enough with MOSH.

Where exactly were you travelling? In many places there are inexpensive 3g options, and wifi is available in most coffee shops.

There is a difference between availability and reliability. The Wifi is available, but quite slow, doesn't work, or you risk your connection being monitored by some hacker.

Most coffee shops offers that card authentication thing (like Starbucks) which is just annoying.

I'm not sure where is this the case, and I can't talk for all of the Eastern Europe. But where I live (Croatia), nearly all coffee shops (and there is A LOT of them, coffee is a national pastime) have free wifi, usually with a password which is either spelled out on the receipt or given by the waiter when asked. The link is not great but workable, usually 4-10 Mbits, and since we don't have a tradition of working at coffee shops there aren't many other patrons sharing it. An we don't have any Starbucks. :-)

Good luck porting a professional grade tool like Eclipse. :) But I'm afraid we'd have to wait until tablets have the same specs as current average laptops. Although I guess stuff like HTML and Javascript could be done on current tables.

Are there any blogs where an android tablet was used to do actual java development?

Not exactly a blog post, but might be a good place to start: http://www.spartacusrex.com/terminalide.htm

Beside Terminal IDE (which is open source and a great package for VIM users) there is:

- AIDE https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui...

- Sand IDE https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jimmychen....

I used Terminal IDE on my Nexus 7 (yeah, too small for actual work) before and with a physical keyboard connected it comes with everything needed to create, build, pack and install Android apps, including native development in C/C++.

I thought of doing that many times. But decided it would be better to just wait for Haswell. We're not far from an era where we have CPUs that are both powerful and mobile. Just wait for them.

I don't know if it's a coincidence, but I feel like I see these articles pop up every spring, when going outdoors is suddenly an option again and a tablet makes more sense.

All those setups have only one problem: I'm too paranoid to type important password on a bluetooth keyboard. Ever.

wow, so much effort for so little result.

regression is the new progression!

These posts remind me of the articles by designers trying to use MS Paint instead of Photoshop to create amazing pictures.

http://mytechquest.com/windows/amazing-ms-paint-pictures/

Yes, you can do it, but you're forcing yourself and it is not the best tool for the job. One giveaway is the emphasis on the time spent (a whole six weeks!) as if it's a test of endurance and willpower(hey, I stopped smoking for 6 weeks!) I have to disagree on the cost too, laptops and desktops are really cheap, powerful and last a long time now. Not to mention the fact that using VNC and SSH makes you dependent on another machine anyway.

One giveaway is the emphasis on the time spent (a whole six week!)

People had been asking for updates after my original post (http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/) explaining the setup. By now it is over two months and I'm still not complaining...

If you're a developer used to IDEs and big screens, this might sound like trying to work with one hand tied behind your back. I never found need for such tools, and so it works fine for me. Vim and tmux are just beautiful on such a screen!

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