I’ve got a 32GB Transformer right now with a 32GB SD card. Yay for upgradeable memory! I’m not so pleased with the resolution however and someday ill upgrade. I detest Apple with a passion and I hate the idea of paying for an iPad but I realize that if I ever want to play any decent tablet games (especially boardgames or wargames) then that’s what I’ll have to do. Android phones have wonderful apps but there’s not much there for tablets. Also the newer tablets seem to be lacking the expandable memory advantage that they used to have over Apple. I’ll probably wait until the next generation of Android tablet and iPad come out and decide then but I think it will come down to do I want to play games on this thing or do I want to be able to easily side load media such as movies, comics and TV shows.
For boardgaming, there’s that, Elder Signs, Carcassonne, Dominion (via the open source Androminion), Through the Desert, and probably a handful of other ones I’m not thinking of. But it’s not the same torrent that iOS has, no.
Ok so it seems the concenses is if I really am in it for the gaming I need to shell out the extra cash for an Ipad. If I go Android then the Nexus 10 is the only way to go which is about $100 cheaper. Other than being $100 cheaper, are there any other benefits of the Nexus over an Ipad?
The other caveat to this whole thing is I have about $150 in Amazon gift cards I was planning on using towards this purchase. However both the Ipad and Nexus are more expensive at Amazon because they don’t directly sell them.
You could always buy itunes gift cards with your amazon gift cards and least your apps/games would be “free.”
Or just buy anything else at amazon. They sell everything, you’re going to buy stuff from amazon anyway just like the rest of us, so use it then.
Android’s general strong point over the iOS ecosystem is its heavy customizability and openness, even un-hacked. You can easily switch the keyboard, default phone app (less important on a tablet, obviously), texting system, music player, browser, navigation app, etc. to any one of many alternatives to each, all with unique features and abilities.
Aside from that, it does offer some extras like non-app-store apps (allowing for things like the Humble Bundle), emulators, and a deeper glance at some internals (which apps are draining battery and when, for instance). Multitasking is better, assuming you have a modern device with enough RAM to actually handle the concept.
Hacked, there’s a good deal more (overclocking for extra power, undervolting for extra battery, re-configurable effective DPI, full system-wide theming, deep, OS-level enhancements, true adblocking, etc.) on the table, but if that’s not your game, it hardly plays a role in the discussion.
I’d argue that the latest versions (ICS and JB, 4.0 and 4.1/2 respectively) have brought many UI elements onto a similar level to Apple, although they obviously take a different visual approach to Cupertino’s ever-present skeumorphism. 4.1/2 have improved system responsiveness and slickness yet again, so while some things (audio latency, important to music-creation apps) still aren’t quite at iOS levels, at the very least, you’ve reached a point where most laypeople aren’t going to spot an immediate difference when scrolling a webpage or what have you.
Apple offers a more curated, measured, and well-aligned experience, on top of its unquestionable superiority in games, tablet-centric apps, music creation software, and oftentimes, “first dibs” on hot new apps. The last has improved for Android in recent years, but it still crops up from time to time.
Any of that sound like $100 worth of differences to you? Well, that is for you to decide :)
Android 4.2 is superior to iOS, IMO. IOS hasn’t really improved in years, and android quickly caught up. But the tablet game and app selection still isn’t comparable.
Android’s built-in programs are better (lots of iOS people use Chrome, Google Maps, and the GMail app). Android makes it easier for programs to interoperate, with its “intents,” so you can select which programs you want to use for different things. Android enables functionality that iOS doesn’t, largely because of its ability to leave programs running in the backgrounds – so you can set up a media server on your Android tablet, and leave it streaming video to your TV even as you check your mail or browse the web. Android lets you get your apps from any source, so you can get, e.g., the Amazon Appstore and buy your apps on there for use on the Nexus 10 if you want to. Android has a better onscreen keyboard, with support for swype-style typing. Google Now embarrasses Siri, by all accounts. Widgets allow for information-at-a-glance home screens instead of just a bland grid of icons.
For the Nexus 10 in particular, it’s slightly thinner than the iPad, has a higher-resolution screen (though few people complain about the 260 dpi of the Retina iPad), uses standard cables instead of weird proprietary ones. But really, hardware isn’t going to make your mind up here.
Very true. If an app has trouble dealing with high-res tablet screens, then it is pretty much guaranteed to have trouble with the new xxhdpi (>400dpi) mobile screens that are coming out now (something I need to get fixed in Pirates and Traders myself).
Any well made Android app is going to work well on both mobile and tablets. Tablet-specific Android apps are pretty much an antithesis to the core Android development paradigm.
I suppose that means most android apps are poorly made.
Give a specific example of what you’re talking about that works well on a modern phone, but does not work on a tablet. I have literally never encountered this.
Are you kidding?
No, I’m entirely serious. Everything that works on my phone works on my tablets (7" and 10" both), with no exceptions. (Which isn’t to say no exceptions exist, but I definitely haven’t seen them.)
Examples?
Oh, work. They all work. They’re just phone UIs blown up huge and look like crap.
Phone UIs are decent on a 7" tablet (although not great) but they’re ridiculous on a 10".
Sigh. That’s a) not really true, and b) especially not true of games. Carcassonne shows more tiles. Androminion shows full card text. Tower defense games are are generally zoomable anyway, so scale fine. Temple Run is in 3D, so it just renders more sharply. Angry Birds is another zoom-and-see-more game. Scramble With Friends just makes all the Boggle tiles huge, but that’s arguably the most correct thing to do anyway (what else would you do, center them on the screen with a decorative frame?).
Sometimes there will be UI elements that scaled weird (Carcassonne’s main menu is very narrow on a 10" 2560x1600 tablet), but for the most part, things work like you’d expect.
Do you actually have a 10" tablet and you’re talking from experience, or are you just repeating falsehoods that you’ve heard elsewhere?
Yes, I have a HP touchpad running cyanogenmod and an ipad4.
Android tablet apps suck in comparison to the ipad.
Which apps do you have problems with, specifically?
So I have an iPad 2, iPad 3, and a hp touchpad running the latest nightly build of cyanogenmod 9 (android 4.0). I also have an MK808 that I have hooked up to a 55" HDTV with 4.1.1 with finless 1.6 custom rom.
So basically all my experience with android comes from rooted custom rom devices. Everything about android screams neat cheap devices for tinkerers. There are some cool things you can do with a rooted rom but then breaks other things (gameloft compatiblity, no amazon vod and even the fire hacked version won’t work on rooted roms). I find all sorts of odd aspect ratio, messed up screens, screens partially obscured, and a ton of blown up phone apps. My general impression is android is a capable cheaper alternative to iOS but is no where near as polished and refined and as easy to use as my iOS devices. But honestly I don’t think I have a proper view on android b/c I don’t have a single stock pure “nexus” like device to play with.
The opinion of my 11 yr old which has the hp touchpad and my old iphone 4 is android sucks. Mostly that comes from these hacked devices being a bit quirky and not quite 100% stable but also the lack of games or when the game is on both platforms they tend to run quite a bit better in iOS on comparable hardware.
Anyways, just from my experience I would never give android to my family but for me it’s kind of a fun diversion but not my every day mobile os. Might be fun to dabble in emulation or like installing airtight on my mk808 and using it as an air play receiver (again with limitations and quirks like pretty much every hackery like android app I’ve played with).
This discussion is stupid. Android’s shitty tablet apps have been extensively documented elsewhere.
Of course. When you have 100’000s of apps, the vast majority are going to be poorly made. It’s no different from the Appstore in that respect.