Android Tablet: October 2012

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Yesterday we reported on rumors of the possibility of a $99 Nexus 7 from Google. This magic price point is seen, from a marketing point of view, as a sweet spot which will drive the further consumerization of tablets. At the moment the lowest priced big brand tablet is the Amazon Kindle Fire which costs $159 (with special offers and sponsored screensavers displayed on the lock screen). It is also possible to get single core, 7 inch Chinese tablets for as little as $79. However it is worth noting that in most countries a sales tax needs to be paid to customs when you get your tablet delivered. This can push the actual price to around $95.

What this means is that sub $100 single core, 1Ghz, 7 inch tablets with Android 4.0 or 4.1 (depending on the manufacturer) do exist today and it is possible to make them for that price. However once you add profit margins, R&D costs and corporate overheads it does become a bit more tricky.

If Google really is trying to create a budget tablet it will likely start a new “race to the bottom”. Although traditionally used as a socio-economic term to describe the taxation policies of countries or states, the concept can be equally applied to building cheaper and cheaper consumer devices to boost sales. The problem with the race to the bottom is something needs to be sacrificed to reach the low costs. In economics, work force regulations, wages and taxes are offered on the altar to attract businesses to a given area. In consumer electronics what is sacrificed is quality, features and usability.

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Best Cheap Android Tablet PC

Computer Tablet

Sometimes creating a device which takes a product category to the extreme causes consumers to stay away. Then on other occasions manufacturers capture the imagination of many and the product flourishes, one such device in recent times was the Galaxy Note. Look at it as a massive smartphone, or maybe as a tiny tablet... it really was somewhere in between... but whatever the device was it sold very well for Samsung. Certainly much better than many would have assumed. In fact it would be fair to say that of all the smartphones we have reviewed in the last year or so it was the Note which allowed us to be most productive on the move. Clearly the success of the Galaxy Note as a brand inspired Samsung and despite having a well-established Tab range (of Android Tablets) their latest device goes with the alternative title which helps identify its key feature, a high functionality stylus. Today we have the Galaxy Note 10.1 on our test bench and will establish whether it has what it takes to compete with the likes of ASUS Transformer Pad, the alternative productivity tablet.

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Computer Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Tablets with 10-inch screens offer an experience that is closer to a laptop than a smartphone. Web pages display at their natural size. Movies and games are more immersive. Apps can be designed without the constraints of the smartphone's pocket-size screen.

The Apple iPad is the best known among the 10-inch tablets, and its success is drawing many imitators. Several manufacturers that initially competed against the iPad with 7-inch devices have changed their strategy to focus on the increasingly dominant 10-inch format.

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4f959a886bb3f71e71000013-400-300/best-10-inch-tablet-ipad-with-retina-display.jpg

Best 10 Inch Android Tablet

Best Tablet Apps

With the Nexus 7 now available, Android tablets are no longer poor iPad copycats. They're real, banging for your buck affordable and most importantly, really good. But to make it even better, you'll need to get some apps. Here are the best Android tablet apps.

Plume: Sadly, the official Twitter app isn't exactly tablet friendly. Luckily, Plume, a highly customizable Twitter app, works well enough on Android tablets so you won't miss Twitter on your Android tablet.

Friendcaster: Friendcaster for Facebook is a much better tablet app than the official Facebook app, as it gives you real time Facebook notifications and includes all your most-used Facebook features like status updates, photos, messages, events, groups, checkins and more.

IM+: Optimized for tablets, IM+ is an IM app that lets you chat with your friends on AIM, Google Talk, Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook chat and others. Free.

Netflix: All the joys of Netflix in your pocket, all the time-including the power to battle that always growing Watch Instantly queue. Streaming's silky smooth over Wi-Fi, less so over 3G, but the app itself is indispensable. Free.

MXPlayer: MXPlayer is quite possibly the best video player for Android tablets because it packs a ton of features and can play a bunch of different video file formats (avi, mkv, divx, etc.) under the sun.

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Tablet Apps

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

It's time for our weekly roundup of the best new Android apps for smartphones and tablets, drawn from a mixture of Google Play digging, press releases and submissions from developers.

Games aren't included – they get a separate roundup which has plenty of Android games this week. The weekly iOS apps roundup will be published later in the day.

Here's this week's Android selection:

PizzaExpress

Fancy a pizza? UK chain Pizza Express' innovative app has been ported from iOS to Android, enabling customers to book tables, and then pay for their bill using PayPal at the end of their meals. The app will also provide regular offer codes, and it ties in with the chain's Click & Collect takeaway-ordering service too.

Via.me

Pitching itself as a "social storyboard", Via.me is an app for sharing photos, videos, audio and text on a standalone social network, as well as through Facebook and Twitter. That means photo filters, feeds of friends' activity – assuming they're on it, of course – and notifications aplenty.

White House

The official White House app has been out for a little while, but what's new this week is a version for Android tablets, just as the US presidential election gets into swing. Expect news, photos and videos from the White House, including live video streams of events featuring the president himself, and his officials.

Quora

Lots of people in Silicon Valley have been getting excited about Q&A service Quora for a while now, thanks to plenty of tech executives giving candid views on their industry. Can it become more mainstream through mobile apps? The new Android version is a step in that direction, providing a usable window into Quora, and lots of Android-specific widgetry and features.

Richard and Judy Book Club

Out on iOS a couple of weeks ago, WHSmith's official app for this year's Richard and Judy Book Club initiative is the latest example of branded augmented reality. Using HP subsidiary Aurasma's AR technology, it encourages readers to scan covers of participating books to watch reviews and other videos.

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Best Apps for Android Tablet

Android 3.0 Tablet

Honeycomb is poised to appear on more tablets than any other OS because of Google's strategy of offering its OS to many different manufacturers. We've seen Honeycomb tablets from big mobile phone makers like LG, Motorola, and Samsung, but also from smaller firms like Anydata and from PC giants like Acer and Asus. This is a very different approach from competing tablet OS vendors Apple, RIM, and HP, who make their own hardware and keep the numbers down to one or two per year.

This version of Android isn't open source, at least not yet; Google seems to be doling it out only to partners it trusts, with a promise to open it up in the future. Once it becomes open source, expect dozens of cheap Honeycomb tablets to appear quickly.

Google swears there's no hardware requirement for Honeycomb, but the first round of devices have all been 8.9-inch or larger tablets with 1280-by-1024 screens and Nvidia Tegra 2 processors. Manufacturers tell us Honeycomb will also be available on 7- and 10-inch devices, on tablets with 1024-by-600 screens, and on HTC's upcoming EVO View 4G for Sprint, which has a 1.5GHz, single-core processor. So just as with Android phones, we're likely to see a wide variation in Honeycomb tablet capabilities.

Honeycomb is considered Android 3.0, with most features in common with Android phones. Honeycomb won't run on small-screen devices, Google has said, but the tablet and phone experiences may be brought together in the next version of Android, which is code named "Ice Cream" and expected later this year.

The upgrade path for Honeycomb tablets is unclear. While all the Honeycomb tablets so far have had the same Google user experience, which would in theory make software upgrades easy, Google and its manufacturers don't have a strong history of providing timely upgrades on Android phones, so we're wary of what will happen with these tablets.