The Motorola Xoom is a 10.1” Tablet that runs Android 3.2 (honeycomb) with Ice-cream Sandwich  (4.0.3) coming to the UK Soon. This started life as a £399 device competing again the iPad 2 but came with a default of 32GIG storage instead of 16GIG. It first dropped to £329 (which it currently retails at) but for a short period of time, a couple of stores had it for £249, which made it somewhat of a bargain.  I managed to get the last on in stock while passing Carphone Warehouse, would this have the same issues as the Blackberry Playbook or would I end off keeping this device?

 Hardware

 Some people love 7” tablets (hold it with one hand, lighter etc) while some people prefer the much bigger 10” tablets. I have tried both now and think I am more of the 10” camp. The device has MicroUSB on the bottom; this can be used to transfer data across. There is also a Micro HDMI connector to allow you to connect your Xoom to your TV / Monitor and this requires a cheap cable, I bought one for £3 and this worked just fine. Finally we have the power connector, the cable from the plug is very long for placement anywhere.

On the top we have a slot that pulls out exposing the SD Card slot and the shape of the piece of plastic you pull out allows you to fit an full sized SIM card in there but I tried it myself and no 3G came forth. They sell a WiFi Only and 3G+WiFI model. The only other things on the tablet are the volume up/down on the left hand side and a power button on the back of the device (near the camera).

Android 3.2

We have now a bar (software) on the bottom, this includes back, home and running tasks along with a clock and notification display on the right hand side. Honeycomb gives you 5 screens to add icons, widgets and apps to suit your needs. As an example of this, you could have one screen that displays the info (Twitter updates, email, Google+ etc) while another contains shortcuts to your most used applications and so forth.

As far as multitasking goes, it was quite easy to jump to running programs and testing say for example an IRC Client, this stayed logged into the channel even while jumping around different programs.

Video & Audio

 One of the main things I wanted to do with tablets is to communicate with other people, so we set about testing a broad range of applications. Skype was an obvious choice and it was not until we entered video mode that it did not display any video but could not end the call have to force quit the program. After some research it seems the latest version (currently 2.6) does not work with a whole range of tablets while the last version (2.5) worked 100% fine – we have a video call going and the quality was quite good.

The next program was Tango and this took a bit of getting used to, it uses your contact book I think to find other people. Eventually the other person popped up and we had a video chat, quality was workable but not as good for some reason as Native Camera mode and even swapping cameras did not make much difference.

The final test involved Google Hangout and Google Talk, I had no issues myself and was able to join hangouts and do video calls in Talk but on Android 2.3 (the test subject) it was having issues. Quality was not that hot on the video again and I can only imagine that it has to do with the software and not the actual camera.

Playing Videos

 I have tested video playing including 720P across the wireless network on the iPad, Windows 7 Phone, iPhone 4S and the Playbook and every single one of them can play a video without slowing down. I tested non-HD videos on this device and it played just fine – along with MX Player and ES File Manager, I can play any format that is out there. Playing 720p or 1080p was a mixed bag. It can only support Baseline Profile HD encoding which means that most of my HD movies are not going to play on the device properly. I do not want to re-encode my entire collection that’s for sure.

Odd Quirks

 Since using it, there has been the odd thing that stops it working properly, such as slow down, a white screen when opening browser and other odd stuff. I assume that this is honeycomb at fault and will all be fixed in the next update. I know that if the device is playing up big time, a swift reboot generally fixes the issue. The boot time is not too bad, when comparing to the Playbook, which took well over 3 minutes to boot (roughly) – this thing is a lot quicker.

My Overall impression

 While I was eager to return the Playbook before even a week had run out, I am more than happy with this device and what it does. I feel that for £250 it was a good deal and I already bought a Gel Case and the HDMI lead. I cannot see myself buying the Bluetooth Keyboard (£50) or the stand (£30), at the moment I am using an old plate stand I found and this does the job just fine.

The Motorola Xoom started life as a £399 10 inch tablet, competing against the iPad 2, the theory was it had double the ram for the same price as the baseline iPad 2. Sales were bad and soon they dropped the price down to £329 and in November 2011 brought out the Xoom 2. Recently a few retailers have slashed the price down to £249, such as PCWorld & Carphone warehouse (the same people who also slashed the prices of Blackberry Playbook). I thought I would pop along to local PCWorld and see if they had any in, online stated they had none in stock.

Selling the lie

I asked a sales woman about the price – she stated that the price was only available on-line and I had to buy the product (and have it delivered) on-line also. I went on to explain that it gives you the option at the on-line price to pick up from a store, so the only Online bit was me actually choosing it online. She went on to say that she has no stock and this was without checking in any form, we can assume that she has already been asked about these today or is in fact guessing. She went on to tell me about the brand new Xoom that is coming soon and this is why they have reduced the price, when I asked about which model, she was unsure but as soon as I mentioned Xoom 2, she said that was the one.

I went on to inform her that the Xoom 2 came out in November 2011 and can be bought anywhere and is not ‘coming soon’. The last bit of info she shared was the fact that PCWorld was the only retailer that is selling the Xoom at £249, once I explained Carephone Warehouse have the same model and price – she walked away, almost annoyed I guess.

Tablets going down in price

It stands to reason that as CES 2012 has been and gone, there will be a whole bunch of new Tablets coming out, these are faster (Quad core), better GPU (Tegra 3) and features Ice Cream Sandwich (V4 of android OS). The tablets that are left in the stores have two options, reduce the price to attract the impulse buyer / looking for a cheap tablet or not sell any more of them.

Let us not also forget the Apple iPad 3 is due out soon and this may be a game changer on what to expect in tablets. I am no hurry to buy a tablet and it seems its hard to get them anyhow, maybe the staff bought them all as they did with the HP, at least I have saved myself £250 once again.

BlackBerry Playbook

I currently own an iPad 1, wife has an iPhone 4S and I have a Windows Mobile 7 Phone, so I have enough devices to do what I need on the go. I have been looking at tablets for a while now and a few caught my eye such as Sony Tablet S, Blackberry Playbook and the Motorola Xoom. The end choice is always about money, splashing out £400 for an iPad 2 was too much money in my books and even the £329 price points of Android Tablets seem a bit high. The two machines that are at the £200 price point are the Blackberry Playbook and Arnova 9 G2.

Buying on Impulse

I had watched some YouTube videos already and was in two minds if this device would suit my needs or not, I was standing in the store and had they no 32GIG models in stock (as the online site told me) I would have happily walked away but they had 4 in fact. I bought the device on the grounds that I could take it back for a full refund, this would allow me to try it out fully and see what it can really do.

Packaging & Initial Boot

The box that it came in is very well presented and contains the Playbook, Neoprene Sleeve, Micro-USB Cable Cleaning Cloth and the Mains Charger. There is a piece of paper that tells you to make sure you have Wi-Fi Coverage, press the power button and follow the steps on-screen. The initial steps including connecting to a Wi-Fi, setting up a Blackberry account, country based settings and finally checking for updates. It took a while to download and update the device, nothing major but until this is complete, you cannot use the device. The last thing it does is take you through a guide on how the device works.

Specifications

• 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor (Cortex A9 Processor), w/ GPU
• 1 GB RAM
• Memory: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions to be available
• 5300mAh battery
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

The Device – Connectors

This is a 7 inch tablet, a lot smaller than the iPad (9.7”) and it runs the screen at 1024×600 which compares nicely to the iPad 1024×768. There are very limited connectors on this device; there is a power button along with volume up and down and a play button on the top. Underneath we have a Micro HDMI, no lead is supplied but you can get this cheaply online. Given the low cost of the cables, I am not sure why RIM did not include this in the box? Next this this we have Micro USB connector and I guess another connector for the Dock you can buy.

Hardware – Camera, Speakers & Microphone

The Playbook has a better front camera than most tablets have back camera. Both cameras can do full HD (that’s 1920×1080), the back camera of course been better quality. They are rated as 3MP front and 5MP back (2592×1944). The microphone is just amazing and can pick up very clear and loud audio. Finally the speakers, unlike most tablets, they have placed them on the front and they are loud and have good bass, perfect for playing music. If you want to think of this device as a HD Camcorder, then that is money well spent in this regard and of course it can do so much more.

The Web Browser

I have tested many sites on this device and I would say that just about all of them work as they would on a normal desktop web browser. I could happily view a stream on Justin.TV and access many of the file sharing sites. The one site that did not work was soundcloud, I could not press the arrow to start the music playing for some reason. I noticed a lot of the applications were in fact just a short cut to the web site, for example BBC iPlayer. Using TVCatchup website allowed me for example to watch TV live which was handy. The reason why most work? Simple, it has a fully functional adobe flash built right in and in no way did the device slow down because of this.

Application Store

This is where the device starts to fall down, there are a lot of applications that are just not there and a lot are things you have to buy. I failed to find for example a decent Twitter program, teamviewer, Skype and so on. One of the reasons why there are applications missing is simply the fact you open a web page and do the same thing, such as Tweetdeck.

Gaming

Battery Life

This is one area where I heard was not so good and it is claimed an 8 hour battery life. With general use throughout the day, I went from 100% to 56% and that was with using it heavily. I agree the iPad has a longer life which means it can last for a whole week without charging but maybe as the iPad does not fully multitask and has no flash is the reason why. I did not feel the battery life was an issue since using this device over the last few days, maybe as I was plugged in via USB half of the time and it trickle charging it?

OS2.0 Beta & Android Applications

I followed a guide online which was as simple as going to the Blackberry site, typing in your PIN number plus email address and I soon had an update flagged on my device (511MB) to the beta OS, which is due out Feb 2012. Before I went ahead with this, I wanted to make sure I could go backwards and again on the same site, it tells you how to do this. One major update here was the fact that wireless which was previously connecting at 11Mbps was now at 65Mbps. You can side load BAR files (Android apps) via a tool called DDPBInstaller. I tested a handful of Android programs and some worked 100%, some looked like they were working but did not function properly and finally some just crashed straight out.

Using this method I was able to get Citrix installed and connect to my work Citrix farm and access the desktop without any major issues. I tried Skype but that failed as well as teamviewer. DS File & DSAudio (both Android Applications to access files from my Synology NAS) worked 100% and I was able to stream any of my music or watch any movie on my NAS box (as long as the format was correct). Doing some testing as to what video formats it can play, it copes with MP4 just fine, it can also play WMV & MOV formats as well. AVI and MKV was a no-go and instead of playing them, just copied them to the device instead.

Bluetooth Keyboards

I used the Apple Bluetooth keyboard as a test and set it to search for devices. It found the keyboard (I held the power key on the right hand side until the LED flashed) and asked me to type in a number on the keyboard. I typed it and pressed enter and the keyboard was paired. I tested an IRC application and was typing away at full speed. Any Bluetooth keyboard would work of course as would a headset.

Comparing it to iPad

Before I compare devices, remember that a 32GIG iPad 2 is currently £479 and this device only cost me £200. The iPad is bigger (9.7”) but no much more screen estate (1024×768 vs. 1024×600). As iOS has a wealth of application, you can normally find just about anything you want but the reason it needs applications in the first place is due to the browser on the iPad not been able to do flash or air stuff. A good example of this is either Ustream or Justin.TV, both need an application on the iPad (which is the iPhone version) while the playbook can not only use the proper website but also stream using the built in camera & microphone. If we add the ability to use Android applications then this opens up the playbook to a more level playing field.

Conclusion

I bought this device with the express thought that I could take it back should it be a waste of my time and for the first couple of days, the “swing-o-meter” was edging towards “take it back”. In fact I almost put it all back in the box and took it back just the other day as I felt it did not do what I wanted out of a device, this was until I placed 2.0 Beta and side-loaded some Android application. Ask yourself this question; what else is out there that will cost you £169, £200 or £329 (16GIG, 32GIG, 64GIG) for so much hardware? I looked at the ‘cheap’ android tablets (Arnova 9 G2) and that cannot do half what this can do plus only has 8GIG ram and costs the same price (£200).

The plan is simple, I keep using this device for another week solid and by time Saturday comes around, if I feel this is just a mere toy and a waste of my £200, I shall flash it back to production OS, wipe it clean and take it back. If it lasts the full week then I shall keep it plus buy myself some much needed items such as a case (which doubles as a stand) and a mini HDMI convertor.

The one last thing to mention is this device has no GPS which means it cannot really function as a replacement SatNav in your car which is a shame as it wound have rounded the device off nicely.

****** UPDATE 10 Jan 2012 ******

I grabbed the device last night to sit down and chill out, I had problems, lots of them. The video player just quit half way through a movie, the browser would hang for a long time on flash related sites and the Android Apps would crash out for no reason. I followed the guide to bring the device back to 1.8.0, cleaned it up and re-boxed it “good as new”. I took it back to the store today and got a full refund. If you do buy one due to this review, the device might work out better for you but I cannot wait until RIM get the software working correctly, maybe this is why they are so cheap?

The three main smartphone’s out there at the moment are Android, Apple and Windows Phone 7, of course there is a lot of makers of these phones (apart from the iPhone, only Apple make them). It just so happens that I have to hand three phones to compare, this been the HTC Hero (Running Android 2.1), a slow and small phone by today’s standards but it does give me a chance to compare. The wife has the iPhone 4S and I got a new work phone, the HTC Trophy, A Windows 7.5 phone. Is there a clear winner here? Will the iPhone wipe the floor with the rest? Onward to battle.

HTC Hero

Before we continue, this phone is well below the specs of the other two. The screen size of 320×480 and the fact it is only running from a 528 MHz ARM 11 means it is slow. One of the great beauty in my eyes of the Android OS is the fact you can find pretty much any type of program you need and normally for free. You can side load any program just by putting in a memory card and installing it that way.

While not relevant on this phone, you can get Skype and many streaming type applications to broadcast anywhere. The other fact is you do not need to sync this phone (you can if you want) to a computer, just put what you need on a memory card and you are good to go. It can do all the major function such as Sat Nav, Mapping, act as a camera, a music player and a whole lot more besides. My main gripe though was how fragmented Android got and for this I see this platform as a failure for now.

iPhone 4S

There must be very little I can write that people do not already know but my first and foremost thought on this phone is the fact that while many applications are free, most cost money. You have to Sync the phone initially with a computer running iTunes and if you own a Mac and a Windows Box, you cannot just plug into any, you have to sync with the computer you choose at the start.

While not important to me, the things that mattered on this phone was the ability to be easy to use (it is – it has one main button to press), notifications (just added with ios5) and be easy to type on. Siri to me (and my wife) seems to be a fun gadget to use but once the 5 minute of playing has been done, it is back to the keyboard.

HTC Trophy 

Recently I swapped my Windows Mobile 6.5 phone (HTC mini) for this model and it came running version 7. It seems you need Zune software to do anything with the phone and updating to latest (7.5) took many hours indeed. It reminded me of Windows actually, doing one update, rebooting then finding another update.

The speed of the phone is very fast indeed, the Metro OS is easy to use and has live updating tiles. There is no dedicated phone button so calling someone means you have to press one of the tiles, I made sure this was placed right at the top. I like the fact I can see if I have any emails, messages and upcoming appointments. The App Store (Market place) has quite a lot of programs, I was surprised as to how many there was.

What was missing though was the programs I might need such as Skype, any sort of Streaming type application and others. It has voice input (rather like Siri) and on my testing it worked better than I expected and I guess it has to do with accents. Siri for example got some things wrong as did this phone but at least when I search for Pizza, this phone actually brings the goods (Not working on Apple in the UK as of yet).

Thoughts?

The iPhone and the Windows Phone both have fixed storage which means I have to micro manage what I put on there. They also both need a program to sync things which means I have to use the one fixed computer. I much prefer the flexibility of have a SD Card to shove on what I want, increase the storage and so forth. I actually find the Windows 7.5 phone very functional indeed and much better than I thought it would be, it sort of does multitasking but only in the fact it suspends applications. It has no Front facing Camera on the HTC Trophy and the quality is not as good as the iPhone.

If I had to choose one phone out of them all from this list then? The answer of course would be the Apple iPhone but the windows phone comes a very close runner up for now.

On the 4th April 2011 (or shortly afterwards) I shall be calling T-Mobile and saying with great Joy “I wish to give you my one month’s notice” and that will be the last payment from them. I have one month to use the phone and then it will stop. Originally I was going to just use my work phone until the iPhone 5 comes out but I have been hearing there is no such thing this year, this means I have to think about which platform I need to buy into, for how long and who with.

Going the Apple way

The choice here is the buy into the iPhone 4 even though it is now getting to be one year old. As I already have an iPad, I know to a degree what I am buying into. My Experience of the IOS devices is that most of the stuff that is of any use seems to cost money. Now I agree that people writing software need to be paid but I got so used to just looking int he Android Market and finding perfectly good software for free most of the time. I do like the camera on the iPhone and the size is quite good. I suppose my main area is that I would not only have to lock myself into a 2 year contract but also pay for the phone.

Andoid for the win?

The way I look at this is simple, there is quite powerful phones out there now with the Dual Core 1.5Ghz CPU as well as the ability to slot in a memory card when needed and hdmi out for example. I think there is adobe flash coming for the devices and it seems most of the paid apps on the iphone are free on the android devices. I have the ability to install whatever software I want from whatever source I want. If I want to change my tunes, I simply put some new music on the Mini SD card – its that simple.

Wait it out?

The other option is a rather simple one – I use my work phone for now to get calls and such and see what new devices come in the coming months, maybe wait until June / July time. For interest, here is a benchmark I found on the net:

Notice how the iPhone is sitting right at the bottom? Interesting times ahead but speed is not everything. Screen size, graphical power (for games), the camera and how good it is at night and so many other things.

What is everybody else thought? Is it worth only buying into a 12 month contract and paying the extra for the phone? Even at 18 Months contract I found my phone to be dropped for better models shortly after and now 600mhz seems very slow indeed.

If every there was a time I am happy I made at last one good decision and it was when I choose to only be locked into a mobile contract for 18 Months instead of 24. In my time so far with T-Mobile and buying into the Android market, I have disappointed by both and this has made me turn to buying into the competition. As I have not had a contract mobile before, I went into the local T-Mobile store and once he worked out that I already was a customer and was asking about leaving, his whole attitude towards me changed, not the jolly salesman any-more. He asked me to send a text message to 150 with the word UP and it tells you what it runs out. As it turns out, on the 4th April 2011, I have to call them up and give them a month’s notice.

The saga of the phone

When I originally went to buy the phone, this was billed at the time (November 2009) as the newest Android on the block and they were trying so hard to compete against the iPhone that they did not have at the time, they were happy to provide the phone for £30 a month, phone free of charge on a 18 month contract with 800+ minutes talk time and unlimited everything else. All was good until the updates started to come out, I wanted the phone to be upgradable of course for new features as it was currently on Android 1.6.

There was many rounds of HTC were holding back, Google was the cause of the delay and finally T-Mobile holding out on updates. This shifting of blame is not good for the consumer, they bought the phone from T-Mobile and that is who should be making sure it gets out the door quickly and not telling me to ring HTC (which I did).

Eventually I hacked the phone myself, I had enough of playing the waiting game and now there is no sign of it been T-Mobile apart from the logo on the front. I learned that Carphone Warehouse do not brand phones – this is something I shall remember for next time. The other issue is now the HTC Hero is slow (600mhz cpu), locked at 2.1 and old tech.

The saga of T-Mobile

Like any Company, before they sell you a phone, they jump through hoops but once they have your money, they could not care less. The Support was the worst I have ever dealt with I think, they removed the un-limited tarrif (which was met with a lot of angry customers) and at no point since I have had this phone have they asked me if everythign is fine. I see no reason whatsoever to stay with these people past the 18 months and I will never be tempted back, once bitten, twice shy.

Time to renew

I can bet you when April 4th comes, they will be on there knee’s begging me to stay and offer me some amazing deal to make up for all the hardship but no matter what they offer, I will be saying a firm “NO” to them. Who will I go with and what phone will I get? Three seems a good deal BUT I have heard horror stories from them so far. I like the idea of a 12 months deal to be honest and maybe this is the way to go. I shall not bother buying any phone at first, I have a work mobile and this can do the job until maybe June when the iPhone 5 Comes out? Not Android I hear you say? Again, I had a bad phone with a bad run – so maybe not.

Apple today announced a brand new iPad called the iPad 2 funny enough, what they have done is make the device thinner, lighter, more powerful (dual core A5) and fitted a couple of camera’s – none of this was of any surprise to people waiting for this to happen but they made the price the same as the previous generation and in turn – took off a chuck of money from the older version. This puts a bit of a different spin now on the tablet market because we have a 16GIG Basic Model (version 1) for £329 or $399 to the USA Market.  On the surface seems not a great deal has changed but to think outside of the box – what other “half decent” tablet can you get for £329 that is as good as the iPad? Already the Xoom has been spotted at costing £500 and others about the same, yes there is cheap tablets but they are pretty bad let me tell you.

Is the iPad for you?

The main selling point of any Tablet based device has to be battery life, the last thing you want is to sit down for a hour or so and have to plug the device into the wall. The whole thing the tablet brings to the table is the ability to pick up the device, have it come on in milliseconds and do what you need to do, be it watch a Youtube clip, browse the web or check your email. The real question comes though – do you need a Tablet at all? I am guessing as most of my on-line activities seem to be flash based produce, then the iPad fails on this account.

What do I use the iPad for?

The iPad that I own has dual use – I have set up my wife as the main user and as such facebook, email, contacts, calender and so forth are all keyed to her accounts and not mine. As it does not need charging as much, it can be left lying around and used as required during the day to check various things. What is important here is that she has no technical skill and a netbook or a laptop would be too much to cope with in one go – this is were the iPad comes in with simple icons to press to run applications.

I use the iPad once I get from work and after I finished my training schedule for the day and this comprises of checking Twitter, Youtube and various “Non-Flash” related Websites. The other main use at the moment is a game called Coin Dozer which is the old style push penny arcade which has levels and such.

I had planned to use it as a rather fancy picture frame type thing but looking at my same pictures for the 100th time soon wears thin and probably why nobody ever buys the dedicated digital picture frame things. The other interesting aspect is that I have loaded the free Synology DSPHOTO and DSAUDIO applications and I can listen to any song in my collection or look at any picture.

Toys for the Boys

I still stand strong in my view of this device been a nice thing “to have” rather then a must have device. I cannot do everything I want with it, do we blame the web for using Flash Media or do we blame apple for refusing to let flash be installed on there device? I still sit and laugh when the Apple Fan boys say the missing things are not needed and they could not live without there ipad – really guys, time to get a grip on reality and are they finding a use for a device they have bought – seems that way to me.

One of the failing I always felt of the Galaxy Tab as a supposed iPad Killer was the price – it was about the same. The device while it had some features missing (such as the screen size been smaller than the iPad), it did come with stuff that the iPad just did not have – these been the dual cameras (Skype Video Calling), a browser that supported Flash, a lot of Free apps that did the job very well indeed (compared to the mostly paid-for apps on the iPad) and of course the ability to take a Sim which means you can use it on the go and as a phone. It seems that the price has indeed dropped and you can now pick this up for £359.20 Sim Free from Tesco or the same price from Amazon.

What does the Galaxy Tab bring to the Table?

It Features a 1Ghz CPU which means it will be able to cope with most you can throw at it. The screen run’s at 1024×600 and from expereince of running windows at this on my netbook – it means some things might be squashed but as this runs Android as the Operating system, it might work out not too bad. Given that it is only 7” Tablet – this makes it a lot more portable than the iPad in my eyes. It has a VBGA port – you can run it from a monitor or your LCD Tv for example and add to this VNC application and you have a very portable machine for remote support.

Which should I buy?

I looked at three devices, the £150 10” Tablet from Toy’R’us will probably be pretty bad for what you want to use it for and you do indeed get what you pay for. This sits now in the middle and I personally would pay that extra money to get a decent Android Tablet and finally if you have the money and can live with the limited use of the iPad, then you won’t be disappointed. If I had to lay my money on the table? I would be buying the Samsung tab.

The HTC Hero (my current contract phone) comes with a 5 megapixel camera – what a large number that sounds, much better then say the 3 megapixel that the iPhone 3 comes with right? The problem comes when you want to take some pictures with it, if you have a lot of light, then this works great but the second it gets even a little dark, you might as well forget using it.

Daylight

This was taken out of a window during the day while I was on-site sorting out some air-conditioning unit, quality is not too bad but the colours look rather washed out.

Room Lighting

This is a bit better, blurry as you can tell as the HTC Hero seems to have a problem with re-focusing whilst trying to take the shot.

Night time

Whilst at my christmas party, inside a pub with ‘normal’ lighting in that I personally could see everyone just fine and the camera add’s a nice red pigment to the picture. I tried messing with the settings and still bad. The person next to me had an iPhone 3G and without even using the flash – it looked like it was in daylight.

Conclusion

The megapixel alone can not tell you how good something is and if your phone does not have a flash (a lot do not) then you can forget about pictures at night. The whole point of these smart phones I thought was to be out and about, take some picture, upload to facebook and so forth – with pictures like this I think you might as well carry a camera out with you.

No way am I buying on contract or otherwise a Android phone again, not only was I stuck at 1.6 for what seems like an age (now running 2.1) but too many issues. Maybe I might wait until the next iPhone comes out.

I like the idea of a Tablet computer and today I went into Toys-R-Us to look at what prices they were charging for PS3 games and came across a stand offering a 7″ Tablet for £89.99 while they had the much bigger 10″ Tablet for £149.99. I checked the box of the 7″ model, limited memory combined with android 1.6 and not something I wanted. I checked the specifications of the 10″ Model and it had Android 2.1, 1024×600 screen and other good stuff.

Technical Specifications

Looking at the picture above – 10.1″ Screen looks good, 1Ghz CPU should be good, the memory on-board is tiny. It only has b/g wireless plus the rj45 adaptor seems to be an optional extra (which I have no idea where you buy this from). It states 3 hours battery (which is very bad for a tablet device) but I have read about 188 minutes. Notice it only has Resistive touch screen and not captive touch screen.

Keyboard add-on

You can buy for this a case which comes with a keyboard (pictured above) and the price of this is £29.99, this lets the tablet be used more like a laptop. If you installed a VNC client on this device or a Terminal Services client – then you can use this cheap laptop as a means fix a server for example remotely. I have tried this on my HTC Hero and by all means it works but with a larger screen and such – I can see this as a very good device.

Try before you buy

I had read many reviews of these cheap tablet computers and how they all fail to be a good experience. I asked the manager (who happened to be close by) if he either had one on display or we could open up a box to try it out. He informed me that they will not have one out and although they can open on, they cannot switch it on – which I saw as pointless. I tried in vain to look for some reviews on my HTC Hero and never come up with anything conclusive. While I probably could buy one, take it home and test it out to death and then return it when I work out that it is in fact garbage, I did not want to go down that route, after all this would be an impulse buy and something I probably do not need.

What I’ve read so far

On my brief travel around the internet looking for information, I have learned a few things that so far has put me off actually buying this. No word on the elonex site about upgrading to Android 2.2 and above, I have already been through this with my HTC Hero and do not wish to be stuck on this device as well. It does not have mutitouch on the display from what I can see, this is a major thing for me to shy away from the device.The battery life I find really bad – 188 minutes is no use at all and I would be forever having it plugged in, I would much prefer the battery life like the iPad.

My thoughts then on this is while it looks a good deal for the price, you do get what you pay for. This means that NO you will not get a ipad type device for a fraction of the cost, what you will get is corners cut with the display, the wireless and various other aspects (no camera for example. As a portable VNC Device – given the limited resolution, I cannot see this been used as much as I would like to think it would. As a web browser with flash (Skyfire) I could use it to watch live streaming shows and such but given the limited battery life, I can see me going back to a proper computer instead (or even my netbook in that case).