Samsung Galaxy 10.1 copies the iPad...and blows it away!

[4DThinker]

I have both the Asus Transformer and the iPad2. I love them both, but coming from strictly video playback capabilities, the Transformer, or any other Tegra2 tablet, doesn't playback High Profile 720p videos, whereas my iPad2 plays them butter smooth whether it be with the stock video player or a High Profile 720p MKV with AVPlayerHD. So in this aspect, I'll have to disagree with you that the Tegra2 tablets can do anything as well as the iPad2 can. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I just wanted to point out my observation with the Asus vs iPad2.

Finally someone with an Asus. I haven't found one to buy yet. The Acer does fine at 720p videos, although I had to download the MoboPlayer app and codec package to get it to play anything but MP4 files. Acer is also promising 1080p support with the 3.1 update. Some owners have already gotten (some) 1080p files to play. The Acer has a GPU in it which I'm not sure the Asus does: "Ultra Low-Power GeForce GPU". I put the same videos on both my Acer and my iPad2 and they play butter smooth on both. The Acer also does a great job of playing 3D action games, and comes with a couple. The cheaper price of the Transformer might be thanks to no GPU. Check the specs. The MoboPlayer will use hardware video decoding if the tablet is cable of it. I prefer the 1280 x 800 screen over the iPad's screen for web browsing and video playback. Flash 10.3 work fine with any web site I've visited, although it will slow down the page rendering (of heavy flash pages)about 20% when ON. Of course I can't see anything on those pages using my iPad 2. I am delighted to discover the HDMI port mirrors the whole UI on the HDTV it is hooked to, with no black bars. The required cable was $6 at MonoPrice. Acer has a remote control dock for the Iconia. The regular USB port on the side (of the TAB) works with thumb drives (read only), cameras, keyboards, mouse, or a self-powered hub and all at the same time. That USB port was no extra charge. A 16gb upgrade cost me $30 for a 16gb microSD-HC card. It cost me $100 more to get an iPad with 32gb rather than 16gb. It's that price difference where android is succeeding. I define succeeding as selling more devices this year than you did last year. Archos and Asus and Acer will easily sell far more tablets this year than ever before. Android is the reason.

4D

 

[4DThinker]

Why would I spend my money on products that don't sell, don't get good reviews and in my view are the typical crap products thrown at a wall to see which one sticks?

You won't. Which is why you'll stay blissfully unaware of how good android devices and android itself are quickly becoming.

 

[thunng8]

I have both the Asus Transformer and the iPad2. I love them both, but coming from strictly video playback capabilities, the Transformer, or any other Tegra2 tablet, doesn't playback High Profile 720p videos, whereas my iPad2 plays them butter smooth whether it be with the stock video player or a High Profile 720p MKV with AVPlayerHD. So in this aspect, I'll have to disagree with you that the Tegra2 tablets can do anything as well as the iPad2 can. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I just wanted to point out my observation with the Asus vs iPad2.

The Tegra2 is missing some hardware decode in the SOC. That means it will fall back to the cpu on some types of videos. High profile would be one of them and also according to anandtech, it does not support B-frames as well.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4225/the-ipad-2-review/6

"Unfortunately only a portion of the H.264 decode pipeline is accelerated by NVIDIA's Tegra 2 in this test. When playing back anything more strenuous, portions of the pipeline are handled by the CPU cores in software. If you were to enable b-frames the Xoom would not only stutter but its battery life would drop to around 6 hours."

Fortunately, Tegra3 i.e. Kal-el will fix this deficiency and might also address the large graphics performance defficiency compared to the Apple A5.

 

[thunng8]

The Acer has a GPU in it which I'm not sure the Asus does: "Ultra Low-Power GeForce GPU". I put the same videos on both my Acer and my iPad2 and they play butter smooth on both.

4D

No such thing as a Tegra 2 chip with no GPU in it. They are all SOC (System on Chips) which include the CPU, GPU, memory and video decode/encode hardware. Problem with Tegra 2 is that it does not handle all video decode in hardware and for some types of file, will fall back to software decode using the CPU. For example, no B-frames support.

 

[alex2792]

Yeah Tegra 2's inability to play hi profile video is a puzzling design decion to say the least. However,I was able to play certain 720p hi profile mkvs smoothly,but not others on my Xoom so it seems like there may be other factors at play.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

 

[thunng8]

Yeah Tegra 2's inability to play hi profile video is a puzzling design decion to say the least. However,I was able to play certain 720p hi profile mkvs smoothly,but not others on my Xoom so it seems like there may be other factors at play.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

Cost saving I'd say. Tegra 2 also does not support ARM Neon FPU extension, so for certain applications that use the FPU, the Tegra2 would much slower (4.7x slower in Linpack test compared to the Apple A5). Another one is memory bandwidth. The ipad2 uses 64 bit wide memory controller, while Tegra2 uses 32-bit wide LPDDR2 controller which gives the ipad2 a theoretical 2x speed advantage for memory speed/bandwidth intensive tasks.

Apple went all out with the A5 processor (except for memory capacity) as evidenced by how big the chip is. Estimated at 122mm^2 compared to the Tegra2 which only measures 49mm^2 (most of the extra area is spent on the much more powerful graphics chip).

 

[songmeesay]

Fortunately, Tegra3 i.e. Kal-el will fix this deficiency and might also address the large graphics performance defficiency compared to the Apple A5.

This I find exciting, and hopefully what was reported that Asus will announce a Tegra 3 tablet this year is accurate. I was actually thinking about returning my Asus and trying out the Samsung when it releases, but figure $399 for the Asus and it's expansion abilities is better than $499 for the Samsung with no built in expansion until the Tegra 3 tablets arrive.

I will always have my iPad 2 for the games and apps (especially Flipboard; Pulse is just ugly) but love the customization abilities of Android. Plus I prefer the 16x10 ratio of the Android tablets; I mean every thing else is widescreen including my iMac, iPhone, TV, GPS. I use my iPad exclusively in landscape mode as well.

 

[thunng8]

This I find exciting, and hopefully what was reported that Asus will announce a Tegra 3 tablet this year is accurate

Yep, Tegra3 should be good. Quad core CPU and it should leapfrog Apple in graphics performance. just hope that it ships on time by near end of the year.

 

[bossxii]

Yep, Tegra3 should be good. Quad core CPU and it should leapfrog Apple in graphics performance. just hope that it ships on time by near end of the year.

So what your saying is the competition will leapfrog Apple hardware roughly 9 months after they release theirs, only to be left behind 3 months later as the next gen iPad launches.

As i own both the iPad 2 and the Asus Transformer one feels like a finshed product, while the other very much feels like a beta product. No apps to speak of, HC is stil buggy to the point of lock ups which require forced reboots and force close apps on a regular basis. It is cool to have he ability to side load apps and media, but the OS can wear you out just dealing with all the issue you run into on a daily basis.

The hardware vendors can throw all the horsepower they want in a tablet, if Google doesn't get it's ducks in a row, quad core, hexcore CPU's won't matter to anyone.

This isn't the smartphone business where people are paying $199 for a phone with some cool apps. They expect more from a $500 or more tablet They want apps and anOS that works, without crashes and lock ups Google needs to step up before they get laughed out of the tablet biz all togther.

 

[vw195]

So what your saying is the competition will leapfrog Apple hardware roughly 9 months after they release theirs, only to be left behind 3 months later as the next gen iPad launches.

As i own both the iPad 2 and the Asus Transformer one feels like a finshed product, while the other very much feels like a beta product. No apps to speak of, HC is stil buggy to the point of lock ups which require forced reboots and force close apps on a regular basis. It is cool to have he ability to side load apps and media, but the OS can wear you out just dealing with all the issue you run into on a daily basis.

The hardware vendors can throw all the horsepower they want in a tablet, if Google doesn't get it's ducks in a row, quad core, hexcore CPU's won't matter to anyone.

This isn't the smartphone business where people are paying $199 for a phone with some cool apps. They expect more from a $500 or more tablet They want apps and anOS that works, without crashes and lock ups Google needs to step up before they get laughed out of the tablet biz all togther.

Technically Samsung has the Epynos processor which is already equivalent to the ipad2s processor. It will see the light of day before 6 months. I think they slapped the tegra2 in there to have ample production. In many of the other ways, this samsung is already superior to the ipad2.

As far as the Asus transformer, you bought Asus's first android product? From the reviews Ive seen it is a pretty decent device, but has a few bugs that will get worked out.

I dont think android is going to get laughed out of the tablet business. All conjecture on your part.

 

[MrWillie]

Yep, Tegra3 should be good. Quad core CPU and it should leapfrog Apple in graphics performance. just hope that it ships on time by near end of the year.

And then three months later Apple will leapfrog it. Tegra 3 will leapfrog current technology, but not tomorrows technology, which is when it will actually come out.

Technically Samsung has the Epynos processor which is already equivalent to the ipad2s processor. It will see the light of day before 6 months. I think they slapped the tegra2 in there to have ample production. In many of the other ways, this samsung is already superior to the ipad2.

As far as the Asus transformer, you bought Asus's first android product? From the reviews Ive seen it is a pretty decent device, but has a few bugs that will get worked out.

I dont think android is going to get laughed out of the tablet business. All conjecture on your part.

I think they slapped a Tegra 2 in there just to show their shareholders that they have a device in a multi billion dollar a year market. Transformer buggy ? Playbook doesn't have a native email client ? It's the same thing, got to get something out there before it's too late. Apple said they were working on a tablet, and decided iOS would be good on a phone, so how many years have they been working on this ?

Android (and iOS) won't get laughed out of the tablet market, it's going to be evolution of the tablet and the OS market that will kill them both.

 

[darngooddesign]

You won't. Which is why you'll stay blissfully unaware of how good android devices and android itself are quickly becoming.

Android better keep improving because currently if I turn on GPS I have to restart my Droid X before maps or navigation will find my signal.

 

[radiohead14]

Android better keep improving because currently if I turn on GPS I have to restart my Droid X before maps or navigation will find my signal.

that is a strange issue and i would bet that it's on the motorola side. isn't that running motoblur?

 

[fizzwinkus]

that is a strange issue and i would bet that it's on the motorola side. isn't that running motoblur?

I believe there currently are legal proceedings against google for forcing this on motorola and samsung.

 

[radiohead14]

I believe there currently are legal proceedings against google for forcing this on motorola and samsung.

what do you mean? what's google forcing them to do? are you referring to google trying to make a pact with all the manufacturers to make sure updates become more timely if they have custom UI's?

 

[4DThinker]

Android better keep improving because currently if I turn on GPS I have to restart my Droid X before maps or navigation will find my signal.

That's just it. Every iteration of Android on a device helps point out where it needs work, and helps to debug it for the next version. The sheer number of devices using it all accelerate the debugging cycle and end up informing the developers how to make an even better and more reliable device the next time. They learn what hardware configurations didn't work. They learn what processors were too slow. They figured out what it would take to match the graphic response times of the iPhone. This all happened in far less time than Apple spent in the labs before ever releasing the FIRST iPhone.

With tablets the same thing is happening. Iterate, update, iterate, update, and soon it becomes common knowledge for all manufacturers to make a tablet that matches or betters the iPad spec for spec. Yes, early android phones had flaws. So did the first iPhone. Yes some new android phones have flaws. So do some new iPhones. Yes many early tablets had flaws. The most recent generation includes some amazing products. All it took was time (a constant few people seem to consider).

 

[fizzwinkus]

So the question is whether apple's designers can architect a better interface than a hodgepodge of manufactures fighting for scraps in the bottom of the market with no profits.

Some people love to pay to beta test a phone. Some people don't.

 

[henchman]

Android better keep improving because currently if I turn on GPS I have to restart my Droid X before maps or navigation will find my signal.

Never had that problem with any of my 4 android phones.
Also, need we need to pint out the obvious, that the iPad doesn't even come with voice guided navigation.

 

[MrWillie]

Never had that problem with any of my 4 android phones.
Also, need we need to pint out the obvious, that the iPad doesn't even come with voice guided navigation.

No, but my TomTom does... And it does it nicely.

If I remember my history correctly the Dream (first Android phone) came out at the end of 08. (Oct or Nov). Four phones in less than 3 years ? Been having major problems with them or do you like new phones every 8 months. That has to get expensive doesn't it???

Edit : Voice guided nav didn't come out till 2.2.

 

[4DThinker]

Some people love to pay to beta test a phone. Some people don't.

iPhone 1, iPhone2, and iPhone 3 owners paid to be beta testers. iPhone 4 owners are beta testing for iPhone 5. No one loves to or wants to pay to beta test, it is just that most don't realize they are.

 

[fizzwinkus]

I don't think you understand what beta means... Googlers don't ever seem to

 

[4DThinker]

I don't think you understand what beta means... Googlers don't ever seem to

I understand well enough:

Dictioniary.com: Beta Test:

a quality-control technique in which hardware or software is subjected to trial in the environment for which it was designed, usually after debugging by the manufacturer and immediately prior to marketing.

Notice the "usually". Apple updates products every year (usually). Any firmware update in-between those hardware updates is a set of bug fixes for the current and/or previous models. Knowledge about those bugs came from user reports: People who were using the product in the actual envronment it was intended for. Every user of an Apple device is a beta tester. Apple appreciates it. Every user of an Android device is also a beta tester. Google appreciates it.

Thanks for being a perfect example of those I mentioned, although I realize you may still not be aware of it.

 

[fizzwinkus]

i personally wouldn't trust results from a dictioniary myself, but more power to you!

 

[Night Spring]

Apple updates products every year (usually). Any firmware update in-between those hardware updates is a set of bug fixes for the current and/or previous models. Knowledge about those bugs came from user reports: People who were using the product in the actual envronment it was intended for. Every user of an Apple device is a beta tester. Apple appreciates it. Every user of an Android device is also a beta tester. Google appreciates it.

Thanks for being a perfect example of those I mentioned, although I realize you may still not be aware of it.

If any product for which updates are released, or subsequent improved versions are released, are considered "beta," then pretty much every consumer product we own are in beta. While that is an interesting philosophical perspective, saying everything is in beta doesn't make for an useful distinction. That is, sometimes a product is so full of bugs and/or lacks features to the extent that the user experience is extremely compromised. This is what people mean when they say that Honeycomb or Playbook is still in beta. Obviously, there will be disagreements over how crippled a product must be before it should be declared "in beta." Some might argue that the lack of copy and paste in the original iPhone qualifies it for beta status, while others might say that the overall user experience was acceptable despite the lack of copy & paste. Nevertheless, I feel the concept of a released product still being "in beta" is useful in accessing usability and satisfaction with a product, while pointing out that everything is perpetually in beta doesn't actually add much to any product discussion.

 

[4DThinker]

... I feel the concept of a released product still being "in beta" is useful in accessing usability and satisfaction with a product, while pointing out that everything is perpetually in beta doesn't actually add much to any product discussion.

Except of course when comparing the development cycles of Android tablets verses iPads, which this thread is mainly about. Thanks for chipping in, BTW.