while not exactly the s8 ultra, i did get a s7 plus recently. No good reason other than I was bored of being stuck on the apple side of things for far too long Plus it was available at a really solid discount..
I have honestly been trying really hard to like it but its a difficult ask.
- Dex is nice in some ways and I can see it being useful if I needed a more PC like experience in the off chance i am stuck somewhere without access to a laptop. However the 16:9 format coupled with the top bar and bottom taskbar (non moveable) leaves very little usable space on the Y axis
- App experience can vary wildly. It took me a while to even figure out what browser to use. Chrome renders comically big fonts (and no option to reduce ) while samsung browser renders well but has its own problems.
Edge seems to be alright but it is nowehere as nice as safari on ipad
- HDR playback is noticeably worse than my 12.9 M1 although its definitely (and significantly ) better than my wife’s 11” 2018 iPP
- The performance handicap of the SoC can be felt even during browsing (heavy pages can be prone to micro stuttering and rendering takes longer) compared to even the old A12X ipad pro , let alone the M1 ipad
- Dual screen with windows (essentially a replica of side car) works - but almost always connects at 30hz (and no, my network is not an issue, this happens even with laptop on gigabit and tablet on 866/866 mbps). Deleting device from known devices on windows and re-establishing connection fixes it till it is time for the next reconnect)
- The broader bugginess quotient is a whole lot higher than the ipad - case in point, android 12 was supposed to add support for dualsense (and remote play for ps5 is a regular use case for me) but the button mappings on the kernel are completely wrong (inverted/wrong axes, non functional buttons etc ) thus making it completely unusable as a remote play machine
Overall, while i don’t regret the purchase - that’s only because I paid only a tad more than the 10” base ipad for it.
However if I had to pick just one tablet device , this would sit far down in the pecking order.
The only scenario where it does well is as a media playback device - and user does not want to plonk down the money for the mini-LED pro ipad
I have honestly been trying really hard to like it but its a difficult ask.
- Dex is nice in some ways and I can see it being useful if I needed a more PC like experience in the off chance i am stuck somewhere without access to a laptop. However the 16:9 format coupled with the top bar and bottom taskbar (non moveable) leaves very little usable space on the Y axis
- App experience can vary wildly. It took me a while to even figure out what browser to use. Chrome renders comically big fonts (and no option to reduce ) while samsung browser renders well but has its own problems.
Edge seems to be alright but it is nowehere as nice as safari on ipad
- HDR playback is noticeably worse than my 12.9 M1 although its definitely (and significantly ) better than my wife’s 11” 2018 iPP
- The performance handicap of the SoC can be felt even during browsing (heavy pages can be prone to micro stuttering and rendering takes longer) compared to even the old A12X ipad pro , let alone the M1 ipad
- Dual screen with windows (essentially a replica of side car) works - but almost always connects at 30hz (and no, my network is not an issue, this happens even with laptop on gigabit and tablet on 866/866 mbps). Deleting device from known devices on windows and re-establishing connection fixes it till it is time for the next reconnect)
- The broader bugginess quotient is a whole lot higher than the ipad - case in point, android 12 was supposed to add support for dualsense (and remote play for ps5 is a regular use case for me) but the button mappings on the kernel are completely wrong (inverted/wrong axes, non functional buttons etc ) thus making it completely unusable as a remote play machine
Overall, while i don’t regret the purchase - that’s only because I paid only a tad more than the 10” base ipad for it.
However if I had to pick just one tablet device , this would sit far down in the pecking order.
The only scenario where it does well is as a media playback device - and user does not want to plonk down the money for the mini-LED pro ipad
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