The Next Web: “Google has also been working with Samsung to launch a 10-inch tablet, confirming leaks which suggested Google had teamed up with the Korean manufacturer for another device. Our source tells us that internally the tablet goes under the name ‘Codename Manta’, runs Google’s new Android 4.2 operating system (previously referred to as Key Lime Pie, but is set to retain the Jelly Bean branding), and will offer a 2560×1600 pixel (10:16) resolution, which we believe will offer around 300 pixels per inch compared to the new iPad’s 264 PPI.” Between the iPad and this supposed Android tablet… Poor Surface. Poor, poor Surface.
Does an Android device in a category they have never, ever broken into equal bad luck for Surface.
Android has historically never caught on at greater than 7 inch, bargain basement form factors.
Imagining an Android with a retina resolution (Where they’ll have something like 2x the pixels to push) will make an already iffy Android performance story even worse.
The lack of dominance in tablets for Android highlights the truth to a point I made here a while ago but many shot down. People didn’t choose Android. Android was chosen for them. Google had good timing and filled a vacuum in the market. That’s it. It didn’t win on its own merits, it won on being “Good enough” and for looking enough like an iPhone to satisfy Verizon and T-Mobile.
I suppose the only good thing is that if it is a Nexus device it’ll be free of the abortion of a software skin that is TouchWiz.
It was shot down because you’re talking nonsense.
You don’t grow to 70% market share by being shit – and remember, no carrier pushing or exclusives here. People CHOOSE Android, as APPLE’s own research even confirmed.
So, research from a COMPETITOR, or unsubstantiated remarks from a random commenter. Tough call!
No. People now choose Android because it has a self sustaining dominance. Just like people choose Windows because it is dominant.
However when you turn the clock back to the early days of Android, the picture is different. Carriers needed an anti-Iphone and Android was the only OS to address that need.
Android is actively pushed to consumers at the retail channel. Saying it is not is pure ignorance. Walk into an Operator store in the US and you’ll see that customers are steered towards Android devices. That decision is made for them.
You’re right but for the wrong reasons.
People choose Android or Windows for whatever reasons they have. And with an average lifespan of just a few years for this kind of devices, most of them probably do it with some experience behind their decisions. Apple STILL sells millions of phones, so, no, the customers aren’t forced to use Android, they just have more choices.
Carriers, on the other hand, choose Android and Windows devices for a simple reason, Apple forces them to. Every single time Apple launches a new phone, a single carrier gets the deal, while the others lose the head start. So, if they offered you Android or Windows instead of Apple, then, it’s only Apple to blame.
That’s not the case in most of the world (where Android also rises to domination, even more so)
Carriers have zero influence here and people still choose Android.
And they choose lower $100-$200 models with knowledge that its not a $700 g3 or $900 iphone5.
Local indian brand micromax outsold samsung and apple tablets(http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/micromax-tablet-review-specif…)
Android has 70% tablet market share? When did that happen?
I have no idea where he got such numbers. http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/device_ownership covers only the United States, but according to that report Android has a 48% market share on tablets and iPad has a 52% market share. That’s to say that Android – tablets and iPads are more-or-less at an equal footing.
Here in Finland it’s harder to find any trustworthy numbers, but apparently Android-smartphones have a market share of 33% and iPhones have a market share of 35%, and of tablets Android has only managed to gather a market share of 12% whereas iPads have 88% market share. One of the reasons for this is the fact that you just do not see Android-tablets being advertised ANYWHERE, and the selection is very poor. Finland is the promised land of smartphones, but for some reason all other kinds of electronic devices are in short supply.
70% is the Android phone market share worldwide.
phone != tablets.
The Asus Transformer (my wife bought the TF101 after reviewing all tablets on the market) was successful enough to have three updated releases. People are buying them, and they are making money. How does this relate to Android tablets never, ever breaking into the tablet market?
Ditto on the TF101, I wonder why Google didn’t continue with Asus after the commercial success of the Nexus 7.
But I admit that the new chromebook look delicious.
Lets put things into a little bit of perspective:
ASUS is not even statistically relevant beyond a rounding error in market share for tablets in the 10 inch category.
That’s iPad country. It is fucking ridiculous that the same people who were saying Honeycomb Tablets would save the world and overtake the iPad are STILL saying Android Tablets are poised to dominate. DESPITE the retail FAILURE of such products.
No version of Windows was ever successful in this category either, and Microsoft was never even a tablet vendor before. So yes, they need all the luck they can get.
True. They need good luck, but Android doesn’t necessarily present bad luck for Surface.
The same vacuum that existed in the phone space when Android was launched, exists now in the tablet space for Windows 8/RT.
It is the perfect storm for Microsoft. I will bet that a year from now, Microsoft will have a significant hold of the tablet market.
OK, I can take the other side. How much do you want to bet and how do you define “significant”?
Retina requires 4x the fill-rate or fragment processing power.
Not just double.
So what exactly is wrong with android that makes it only “good enough” and why would the iPhone be better?
(Emphasis mine)
Oh dear … Historically? Don’t you think you should wait more than two years before talking about ‘history’? I know the Internet has an attention deficit, but that’s just daft.
The problem with the “historically has never…” argument: http://xkcd.com/1122/
Why do people and companies focus so hard on resolution? Everyone keeps masturbating to ever higher pixel counts while all the other features — both in software and in hardware — are ignored. IMHO Microsoft went the better direction with Surface’s screen — if what they claim about its better colour balance, gamut and brightness are true. I own an Acer Iconia Tab A500 which has 1280×800 pixels and I have no complaints whatsoever about the pixel count, but its colour representations leaves a lot to be desired.
It’s like the megapixels race for cameras all over again.
Up to a point, though marketing speak aside the new ‘retina screen’ on the iPad is lovely. It almost made me want one and I find it’s OS a pain-in-butt. So I, imagine most everyone given the choice, want it’s equivalent in their choice of tablet, laptop etc.
Edited 2012-10-21 16:16 UTC
I frankly don’t see the point of a 10+-inch tablet. All you’re basically getting is all the hassles of a laptop, with none of the benefits.
I use an iPad regularly (though I’m not a fan), and the large screen is very nice for reading and browsing – 10″ tablets rock for that. The downsides are limited portability (I carry my N900 everywhere and love it) and anything requiring typing (for which I use my Ubuntu net book).
I’d buy a 7″ Android tablet if I was shopping today. YMMV.
Because eye strain is a real issue vs. minor clock speed bumps and bad glass with 10 mp sensors.
Readability at these resolutions and distances is a real benefit, far more so something like he video in a living room.
But it’s nothing like the megapixel or clock speed races because there’s a limited return on anything past retina until you jump to 4k. This is just the minimum that all displays should have been pushing to for years…
Until you’ve used one for a while and return to a normal display, you won’t get it.
If it is not about clock race and megapixel, why is Apple also making benchmark ?
If I had the option I would choose e-ink for readability (plus I’m pretty sure that looking at backlit display in wrong condition cause more eye strain than low resolution display, because you know … gameboy)
e-ink > all for reading.
I’d probably choose Pixel Qi over e-Ink.
That way, I get all the benefits of an LCD (response time, integrated night-time lighting, color), but I get battery lifetimes in the same ballpark as e-Ink if I shut the backlight off and I’ve also heard they’re working on models that stay color when you switch off the backlight.
(From my experiments with my Sony Reader PRS-505 and my OpenPandora, I’m inclined to believe Pixel Qi’s claim that repeatedly changing the page displayed on an e-Ink screen is as electrically expensive as just using an efficient LCD with the backlight turned completely off)
PixelQi doesn’t seem to be in the same ballpark as e-ink …kinda closer to it & print, but still much closer to normal LCD.
And on transflective screens colour will be always washed out (but who needs that for reading, anyway?)
It’s really too bad that netbooks with PixelQi didn’t really arrive, though.
Edited 2012-10-29 00:02 UTC
Apple hasn’t. The print industry has. This is what every electronic display seeks to emulate. As they should.
Actually, no. That’s what e-Ink, Pixel-Qi and the likes seek to emulate. Everyone else has realized that it’s pointless to try to emulate paper or other cellulose-based objects without a back-light on an electronic device with entirely different characteristics and strong back-lights, and therefore there are so many different products and guidelines for aiding people having to work with both kinds of output medias.
Everyone else apparently doesn’t include Google, Samsung, Acer and several other android oems.
Cellulose is only part of the equation and obviously not what I’m talking about, whereas being able to draw a straight line is valuable in design of any type. I’m not sure why people see visible pixels as something that never needs to change. The tech is ready, we can easily move beyond it (especially on desktops) and don’t have to move even one bit farther, but suddenly it’s a race because someone took a step forward.
Alas, colour gamut, contrast and brightness affect readability much more than the occasional bump in PPI at these resolutions. You can cram 20 000 x 20 000 pixels in the screen if you want but it won’t be readable and it will definitely cause eye strain if colours, contrast and brightness are subpar, ie. high pixel count is not a substitute for those. That’s exactly why I am asking: why masturbate to high pixel count when concentrating on the other aspects is much more beneficial after a certain point?
I have to say that I disagree.
Color gamut is only an issue if the developer chooses a bad color scheme if where reading is concerned. And color gamut is a real push as evidenced by the iPhone 5.
20000 x 20000 might be just as terrible if the device was powered off, but I haven’t encountered an issue with brightness and contrast in the last four years. Whereas there are tons of sub-200 ppi displays that make small text unreadable. There’s a reason why fonts have glyphs. Anytime they aren’t print quality it’s problematic.
I’m glad to hear that there are people who were fine with twenty-some inch displays never passing 2000 a pixel width.
I don’t know why printers ever bothered.
Well, I’d very much like 20k x 20k on a small device …and further. It would probably mean we’re on a path towards proper holographic screens ( http://www.osnews.com/thread?492454 basically: the need the size of pixels comparable to the wavelength of light; oh, and also processing power and memory we’re nowhere near yet – but once there, a display can feel kinda like a mirror or window)
Edited 2012-10-29 00:07 UTC
Not sure what is meant by this statement, but eye strain is not affected by the resolution of a display as much as how something is rendered on that display.
Which resolutions? Which distances?
What type of rendering? What type of content? How keen is the viewer’s eyesight?
All of these variables are important to establish in determining the validity of such a “readability” claim.
“Retina” is an Apple BS marketing term (as is “4k” in the cinematography world).
Resolution is purely a matter of degree — there is no magical resolution range “of limited return” that Apple has discovered.
“Effective” resolution is determined by the variables mentioned above.
There is this small consideration in manufacturing called “practicality.”
Furthermore, with computer devices, there is this limitation known as “bandwidth capability.”
Perhaps it would be best if we didn’t live the fanboy stereotype.
By the way, for about 15 years, one could use Linux terminal emulators with LCD/LED screens. When the resolution was properly set, the font in these terminals was perfectly aligned with each pixel, so that the characters were razor sharp, with no aliasing. Thus, these 15-year-old terminal emulators were sharper than aliased fonts on “retina” displays.
Edited 2012-10-22 19:42 UTC
It’s quite simple, really. Higher pixel counts basically translates to higher res screens which allows the display of higher quality boobs. And that is something that can be worth masturbating over.
I guess the problem occurs when people masturbate over the thought of such a screen, without any porn on the screen in front of them.
How gay to mention masturbation in every second sentence. OFCOURSE you would want HIGH resolution, on a SMALL display.
Very cool news. It seems though that certain people think the opposite, who I have always found to be really offensive. No doubt they block rational thought and the praises of God, and brilliance and excellence in all spheres of life.
Provocative idiocy, all the way to the “cottaging”, where no humanity is left.
If you have been on the internet for a while, you notice this.
So yeah, praises of God, or cottaging?
Peace Be With You.
uh huh…
I don’t get the point of your comment. Is it supposed to be sarcasm or what?
Please don’t price it like an iPad…
As regards the Transformer, I don’t know if the it saw 3 updated releases because it was sucessful, or because Asus thinks there is an untapped “hybrid Android tablet” market and so they persist with the Transformer despite the low sales…
How many of those Android tablets sold were above 7-8 inches anyway, and how many of them were “hybrids”?
PS: Anyone talking about Android lag in versions 4.1 and above falls in the “not sure if trolling or just stu…. errr ignorant” category.
Uh no, sorry. In real world use, Jelly Bean is still slow.
In real world use, I think the device I have in my hand would disagree.
You don’t sound like someone who has a Jelly Bean device, how could you possibly know that?
In what manner?
I’ve got a Nexus 7 (which runs JB) and it’s ridiculously fast, smooth and responsive. My only complaint about it is I wish it had an SD slot. Although that’s more a device hardware complaint than an OS complaint.
…but it would be nice to see an SD card on a Nexus tablet for a change. That way, they can just sell it with one SKU – say 32GB built-in with up to 64GB SDXC to add later if you want. I also hope they up the CPU and GPU from the one in the Nexus 7 because the higher res will probably need a speed bump overall.
I could see a Nexus 10 – if it is actually going to turn up – selling well if it offers a vanilla Android 4.2 experience, isn’t too thick or heavy, is rootable/ROMable (OK, that’s for me 🙂 ), performs at least as well as the Nexus 7 does and comes in at price a decent amount below the iPad 3 (it might be able to equal or best the iPad 3 in most aspects, but if the price is close or the same, people will still go for the iPad 3 because it’s shiny).
I agree otherwise, but, well, Google needs to work on how the added storage space is handled by Android. At the moment you kind of have to jump around various hoops to store files you download on the SD-card, often the files stored there don’t show up properly in gallery, there’s plenty of applications that cannot store their files at all on an SD-card and so on.
It would be nice if the user was presented with the option of keeping the SD-card like it works now for various reasons, like e.g. if the user knows he or she will have to remove it every now and then, or a choice where the system formats the card and uses it as a seamless addition to the internal storage.
I hope they won’t drop the ball (like in case of GN) increasing pixel count w/o the fill rate and equip the device adequately (that also means the battery).