Monday 23 January 2012

Me and my new tablet

A friend of mine recently gave me a new Android tablet, I have had an Android phone for about a year now and have been nothing but impressed with it. That I like Android as a smartphone OS is a big deal for me - I am a reformed Nokia fan. Personally, I think Android turned up just in time, Nokia lost the plot a bit when it came to smartphones and let the iPhone steal a lead. Granted, Nokia had been trying to get tablet computing off the ground for a while (the N710 etc), but like its phone offerings, they seemed to lose touch with their consumer base (note to self, get on eBay to pick up an old Nokia tablet).

As you will see from my blog in previous posts, I love old tech and how it has influenced today's products. For example, the tablet I am currently using to write this post. It uses am Arm CPU, as do a lot of things these days, which of course is related to one of my favourite old school computers - the A7000+. It also uses a touch screen interface, which is normal on every device these days, but this tablet offers stylus input - this is unique I the days of multi touch capacitive screens. It almost seems old fashioned, years back we use to have to make do with a stylus on a resitive screen to have any form of input. These days it almost seems like a backward step to include something like that on a new design. Think Psion Series 7, this tablet I am using, a Lenovo ThinkPad, can use a stylus (unfortunately one doesn't come with it in the box), it can be usedfor regular operations  or for handwriting recoginition. Thankfully though, you can also make do with your finger for this - doesn't work so well with my blunt digits though!

Connectivity is wonderful to. I have WiFi and Bluetooth of course, however I also have a mini HDMI out, a full sized SD card slot and a SIM slot (although my model doesn't have a WWAN card - something I plant to remedy soon). Added to this, I also have a full sized USB port. This is primarily used for storage, which is pretty amazing on its own. I hooked up my 1TB USB drive with no problems. However, when I tried this with a wireless USB keyboard it did not work.

One thing I did find annoying was the inability of the Netflix app to work. It consistently complains of no network connectivity even though I have a good WiFi connection. Same goes for the Virgin Media app - a hold over from phone apps maybe? The BBC I player worked wonderfully though, and I was able to install all of my previously purchased apps as well.

One thing I am very keen to explore is the gaming potential of this device. At the end of last year two rather wonderful games were released for Android - Sonic CD and GTA3. I have Sonic CD installed at the moment and I love it. It is one of the games I keep telling myself to pick up for my Mega CD, but never do. With the release of the Wii U later this year, I can finally see why people are making a big fuss about tablet gaming.

Whilst I know this device will improve my productivity, I also know I will use it a lot in my down time. I have some films stacked up on now to watch on the journey to work. Hopefully I will also be able to find a Bluetooth gamepad so I can indulge in some Retro gaming :-)

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