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[roseway]

In the course of a recent discussion about the iPad I became interested in getting an Android tablet. The Motorola Xoom which we talked about is no longer available (it's been replaced by a more expensive new model) so I looked around at what was going for not too much money. The model I decided to buy was the NATPC M013RTB and I received it on Tuesday. I also bought the cheapie keyboard and case (shown on the same page) and a 32 GB microSDHC card to expand the storage capacity. The whole lot was about £200 including delivery.

This was a bit of a punt on my part, because it's a very new model and there were no reviews to be found, so I bought it on specification alone. In the event, I'm not disappointed with what I got for the money.

The enclosed manual was useless because it relates to a completely different model, so as a newcomer to this technology I struggled a bit to get started. But having found my way around it, it's very nice to use. The touch screen is smooth and responsive, and the pinch zoom capability is very handy for expanding things to meet the needs of my eyesight. Installing apps from the app store is a doddle, and the first one I installed was tapatalk, which gives easy access to forums which support it (such as this one ).

One less good aspect is that apps do seem to have a bit of a tendency to crash, and I've also had one complete system lockup. I'm hoping that there will be an OS upgrade soon to improve this.

As I mentioned, I also bought a keyboard and case, and I have nothing but praise for this very low cost product. The case is well made and neat in appearance, and the keyboard is surprisingly good for a clumsy two-fingered typist like me. It effectively turns the tablet into a 10-inch netbook, which makes text input a lot faster and easier than using the touch screen.

[tonyappuk]

Very interesting. I'm thinking about a tablet for use on my boat to replace the old Thinkpad I use mostly for navigation progs at the moment. The big disadvantage of the Thinkpad and all laptops except very (expensive) special devices with daylight viewable screens, is that it's totally unuseable out in the cockpit. Can you use your new tablet outside?
Tony

[roseway]

Sorry Tony, but I don't think that this tablet will be any better in bright light than other similar products. It's got an LCD screen like nearly all of these devices, and even with the brightness at maximum you would struggle to see it in bright daylight.

[tonyappuk]

Eric
Thanks for the quick response. That is what I feared - back to the drawing board!
Tony

[sevenlayermuddle]

Sounds like a heck of a bargain Eric, glad to hear you got one.

Speaking purely of IOS (which yours isn't), App crashes/lockups on iPad /iphone often seem to result fro a rather curious decision from Apple that apps should never exit, they simply run in background.  The problem then is that the developer  has to honour a profliferation of background/foreground transitions events, each one of which is an oportunity for a bug.  And of course, memory leaks just continue to accumulate over time.

But in terms of iPad/android comparison I'm reaching the conclusion., they' both OK but given a free choice, I think I'd trade either or both of them for Tony's boat....   

[roseway]

But in terms of iPad/android comparison I'm reaching the conclusion., they' both OK but given a free choice, I think I'd trade either or both of them for Tony's boat....   

I couldn't disagree with that.

[kitz]

YAY
That looks a cracking deal eric.
Its good to see the prices of tablets finally starting to come down. 
At one point it looked like there was price fixing going on and there wasnt that much difference between the cost of Android and Apple devices.  That seems to have changed since the price reduction in the ipad2 and its nice to see some decent deals around now.

>> App crashes/lockups on iPad /iphone often seem to result fro a rather curious decision from Apple that apps should never exit, they simply run in background.

Out of curiosity, because I really dont know for sure, but dont they do that on some android systems too? (Thinking of my droid phone).

It does seem to be a rather weird way of doing things and every so often I go through and close down the running apps... at least apple make it easy... once you know where to find it.   Like you say I often have to manually close down iplayer which does on occasion seem build up a memory leak and then crash. 

Ive heard there are various reasons why they do this, mostly though because of the drain on app startup. However if I only use an app once in a blue moon I dont see the point of keeping it running in the background.

>> But in terms of iPad/android comparison I'm reaching the conclusion., they' both OK but given a free choice,


They both have their place.. apple makes things look smart and feel good and soooooo easy to integrate with any other apple devices. 
As already mentioned though..... I really dont like how they 'lock' and have the final say on what you can/cant put on your system.  When mines a bit older I may look at jail breaking it.


>>> the first one I installed was tapatalk,

haha I did wonder the other nite but didnt twig properly because I was so tired and not familiar with the model.. and thought perhaps it was a phone you were playing with it on.

>>> I also bought a keyboard and case, and I have nothing but praise for this very low cost product

Im happy with my keypad/case, but that does look particulary nice, not seen one quite like that before.

[roseway]

There is one downside of the keyboard and case - the keyboard has a US layout, and so far I've been unable to remap it to a UK layout, despite installing an app which is supposed to do this job. So I don't have a £ sign readily available, although I presume that there is some key combination which will deliver it.

[sevenlayermuddle]

me decent deals around now.

>> App crashes/lockups on iPad /iphone often seem to result fro a rather curious decision from Apple that apps should never exit, they simply run in background.

Out of curiosity, because I really dont know for sure, but dont they do that on some android systems too? (Thinking of my droid phone).

It does seem to be a rather weird way of doing things and every so often I go through and close down the running apps... at least apple make it easy... once you know where to find it.   Like you say I often have to manually close down iplayer which does on occasion seem build up a memory leak and then crash. 

I've heard there are various reasons why they do this, mostly though because of the drain on app startup. However if I only use an app once in a blue moon I dont see the point of keeping it running in the background.

One reason, I suspect, is a well-intentioned desire to provide the user with continuity. For example, if he/she's engrossed in some interesting puzzle game and the phone rings unexpectedly, he/she may want top open other apps whilst dealing with the call, and then continue the puzzle game exactly where he/she left off.

Yet another downside of the scheme is that when memory gets low (ie if other apps are too greedy), apps receive 'memory-warning' events, to which they should respond by freeing any resources they can do without.   That means more code in every app, so opportunity more bugs, and moreover.. bugs that might go unnoticed until tested on other people's devices if they happen to be running greedy apps.

In Apple's case they do allow apps to opt out of 'background mode', but they discourage it.  In fact, they discourage apps from terminating themselves, even in error scenarios such as failure to allocate memory.  The reasoning is that if the app exits it's perceived as a crash, whereas if the app puts up an error message suggesting that the user terminate it, that seems to be seen as OK.  I'm not at all convinced by that argument either.

And a flip-side of the 'power-saving' argument is that an app may have a bug such that it fails to react properly to the ' enter background' events, and so could leave some horrid animation loop running whilst in background.  I've found (and fixed) one such bug in my own app already.

I'm not trying to twist this back to an iPad debate though, it's just that IOS is the only one I know well.  I can well imaging similar challenges may afflict Android devices and apps.

There is one downside of the keyboard and case - the keyboard has a US layout, and so far I've been unable to remap it to a UK layout, despite installing an app which is supposed to do this job. So I don't have a £ sign readily available, although I presume that there is some key combination which will deliver it.

Apple can do even better (/worse) on that one.  I bought my Mac Mini purely for development purposes and I decided also to buy an Apple keyboard (when in Rome, etc).  Anybody who's every written any C code will understand my frustration at finding the UK Apple keyboard has no '#' key.  You can generate a # by alt&3, but I had to google to find that out.  I'm sure there'll be some Android combo for your £ sign, too.

[kitz]

Funny enough my phone has just crashed..  it must have done it in protest just 10/15 mins after typing the above.   
I ended a call, phone crashed..  and now all I get is android.process.acore is not responding when I try to get my contact list up.. now on a google hunt for a fix. 

In fact, they discourage apps from terminating themselves, even in error scenarios such as failure to allocate memory.  The reasoning is that if the app exits it's perceived as a crash, whereas if the app puts up an error message suggesting that the user terminate it, that seems to be seen as OK.  I'm not at all convinced by that argument either.

hmmm ok.. not too convinced either.  Surely there must be some way to identify a genuine closure and a crash.   Even windows can do that rather nicely.

[roseway]

Android is basically Linux of course, and Linux has a different way of handling memory. When a program is terminated, its image is cached in memory, so that if it's called up again it can be loaded quickly from memory instead of slowly from disk. Data files which are used are cached in the same way. When the memory is full, the next time a program requires memory, the memory manager unloads the oldest cached data to make room for the new requirement. If a program crashes, its image is already in memory so it can be reloaded quickly.

[roseway]

There is one downside of the keyboard and case - the keyboard has a US layout, and so far I've been unable to remap it to a UK layout, despite installing an app which is supposed to do this job. So I don't have a £ sign readily available, although I presume that there is some key combination which will deliver it.

I've now solved this problem with the help of the app I referred to. The solution was to configure the USB keyboard as the default keyboard, and then the keyboard layout setting works as it should. If I disconnect the USB keyboard I have to reconfigure the touch screen keyboard as the default. I haven't found a way to completely automate this, but it's not a big imposition.

[kitz]

Im glad that youve found some sort of solution eric...  however... It would be nice if there was an automation... or even a small app (an idea for someone) that allowed fast switching. 
Something like the app I keep on my android 2nd screen which allows me to easily switch between wi-fi networks, switch bluetooth on/off etc.  Its much quicker than having to go into settings each time I want to change network config.

[roseway]

Good idea, I'll see if there's an app to do the switching.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Android is basically Linux of course

I'd be envious of that, except of course...

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS

iOS is derived from Mac OS X, with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and is therefore a Unix operating system.

A 'proper' operating system, and arguably the Daddy of all linuxes ?