I have a problem. Well, actually, its more like an addiction...
My addiction is technology, more specifically gadgets. I love gadgets!
Now that CES is a couple of weeks old and I've had a good, long look at the plethora of next generation Android tablets I have to ask myself
"What happened to the FIRST GENERATION tablets?!"
I'm not talking about the plethora of low-quality (i.e. "cheap") Chinese products currently flooding the market in the form of brands like Coby, Augen, iCan, etc. etc. These devices are generally described as being fairly underpowered with resistive touch displays and limited or no Android Market access.
No, I'm talking about quality products like the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
The Galaxy Tab strikes me as being the only real attempt at a first-generation product that is high-quality, fully functional with a beautiful (forgive me) "Apple-like" capacitive display. I guess the Galaxy Tab's only drawback is that it is not running the most current iteration of Android. It also doesn't appear that the Galaxy Tab will have the horsepower to run Android 3.0 when it is released and, if as rumored, it needs a dual core processor for the "optimal experience". Again, this last point is a sore spot for many Android fans, but that is for another blog post...
During Apple's most recent quarterly report Tim Cook, the acting CEO, offered his thoughts on Android:
"Then you have Android tablets, and the varieties that are out shipping today, their operating system wasn't designed for tablets. Google has said this, this isn't just Apple saying this."
I think Mr. Cook has a point. There is a conspicious lack of Android powered tablets on the market that provide the kinds of experiences, compelling experiences, compelling computer-like experiences that Apple's iPad delivers. Its as simple as that... Sure Android has thousands and thousands of apps and so does Apple, but the iPad provides an experience that the current iterations of Android simply cannot provide.
That being said, I would love, love, LOVE to purchase an Android tablet and I've looked long and hard at several devices currently on the market. As I've mentioned before, the Galaxy Tab is a very compelling platform, but at $599.00USD (Unsubsidized. That is $100.00USD MORE expensive than the wi-fi enabled iPad) one could bemoan the seeming existence of an "Android Luxury Tax"...
[It gets worse!]
On the software side of things the fragmentation of the Android platform is disturbing to those of us who have come to expect operating systems that offer the latest and greatest "updates" and security fixes using fixed hardware. Can you imagine the rancor and furor caused by Microsoft if they demanded a hardware upgrade for every patch, security update or hotfix? Hell, Microsoft plans on supporting Windows XP until 2014! A policy like that would be the French Revolution times a thousand and possibly the end of that software's market adoption, but that is the current state of the Android platform.
Mr. Cook made the following comments regarding the fragmentation of the Android platform:
"We firmly believe that our integrated approach is better than the fragmented approach. You can see this in a number of ways -- from the number of fragmented app stores with a variety of ways to pay, people will pull their hair out. Who's on the latest OS -- Android always lags ... In net we think our integrated approach is better, rather than making the end user a systems integrator. I don't know a lot of people who want to be systems integrators. And I think the same thing about iPad. It's the same set of issues, at the end of the day."
I agree with his assesment 100%! I also feel that it is not environmentally conscious or responsible to demand arbitrary "upgrades" in order to run the latest version of Android. Think of the millions of tons of e-waste generated by that kind of policy?
Not good...
Another worrying issue, or rather obstacle in my quest for the perfect Android tablet (or at least a tablet that provides me with an experience equivalent to my iPad) is Android barring wi-fi only enabled tablets from the Google Market place. I've noticed this strange phenomena affecting the various devices that utilize Android 2.1. Ironically, the latest and greatest from the guys at Archos (Arcos 32, 43, 70 and 101) that include Android 2.2 still lack the Android Market and instead use a proprietary piece of software called "Appslib". This scaled down version of the Android Market, by all accounts, (pardon my French... get it!? Haha) sucks.
This is, in my humble opinion, completely unacceptable and counter-productive to Android's growith as a platform. How do they expect to grow and innovate if they starve a large part of their user base?
All hope is not lost though, because this year's CES demonstrated the looming tablet revolution. Devices of all shapes and sizes are currently in the late stages of development or pre-production. RIM's Playbook looked very interesting. Some of the Tegra II devices looked interesting as well, but I've lost a lot of faith in Nvidia over the last decade (again, another blog post).
For 5 days, a mind-boggling host of Android powered devices were paraded across the pages of Engadget and that gave me hope.Yes, there is hope for the Android platform; a platform with a lot of potential!
And yet there are still these nagging questions. Also, it is my belief that Apple will not wait for Android to catch up...
Only time will tell, but I hope to review my future Android powered tablet sometime soon...
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