I just marked a thousand items in my Google Reader as “read” so I’m pretty useless for political blogging until I catch up from vacation. Instead, some tech dorkery.
In case you missed it, Google announced a new 7″ tablet called the Nexus 7 at the end of last month and I ordered one the day after it was announced. The reason is that I travel with three devices: a laptop, a 3rd Generation Kindle and a Galaxy Nexus smartphone. I carry the laptop to do work (software development) that isn’t really suited for an iPad-type device. I just couldn’t justify the expense and, more importantly, the size of an iPad for the amount of use it would get, so I’ve been getting by with a mix of using my smartphone and Kindle for reading or quick checks of web sites.
A device that is a few millimeters thicker and a few ounces heavier than a Kindle is a no-brainer for me but, until now, the 7″ tablets on the market have been expensive and/or slow. This one is cheap ($200) and fast. It’s also a hell of a bargain because Google is selling them at cost to push Android adoption on tablets.
There are rumors that Apple is going to create a device like this (“iPad mini”). I would be surprised if they don’t, because between the mediocre-but-cheap-and-widely-used Kindle Fire, the Nexus 7, and the new Kindle that will be coming out soon, there are going to be some good, cheap 7″ tablets out there that will be purchased instead of iPads come Christmas.
eric
I guess that sounds good if you cant afford to get a real tablet like an ipad, but whatever. /troll off
giltay
I would be surprised if Apple did come out with a cheap, smaller tablet. Smaller, perhaps, but not cheap. Competing on price is not something Apple does (or does well at least).
MikeJ
Nexus huh? I design your eyes.
Gin & Tonic
I resisted for a long time, but the e-ink or e-paper or whatever it’s called Kindle is a great thing. Battery lasts forever and you can read it outdoors. Sitting at the beach with something like Robert Caro’s latest or some of the other doorstops I’ve been reading is a huge PITA; I can hold the Kindle Touch in one hand and don’t have to hide under an umbrella. For that alone it’s worth $100, and I don’t see how an LCD tablet can be better.
NonyNony
@giltay:
THIS.
Things may change now that Jobs is gone, but one of the things that Jobs recognized was that by making Apple products a bit “elitist” he increased the demand for the product among people who otherwise wouldn’t care about what kind of computer device they were using. Why an iPod instead of a $30 MP3 player? Because iPods are cooler than the $30 MP3 player!
Cutting prices and offering “bargain rate” versions of Apple products cuts into the cache of being an Apple customer and potentially hurts the brand more than losing the lower end of the business would. If all of these devices become true commodity products, Apple loses.
Emma
I have two Kindles — a Kindle Fire that travels with me because I can carry shed-loads of pdfs for business, my Audible library, a Note Everything app for note taking at meetings, Pulse, imo instant chat, plus Scrabble. What more can one want?
But my baby is the old Kindle keyboard tablet. Beautiful for reading, stores (so far) over 500 classic mysteries (hard to find in used book stores, even in reprints), 18th and 19th century travel books, and whatever takes my fancy. I love it.
Roy G.
I’ll lend a shoutout to support the ‘tween tablet form factors, especially if the tablet is not your primary device. I’ve got a Samsung Note (along with an iPhone, Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone, MacBookPro and 1st gen iPad – i’m a designer/dev and I work across platforms). While the Note was panned by many due to its size relative to phones, I have found it to be infinitely more practical, due to the slightly larger screen size.
While i’ve been an Apple user for over 30 years, I think I peaked with OS X, and am less than enchanted with iOS and living in the walled garden. Android does some things very well, and its openness makes up for what it lacks in sweet sweet chrome.
The Moar You Know
Nexus 7 pre-ordered. I’ve been running my Nook Color with the Cyanogen mod for a year and a half now – it’s the right size but a bit slow. The Nexus is the same right size, much faster and leaps two iterations of Android in the bargain for the same price I paid for the Nook. Gonna be a fun Christmas.
Brachiator
@mistermix:
I’ve been following this with some interest.
Google’s strategy of selling the Nexus at cost seems odd. Apple makes a profit on the iPad and also has a bazillion apps in its app store. But they also play well with some others.
I read some tech journalists talk about how google was going after both the iPad and the Kindle Fire. But Kindle users happily buy lots of stuff from Amazon, and Amazon Prime and its video service does well. Amazon also pushes Kindle apps that can be used on any device. They are not trying to bind you to their ecosystm; they just want you to buy stuff.
Bottom line is that there are a lot of folks who just want to use Dropbox, Evernote, browse the web read books on a Kindle app, and maybe watch movies and play a few games. They are not necessarily interested in the Google Play store or whatever it’s called, and are not necessarily hot about having an Android experience. This makes it risky for google to push the price point down on a loss leader device. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
And if Amazon comes out with an updated Fire (the Blaze? the Forest Fire?) things may get very interesting.
The rumors about Apple coming out with a smaller tablet just won’t go away. They could use this device to supplement or do away with the Touch and probably still make money.
The possible loser in all this, in the short term at least, appears to be Microsoft. They announced their Surface tablet, but didn’t price it or come up with a definite ship date. And they didn’t let anyone touch it or play with it. Google, who doesn’t do hardware well (anybody got a Chrome Book? Anyone?) learned that if you get the product out the door and into people’s hands, you are ahead of the game.
BTW: what kind of battery life do you get with this device? Is the screen bright enough?
mistermix
@giltay:
I don’t agree. Apple won’t produce crap just to shave a couple of bucks off the price of a device, but they are incredibly competitive on price in the tablet, phone and music player market. For example, nobody has produced a iPad-size tablet that is price and feature competitive. They are either too slow and/or junky, or too expensive. Apple buys in quantities nobody else can match because they sell only a few products, and they get the cheapest rate on Chinese labor because they make so many products, so their prices are actually quite good.
ouidcom
I expect a breathless post from Cole with this piece of news any minute now…..NOT!
Romney booed while speaking to NAACP.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1224849–romney-booed-at-civil-rights-meeting-for-criticizing-obama-s-health-care-plan
While real shit is going on Cole will post about some horseshit the Koch funded Greenwald said or post pictures of half eaten ribs.
mistermix
@Roy G.: A friend where I was vacationing had a Note and I have to agree – it’s a form factor that doesn’t make sense on paper but is remarkably useful in practice.
Roger Moore
@giltay:
Have you looked at their prices recently? They’re on the expensive end, but that’s because they’re on the high-end in terms of quality. If you compare Apple’s products to similarly specified products from their competitors, they’re pretty competitive.
Walker
I am very skeptical about the size of the market for the 7″ tablets. As touch-screen devices, a lot things are driven by the size of your hands. There are things that you can do with an iPad that you simply cannot do with the iPhone because of the screen real estate is just too small (this is very obvious when you look at gaming on these devices). So making a smaller iPad removes a lot of these options. 7″ opens you a bit from the iPhone, but it is still a very constrained device.
I do believe that a market exists for these devices, but it will be much smaller than the 10″ market.
Martin
@NonyNony:
Apple is a lot more careful about this than people give them credit. Apple undercut the competition on price with both the iPod Nano and then the Shuffle (which is $49). They undercut the competition on price with the iPad. They are undercutting the competition on price with the MacBook Air.
They do it when there’s some benefit to expanding the market reach of the product. They did it with the iPod because so long as the iTunes Music Store remained strong and Apple could keep attracting interest from the labels in it (and around the world, remember), the market for their higher end products would hold up. The same reasoning applies now to the tablets – but for software and media. Apple’s goal here is to make sure that developers, publishers, and studios want to keep their content available for the 10″ iPad – and one way to do that is to make sure that the 7″ non-iOS market doesn’t grow strong enough to lure them away. Apple will make a cheap 7″ tablet to ensure that the 10″ sales remain strong. They’re very careful about things like this. My guess is we’ll see it at $249-$299. They don’t need to meet everyone on price – they just need to be close enough that consumers consider the product and upsell on the higher feature set.
There is no real ‘cache’ to being an Apple customer. Half of the homes in the US have an Apple product in them. Apple has as much cache as Pepsi – it’s not some elite brand. Apple customers buy Apple products because they goddamn easy to buy and to own. Sometimes they are cheap, but even when they are not, they are considered good value for the money. That’s really the goal here.
People get really screwy attitudes about cost when looking at electronics for some reason.
And if these devices become true commodity products, then everyone loses. Commodity prices are fine for things with no or minimal R&D costs – like corn. If you take products that are end-to-end R&D driven and suck all of the profit out of them, you kill the development engine, and everything stagnates. The last thing anyone who enjoys the advance of technology should want is a commodity market here.
Catsy
I’ve been seriously considering getting one of these. I do like my iPad, but it’s just too bulky to tote around everywhere, even with a shoulder bag. And it’s got a lot of problems that are never going to be fixed because said flaws are Apple’s intent.
For example, they had me at micro USB here. Of all the feature omissions Apple has made in a bid for more battery life (and to gouge more money out of customers who otherwise would have no reason to pay another $200 for a “higher end” version that offers absolutely nothing other than $15 worth of storage space), the complete lack of removable storage in the iPad is probably one of the most indefensible.
The App Store was a big selling point when I got my iPhone 3G, and it’s nice to have it there on the iPad. But to be honest, having had the thing for over a year now I’d say 99% of what I do with it is checking email or browsing the web. I don’t need the App Store to do that.
jibeaux
I kind of want the Nexus, but I like iPad screen size better. At less than half the price, though, I’m sure I can make do. Currently don’t have an e-reader.
One review I saw said to definitely spring for the extra storage with the 16G at $50 more, though. Any thoughts on that? I would be a very recreational user, but there could be the potential for a lot of pictures and video.
Walker
@NonyNony:
Actually, the reason Apple has done so well is that so many of their competitors believe this garbage. If you think this is why Apple has succeeded, then you do not understand this market at all.
The only competitor with a clue is Samsung (I know people in some development groups at Samsung). Which is why Apple is fighting so hard against them.
The Bobs
@eric: The iPad is an expensive toy. Compared to my laptop it is slow and the screen is a joke.
I can troll too.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Brachiator:
Battery specs from the link:
9 hours of HD video playback
10 hours of web browsing
10 hours of e-reading
300 hours of standby
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
I have an original (and soon-to-be-orphaned-after-barely-two-years) iPad. But I find myself using my Kindle DX more these days for anything beyong very casual reading.
It’s a shame that Amazon has apparently abandoned the larger form-factor eInk displays, because the DX’s screen is perfect for the two-column PDFs I end up reading for work. Almost as much screen real estate as a 10″ tablet, but much lighter in weight, and little eyestrain.
I’m hoping the DX keeps running until *my* dream tablet comes out: A DX-sized touch e-reader with color eInk. (My guess? 3-5 years).
Martin
@Walker: It’ll be a big market down at $250. Once you get down there, you have a price point that parents will buy these for kids, you’ll buy one simply as a bedside reader, etc. The Kindle was very successful as a single-use device, mainly because Amazon got the price point to justify that kind of use. $250 is a bit high for that, but it’s in the ballpark.
$250 is also cheap enough for K-12 to invest as textbook replacements – and with smaller hands, the product is almost a perfect fit for that market. We spend $160 per K-12 student per year in the US for textbooks. With a 3-year lifecycle (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12) these devices get pretty much in the price ballpark for at least the above-median budgeted schools to switch over. That market alone is large enough for Apple to build this product.
redshirt
Because I am one paranoid MFer, I would never want to concentrate so much internet activity on a Google (or any one company) platform. They’ve got everything when you do.
Spread it out man.
mistermix
@Catsy: I think micro-USB is for charging only, not storage.
I ordered the 8GB version because ebooks are tiny and I can get the rest of the stuff I want (music, pix) from the cloud.
eric
@The Bobs: yes but you get viruses and your screen does not welcome you with a curtsy or bow, nor will your machine compliment you on how well you look even when you look like shit from the past night of trolling on Mac vs. PC threads on tech sites ;)
let’s kick this up a notch and see if we can hit 500 comments: It is my understanding the GG won’t use a Mac because Obama believes that Macs should be used to support terrorism worldwide and they are priced too high in brazil, which is a much saner place with its civil liberties.
Roy G.
@mistermix: Word! Did you try the stylus as well? Another disparaged feature that ends up being remarkably useful – Google apparently agrees, since stylus support APIs were added to ICS.
Brachiator
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Thanks for this. I would also like to see confirmation via hands on testing.
I watched a couple of tech podcasts on the Nexus, which drove me nuts with their spouting of techs without any hands on performance reviews.
@Martin:
I wonder if the smaller screen size makes for a good enough text book reader. Hell, I wonder if the smaller size makes for a good enough comic book reader.
Roger Moore
@Walker:
I’m not sure about that at all. I don’t want a 7″ format tablet myself, but that’s because I don’t see it as a big enough step up from my 4.5″ class smartphone. But I can definitely see them being popular among people who want to get either a smaller format smartphone or stick with an older phone but still have a mobile smart device. A 7″ tablet has a big portability advantage over a 10″ tablet, especially for women who can fit one in their purse. I can also see the $200 price point as being a big advantage over the $500 price point for a 10″ tablet.
gnomedad
@ouidcom:
Given the demographics of “the base”, is this a bug or a feature?
mistermix
@Roy G.: I didn’t get to use the stylus much but I see how it would be useful. The person using the device was in his 50s but didn’t like to use bifocals or reading glasses when out and about, but he was able to use this device, which is also something nobody mentions about bigger screens.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@mistermix: I would hope it would have a separate slot for the internal storage. The acer A100 I bought for my son had a slot, so I was able to buy the storage separately.
Served
I’m on the verge of starting my exodus from the Apple ecosystem.
Software is getting buggier across the spectrum of products, features and specs are lagging, and while the seamlessness is nice, the individual product’s detractions are starting to add up. I’m starting to fall out of love with the UI with the bizarre changes overall as well.
Cassidy
@ouidcom:
Get a life.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Brachiator: The Nexus also has nVidia’s new quadcore gpu. I read somewhere that they are hoping by the end of this year to use that to drive 10″ prices down below $250. That would be useful for textbooks.
Steeplejack
@Emma:
Where are you finding your classic mysteries (other than Project Gutenberg)? I’m always on the lookout for sources.
daveNYC
I’m not sure why people are saying that Apple isn’t good at competing on price in the tablet market. I don’t see any of the nine or ten inch devices really sticking it to Apple on that front. Samsung, Toshiba, and Acer are all at about the same price point as a similar iPad.
I might pick up a Nexus. $200 isn’t bad in order to get that unboxing a new gadget rush. I’ve already got a Transformer Prime, and I like it. Though its stability does leave something to be desired. There’s a reason that I’m willing to goof around with Android for tablets, but I for my phone I’m sticking with the iPhone. I don’t want anything goofy to strike down my main communication device.
Brachiator
@jibeaux:
Depends on what your needs are, but I would strongly suggest that you think about the 16G.
Ebooks don’t take up much space. But if you load up movies or a number of episodes of tv shows, or even some magazines, you can easily eat up space. Apps themselves take up varying amounts of space.
And yes, you can swap content back to your hard drive, and maybe use the cloud to keep some stuff, depending on how much time you want to spend for device housekeeping.
Games, if you are in to that, can take up space.
scav
@Steeplejack: Ditto, please!
JGabriel
NYT has an op-ed today from Miloš Foreman telling us that Obama is not a socia1ist:
Predicted Right Wing Response: Commie newspaper prints Commie editorial by Commie movie director from formerly Commie country — lies and says Obama not a Commie.
.
Steve in DC
It’s also worth noting that the nexus 7 is made by ASUS, a companies who’s higher end is much higher than apple, samsung, and most other companies.
The Tegra 3 chipset is a amazing. It’s the only quadcore CPU out right now based off ARM (which most tablets and smartphones are now). Outside of the Qualcom Krait based tablets, Tegra 3 has by far the best CPU performance, the GPU performance only falls to the new ipad… but since you’re not driving as many pixels it’s a wash, and since nvidia makes it a TON of software is designed for the Tegra 3 chip.
I’ve been using a Transformer Prime which is the larger brother device and it’s been a dream.
It’s also worth noting that ASUS was talking of releasing a higher end 7 inch device and tossing in a few goodies. All metal to boot. The transformer prime has micro SD and micro HDMI out (while still being thinner than the ipad), and a docking station with USB and SD and another 8 hours of battery life.
daveNYC
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Sub-$250 10″? That’d be nice, but I’d guess that some other spec would take a hit along the way. Maybe a slightly dubious display or something. Plus, I think that tablets are still in on the fast improving hardware track. More memory, storage space, I/O slots. I’m not quite sure that the market is ready to pivot to comoditization and price drops just yet. In another two years, definitely.
BillinGlendaleCA
Was at Costco yesterday, they have the Samsung 7″ for 235. Looks to be comparable to the Nexus and has a IR blaster. I’ve had a Vizio for over 6 months(8″) with the IR blaster, love being able to use it as a remote for the TV, etc.
TBogg
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: My daughter traded in her 4 year old DX to Amazon for $95 and paid the difference for a Fire. She LOVES her Fire. On it constantly. I’m happy with my Touch, but the Fire sure is pretty to look at.
Brachiator
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I think that the most important things for textbooks are readibility, long battery life, and storage (including easy cloud access). Screen size is a major factor here, and I tend to think that a bigger screen is more desirable than a smaller one.
I don’t see that stuff like dualcore or quadcore is as important to a good etextbook.
burnspbesq
@gnomedad:
Agreed. The Romney campaign got exactly what it wanted out of his appearance, IMO.
PeterJ
@Martin:
Why pay $49 for the Shuffle that lacks a screen when you can get the Sansa Clip+ for $30? Why pay 63% more for an inferior product?
Apple clearly hasn’t undercut the competition on price here.
jwb
@Brachiator: For textbook use, especially until the kids are in high school, the device needs to be military-grade impervious to damage as well.
Culture of Truth
Google is also selling its Nexus phone directly for $350. If I can connect it to t-mobile’s no contract plan of $30 month, tha’s $1,070 over 2 years, which is substantially less than any other comparable deal.
However, I am still tempted by the Virgin mobile / iPhone plan, which is only $1,370 over 2 years, and has 300 minutes vs 100 minutes.
That is nice, but I feel like rewarding Google for finally selling an unlocked phone directly, and letting the consumer buy their own plan.
Culture of Truth
Actually they’re terrified of the latter, too.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Brachiator: I was just mentioning the gpu because I had heard about nVidia’s plans for 10″. I agree, for textbooks it’s the screen size. They just happen to think that this gpu will allow them to reach that price point.
giltay
@mistermix and @Roger Moore:
Well, no, these aren’t the days when Apple could slap on an extra $500 just because they could. Perhaps I should have said competing on price alone, or primarily. With few exceptions (curse you, 3rd gen Shuffle!), they aren’t willing to sacrifice quality for price.
I expect they’ll come out with a mid-size tablet, probably a little later than their competitors. No one will see making a 7″ tablet as being cutting edge, so Apple doesn’t gain anything by being first. And it will probably be seen as a poor relation of the 10″ iPad, so they’ll roll it out without much fanfare alongside whatever the next Big Thing they’re doing is.
Emma
@Steeplejack: try Gutenberg Australia! http://gutenberg.net.au/ Treasure upon treasure. Also manybooks.net.Both have genre lists.
Brachiator
@jwb:
Ha. Good point.
My nephew goes to a middle school that provides laptops for all the students. They are not especially tough. However, he has lost a laptop a couple of times.
As an aside, a tech guy named Fraser Speirs blogs about a project using the iPad in a school. One of the biggest advantages when he first started the project was the longer battery life compared to laptops. Kids being able to use the device for an entire school day without having to recharge the device was by itself a tremendous boost in productivity.
More about the project can be found here.
Culture of Truth
I was tempted by the Note as well, but I think it might too big to serve as my only phone.
I bought a Kobo e-ink reader for $70 a year ago. That was a good decision.
Valdivia
@Emma:
as a mystery fan I thank you no end!
Steve in DC
@Brachiator:
For reading, no, but you will see other gains. Also the Tegra three is quadcpu with a fifth low power core it can use to help raise battery life. The extra juice is only there when you need it.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
That depends on whether you want to keep that textbook as a largely static text or if you want to take real advantage of having a tablet and include multimedia and interactive features. There’s a lot of really exciting things you could do with a textbook if you rethink it as an app instead of an electronic version of a paper textbook.
Culture of Truth
I’m thinking a biology textbook app showing Adam and Eve killing Charles Darwin with their army of killer pterodactyls
El Cid
I thought the iPod touch was the iPad mini.
Violet
Can someone explain to me the various types of phones? I went to T-Mobile to talk to them about phones and they said they have GSM phones (we were talking about my need to have one number that works worldwide) and that I’d have to get a new SIM card, which would have a new phone number for the country I would be in, while I was traveling.
AT&T told me that I could just turn on international plan for the time I was traveling and it would work with my US number. The T-Mobile person told me this was because of the kind of phone.
If I’m looking to buy a phone online, and not from the service provider, is this something I need to know?
Sorry, I’m totally clueless about this. Any help appreciated.
the Conster
@MikeJ:
Win.
Brachiator
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Ah, I see, now. Makes sense.
Thanks very much for the clarification.
Steeplejack
@Emma:
Thanks for the link to ManyBooks. I’m already onto Gutenberg Australia.
(Note for lurkers: Because of different copyright laws, Gutenberg Australia–and Gutenberg Canada–sometimes have books you can’t find on the U.S. site.)
Roger Moore
@giltay:
Which is wrong thinking. Once somebody gets a 7″ Android tablet, they’re going to be a lot more likely to pair it with an Android phone or upgrade to a 10″ Android tablet than to switch to and iPhone or iPad. Leaving that space in the market open is like inviting Android to invade the rest of the market, which is something Apple has otherwise been fighting tooth and nail to prevent.
Amanda in the South Bay
It seems like a nice device to do Android development on, but honestly, my eyes glaze over at reviews that always seem to be “heads I win, tails you lose” when it comes to Android and iOS devices. Apple can do no wrong? No company can ever threaten them in the tablet and phone spaces?
Gin & Tonic
@Violet: International roaming costs a fortune. The most economical way to use a US-based GSM phone outside the US is to make sure it’s not carrier-locked and then just buy a cheap no-contract SIM card in your destination. You lose the “single number everywhere” but there are any number of ways around that.
AT&T will of course tell you to just use their phone wherever you go, but won’t tell you that it’ll cost you $2/min or whatever to do so.
jwb
@Violet: As I understand it, AT&T uses the same kind of mobile network as most of the rest of the world, hence their SIM cards can work on foreign systems, whereas the other US cell phone providers use a different kind of network, so you need to get a SIM that will work on the foreign network. On the other hand, getting a SIM for the country you are in is generally cheaper, especially with respect to data.
Steve in DC
@Brachiator:
It’s not just that, it’s the progress of thing. There was Tegra 2 which was dual arm cortex A9 + nvidia GPU, then Tegra 3 which is quad arm cortex A9 + nvidia GPU + fifth low power core. Tegra 3+ will come out soon and then they will only use that. Then Tegra 4 comes out, which will be based off ARM15.
With each generation they get more processing power and consume less power. Manufacturing gets cheaper as well.
Keep in mind that all the android and ios products use ARM now, so they all update their SOC (system on a chip) as ARM updates theirs regardless of what vendor you buy from. Apple, samsung, nvidia, really have no input on what the hell ARM does.
Gin & Tonic
@Violet: May have neglected to say specifically, if you want to use a phone anywhere in the world outside the US it needs to be a GSM phone. GSM is like the metric system — it’s the worldwide standard that only the US is too dumb to use.
Amanda in the South Bay
@El Cid:
Yeah, I wonder how Apple will market the 7 inch tablet, assuming they make it. iPod touch mini? Touch nano?
I wonder if it makes more sense to junk the Touch and keep the tablet.
Arclite
Mr. Mix, what do you think of the Nexus as a replacement for the Kindle? Isn’t the Kindle easier to look at when you’re reading for a long time?
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Isn’t Apple promising this kind of thing with the iBook?
I agree that this could be tremendously exciting, but I would be happy with better e textbooks.
The UC Irvine Med School did a project providing iPads to medical students and provided information about the use cases in downloadable iTunes U downloadable podcasts. It was interesting to see that some of the anatomy and other medical apps used did not make tremendous use of multimedia and interactive features. PDFs of lectures and Dropbox were essential, though.
There is an iTunes app of Shakespeare’s Sonnets that I understand has some interactive features, but I don’t think it requires a super processor to deliver the goods.
Ah, here’s the Guardian on the Sonnets app
O Brave New World That Has Such Apps in It.
Violet
@Gin & Tonic: It’s a requirement for dealing with family members and potential emergencies. I simply cannot have a new phone number that I then have to relay to everyone, and they have to somehow remember, when I’m traveling. It won’t work. It’s not going to happen all that often, but it’s essential for when I’m traveling.
If I could forward my US number to the international number on the new SIM card, then maybe, but I don’t know if that would work. Anyone have any idea? Can you use call forwarding and forward your US calls to an international number? Or would you be charged a lot for that?
Plus, if you need to get a new SIM card, don’t have you to visit a shop when you arrive and get the card to put in your phone?
Culture of Truth
I thought AT&T, Sprint and T-Moible all used GSM and Verizon was the outlier. Also I think iPhone take a different size SIM card.
Also I would be wary of any advice I get from someone in a store.
Steve in DC
@Violet:
Most countries have cell phone shops in the air card, get sim, put in sim, doesn’t take long.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – anyone feel like having a little fun and freeping a poll on Pete Sessions website? “Should Congress have passed Obamacare? Vote early, vote often!
http://www.petesessions.com/
Poll is on the right hand side of the site.
Violet
@jwb: @Gin & Tonic: This is interesting. The T-Mobile guy said that they use only GSM phones because they’re a German company. They said AT&T uses some other kind of phone and you don’t replace the SIM cards. Maybe they don’t even have SIM cards?
I was reading around on it, and remember seeing something that said that GSM is now a bit out of date and Asia is using some other type of network? Can’t remember now.
Thanks for the tip that I’ll need a GSM phone.
Culture of Truth
AT&T phones have SIM cards. Verizon phones don’t.
Violet
@Culture of Truth: Yeah, I know not to take everything the person in the shop says, but I had to start somewhere and wanted to know about their plans.
@Steve in DC: Maybe so, but not all those shops are outside security. Once you arrive, go through customs and immigration, you’re dumped outside security and don’t necessarily have access to shops. At least not where I’ve been lately.
I think you might be able to buy SIM cards online before you travel, which is good if it’s not a last minute trip.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Arclite: Are you replacing the Kindle or the Kindle Fire? Though they share a name, these are really two different devices.
The Kindle is an ePaper book, and is great for reading outside, in bright light, but needs a light for in the dark (a lot of the cases come with a light that uses the Kindles battery for power). My mom loves hers, because it means she can read just about anywhere.
The Kindle Fire is an Android tablet running a modified version of Android. It’s just like every other tablet, running a backlit color screen, which means it can do all of the cool color stuff – movies, games, books – but it cannot be read in bright light, though it does not need its own light if you are in the dark.
If you are comparing the Fire to the Nexus, I would say the Nexus. Amazon controls what can be downloaded to the Fire. For example, I cannot download a DLNA player to the fire that will work with MediaTomb. I can on my kid’s Acer A100. On the other hand, if you like to read a lot, and that’s about all you want to do, then get a regular Kindle.
Violet
@Culture of Truth: Thanks for the info.
Steve in DC
Shocked nobody has mentioned this yet
http://www.asus.com/Mobile/PadFone/
Martin
@Brachiator:
With a retina display, no question. Not sure about a standard res. There’s a lot that I do at work that I need to print because a standard screen doesn’t have the detail. For regular books thats not an issue, but for technical books it could be a problem.
pseudonymous in nc
The @Culture of Truth:
The Verizon iPhone (at least, the 4S) has a SIM card slot for overseas GSM use, though it doesn’t use it for regular CDMA service.
@Violet:
Nah, that’s BS: T-Mobile uses GSM phones because it bought up a lot of small regional operators with (slightly crappy) GSM networks. You can sort of assert that Deutsche Telekom bought up American GSM operators because the bulk of their business elsewhere is in GSM networks, but it’s mainly because they were there to be picked up.
As for Apple competing on price: the 3GS is free-with-contract in the US, and the argument about the “iPad mini” is that its iOS device production lines are sufficiently mature, especially for the lower-resolution LCD panels, that they can produce a 7.85in device and still keep a healthy margin at $200 or thereabouts.
I think there’s room for the iPod touch in the lineup, because there’s room for small devices that don’t have phone capabilities — say, for kids or people who just don’t want to be locked into a two-year contract, which, for the US, is more expensive and onerous than most places.
Violet
Question: If you have an iPhone, can you get it unlocked (or unlock it yourself without damaging it?) to use another SIM card in another country? Or are you better off going with a different kind of phone (Android)?
Martin
@Brachiator: Yeah, iBooks is trying to push for more interactive features in books. It’s going to take time. For one, the market is still growing since those features won’t work on Kindles. For another, the publishers need to go back and recreate that content, so you won’t start seeing it until the books being started NOW take that into account. That said, there are some pretty hopeful signs coming – some nice titles that are very interactive and clearly useful.
ouidcom
@Cassidy: That you Cole? You need sock puppet accounts to make it seem like there are some poor idiot saps out there willing to defend you.
Or maybe your just some poor idiot sap in which case I stand corrected.
Martin
@Violet: Here’s a good rundown of it.
I know some people that have gotten AT&T to unlock their new phone, but officially they won’t do it until your contract is out. Sprint & Verizon will do it pretty quickly though.
Gin & Tonic
@Violet: T-Mobile is the US arm of Deutsche Telecom, but onyl by acquisition. They were previously a US-based company called Voicestream, prior to that something else, that went GSM very early — long before the Germans came in.
You could use Google Voice for single-number reach and forwarding. I know plenty of people who do that, although I do not myself.
Yes, in most cases you’d need to buy the SIM card once you get “outside” in your destination. I’ve found that is seldom a problem. Sometimes you can buy one on-line beforehand. The key is to determine what your usage pattern while outside the US will be, and run the numbers. If it’s not a smartphone and you won’t be using it for data, just for people to reach you in case of emergency, keeping the AT&T plan might be best. But if you’ll be doing any local calling at all or any data usage in the destination country, the roaming charges will kill you.
Steve in DC
@pseudonymous in nc:
The ipod touch is important to them because of the apps and prices. The ipod touch has helped them muscle into portable gaming markets and get’s people hooked on itunes, and it’s the itunes store where their real cash comes from.
Roger Moore
@Steve in DC:
I don’t think that’s quite right. ARM defines what an ARM core looks like, but then various SOC designers can combine those cores with varying other components like GPUs and RAM to make a SOC. That gives vendors quite a bit of control, even if they don’t have the freedom to define the cores themselves. And they may not have complete power to design their own cores, but if an important company like Apple requests specific features for a new core, ARM really, really wants to please them. That probably gives them more influence over the future of the ARM core than they have over the Intel and AMD x86 and x86_64 processors they use in desktop systems.
Culture of Truth
@Violet: I’m phone shopping myself right now, so I feel like I know a lot about it, but I’m not an expert on the international thing.
I also talk to kids in the store too, of course, it makes sense, but sometimes I know more about their product than they do, which is odd. Good luck.
Brachiator
@Martin:
RE: I wonder if the smaller screen size makes for a good enough text book reader. Hell, I wonder if the smaller size makes for a good enough comic book reader.
Good point about the retina display, but this is not quite what I meant.
I see people reading books on smartphones, but this would be insane for a textbook.
The iPad or a 10 inch tablet lets you see a good amount of a page at a time. A smaller device, even with a good display, is going to make you have to scroll more to display more of the text, which may be tedious and inefficient at times.
An etextbook also has to let you make, and view, annotations and notes.
I recall that some of the reviews of the Kindle Fire had reservations about the device as a magazine or comic book reader.
But who knows, maybe the lower price will be a reasonable tradeoff. But I like seeing as much of a whole page, in reasoable sized text, at one time when I’m reading on an iPad.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Except that unlike American measurements, the CDMA system that Sprint and Verizon use is actually technically superior to GSM in a number of ways. IIRC, it uses spectrum more efficiently and degrades more gracefully when the network gets crowded.
Violet
@Martin: Thank you. My goodness, that looks awful. Are Android phones easier to unlock to change out SIM cards?
@Gin & Tonic: Do you have any info on how Google Voice works? I don’t even know what it is.
I would be wanting to use the phone for data while abroad, most likely (yes, a smartphone). Probably texting (is that considered data?) and checking email and looking up stuff while traveling. Not extensively, but some. Maybe maps while in the car. Checking news headlines, etc.
Davis X. Machina
@@Brachiator: The iPad needs a much, much better keyboard before it replaces the laptop at HS and above — the further into the educational bushes you go, the more writing is required, and the touch-screen keyboards just don’t cut it, at least not yet.
Steve in DC
@Roger Moore:
What you’re saying isn’t exactly correct either.
When talking x86 only three companies hold an x86 license, intel, AMD, and VIA, and they all have cross agreements where they can use each others tech (for example intels 64bit CPUs do use AMD64 and AMD got access to SSE).
Now, when it comes to x86, apple, HP, ASUS, sony, can pair it with whatever memory they want provided the CPU and chipset support it, along with whatever GPU they want from nvidia or AMD, and whatever else they want.
When talking ARM the slight change is that Samsung, TI, Qualcom, et all are license holders as well… so they are free to make their own chippery as well. Of course, very few companies actual have the ability to fabricate their own chips (ie Samsung for the big dog here). But just like with x86 they can pair it with whatever else they want that’s supported.
But the big deal is the licensing here. It’s illegal for anybody but AMD, intel, and VIA to actually make an x86 chip, and there was a HUGE fiasco a while ago when it looked like nvidia was going to buy up via and start making x86 chips, which could have created major problems…. however nvidia was blocked from doing this specifically over x86 which is one of the reasons they are cranking out ARM devices as well. However tons of companies, nvidia, samsung, et all can make their own ARM products, and the cost savings going this option are pretty large.
And apple, despite inflated stock value, is a pretty damn small player when it comes to chips, they don’t really design anything. They buy off the shelf components from other people and slap them together. The new ipad is just an old and crappy dual A9 design with a new and snappy power VR GPU and a Samsung HD panel slapped on… they simply picked what they wanted, it wasn’t made for them. People ramp up production for apple, but apple “designs” products by picking off the shelf technology from other firms.
deep
@ouidcom: Considering the number of people who visit and comment on this blog, I don’t think John Cole needs to make a fake comment just to call you a jackass. There are plenty of us who are more than willing to fill that role. Jackass.
Culture of Truth
Generally texting is considered separately from data, although you can send texts via a data plan, I believe.
Emma
@Culture of Truth: My T-mobile worked both in Italy and the UK. I’m going to Canada this fall, and I don’t expect to have any trouble. But a friend of mine who travels a great deal uses Skype on his computer.
Brachiator
@Davis X. Machina:
Fair point, although I note that I am amazed at how much some people type on smartphones.
Martin
@Roger Moore:
Right. ARM is a strange beast. It’s a consortium of vendors and ARM defines standards within that group. IP is shared between vendors and chipmakers can pretty much mix/match technologies so long as they build to the standards. ARM was co-founded by Apple and is one of their more powerful partners, even though they aren’t named (benefits of being a founder, I suppose.)
CPU power in mobile phones is a bit of a silly thing to get focused on. They’re basically single-app devices, so as long as the device has the power to run the app right in front of your face (which will be defined somewhat by the lowest common denominator of devices the app is targeting) and has enough extra power to play music, etc. in the background, then you’re solid. The quad core tegra is going to have 2 idle cores almost all the time, so while its theoretical power is quite high, on actual head-to-head comparisons, Apple’s dual-core CPU does as well or better.
@Steve in DC:
That’s not entirely true, or else the A5 would look just like other A9/VR chips. Apple’s A5 incorporates a number of additional video and audio processing hardware that other chips don’t have – elements that Apple indeed designed. The A5 isn’t a Samsung chip. It’s fabbed by Samsung, but the design work was done by Apple.
Martin
@Violet:
Generally the same. The carriers are who controls all of that, not the phone maker. Android does have cheaper entry point phones so that you can buy one off contract already unlocked. The iPhone will cost a bit more to buy unlocked, but you can buy them unlocked pretty much anywhere.
Steve in DC
It’s still an A9/VR though! That doesn’t change. Of course they can add more items to system, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s an A9/VR. Just as the new macbook pro is an ivybridge/geforce 650m 1gb system, that they added extra items to, but that doesn’t make it any less an ivybridge/650m system.
Martin
@Davis X. Machina: That’s because you aren’t used to them. My son types much faster on the iPad than I do, and I’m a 100+ WPM typist on a normal keyboard. He’s impressively fast on it, in fact. I’d put him at 50-60WPM, and while he might not ever be able to hit 100WPM, I’d say that’s a pretty acceptable typing rate for high school.
Brachiator
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Here’s part of an interesting review of the Nexus 7 by Walter S. Mossberg.
In my battery test, where I keep the screen at 75% brightness, leave the Internet connection on and email collecting in the background and play videos back to back, the Nexus 7 lasted 10 hours and 44 minutes. The current iPad logged nine hours and 58 minutes on the same test (albeit while driving a much more power-hungry screen) and the Fire lasted five hours and 47 minutes.
So what are the drawbacks of the Nexus 7?
The main one is that some key content is missing. Shows from many popular TV networks aren’t offered, including hits like “Mad Men” and “Modern Family.” And magazines from Time Inc., like Time and Sports Illustrated, are absent. Google says it’s working on adding more content. Also, many of Google’s books are out-of-print volumes from before 1923.
I found some magazine pages were a bit fuzzy, and the books app lacks a basic feature: the ability to select a word to search for it in the book, get a definition or add a highlight or note. Google says it plans to add this feature.
Maude
I don’t need a tablet. I want a Nook Color. I want to read stories with pictures.
pseudonymous in nc
@Martin:
I think we’re at the point where the focus on internal hardware specs looks like it belongs to the previous decade. People are finally embracing what are, for a lot of tasks, thin clients, except that they’re not the thin clients that Oracle and others attempted to sell in the 1990s.
@Steve in DC:
The Apple CFO said in 2010 that the store operates “a bit over break-even”, given the cost of hosting apps, network bandwidth, employing reviewers, etc. (Asymco post from 2011 on the topic.) Unless you can cite something to suggest otherwise, I’m more inclined to believe that.
Apple makes money from hardware. The ecosystem drives hardware sales. The store model shapes the ecosystem.
Martin
@Steve in DC:
Sure. But ARM only gives them so many options there on the CPU core. And you don’t know what Apple might have contributed to that core – remember, ARM is a consortium where members provide technology and input to the standard designs. And the core is just the design, not the implementation. You can implement that core more or less efficiently. That’s what Intrinsity did for Samsung – and why Apple bought Intrinsity. They helped make Samsungs A8 Hummingbird faster and more efficient, even though it was the same A8 core as TI or Qualcomm.
You’re suggesting that Apple calls up Samsung and places an order for 250 million off-the-shelf A5 processors. That’s not accurate. A5 is an Apple design – designed at Apple with a reference design established by ARM, and certainly with design input from others (For instance we know that Audience noise cancellation logic is in there). That design is handed over to Samsung to fab. Presumably it could just as easily be handed over to TSMC to be fabricated, assuming TSMC has the same fab tech and capacity.
Samsung ARM design efforts and Samsung ARM fab efforts are separate and distinct. Apple uses the latter and competes with the former.
WRT the MacBook comparison, Apple doesn’t add anything to the Intel/nvidia system at all except on the very edges for power management and a few other things. Apple used to do quite a bit more back in the PowerPC days, and that would have been a more appropriate comparison.
Martin
@pseudonymous in nc:
Precisely.
What makes me nervous about Android is that Google makes no money off of it directly. Google is making their money form somewhere else, but where? With Apple, I know how the financials work. They don’t need to sell my information or pull any of that crap to keep the engine running. I pay them up front. Google has dumped a lot of money into this platform and all they do is sell ads and customer profile data. They’re going to expect to make that money back, and if you don’t pay them up front, they’re going to find a way to earn it later. I’m not cool with that.
Nothing in this world is free. If you don’t know how you’re paying for it, you’re in for a surprise later.
Catsy
@mistermix:
Sure, but that’s not the point. If you have micro-USB (or any other standardized connection), you can easily plug in a tiny SD card reader or–with a cheap and readily available adapter–a USB flash drive. And you stand a much better chance of actually being able to use it when you’re not running on a painfully locked-down OS designed by a company with a vested interest in and design philosophy of blocking you from using anything they don’t think you need.
RareSanity
@mistermix:
It will do both.
Android started supporting USB host mode in ICS, and since this is a Nexus device, it too will support it.
Of course, if you’re like me and have an HTC phone, those bastards disabled it. Why would you do that? There’s no technical, or financial, reason to do it. Bastards.
I’m never buying a non-Nexus Android product again…ever.
Violet
@Martin:
When you say “buy them pretty much anywhere” do you mean like from AT&T or T-Mobile when you sign up for a contract? Or somewhere else like Best Buy or New Egg or something? Sorry if that’s a dumb question. I’m still very new to this and trying to figure it out.
Another question…If I were to get an GSM phone and have it unlocked and get a new SIM card in the UK, does my data stuff go along with that SIM card, or do I have to turn that off or risk paying international charges for it? I’m sort of confused on how that works.
Martin
@Violet: You can buy them unlocked straight from Apple. Just go into the online store, pick the model, and below the carrier information you will see a link for “Unlocked and contract-free”. You can get them at Amazon and a number of other places. And not just in the US, but worldwide. I’m pretty sure you can buy the unlocked phone in any Apple retail store. I think WalMart also sells it unlocked.
The carriers generally will only sell you the subsidized ones attached to their contracts – that contract commitment is really how they make their money. They do sell some unlocked phones, but I don’t recall ever seeing them offering the iPhone that way.
Violet
@Martin: Thanks for the info. I’m trying to grasp all this new stuff. I’ve been muddling along on a really old phone and am getting to where I need to have something upgraded to do what I need to do in work and life in general. But things have definitely moved on since I got my phone, oh, four (five?) years ago.
RareSanity
@Violet:
RE: your question about data
I travel to Japan several times a year, and here’s how international roaming works.
You have two choices when you leave your “home” area, and enter a “foreign” area:
1.) Leave your SIM card in your phone and pay roaming charges. The main advantage of this is that people can still call/text you using you U.S. number. The disadvantages are, people can still call/text you using your U.S. number. When you are roaming, you get charged (a lot) if you make a call, if someone calls you (whether you answer or not), if you send a text, or receive a text. Also, if your phone is compatible with the data network, they will allow you to have roaming data access. DO NOT EVER DO THIS! You will never truly know how much data your smartphone uses, until you get the bill for roaming data access. YOUR BILL WILL BE ASTRONOMICAL!
I keep “data roaming” disabled, whether I’m in the U.S. or not. I don’t want my phone to even try and access a cellular data network that is not its “home” network.
I don’t use my phone much in Japan, it’s mostly hotel, work, hotel while I’m there, so I just use my own SIM card. My phone’s on wifi in the hotel or at work, and has “wifi calling”, so any calls made (to U.S. numbers) or received don’t incur any additional charges, and I still have cellular access for my wife to reach me if there is some sort of emergency.
2.) Rent a SIM card in the foreign country. For this option you have the choice of renting a voice only, data only, or voice and data SIM cards. You remove your SIM card from your phone (and put it somewhere safe), then insert the rented SIM card. This gives you a number local to that country. However, if someone from the U.S. wants to call you, they have to pay for an international call. same goes if you call anybody in the U.S. (but that’s true for both methods). Calls within the country you are in, however, will be local.
This method is by no means cheap, but if you need to use your phone quite a bit, or if you need to use data at all, it is a far better choice than roaming.
What it boils down to is, how is your phone going to be used, while you are out of the states?
If the answer is, “a lot”, rent a SIM card in the country you’re visiting. If the answer is, “a little bit”, you may just want to use your SIM card and pay for few calls you make or receive.
Let me reiterate…DO NOT USE DATA IF YOU ARE ROAMING INTERNATIONALLY! DISABLE IT! DISABLE IT NOW! NEVER ENABLE IT UNLESS YOU’VE GOT MONEY LIKE MITT ROMNEY! THOSE CHARGES CAN REACH SEVERAL THOUSAND DOLLARS IN A JUST FEW DAYS!
Violet
@RareSanity: Thank you so much for the info. I was beginning to gather that about the data, but your experience makes it pretty clear.
Steve in DC
@Martin:
Not fully, apple and ASUS both contributed a bit to intels ULV. To be more specific intel came up with the ULV chips that power ultrabooks and macbook airs, apple had some input into what they were shooting for in thermals, and ASUS contributed heavily to the chipset design.
In the case of the 650m, apple tweaked the clock rate to up it for the display.
Also apple gets the CPU, chipset, and GPU from vendors, and all the chips for everything else in a laptop. But they decided how to slap it all together and what goodies to add, as does any laptop maker and then they farm out production to foxconn or pegatron.
But the point remains, apple isn’t really “inventing” or “designing” much of anything. They are taking things that already exist, slapping them together, and then claiming that they “designed it” which everybody does, but only apple is daft enough to try and hide the fact that they were using ARM, and then lie about it after… probably because only apple consumers are stupid enough to believe that.
And keep in mind that a dual A9 is going to perform the same across the board, sure you can add extra things to the SOC for more features, but that’s not going to make an A9 faster than an A15.
I’m looking forward to quad A15 at 2ghz though, it’s not ready yet, but I’ve got dual A15 developers kits that are rather interesting, in many cases dual A15 beats quad A9!
pseudonymous in nc
@Steve in DC:
Or because they don’t really care about internal specs, because guffing about that stuff is best left to the ArsTechnica messageboards? Again: we’re at the point where the specs that matter on the consumer side are tied to user experience: battery life, display resolution, responsiveness of interface. Network connectivity is the point where internals meets UX, because the next decade of computing is finally going to be about what you can do when you sub out ubiquitous connectivity for internal hardware capability.
polyorchnid octopunch
I’ve been using a blackberry playbook for about half a year now. I’m quite happy with it, and I like the 7″ form factor. The first version of TabletOS sucked, but the upgrade to 2.0 was pretty awesome… and they’re cheap; I can get the 16GB for 200$CDN. Dual core 1GHz processor and a gig of ram, so it performs well. I’ve got it hooked into all my google stuff (calendar, docs, mail blah de blah) and the web browser in it is absolutely stellar… significantly better than safari. It also comes with a stripped down version of the openoffice document writer and spreadsheet. The text entry system is the same one that Android uses.
It’s based on qnx, which means that it’s fast and stable. I’ve had some apps crash, but the actual device has never croaked out on me.
One of the really great things about it is that it’s big enough for me to get good use out of things like amp schematics (for my guitar amps), the user manuals for my PA stuff, fakebooks, and all that jazz… and as was mentioned up thread it’s a LOT more portable than an iPad; I’m in the Great White North and it fits quite nicely into a parka pocket. The speakers and microphones in it are also significantly better than the ones in iPad; I’ve done both audio and video recording with both and while the camera’s basically competitive with what’s in the iPad (though it will go up to 1080p) the quality of the audio completely blows away the iPad.
I really hope the product survives… it’s a good thing for there to be a multiplicity of devices and manufacturers of computery goodness… a good thing for the consumer. I can remember the stultifying effect of the Microsoft desktop monopoly in the eighties on development of the platform and it would be a real shame for it to happen to tablets and smartphones.
JustAnotherBob
An interesting read, this is.
Personally I’ve no use for a tablet. What works for me is a netbook and Kindle for travel.
I want a keyboard and I need photo backup capability. And some ability to edit photos on the road. A netbook meets that need nicely.
The 7″ Kindle is great for reading on the road. It fits in my camera bag or jacket pocket. Pretty wonderful.
For reading at home I’d like a larger, perhaps 10″, reader as long as it wasn’t much heavier than the 7″. And didn’t cost a lot more, as long as I’m being unreasonable….
Ron
My wife has a Nook tablet (which you didn’t list in your ‘cheap tablets’) which she likes. If I am going to get a cheap tablet though, it will probably be the Nexus 7, because I’d rather have an actual android device that allows me to use Google Play rather than proprietary software that forces me to buy stuff through Amazon or B&N. The Nexus 7 looks pretty nice and it runs a version of android that is newer than the one I’m waiting for on my phone. And the other plus is if you want it as an e-reader you can simply download both the kindle and nook apps onto it. (I have them on my phone, but reading on a smartphone is not really that great)