[ale] Tablet PCs

[Brian Pitts]

On 11/27/2010 09:22 PM, Chris Fowler wrote:
> There were a few stores selling Android tablets real cheap over Black
> Friday but I steered away.  My father called and he asked about them.
> He wants to look at the Internet while sitting in his Lazy Boy :)
> 
> A week ago I saw a Samsung at Frys but it was $600+.  I was amazed at
> some of the cheap prices duing BF.  KMart was selling one for $130.  
> 
> I found this on eBay
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/Android-Tablet-PC-7-MID-wifi-touch-screen-laptop-8GB-/110617119786?pt=Laptops_Nov05
> 
> I think that may fit his needs but I'm very interested in knowing if it
> would be a waste of time for me.  I would immediately expect to be able
> to download app-store programs to use with it.  

I would spend a lot of time on http://www.androidtablets.net/
researching before I bought anything. My understanding is that unless
you are willing to flash third-party ROMs, the current crop of cheap
Android tablets won't be able to do what you want. Google doesn't allow
them access to the Anroid Market (the app store), for example.

> My biggest concern with Android is the same problem I had when I used
> Windows PDA's and phones.  when looking for software I had to also make
> sure that the software I was downloading supported the device processor
> as well as screen resolution.  I had been let down many times by wanting
> to run a program only to find out my device could not run it due to
> incompatibilities.  The thing I love about my iTouch is that I don't
> have to search the net for software and anything I download will run.

It's the same way on Android. Anything you can install through the
Android market will run on your device. You might like to read
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/ars-explains-android-fragmentation.ars

I'll excerpt the major relevant points.

"""Google uses its control over the Android Market to compel device
vendors to conform with the compatibility standard. The Market is one of
several pieces of the Android platform that is not open and has to be
licensed from Google. In order to obtain a license to ship the Market, a
device maker has to first demonstrate that its products meet the
criteria established in the compatibility definition.

Google's approach of tying Market access to compliance with the
compatibility definition effectively encourages hardware vendors to stay
within certain boundaries and not deviate from the default code base to
an extent that would make applications incompatible. This is the reason
why you see the same standard input model and user experience on
virtually all mainstream Android devices.

The parameters of the Android compatibility definition are more
restrictive than you might think. For example, the standard says that
devices must have a touchscreen, camera, Bluetooth transceiver, and GPS.
Any Android product that doesn't have those hardware components is not
in compliance with the compatibility standard and consequently cannot
ship the Android Market.

These restrictions effectively ensure that all Android devices that are
intended to run third-party applications are basically the same with
respect to application compatibility. In addition to mandating some
consistent hardware specifications, Google has also taken steps to make
the Android software more resilient to fragmentation.

One key example is the extensive use of managed code for userspace
applications. Most Android programs are compiled into bytecode that is
executed by Google's specialized Java runtime engine. Taking that
approach—instead of using C and compiling to binary—sacrifices a lot of
performance in exchange for significant gains in portability (and
possibly security). Because the applications are compiled into bytecode,
the software can work seamlessly across multiple processor architectures
and there are not going to be any binary compatibility issues."""

[snip]

"""The Android SDK defines API "levels" that are associated with each
version of the platform. New API levels can introduce additional
functionality and potentially deprecate existing functionality. Each
application has a manifest file that specifies the minimum and maximum
API levels in which the program can operate. The application can only
run on devices that are running a version of Android that fits within
the boundary of the application's supported API levels. It's a bit like
the versioning model that Mozilla uses for Firefox add-ons.

By default, the Android Market program will hide applications that
aren't compatible with the user's device."""

-- 
All the best,
Brian Pitts