Is there ANY Android product that doesn't suck?

Seriously, I'm trying to find one. Just a single one. One Android-based tablet product that isn't near the worst piece of crap ever made.

Asus' "Transformer Prime" tablet for instance: http://event.asus.com/ASUSPad/TF201GPS/ (I'm not sure anyone could have put together a more farcical site - I can't believe this is real). Even the name of that product screams "this is a piece of shit."

Anyway, primarily talking about tablets here as I'm looking for something for someone else. Myself, I wouldn't keep an Android tablet if it were given to me for free.

Why are you looking for one instead of just buying an ipad?

I have an iPad, my daughter loves it. Not everyone I know wants to drop $500-800 on an iPad, even though I've already warned them that everything else is shit.

Maybe if you gave more specifics as to what consititutes a "shit" vs a "not shit tablet" can make this a productive topic that provides you the information you need, rather than just a screed about one particular tablet based on their choice of web page design and product name with no reason given why that tablet is shit.

I think Bruno's pointing out that Asus is providing a free GPS dongle because the built-in GPS functionality is broken in some way. I have to agree that this is ridiculous.

Anyway, I installed CM9 on an HP Touchpad this weekend. That is actually the best Android tablet I've handled. It has subtle physical design, decent specs, low price, and gives the stock Android experience. Plus you can dual-boot with WebOS if you find that interesting.

I especially like the way they won't actually admit there is a problem with the GPS on the tablet and basically try and blame it on the users being fussy.

If the HP were still available, at the firesale prices, then I'd probably have recommended that, since as Rob says, it's pretty much the best constructed tablet out there apart from the iPad. The trouble is that it would then also require some hacking on likely an ongoing basis to run Android.

Heather, the ASUS comes broken from the factory. Instead of a recall ASUS is giving customers a sort of brick that must be physically attached to the device, occupying its expansion port and making it so that it won't likely fit into all its cases, etc. It's absolutely ridiculous. Apart from that we have tablets with abysmal screens, poor performance, very old software, won't be supported by manufacturers for more than a couple of months, etc.

There is nothing out there that comes in at even half the iPad in fit, finish, stability and performance, but I'd like to think that there's at least something out there that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the garbage.

Right now my recommendation is to wait until the next iPad is released and try and get the iPad 2 on super-clearance. They weren't so happy about that.

I used my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for at least 20 hours in the past week. I didn't realize that I was miserable from using a horrible, sh*t product that sucks in every way, but I guess I was wrong and Bruno was right. Then again, isn't it always that way?

Try an iPad Matt, then come back. Maybe the Samsung is the best Android product out there, but I felt there had to be something better. It doesn't speak well at all for other tablets if the Sammy is the benchmark...

The big issue with the Samsung is that it's the same price as the CURRENT iPad (and $100 more than the previous). And sorry, it's just not anywhere close to an iPad and there's no way in this or any other hell that it should command such a price. If it were $299 for the 16GB model then it'd be worth looking at.

Oh, and I've already spent waaaay too long researching this online only to come up with squat. Lots of "review" sites contain nothing but empty praise for every single Android tablet, even when they have a shoot-out of 10 of them. It's infuriating. There's promise of some lower-priced Samsun models in May, but who knows if they will even make it to market. The new iPad pretty much tossed the tablet market on its ass again.

If it weren't so small, I'd just tell them to get a Kindle Fire and STFU. It's slow, but at least it's cheap. Though it's also kind of small...

I find that annoying as well. But I’ll just not post to this, oh damn.

I feel sorry for all those who bought shit and are not stuck with shit.

It’s a shame I have to throw mine away I kind of liked it.

I have a Samsung Series 7 running windows and I'm happy with it. However, I value running Autocad higher than "Pull my finger"...

You feeling ok Rob ???

Cheers

Cris

So lets say an ipad is better than an android tablet but the ipad is a lot more money so isn't it ok if it's not as good then? Do you expect a ford focus to be as good as a audi?

I can't ever see paying 500 to 800 for a tablet for what I would use it for I would just rather have a real laptop but I would spend 100 to 200 maybe.

The issue is that many Android tablets are the same price or more expensive than the iPad.

The iPad starts at $399 right now. If I was asked to recommend an iPad, I would have.

Bruno - my problem is that I don't like iPads at all, and even my kids, when I took them to an HMV for a half hour to kill some time before an appointment) played with an iPad for a short while but were much more interested in the Samsung Galaxy and the HP.

I could say iPads are shit because I don't like them. They blatantly are not though, and they are right for a large population of the world - obviously.

For me and others, many Android devices are good. There are some bad ones - you have a wide range so there is a wide range of types, builds etc, as opposed to Apple, who can concentrate on one build (which they eventually get right after the first mistakes with each platform)

Apple just do too many things wrong with these devices for me to like them, so while I would recommend an iPad to someone like my wife, I wouldn't recommend it to any of my technical friends. The two that were early adopters have since bought android tablets as iPads restrict them too much.

As ever - YMMV, but be aware that others have different viewpoints to you.

There's always Windows Phone and soon Windows 8. Seriously anything is probably better than Android's horrendous interface. I haven't used an Android in a year and now if I picked one up I probably won't even be able to figure out how to make a phone call.

Aside from the fact that tablets don't generally make phone calls, is that Android's horrendous interface, or the telco's horrendous interface?

That's the reason I posed the question to the forum. I've only ever touched Android tablets that suck in too many ways to list them all. Bad screens, bad plastics, generally bad construction, insane prices, not enough storage, two year old OS, no OS update future, etc.

I don't care about walled garden opinions, that's besides the point, so I didn't even begin to talk about Android app distribution and UI.

But Bruno, so few of those are true of the Android devices I have used.

Screens can be on a par with Apple
Build quality can be much better
Pricing is cheaper for the same functionality
Storage is better than Apple (as you can use whatever memory you like in some of them - much cheapness!)
For OS updates - use Cyanogen: much more frequent updates than iOS

All of these are dependent on the provider, if you buy one that is locked in.

Oh, good god no - the W8 interface is one I hope to never have to use. My favourite interface for mobile devices was Nokia's, but my htc has an interface which is fast, intuitive and just plain easy.

Apple are good at the user experience, in terms of shiny - I wouldn't deny that - but so is Google these days.

Windows - not so much :-)

Agreed on the Windows 8 UI, but the Windows Phone UI (from the little I've played with it) didn't seem half bad.

I'm totally happy with my HTC Desire (running MIUI). It doesn't suck. At all.

I haven't played with WP7, but I still claim that the Zune HD had by far the best interface of any portable MP3 player. I sold mine recently, and I really miss the UI elements that thing had. I don't know how much of that carried over to WP7, but it looks like quite a bit to me.

However, there were constricting elements to the way interface was designed in everything but the music player, so I'd probably be hesitant to try WP7 based on that. Besides, I need a real GMail client on any phone I use...

I recently had a chance to play with the iPad 3 and I was really impressed with the screen. You could take a research paper formatted in 10-point type on U.S. letter paper and it's crisp and readable. Apple really knocked it out of the park with their screen.

So far, none of the Android tablets come close to this. Instead, the Android tablet universe seems to be going for minimum price point things like the Kindle Fire or oversized phones like the weird-but-popular 5" Samsung Galaxy Note.

Conjecture: Microsoft has announced that "Windows RT" will run on ARM processors, which probably implies that there will be a bunch of additional tablet-class products hitting the market soon. I'll bet that those manufacturers will offer Android variants as well. I expect the real rush of new products will be out in time for Christmas.

I'm probably not qualified to have an opinion since the only portable MP3 players I have used are an iPod Classic and a Rio Karma. (I don't count my iPod Shuffle which doesn't have a UI )

But the Rio Karma seemed pretty good to me...

tanstaafl.

The products were released six years from each other. That's like three generations of technology apart, so you get into the question of whether it was best of its own time or best because it was just the most recent.

But I urge you to play around with a Zune HD sometime if you get a chance. I adore that UI because neither form or function were sacrificed, and both were excellent. I think my favorite UI element was a very basic one, in that it took me an equal amount of time to get to any artist in my collection. There's an extremely short example of how it did this here (it'll be over in about 4 seconds). It really amazes me that all other players simply present your collection as one giant list, and insist that you use a search to get your music. That's much slower than the method the Zune HD used (and I assume WP7 phones use it too).

Anyway, I just wish I could skin the Android music player. It's pretty bad. None of these mobile platforms have a good default music player, frankly...

How is that popup A-Z list significantly different to the iOS approach of the A-Z list down the slide of a list that you can slide quickly down to jump to a letter ? iOS certainly doesn't make you search to navigate a long list of artists, tracks or albums.

You're not going to convince me that the existing/available Android tablets that I've seen/touched aren't shit. Every single one I've ever seen or read about leave my jaw hitting the floor as to how absolutely garbage they are (or "must be" in the case of the ones I've only read about).

That said, you don't need to convince me, because I'm not looking for something for myself. I've already got someone that's interested specifically in an Android product, I just need to help them decide which one. They already know/feel the iPad rules the tablet space, but they want what they want.

So can you mention any of these unicorn-powered products by name?

So far you've mentioned how some Android product matches the iPad in all these areas and is even better on price, so I'm really eager at this point to find out what it is, because I've certainly never seen or heard about it. But, don't break any NDAs if it's something still in development.

Honestly, I'd be thrilled to see somebody run Android on iPad hardware. Probably not happening any time soon.

It does surprise me that we haven't heard about that in the jailbreak community. Then again, I think most jail breakers really like iOS and especially what they can do once they have that wide-open access.

Android development on Apple's hardware stalled out long ago, due to the fairly different SOC and related parts. The community never stepped up to write the proper drivers. I've got an initial iPhone with the latest community Android release, 2.2, and still no power management at all. Battery will last all of 30 minutes booted into it. I don't think they got past the 3GS for anything basic.

Makes sense in a way, why bother trying to do all the really hard driver development when there is a ton of Android hardware to pick from.

The HP Touchpad used a lot of similar hardware to other Android products, and HP even released some of their work from running Android internally on the hardware.

Kind of like replacing the leather in a BMW with the cloth from a Kia anyway.

and I'm out

ROFL

It's funny only because it's ironic - Rory seems to have come in here trolling. Dropping the conversation when asked simply for the names of the products he's described. Like the troll, these devices seem to be only mythical.

Right now, my recommendation is save a bunch of cash and get a Nook or Kindle. With a slight nod to the Nook if they're going to do a lot of eBook reading and a nod to the Kindle if they want access to Amazon's store.

Nope, that’s not why it's funny. And my opinion of why it is funny is fact!

Now that statement is ironic.

Nooo.... I think Rory came in here with the desire to contribute, but was put off by your antagonistic, closed-minded, I-know-better-than-you replies. Honestly, you don't come across as someone genuinely interested in an open exchange of opinions, but as someone who's just trying to elicit an answer that you can trample into the dust with your own brand of derision.

I mean... just look at the title of the thread! "Is there ANY Android product that doesn't suck?" Combative from the get-go. How about just "Recommendations for non-iPad tablet?" I mean... even Heather, who so rarely posts these days, took the time to suggest you tone down your responses.

I should say, this isn't always the case, but it does seem true more often than not when the topic centers on Apple-related products and their competitors. I almost skipped this thread, because of that, but I was curious to know what people were suggesting because I'm dissatisfied with iOS on my iPod touch. The walled-garden ethos bugs me.

I dislike Google (that wasn't always the case, not by a long-shot). I dislike Android and I dislike every Android tablet I've seen or touched. Done. I'm not here to debate that, but I'm interested to know if there's an Android tablet product out there, that despite me not liking it, has any chance whatsoever of being usable above the ones I've already been through with my friend. For him. Not for me. So I don't need to be convinced of Android's merits.

Yeah, the Android "open" ideals yadda, yadda, yadda, and more Google smoke being blown up our collective arises aside, what are these products Rory was referring to? Why didn't he mention them by name right away?

I don't need to know why someone prefers Android over iOS. The point is that someone I know is already looking for an Android tablet and he doesn't want to throw his money away. If he did I would have already given him a list of 20 tablets on which to burn the coin. Or actually just light it on fire.

Look, I just don't have patience anymore for crap products, hardware and software regardless who makes them. And believe me, Apple has a to to answer for it too. Their software is getting worse every day and for the life of me, I have a hard time picking one single thing in their newest desktop OS that's worth the update. So far it's a steaming ball of shit and it's aggravating me more each passing day.

Well, there's something we can agree on, at least.

I spent several hours debugging some very complex software, a few weeks ago (I was porting some cross-platform code to OS X), trying to figure out why I kept getting blocks of zeros in a file I was trying to read on Lion. We have a multi-threaded asynchronous file system abstraction layer, plus a couple layers of buffering, plus our own memory management model, all of which, at different times, have caused similar symptoms due to various corner cases. Turns out it's their CIFS mount client. WTF? Working fine on 10.6, jettisoned, and completely broken for Lion. I'd have been fired for putting something that broken into production software. Steaming turd, indeed.

Arses not arises

See, that's another PITA for Lion. Auto-correct. Which I like and dislike at the same time.

My biggest peeve in Lion is the move to auto-save. While the theory is decent, the implementation is horrid and horribly broken. It's far easier now to corrupt your work than it has ever been. I've lost new content in Automator just by answering one of the oddball dialogs that gets displayed by the OS when you're opening/closing auto-saved files.

But back to Android for a moment... And it's not the OS per se, but the same old companies releasing the same old products.

HTC completely screwed the pooch with their latest, releasing a product called "ONE" in no less than 3 versions. WTF? If the product is called "ONE" doesn't it stand to reason that there should only be one actual device? It doesn't matter who makes their software, this company will never get anything right and won't get anywhere while they're riding the coat-tails of someone else. Unfortunately they were novel and original far too long before the market were ready for them. And couldn't change the market because they were hitching their horse to someone else's software.

Back to ASUS, courtesy of John Gruber quoting Engadget's review of that dongle:


How can a company like ASUS be taken seriously? A few years ago I stopped buying anything ASUS - so glad I did. Bold highlights applied by me. This dongle is a band-aid to address an issue in a shipping product. And ASUS release it incomplete with problems of its own? WTF.

Just recall the tablets or give everyone a substantial refund, not a crappy dongle.

If you're going to troll, get your facts right.

Unless that was part of your strategy... Damn, fell for that one, too.

Sorry, I miswrote. It was something else about Samsung today (their latest teaser with a comment about HTC) and I crossed my wires. Fixing the previous post. It's not easy keeping these disposable handsets straight though.

Incidentally, getting back to crap products... I had a chance to play for a few minutes with someone's BlackBerry Playbook two days ago. The screen is too small for a tablet, and the buttons and ports seem like they were placed without any thought, however the device does feel nice and solid in hand. That's a huge deal, IMO. Too bad the OS and touch response were abysmally slow. I was glad to hand it back as quickly as I did.

Bruno

If everything is just crap why don't you go out and invent some products that "don't suck"? You'll be an instant millionaire no doubt since whatever you come up will obviously be so much better than anything else.

It's going slowly because I'm in the process of filming a new Star Wars prequel trilogy and recording a half dozen music albums.

Here's a Samsung tidbit. They're resorting to hiring people to protest in front of Apple stores now: http://9to5mac.com/2012/04/26/samsung-employs-protesters-to-wake-up-apple-users/

I know how this marketing strategy plays out. Putting a bit more focus on product design, so you're not just selling another run-of-the-mill generic piece of plastic might be a better idea.

Actually, that does sound a bit douchey. This is in Australia though. Maybe that sort of thing plays differently down under.

Points for the first use of the word "douchey" on the BBS.

buuuuuuuuuuuuuurn

Ok, so the complete lacklustre release that is going to be iOS6 and the pace at which google are progressing is leading me to think that my next phone is going to be Android.

I have no interest in a phone other than one that runs pure Android, I don't want to be running half baked hacked together distributions and I likewise I also don't want to be waiting months and months (or never) to get the latest version.

So, I want a google device. Currently it's the Nexus, how do people like it? Anybody gone from a 4S to one? I'm liking some of the features that Mark has posted about in the other threads recently about Jellybean.

The nexus also seems to be "getting on" a bit in terms of hardware, I wonder if there's any new google phone hardware on the horizon?

And to cap it all, there appears to be an ongoing rumour that the nexus will be available direct on the google play store in the UK "soon" at around £270, so I might just wait a bit to see if new hardware and/or a lower price appears.

I haven't heard any rumors of new hardware, unfortunately. The Galaxy Nexus is over 8 months old, so I would have thought we'd at least hear rumblings of the next Nexus device.

The rumor a little while ago was that Google was going to shift their model for the Nexus line a little. Instead of working closely with a single manufacturer to make the flagship pure Android phone, they would instead offer any manufacturer a spot on the Google Play Store, with the caveat that it had to be sold without any skinning and be the pure Android experience. I don't know if this approach will work, but it's interesting to see Google attempting to use the carrot of being on the Play Store, which I wouldn't think would be very enticing to most manufacturers. But if the Nexus 7 sells well enough, then maybe it's something they'll want to do.

I think we'll see pretty soon if a new Nexus device is rumored. I'm curious to see if Google does what they did with the 7, and buys a phone from one of these companies so they can list it for cost on the Play Store...

It seems Google still don't seem to get dealing with consumers, they appear to have run out of 16GB Nexus 7s:

"Sign up to be notified by email when Nexus 7 (16GB) becomes available"

Really ? Why on earth does it not state when they'll be available and why on earth can't you place an order now to get them when they are available ?

Can it really be that Google/ASUS really don't know when they'll have more to ship ?

As lackluster as iOS development has been, Apple still has a better, more polished and more usable software product today than Google is likely ever to have. That's the sad sad truth - for those who don't own Apple stock anyway. It's especially sad because Apple's software leaves so much room for improvement.

It also looks like another stellar quarter for Cupertino, let the good times roll.

Thus far, Google has brought out a new Nexus every year. I dunno if the tablet counts as "the Nexus" for 2012, though, so expect perhaps a new phone to arrive late in Q4, same as last year.

The current Galaxy Nexus (aka. "Prime", or model i9250) has been out since last November. It is an excellent handset, with lots of storage, but no SD slot. I initially thought the battery life was crap, but in the past couple of days I've not been pawing it continuously and surprise.. the battery is lasting longer.

I'll reserve further judgement on that until I've used it a bit more off-site this week. Everyone who sees/plays with my phone in person wants one.

Cheers

I'm very pleased with Android 4.1 running on my Nexus S 4G (in the form of an early build of CyanogenMod 10.) The main gripe I hear from iPhone users who try Android is the input lag, and they've really tightened things up with the latest release. With the superior hardware of the Galaxy Nexus I'm sure things are even better.

In terms of a new Nexus release, I don't know what's been officially announced or rumored, but I have to think one is imminent. The Nexus One was released in early 2010, the Nexus S in late 2010, and the Galaxy Nexus late last year. If Google were not to have a product out by the end of the year would be a significant missed opportunity to capitalize on the momentum of these releases and the big leaps forward with the operating system in the last year.

My main irritations with iOS6 are:

DND - It's taken 6 versions to get to a "do not disturb" feature, nothing is more irritating than the spam waking you up in the middle of the night. I'd like even more granularity and options than what iOS6 offers, so maybe in another 6 revisions of iOS it might get there.

Maps - Shit, double shit and completely fucking shit.

Work email - i'd like this on my phone, but again more granularity (i.e show me/notify me of work emails during the working week) I'm pretty sure that Android can be made to do what I want.

Tethering - I dislike the fact that despite their "brand", they still bow to the networks and disable tethering.

Widgets - come on, this is *basic* stuff.

Accessories - Made for iPod. Pfft. If you search hard enough the actual apple documentation on the authentication chip & the protocol is on the web. Auth chips are easy enough to come by if you take something apart that has one in....

iOS6 is nothing more than iOS5.01, very little appears to have changed and new features are just well, pathetic.

I've been a massive fan of the iPhone & iOS from the 3G to 4S, but I just feel disappointed with what I've seen so far - and new hardware (iPhone 5) isn't going to fix this because the problem is the OS now.

Edit:

Oh and thanks guys, much appreciated insights and thoughts on the matter. Will be interested in your thoughts Mark after being out and about with it, I use my phone a lot while on my commute to the office (London<->Ely).

I want one too, but there's one thing holding me back and that's bad reports on the volume of this phone. As it seems, a lot of users believe his phone's speaker is too soft, resulting in users not hearing the phone when it rings and finding the volume too soft when phoning in areas with lots of background noise. Most also say this renders the handsfree functon of the phone useless. For me, this is a very important issue and if it wasn't for this, I probably would have bought one by now. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that cannot be easily determined in a shop and I don't have a friend who owns one of these so I could try it out myself.

So how are you finding the overall volume level of the phone Mark?

From what I can tell the CPU/GPU of the Nexus 7 surpasses those of the Galaxy Nexus ?

In my experience with the Nexus 7, Project Butter didn't achieve all of its goals at eliminating input lag and the like.

Certainly those random pauses you saw scrolling around on previous Android devices are all but gone*. But things are still not as smooth as iOS.

It is apparent (though subtly so) in many areas, but one noticeable case stands out. Slow speed tracking is still very poor compared to iOS.

What I mean is when you drag something slowly around the screen you expect it to move smoothly with your finger. Which is exactly what you see on iOS, a buttery smooth movement.

On the Nexus 7 however you don't get a buttery smooth movement. Instead the display jerks a couple of pixels at a time i.e. drag finger slowly, display moves a bit, keep dragging, display stops moving, keep dragging, display jerks a couple of pixels and catches up with your finger. This will continue like this all the way across the screen, it seems incapable of moving the display by less than a couple of pixels at a time.

The end result is jerky and not at all buttery. From what I can tell it doesn't matter what app you are in, the same roughness of movement is there system wide.

Of course it maybe that the problem is down to the digitiser in the Nexus 7, I have no idea as I have no other Android 4.1 devices to compare it to.

* the one place it still rears its ugly head is in the Play Store. But then the UIWebViews used in iOS's App Store can be equally laggy, so that one is a draw

The tablet uses a quad core CPU. The phone has a dual-core CPU. Dunno how the clock speeds compare.

I have never had an iPhone/iProduct of my own to play extensively with (and don't want one, thanks).

But the GN phone I have feels pretty darned buttery smooth to me. There's a decent chance an iFruit might be "smoother", but that's could just be technobation. At some point, things are good enough, and the GN+JB certainly is.

Dunno about the tablet, but it's probably the same, just magnified (size).

Here's a question for the Nexus users out there:

The headphone jack: the included earbuds have an inline switch (and mic?) with a 4-conductor mini-plug.
Is it safe to use an ordinary 3-conductor mini-plug for stereo output to my empeg (aux-in) ?

Sure it works (tried it already), but need I be concerned about whatever abuse that 4th conductor is experiencing ?

The speaker emits through a tiny pair of slits on the back side of the phone, just above the USB jack. It's amazing how it mutes completely when those slits are covered by a finger or the palm of one's hand, and how loud it is when uncovered again.

I haven't really used it as a speakerphone yet (I'm not a huge voice caller type), but I'll try and exercise that functionality Real Soon Now, and report back here afterward.