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Xoom and the Android tablet experienceXoom and the Android tablet experiencePosted Apr 19, 2011 15:56 UTC (Tue) by mcoleman (guest, #70990)In reply to: Xoom and the Android tablet experience by oever Parent article: Xoom and the Android tablet experience
Second this, regarding user hardware control. It's difficult to trust a device that doesn't have *hard* switches to disable all of the "wireless" features (built-in cameras, microphones, radios). A hard switch for the speakers is important, too, especially for a device you cannot easily remove the battery from (which is my current hard switch of last resort).
(In a somewhat related trend, it's almost impossible now to get flash drives and hard drives with a hard read-only switch. Every time you plug one of these in, you are completely trusting the hardware you plug it into.)
The Xoom itself looks attractive at $450, but at the current price it's a no-go. I'm using a rooted Color Nook instead, which is pretty nice, and at seven inches probably about as large as I'd care to go.
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Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 19, 2011 16:23 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
How is the rooted Nook color? I'm thinking about one; the price tag is about the upper end of being possible for me to afford at the moment. I played with one a little bit, but I'd love to hear your take on it.
Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 20, 2011 1:42 UTC (Wed) by tutufan (guest, #60063) [Link]
Well, I'm enjoying it, but my expectations were quite low. Read the reviews and look at the videos closely--that will help.
For me it works reasonably well, though the interface is a bit quirky, and occasionally having only one hard button (instead of four) is an inconvenience. Though it's not heavy, I can't really hold it comfortably with one hand, which was a bit of a surprise. Having used this seven-inch device, I can't really imagine wanting to deal with anything larger. If anything, I'd be tempted to go with *smaller* devices in the future. (In some ways, my (work) Blackberry is easier to use, as it can be used one-handed.)
Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 20, 2011 2:38 UTC (Wed) by alogghe (subscriber, #6661) [Link]
A rooted Nook Color is generally excellent.
The screen is 1024x600 and its 380grams instead of the too heavy 630gram+ of the iPad and wannabees. Most of the eink devices are 250grams I believe.
Beautiful screen.
Snappy and responsive ui. Enough acceleration to make it pleasant to browser and read.
Cyanogen has a replace softkey setup to make up for the lack of a back and menu button on the hardware. Its quite nice.
Firefox mobile is a good to great experience on it.
Highly recommended.
Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 20, 2011 18:07 UTC (Wed) by khc (subscriber, #45209) [Link]
Has cyanogen fixed the sleep power consumption problem and video problem yet? I was going to flash to cyanogen but stopped after reading about them.
Nook Color & CyanogenMod Posted Apr 21, 2011 0:14 UTC (Thu) by knobunc (subscriber, #4678) [Link]
They have fixed the video problem. You still need to encode to whatever the chip supports (until they get the closed drivers working on the NC that allow full resolution). But that's the same as before CM.
I think the sleep power consumption problem is not fixed. However, I have had no trouble with the battery life of my Nook Color running CM 7 release. It is snappy, pretty, and the soft-button bar at the bottom works really well. It may no go to the lowest sleep state, but at whatever state it goes to, it still lasts for days without a charge. Remember that the screen sucks down tons of power... so if that sucker is off then it doesn't drain that much power.
Nook Color & CyanogenMod Posted Apr 21, 2011 21:12 UTC (Thu) by khc (subscriber, #45209) [Link]
I don't encode much video myself actually, as long as youtube works I am happy.
If it lasts for days without a charge, I may give it a try. I was reading that it needs charging everyday. I already do that for my phone, I don't want to remember to recharge another device everyday.
Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 20, 2011 4:00 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
Seems to be about $200 for B/W, $300 for color.
Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 20, 2011 4:04 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
The black and white (eink) and colour Nooks are entirely different devices. The eink device is pretty special purpose - people have written applications for it, but they're incredibly limited by the hardware constraints and there's no terribly useful way to run unmodified Android applications. The Color has a much more capable CPU and a full touchscreen, so it's entirely capable of running a full Android tablet setup.
Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 19, 2011 20:12 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
Sadly the days of hardware switches that actually do anything seem to be far behind us. I remember at least back in 2006 we were evaluating some hardware with supposed switches but all they did was tell the software to turn stuff off and could be bypassed.
Sadly the days of the US government ordering them for security reasons seems to be done with as it violates various "off the shelf, lower costs" mantras.
Xoom and the Android tablet experience Posted Apr 21, 2011 19:30 UTC (Thu) by cwillu (subscriber, #67268) [Link]
An SD card's readonly tab is typically implemented in software. If you don't trust the software, you can't trust the readonly tab.
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