Prime first Impressions. Well gang I have had this since the 23rd and played with it over the holidays. I am sorry to report that so far I am not very impressed with this tablet.
First, While I guess thin is good in some ways, it presents problems in others, especialy when the back is smooth metal. This tablet is REAL hard to hold onto. I just can't beleive that none of the initial early reports out there mention this. Everyone that has held mine has the same comment about being hard to hold onto and afraid of droping it. Also the edge is rather abrupt and not rounded or smooth, which is not pleasant. I get hand craps trying to hold it while laying in bed reading at night. You will need a cover for this thing just to make it "Holdable"
The next big let down is the the keyboard. There are two options and they both are very lacking in my optionion. Niether of them have push to hold keys with special characters so that is a real PIA always having to switch modes when you want a special character. No cursor movement keys which is nuts on a big keyboard like this. They have a light version of swype, but that is missing some of the better features that normal swype has. Of couse you can get another keyboard on the market. I am sort of liking HACKER keyboard at the moment.
The biggest let down is performance. I can't tell a bit a difference between this and my Toshiba Thrive. In fact, I suspect my Thrive is equal to or faster than the prime. I will have to run some timing tests and get back to you on this to verify, but the impression says it all. I base this comment on Web Browsing, which to me is one of the primary attractions to using tablets. This think can't hold a candle to IPAD2 in WEB performance I am sorry to say. Even general tablet navaigation speed is not impressive, again, not noticably different than my Thrive. I am really let down by the QUAD CORE hype because I see no noticable speed improvements. Even screen touch responsiveness seems to be slow. Thinking back, many of the early video reviews showed the user having slow response or tapping twice at times to get the tab to respond.
Lastely, the battery life is not impressive at all. It seems to be about 5-6 hours. I can run all day on my Thrive. This unit needs to be recharched before the day is over.
I really hope either updates or ICS come out and fix some of this because I am not happy that I just paid $500 for this tablet.
Sorry for the negative report, but I suspect you are going to start seeing a lot of them unless maybe I just got a lemon, which I doubt. I am not sure anyone should be upset about missing this for XMAS, or at all. I may even sell mine if anyone is interested. It is just not that much better than my Thrive. It is smaller and lighter, but you can't hold the darn thing so that ruins that, and general performance is not noticably better. I am afraid this tablet is mostly hype from what I am seeing and does not deliver much over existing dual core tablets.
1. I don't find it too terribly hard to hold, but I suppose if your hands get sweaty easily you may have to get a cover. Easy fix.
2. Stock keyboards usually suck, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Fortunately on Android you have a metric ton of options for keyboards. Again, easy fix.
3. Performance, with HC it seems to be the same old song and dance...slow. I agree there isn't anything groundbreaking about the interface fluidity. Browser sucks, it's no iPad (and never will be due to the Andorid framework) and everyone knows it as it has been mention umpteen times before. There are alternatives to the stock browser such as Opera that make things smoother but they all have their own shortcomings.
--As far as comparing it to the Thrive, performance could be similar or night and day depending on what you're doing with the device. For example, with simple media consumption you won't see much difference, but I've yet to see the Thrive play 1080p. Additionally, like it or not, but the Thrive is a dead platform as far as development (I'm sure you've seen the forums).
4. Battery, I cannot make a fair observation yet as my battery hasn't been broken in yet. But so far I'm averaging 6-7 hours of good use.
Asus has some serious bugs to work out, there is no denying that. But, in my opinion the biggest issue with the Prime is the level of hype this thing has received,which led to unrealistic expectations.
Oh dear... I just sold my TF101 because of browser lag and general sluggishness, and pre-ordered one of these. looks like I may be disappointed when it turns up (3x weeks here in UK).
So let's summarize:
_ The form factor is a copy cat of the ipad2 which is praised by everyone but for the Prime it's not a good thing.
_ The virtual keyboard, which can be change whenever with whatever in a blink of an eyes, isn't good enough for you.
_ Perfomances of Tegra 3 are egal or worse than those of Tegra 2. Yeah right.
_ Battery life doesn't hold more than 6 hours.... Are you stuck in Super IPS+ mode ?
I don't have the prime, sure, but strangely enough I have a hard time believing you.
I'm not particularly bothered by stock keyboards, since you can install others, and the battery life sounds a little low compared to what I've heard before?
But as for performance, as I was just writing in another thread, I think that the problem is that people who already have dual-core tablets were looking for an instant speed boost here and not finding it. If you already have a dual-core tablet, I'd stick with that for now and see what comes out in the coming year. For now, Tegra 3 has at least as much power as Tegra 2 in applications which are not highly multithreaded, while using less power. Hopefully we will see threadedness become more of a priority as more devices with more than two cores come out, and more of the dormant power of the Prime will be realised.
(This is just what happened on desktops, of course: when quad-cores came out, people were divided on whether it was worth having two extra cores or having a faster-clocked dual-core chip. Faster dual-cores were winning at the time, because most applications couldn't make use of a quad-core. The balance has been tipping in favour of quad-cores ever since, and they're now essentially standard on the desktop, and my quad-core Q6600 has aged much better than the "faster" dual-cores of the time.)
kokusho said:
So let's summarize:
_ The form factor is a copy cat of the ipad2 which is praised by everyone but for the Prime it's not a good thing.
_ The virtual keyboard, which can be change whenever with whatever in a blink of an eyes, isn't good enough for you.
_ Perfomances of Tegra 3 are egal or worse than those of Tegra 2. Yeah right.
_ Battery life doesn't hold more than 6 hours.... Are you stuck in Super IPS+ mode ?
I don't have the prime, sure, but strangely enough I have a hard time believing you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kokusho,
Beleive me or not, start reading other posts and you will see similar reports already. If you think I broke my butt stalking my local gamestop daily to spend $500 hard erned money to bash it, think again. Your response it rather aggressive considering I took time to document my impressions to help people
To answer your points:
Form factor - the metal back is slick and of course glass is slick. You will see for yourself if/when you hold one. It is not horrible, but very much something that gets noticed buy everyone that has held this.
Keyboard - My keyboard on my HTC phone is better than this. You would just think that when you pay $500 for a nice tab, and the keyboard is the primary interface to it, they manafacturer would spend some effect to make sure it is a good experience and not drive us to search the market for something better.
Performance - I SPECIFICALLY said in my post that this was a WEB observation. I am sure that for other more CPU intesive apps like games, this will perform better. I have Shadowgun on my Thrive and will compare as time permits. Again, the title here is INITIAL impressions
Battery Life - Screen brightness is about 1/2 and I have had it mostly in balanced mode and then go to power saver when I see it getting real low. Again, this is new and the battery has not come to life yet so that may improve.
The camera is also pretty good which was important to me. The other thing I really wanted was the SUPER IPS to read in the sun (I can barely see my Thrive in the sun) since I now use tablets for my book reading and want to be able to read outside. I still have to test this later today.
To be clear to all, I am not trying to bash this unit. To the contrary I am trying to talk myself into it was worth all the effort and cost to get it. It is probably is the best tablet out there at the moment, but it is just not living up to the hype. Also, is it that much better than the dual cores out there? Maybe if you are a gamer it would make a difference. For an average user, I would recommend saving the cash and getting a Thrive or previous ASUS TF101 model. Maybe ICS will make a difference.
From my one day use of the Prime:
I got the smart cover for prime, so holding does not seems to be an issue. But, then I again it is not a drawback as such. Anything which is thin and wide will be difficult to hold. Comparison to iPad2 is not accurate it would seem, because holding it in portrait mode seems pretty fine, but landscape mode may be difficult owing to the width of this thing.
Keyboard is a non-issue. you can always switch to honeycomb keyboard, which is way better than the Prime's default properitay keyboard, in which for some reason I dont feel the keys are placed properly, more often than not I end up hitting wrong letter. But, as I said it is a non-issue, Thumb keyboard works perfectly.
Did not have much experience with the browser yet, as I was busy installing apps mostly. But, from what I saw little bit, it seems to be fine, if you dont draw comparison against any other tablet. Should wait for ICS to really judge its performance.
Battery, since I inadverently left it at power saving mode, it was left with 50% charge after about 4-5 hours with screen on and playing and browsing.
I would rate it as 4/5 pre-ICS. But with the scope of getting ICS sooner, which will make the best use of Tegra 3, it might end up with 4.5/5.
And let's not forget why Prime is still a great tablet even without taking advantage of Tegra 3:
+Awesome build quality
+Great display with super IPS
+Gorilla glass panel to protect
+ 8 MP camera
+32GB for the sub $500 price range
I was paying for the hardware, more than the software and I am not disppointed. If I say, this is the best 32GB tab you will get for under $500 in 2011 or in Q1 of 2012, can anyone object it?
these negative first impressions are really getting old and annoying.
hard to hold? really? thing is ligher than a feather with a nice bezel for your thumb.
your thrive is faster? really? lol the thrive? lord.. this thing navigates through honey comb like butter while every other first gen tablet with more than 20 apps on it can't handle it
your keyboard stinks? and you are an android fan? just get a new keyboard. first thing i did was install swiftkey.
I appreciate the honest review.
For the average consumer, sure, the stock keyboard should probably be really good. But given you're on XDA, you should know how to install a *much* better keyboard... issue solved.
As far as speed - did you test out Opera browsing speed? Very smooth. Yes, there are quirks with it, and still probably not as smooth as an iPad, but it works great.
I haven't had any laginess in my interface speed at all (i.e. screen transitions, app drawer opening, etc.), even with HD live wallpaper on.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - to me, iOS and Apple products work much better straight out of the box if you don't want to fool with anything. Android devices require a little work with downloading third party keyboards, different roms, etc. But when all is said and done, that IS the fun part of Android for me! Maybe not for the average consumer, but jus' saying.
About performance - HC browser has some huge bug which causes it to sleep for a moment sometimes. Solution: use any other browser (Dolphin or Opera work best for me). Don't judge the tablet on HC browser - if it lags on Tegra2 device it will lag on Tegra3 device too, just for a shorter time (still noticable though, on my Transformer HC browser lags sometimes for 10 seconds, haha, that is why I don't use it).
About keyboard - I prefer the stock HC, I agree that the one from Asus is quite horrible. All of this could be fixed by you in 1 minute and the browser will almost certainly be fixed by ICS update.
Why do people keep complaining about the keyboards in TP, is this your first Android devices? Just go the market and download a ton of keyboards.
And same with the browsers.
yumms said:
why do people keep complaining about the keyboards in tp, is this your first android devices? Just go the market and download a ton of keyboards.
And same with the browsers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
yumms said:
Why do people keep complaining about the keyboards in TP, is this your first Android devices? Just go the market and download a ton of keyboards.
And same with the browsers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, sure you can download a ton of keyboards. But a strong majority of them simply are not good. I don't like Swype or Swift-X and I gave both of them a good run. I've liked HTC's keyboard the most, but on phones. And I do like stock Android keyboard on ICS, which will come to Prime at some point.
Same with browsers? Don't think so. I prefer the original browser in that it is not bloated at all compared to Opera or Dolphin. I want bare-bones browsing that is fast, I don't want to be cluttered by features I don't use.
Simply because you can get another browser or keyboard for Prime does not mean that the other one is necessarily better for you or without problems.
kristovaher said:
First of all, sure you can download a ton of keyboards. But a strong majority of them simply are not good. I don't like Swype or Swift-X and I gave both of them a good run. I've liked HTC's keyboard the most, but on phones. And I do like stock Android keyboard on ICS, which will come to Prime at some point.
Same with browsers? Don't think so. I prefer the original browser in that it is not bloated at all compared to Opera or Dolphin. I want bare-bones browsing that is fast, I don't want to be cluttered by features I don't use.
Simply because you can get another browser or keyboard for Prime does not mean that the other one is necessarily better for you or without problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can download the ICS keyboard from the market.
What makes you say that Opera or Dolphin browsers are bloated?
yumms said:
You can download the ICS keyboard from the market.
What makes you say that Opera or Dolphin browsers are bloated?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am sure he knows that.. he is a 'tech wizard'...
@OP yup battery life really sucks #sarcasm. Stick to ur thrive then
kristovaher said:
First of all, sure you can download a ton of keyboards. But a strong majority of them simply are not good. I don't like Swype or Swift-X and I gave both of them a good run. I've liked HTC's keyboard the most, but on phones. And I do like stock Android keyboard on ICS, which will come to Prime at some point.
Same with browsers? Don't think so. I prefer the original browser in that it is not bloated at all compared to Opera or Dolphin. I want bare-bones browsing that is fast, I don't want to be cluttered by features I don't use.
Simply because you can get another browser or keyboard for Prime does not mean that the other one is necessarily better for you or without problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Each person has their own needs, so it's totally fair to say that the prime is not what you expected. I'm a little disappointed myself at the fact that there are no good academic research paper organizing apps for Android tablets.
However, saying the stock browser is not bloated compared to Opera... come on. I wouldn't expect my parents to download third party browsers, keyboards, etc. to make their device satisfactory - but you're clearly somewhat of a tech person, so your comments are kind of strange to me. You can download just about any keyboard possible. If you aren't satisfied with ANY of them, I don't think you're trying hard enough, or you are just set on being unhappy with the stock keyboard. And that's fine. Each to his own.
yumms said:
You can download the ICS keyboard from the market.
What makes you say that Opera or Dolphin browsers are bloated?
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Click to collapse
I stopped using Dolphin once they let this eZine (or whatever it was called) happen to my browser. I like Opera much more and the mini version is not bloated, but Opera mobile browser does not listen to 'Enter' key as the submitting command on forms that do not have separate button on websites for it. As a result I found myself jumping back and forth between native browser and Opera one, which obviously sucks.
After using Galaxy Nexus for a while and since I use Chrome at home, the bookmark and other sync options natively are much preferred as well.
flak0 said:
@OP yup battery life really sucks #sarcasm. Stick to ur thrive then
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Click to collapse
damn! lmfao is that on battery savings mode? no other tablet has even touched that kind of battery life. I just switched from normal to battery savings mode to see if I can pull those numbers. actually thrive has one of the worst batteries of any tablet. its replaceable but very small. that was the main gripe about the thrive, its horrible battery life and that it was the thickest and heaviest of all tabs. now the newer 7 inch is very thin and light but still plagued by dismal battery life.
flak0 said:
@OP yup battery life really sucks #sarcasm. Stick to ur thrive then
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Eh? You barely used it mate. Look at the battery drop while you actually used the device. Of those 14 hours you did not use the device for 11 hours. According to that graph your actual 100% in-use battery time is about 7-8 hours.
demandarin said:
damn! lmfao is that on battery savings mode? no other tablet has even touched that kind of battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please pay attention to what the graph actually says. It shows that he had the device inactive for 11 hours. He only used it for 3 hours.
Related
Hi all,
got the Flyer today, after some hours of playing around I'd like to share my thoughts with other users:
- solid thing, just opening the top to insert the cards was a bit tricky for me
- very fast, no problems with the HTC Sense interface, works perfectly fine. Still in applicaitions like Google Maps a bit slower than the Xoom I'm testing in parallel.
- I like the new e-Mail client and calendar application a lot.
- Being an intensive evernote user, I am happy that there is a good direct integration, also with the notes you can take with the pen. Well done!
- The speakers are great, one of the few things where I don't agree with the Engadget review which has been posted today. And: They are extremely loud, louder than any of the - many - devices I could test up to now, including iPad, iPad2, Galaxy Tab and Xoom.
- The screen is great and very bright, together with the loadspeakers a great experience in Youtube or watching one of the HQ movie trailers which came with the Flyer.
- Generally, I prefer the 7'' format over the 10'' of the Xoom and the iPad. I think it is the best tablet format for me. The weight lets you hold it for a very long time without getting tired, the Xoom (which I like a lot because of Honeycomb and the incredible speed) is too heavy for me.
- the typing experience is excellent, the Flyer has the right balance between being responsive, but not over-responsive. The Xoom seems to react to even the slightest touch, this was almost a bit too much for me in the beginning
- there is a significant frame around the screen, much larger than the Xoom has. This is sometimes a problem when using the Xoom because it is hard to hold without touching the screen (and eventually doing something unwanted), but the frame around the screen of the Flyer is really huge. This makes it easy to hold the device in several ways, though.
- The bag shipped with the device is a joke from my point of view, first of all it does not allow you to use the device when in the bag, second the pen is attached outside and somehow always disturbing; also I guess it will be lost soon. I will wait for something which holds the pen inside and can be opened to use the Flyer without taking it out.
- Mixed feelings about the pen: The setup in the bottom right corner is excellent and intuitive and the pen seems to react quite quickly, it is fun to use. But: The hardware is not my favorite at all. Especially the buttons on the pen are hard to reach and it is not easy to hold it naturally
- Some new functionality in the browser including small thumbnails of the open windows, well done. Also pinch out works. I like it, it seems to be very fast and the re-arrangement of the text when zooming seems to be excellent.
- Although I don't need a camera in a device like that and I really don't care, still to mention that the camera seems to be really terrible.
- Installed tons of apps, everything works great, no speed issues at all.
- HTC Sense in the tablet edition is great. Some new additions for books, notes,... first impression everything well done, HTC
My first summary after a couple of hours is very positive. Let's see how I think after a week or two. No comments at that point about battery life for sure, but the Engadget review (and the very first, non-reliable own impressions) give me a good feeling.
Questions anytime, for sure! And appologies for my German English
Got mine today too.
I am fairly impressed and looking forward to taking it out and about with me tomorrow. I am curious to see if I can get 2 days battery life out of it or not.
The screen is wonderful. No other word for it. I used to think Super AMOLED was the best, but this is the best screen I have seen on an Android device.
The browser is excellent. Fast, stable, easy to use.
I find the pen fairly good. Though I keep pressing the buttons when I dont mean to. I cant wait to use it in a meeting!
Using Kindle on the device seems to be a great experience. The inbuilt ebook reader is really nice, but I am a Kindle user.
The updated HTC mail app is lovely as is the weather and calendar. But the software is not particularly tablet friendly otherwise. I like Sense and am using friend stream for the first time on at HTC device (this is my 3rd) and it works well.
The form factor is excellent. Easy to hold in one hand. It is quite a bit heavier than a Kindle despite not being much larger, but I am sure I could hold it all day without too much trouble unlike a 10" 700g device like the ipad2.
It's not all great though. I have had a few crashes through the day and the performance is not always silky smooth. I find the volume buttons a bit rattly and whilst the speakers are good, they are really not that good. There is no search button which I definitely miss and it is a major fingerprint magnet.
Overall, I am really pleased with the device so far. Feel free to ask any questions.
Hi Onkel,
Can you say a bit more about how writing with the pen feels like? The reviews are all saying that it's not that great for regular note taking (as opposed to doodling/drawing), especially in comparison with wacom digitizers on windows tablets. I have a win tablet right now and this makes me a bit
hard to tell for me, as my personal tablet experiences come from an IBM Thinkpad a couple of years ago.
Generally, I guess the Flyer will be for short note taking rather than replacing a tablet Pc. There is no handwriting recognition for the Flyer yet, and even if it will be available later, I think the handwriting quality I produce on the device will not be good enough.
I think there are many scenarios where the pen is helpful though, I had a Pdf document to comment today and the Flyer was a dream to use. Other example, for our corporate website I do a lot of commenting on improvements and bugs, the screenshot & comment feature with the pen is simply wonderful...
thoughts on performance?
i know you both mentioned performance, one as being excellent and the other as being ok. After spending more time with the device do you have any more details on the performance? One mentioned google maps being slower than on the xoom, slow enough to be an issue?
I am a little worried about purchasing a device that is already outdated, especially when there are rumors of amazing releasing both dual core and quad core tablets before the end of the year, the scribe tech has be pretty excited about this tablet, but i think i'm reeling in my expectations after reading some reviews.
thanks!
kborer22 said:
i know you both mentioned performance, one as being excellent and the other as being ok. After spending more time with the device do you have any more details on the performance? One mentioned google maps being slower than on the xoom, slow enough to be an issue?
thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was me. If you start to go into 3D and then turn the map with the finger, I see a difference. No issue at all. As usual, once you have used a device like the Xoom, which is setting a new standard as I think, you get used to it.
This is a 1.5 ghz device and couple of months ago I thought 1 ghz is all I will ever need
I an very pleased with the performance up to now, and I started tons of apps yesterday and it works great. SlideIT keyboard, which I am using right now, is a great performance test and it works great also.
The bigger question for you will be whether the pen turns out to be a toy or an important tool. I am not sure yet...
kborer22 said:
i know you both mentioned performance, one as being excellent and the other as being ok. After spending more time with the device do you have any more details on the performance? One mentioned google maps being slower than on the xoom, slow enough to be an issue?
I am a little worried about purchasing a device that is already outdated, especially when there are rumors of amazing releasing both dual core and quad core tablets before the end of the year, the scribe tech has be pretty excited about this tablet, but i think i'm reeling in my expectations after reading some reviews.
thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would describe the performance as similar overall to my Desire HD. It is all the speed you would need, but not the fastest thing out there. I have found it does bog down sometimes which a dual core might not, but nothing to cause me concern personally.
OnkelAlbert said:
hard to tell for me, as my personal tablet experiences come from an IBM Thinkpad a couple of years ago.
Generally, I guess the Flyer will be for short note taking rather than replacing a tablet Pc. There is no handwriting recognition for the Flyer yet, and even if it will be available later, I think the handwriting quality I produce on the device will not be good enough.
I think there are many scenarios where the pen is helpful though, I had a Pdf document to comment today and the Flyer was a dream to use. Other example, for our corporate website I do a lot of commenting on improvements and bugs, the screenshot & comment feature with the pen is simply wonderful...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I mainly want to use it as a substitute notebook for my college classes so how well it emulates pen and paper is something to think about.
Any impressions on the battery life? The reviews say you get a full day and more of standard use. Is the only batter hog video playback (the stated 4 hours of playback time)?
OnkelAlbert said:
I think there are many scenarios where the pen is helpful though, I had a Pdf document to comment today and the Flyer was a dream to use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm also looking forward to usage of the pen and found your PDF comment interesting. Did you have to take a screenshot and work with that, or could you open the PDF in the book reader, which I know has added pen applications?
veethree said:
I'm also looking forward to usage of the pen and found your PDF comment interesting. Did you have to take a screenshot and work with that, or could you open the PDF in the book reader, which I know has added pen applications?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was a document which I recieved as an attachment. I opened it, wrote on it, press save, email. Simply great, no screenshot necessary...
Bigmuzzy said:
Thanks. I mainly want to use it as a substitute notebook for my college classes so how well it emulates pen and paper is something to think about.
Any impressions on the battery life? The reviews say you get a full day and more of standard use. Is the only batter hog video playback (the stated 4 hours of playback time)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
regarding battery life, I am on a conference all day and the Flyer was with me all day, pushing and answering emails, taking notes and doing Demos for my collegues...
after half day battery says 76%. So I guess running out of battery during the day seems impossible to me, as long as you don't spend most of the day with Angry Birds and movies
Did anyone manage to use the flyer in making gsm calls???!!!!!
Hi
Wants about video streaming to TV , does it have HDMI via USB cable or DLNA . HTC web site in official specs does not mention anything about it.
ahm1010 said:
Hi
Wants about video streaming to TV , does it have HDMI via USB cable or DLNA . HTC web site in official specs does not mention anything about it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It definitely supports DLNA although I havent tried to get it working yet. I have heard there is meant to be HDMI out through the USB port and the fact the port is Ext-MicroUSB suggests as much, but I haven't seen the cable for sale anywhere.
The Jones said:
It definitely supports DLNA although I havent tried to get it working yet. I have heard there is meant to be HDMI out through the USB port and the fact the port is Ext-MicroUSB suggests as much, but I haven't seen the cable for sale anywhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've seen some EXT-microUSB tot hdmi cables somewhere... So yes, it'll be able to work trough usb port
OnkelAlbert said:
regarding battery life, I am on a conference all day and the Flyer was with me all day, pushing and answering emails, taking notes and doing Demos for my collegues...
after half day battery says 76%. So I guess running out of battery during the day seems impossible to me, as long as you don't spend most of the day with Angry Birds and movies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem is that I now use my Flyer too much! Love the note taking and ebook reading. The size is perfect. So the battery does last a day, but I always give a quick charge during the day just in case.
Hi. With regards to the Evernote integration on the Flyer, is it possible to maintain a copy of the created notes locally on the Flyer in addition to having them synced with Evernotes on the web ?
Having a local copy on the device will definitely speed up the retrieval of created notes and give you access to these notes when there is no internet access available.
A suggestion and a question.
The suggestion is for those who keep clicking the button inadvertently. There are pen/pencil grips you can buy that will cover the button so you have to press down firmly to activate it.
The question is whether there are any options to control pen vs. finger input. For example, on my tablet, I can set the N-Trig control to "auto." At this setting, the tablet will recognize finger input until I use the pen, at which point it will switch to pen-only input. When I want to use my finger again, I just tap twice on the screen with my finger. That way there's never any palm recognition issues.
sevoflurane said:
Did anyone manage to use the flyer in making gsm calls???!!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As others have said elsewhere, NO you don't even have the dial button or app in the list of applications to make a gsm call.
Perhaps when the flyer is rooted we will have some devs working on that.
OnkelAlbert said:
Hi all,
got the Flyer today, after some hours of playing around I'd like to share my thoughts with other users:
- solid thing, just opening the top to insert the cards was a bit tricky for me
- very fast, no problems with the HTC Sense interface, works perfectly fine. Still in applicaitions like Google Maps a bit slower than the Xoom I'm testing in parallel.
- I like the new e-Mail client and calendar application a lot.
- Being an intensive evernote user, I am happy that there is a good direct integration, also with the notes you can take with the pen. Well done!
- The speakers are great, one of the few things where I don't agree with the Engadget review which has been posted today. And: They are extremely loud, louder than any of the - many - devices I could test up to now, including iPad, iPad2, Galaxy Tab and Xoom.
- The screen is great and very bright, together with the loadspeakers a great experience in Youtube or watching one of the HQ movie trailers which came with the Flyer.
- Generally, I prefer the 7'' format over the 10'' of the Xoom and the iPad. I think it is the best tablet format for me. The weight lets you hold it for a very long time without getting tired, the Xoom (which I like a lot because of Honeycomb and the incredible speed) is too heavy for me.
- the typing experience is excellent, the Flyer has the right balance between being responsive, but not over-responsive. The Xoom seems to react to even the slightest touch, this was almost a bit too much for me in the beginning
- there is a significant frame around the screen, much larger than the Xoom has. This is sometimes a problem when using the Xoom because it is hard to hold without touching the screen (and eventually doing something unwanted), but the frame around the screen of the Flyer is really huge. This makes it easy to hold the device in several ways, though.
- The bag shipped with the device is a joke from my point of view, first of all it does not allow you to use the device when in the bag, second the pen is attached outside and somehow always disturbing; also I guess it will be lost soon. I will wait for something which holds the pen inside and can be opened to use the Flyer without taking it out.
- Mixed feelings about the pen: The setup in the bottom right corner is excellent and intuitive and the pen seems to react quite quickly, it is fun to use. But: The hardware is not my favorite at all. Especially the buttons on the pen are hard to reach and it is not easy to hold it naturally
- Some new functionality in the browser including small thumbnails of the open windows, well done. Also pinch out works. I like it, it seems to be very fast and the re-arrangement of the text when zooming seems to be excellent.
- Although I don't need a camera in a device like that and I really don't care, still to mention that the camera seems to be really terrible.
- Installed tons of apps, everything works great, no speed issues at all.
- HTC Sense in the tablet edition is great. Some new additions for books, notes,... first impression everything well done, HTC
My first summary after a couple of hours is very positive. Let's see how I think after a week or two. No comments at that point about battery life for sure, but the Engadget review (and the very first, non-reliable own impressions) give me a good feeling.
Questions anytime, for sure! And appologies for my German English
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How is the multitouch? How much points does it have? Could you test it for me? I want to buy one too.
Thanks Tbo-art
This is for the people Satisfied with their device. People that are happy with device. THE ones who were glad to make their purchase and would do it all over again. Basically for those with a more Positive outlook on life n doesn't let little things get to them
This thread will be an expansion of the Positive Transformer Thread going in a more detailed direction. I'm sure a majority of you, like myself are tired of all the complaint threads about what Prime doesn't do well or not at all. Soo.....
This thread is to list "What does work great on your Prime". Also how does Prime help you in day to day functionality? Like examples of the Prime being very useful or coming in handy in everyday scenarios. How do your friends, family, and peers react when showing off the power of Prime? What are some standout features on Prime? Positive stories n testimonials fully welcomed. All others will be Charbroiled! Lol
So you can see the direction this thread is trying to take. To expand on the great form factor and functionality of a device that works well for you. With so many issue threads, its time to expand on the flip side, the Majority side, that most here in Xda actually love their device and keeping it.
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There's more than enough complaint threads as there is. This is another way of letting new people know that things on the surface aren't always what it seems. There's a flip side to every story.
"EVERYTHING IS NOT AS GOOD AS IT SEEMS AND EVERYTHING NOT AS BAD AS IT SEEMS, SOMEWHERE IN-BETWEEN, REALITY FALLS" Remember that with anything in life
Update: We now have Official Bootloader Unlock Tool. More reason to be happy to own a Prime. Custom roms will be here b4 you know it!
Everything works on my prime except GPS. Serial # BC, still running .11 stock.
I sit at a computer all day for my job, so I really just wanted a device that I could plop into bed with to surf the web and watch videos. In that respect, the Prime is perfect. Web browsing is as fast or faster than my netbook, and I really like physically interacting with web pages - a touch interface is the way to browse the web, IMO.
Considering I have yet to use my prime while not laying in bed, functional GPS is obviously a non-issue for me. This is a good thing, since the GPS on mine is entirely broken.
My biggest concern was WiFi performance, but I have to say I've never noticed a problem. I sit fairly close to my router in my small studio apartment, so it's possible I've never gone far enough away from it to notice signal degradation. However, I can routinely achieve speeds of > 15Mb / 5Mb down/up anywhere in my apartment, which is more than sufficient for my means.
Gaming was another big selling point for me, and not much needs to be said about the Tegra 3. Thing is a beast. We all know Android doesn't even fully utilize that horsepower, so I'm pretty excited to see what the dev community comes up with after we unlock the BL
Finally, I love the form factor. The thinness and lightness of the TP astounds me every day. And signal attenuation aside, I love the spun aluminum case. It looks and feels premium, durable and high quality. I may be an Android fanboy, but I have to give Apple props for their solid build quality - now I have to give Asus props as well, because the TP is probably the prettiest piece of Kit I've seen in the Android world so far.
I've been very happy with my unit so far. I know I got lucky by avoiding many of the most serious problems - lockups and whatnot - but in many ways I'm impressed that ICS has as few problems as it does, what with being brand new and all that. In contrast, I had to engage in a much greater level of hackery with my Epic 4g to get it to a workable condition, and that was after Froyo had already been out for almost a year.
Picked up my C1-serial Prime end of January at BestBuy.
Mine basically has no usable GPS to speak of. It works outdoors for geo-location to about 50', but loses lock as fast as it gets it. Navigation is impossible. But, I knew that going in and didn't care that GPS might be problematic. I looked at it as a "value added feature that might not work". My box doesn't state GPS as a feature anyhow, so I can't complain too loud.
Beyond that, everything else is pure awesome. I have a 17" widescreen laptop that is more of a desktop replacement than a laptop, and it's definitely not that portable (The battery dies in about 90 minutes of use without being plugged in, even on the "power saving" setting in Win7) so having the prime for web surfing and reading on the couch or in bed is awesome.
I haven't come across a task that I couldn't perform on the Prime that I could on my laptop. Sure, some things are more difficult to accomplish on the tablet (Especially since I don't have the keyboard dock for it ... yet) but I could still do them in a pinch. I even used TurboTax online on it and managed to get my taxes done.
I like that Polaris Office is installed as well, as it gives a quick way to view MS office documents out of the box when needed. I usually just import them to my Google Docs, but if I'm even in a location without 'net access, it's nice to have something that works offline.
The other thing I REALLY appreciate is OTA updates. My Galaxy S phone never had that until I migrated to CM7, and I'm missing OTA horribly on it too since I moved to CM9. Not having to tether to keep it updated is pure awesome.
I can't say enough good things about this device.
anti09 said:
Everything works on my prime except GPS. Serial # BC, still running .11 stock.
I sit at a computer all day for my job, so I really just wanted a device that I could plop into bed with to surf the web and watch videos. In that respect, the Prime is perfect. Web browsing is as fast or faster than my netbook, and I really like physically interacting with web pages - a touch interface is the way to browse the web, IMO.
Considering I have yet to use my prime while not laying in bed, functional GPS is obviously a non-issue for me. This is a good thing, since the GPS on mine is entirely broken.
My biggest concern was WiFi performance, but I have to say I've never noticed a problem. I sit fairly close to my router in my small studio apartment, so it's possible I've never gone far enough away from it to notice signal degradation. However, I can routinely achieve speeds of > 15Mb / 5Mb down/up anywhere in my apartment, which is more than sufficient for my means.
Gaming was another big selling point for me, and not much needs to be said about the Tegra 3. Thing is a beast. We all know Android doesn't even fully utilize that horsepower, so I'm pretty excited to see what the dev community comes up with after we unlock the BL
Finally, I love the form factor. The thinness and lightness of the TP astounds me every day. And signal attenuation aside, I love the spun aluminum case. It looks and feels premium, durable and high quality. I may be an Android fanboy, but I have to give Apple props for their solid build quality - now I have to give Asus props as well, because the TP is probably the prettiest piece of Kit I've seen in the Android world so far.
I've been very happy with my unit so far. I know I got lucky by avoiding many of the most serious problems - lockups and whatnot - but in many ways I'm impressed that ICS has as few problems as it does, what with being brand new and all that. In contrast, I had to engage in a much greater level of hackery with my Epic 4g to get it to a workable condition, and that was after Froyo had already been out for almost a year.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, Tegra3 is a beast.
m3t4lw01f said:
Picked up my C1-serial Prime end of January at BestBuy.
Mine basically has no usable GPS to speak of. It works outdoors for geo-location to about 50', but loses lock as fast as it gets it. Navigation is impossible. But, I knew that going in and didn't care that GPS might be problematic. I looked at it as a "value added feature that might not work". My box doesn't state GPS as a feature anyhow, so I can't complain too loud.
Beyond that, everything else is pure awesome. I have a 17" widescreen laptop that is more of a desktop replacement than a laptop, and it's definitely not that portable (The battery dies in about 90 minutes of use without being plugged in, even on the "power saving" setting in Win7) so having the prime for web surfing and reading on the couch or in bed is awesome.
I haven't come across a task that I couldn't perform on the Prime that I could on my laptop. Sure, some things are more difficult to accomplish on the tablet (Especially since I don't have the keyboard dock for it ... yet) but I could still do them in a pinch. I even used TurboTax online on it and managed to get my taxes done.
I like that Polaris Office is installed as well, as it gives a quick way to view MS office documents out of the box when needed. I usually just import them to my Google Docs, but if I'm even in a location without 'net access, it's nice to have something that works offline.
The other thing I REALLY appreciate is OTA updates. My Galaxy S phone never had that until I migrated to CM7, and I'm missing OTA horribly on it too since I moved to CM9. Not having to tether to keep it updated is pure awesome.
I can't say enough good things about this device.
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Click to collapse
The constant OTA updates is a luxury we enjoy more compared to other makers or devices. We have seen more updates n a lil over a month compared to others in a whole year..lol. always good to have tthe latest firmware and drivers on device. It is good we have a way to roll back to a previous version if needed.
The battery life is great on Prime and will only get better as more updates roll out and custom roms arrive. Even overclocked prime gets good battery life. Plus like you said, there's nothing out there to really even make the Prime bust a sweat yet. So power of Tegra3 hasn't even been really tapped into yet. As far as these newer more powerful chips on the way, I'm not worried or pressed at all. As long as i have overclocking, we can easily match or surpass power of those chips.
The mobile scene may about to change up big time with the Announcement of Ubuntu Desktop OS being introduced into Android. Plus it will be officially supported and brings a true desktop experience to mobile devices. This might be the start of the home PC disappearing. Can't wait till we get this integrated into Prime. Its not even a hack. Ubuntu officially supporting Android and hopes this will integrated into 2012 and later mobile solutions. So Win8 better watch out. Android about to officially have Ubuntu desktop support and experience.
Some might say the constant updates are a symptom of a problem at Asus. I say they are a company trying their best to fix users problems.
I really don't believe there's some grand conspiracy going on.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
What i REALLY like on my Prime + dock:
- Great battery life
- keyboard very usable
- Fast
- I am able to print and scan on my Canon Pixma (using PrinterShare and Canon apps)
- Instant on (awesome)
- Bright and colorful screen
- Comes with some good useful apps (Backup, MyNet, Polaris, etc)
- Thin and lightweight
- Android ICS and Google Market (definitely not an iOS fan here)
- I can use my QNAP torrent with the QGET app
Unfortunately my unit has a bright spot on the LCD and I am sending it back to the store. Also has weak WiFi and BT+WiFi dropout. I don't need offline GPS.
Things that could be better on Prime:
- Speakers, trackpad must be disabled to avoid cursor jumps
Things that need improvement on Android:
- Chrome, Docs.
I love the screen on my prime. During bootup I can see a couple spots of light bleed but during any use it is completely invisible. The screen is bright and clear and just looks generally amazing. I have zero dead or stuck pixels, no bright spots or any discernable defect whatsoever when using it.
I love its abilities to play video, it has chewed up and swallowed absolutely everything I have thrown at it so far including 14gb 1080p move files without a single problem.
I love its portability and take it with me to the university and use it all the time. Locks onto wifi without a hitch in the multitude of places I use it there. With it and the dock it is very useful for SSH into the universities Linux system to do some light Java and c programming in VI. I do wish there was an eclipse ide available for android and cannot wait for it to be available.
I also love to use its Bluetooth abilities to sync up my PlayStation controllers and play all my favorite oldschool games through its amazing ability to run many emulators. It also plays new games built for android some of which have tegra 3 specific versions and simply look amazing.
Lastly, I love how fast I can type on a screen holding it in portrait view and using thumb keyboard. The touchscreen is extremely responsive and I can type long posts, such as this very one, with speed and ease.
There are many other things use it for that i cannot recall from my very taxed brain at the moment but it goes without saying that I have no need for a laptop since I can carry this around and easily vnc into my home desktop Linux for any heavy lifting and use dropbox to easily get to any powerpoints or documents I may need on the go.
One last thing, its pure contentment for me to lay back on the couch while the wife does her thing and I can sit and browse the web with ease using boat browser. Never have I had a more satisfying way to consume the ol www.
rand4ll said:
I love the screen on my prime. During bootup I can see a couple spots of light bleed but during any use it is completely invisible. The screen is bright and clear and just looks generally amazing. I have zero dead or stuck pixels, no bright spots or any discernable defect whatsoever when using it.
I love its abilities to play video, it has chewed up and swallowed absolutely everything I have thrown at it so far including 14gb 1080p move files without a single problem.
I love its portability and take it with me to the university and use it all the time. Locks onto wifi without a hitch in the multitude of places I use it there. With it and the dock it is very useful for SSH into the universities Linux system to do some light Java and c programming in VI. I do wish there was an eclipse ide available for android and cannot wait for it to be available.
I also love to use its Bluetooth abilities to sync up my PlayStation controllers and play all my favorite oldschool games through its amazing ability to run many emulators. It also plays new games built for android some of which have tegra 3 specific versions and simply look amazing.
Lastly, I love how fast I can type on a screen holding it in portrait view and using thumb keyboard. The touchscreen is extremely responsive and I can type long posts, such as this very one, with speed and ease.
There are many other things use it for that i cannot recall from my very taxed brain at the moment but it goes without saying that I have no need for a laptop since I can carry this around and easily vnc into my home desktop Linux for any heavy lifting and use dropbox to easily get to any powerpoints or documents I may need on the go.
One last thing, its pure contentment for me to lay back on the couch while the wife does her thing and I can sit and browse the web with ease using boat browser. Never have I had a more satisfying way to consume the ol www.
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Click to collapse
What I love about my TP...
Screen > clear, sharp and very bright
Battery > Outstanding especially when you combine it with the dock
Design > clean, light and sturdy. I love the choice of colors
ICS > runs smoth and quick... the only issue so far after upgrading to ICS is the flickering screen
GPS/Wifi > Works very well and consistent... I don't understand all the hoopla surrounding the issues with GPS... if I really need to use GPS I use my Thunderbolt
Apps > Polaris Office, Backup, Cloud
My TP is like my Amex... I don't leave home without it!
I really hope Gary and Asus can fix the flickering screen issue
Well, I've had my Prime since 12/21/11, and to this day I have no complaints. In fact, I look back on the HC days and realize how killer this thing runs on ICS. Good support from Asus with consistent updates too.
Tegra3: Lag? Never heard of it. Impressive graphics, what more could you want from a tablet.
Screen: IPS+ is great, even in the sunlight (much better than I expected!) and is not fatiguing after extended use. I personally leave it on IPS+ mode with Auto Brightness and it's perfect.
Form Factor: This thing is so well conceived and executed. Quality build, everything just fits so well, especially with the dock.
Connectivity: Especially with the dock, having the USB and SD. HDMI out has turned out to be a better alternative than the built in USB on my TV, better image and sound quality.
Is it perfect? Maybe not, but as close as I could have really hoped. The things that matter to me are: 1) Highly useful day in and day out; 2) I enjoy using it day in and day out.
I was one of the lucky guys getting a solid TP since day 1, I honestly don't have complaints, this is a wonderful piece of technology in every aspect, it has everything I wanted on a tablet. The GPS isn't great yes, only performs outdoors, but hey, I don't really care, as I only used it to test for feedback here on XDA, I own a specialized navigation device for my car and a smartphone when walking in case I need, therefore, I don't need a tablet for such tasks. I wanted a Prime for other things, email, notes, video, surfing and most of all, a portable yet powerful machine to carry around. The flexibility is incredible and the battery life ridiculous, please name a device on the market with this characteristics?! Yep, the TP is unique, enough said...
Cheers
Another happy camper. I have not had any problems with my prime at all. I've used it 60' from my router with BT enabled and disabled. Made no difference.
It works great for me, no matter where I take it as long as there is a wifi signal.
I just wish my keyboard dock would show up after being on backorder for over two months.
I use my Prime mainly for watching worldwide cams, listening to radio/police scanners in my local area, reading emails, cloud printing, drop box, remote access to my PC and other client PC's.
I wouldn't trade this Tablet for any other available on the market at this time. I love it. It's fast, great resolution, handles every app that I've thrown at it. I'll hang onto it until ASUS comes out with a 6 or 8 core Tablet.
I love my TF PRime!
demandarin said:
This is for the people Satisfied with their device. People that are happy with device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have my prime since the 4th of January, and just recently found a dock in stock. Mine is one of the early BCO* machines. (BCOKAS005) but works like a charm. No screen bleed through, the speakers after rooting and applying the help here are far better.
First, I absolutely love ICS and the ASUS' screen quality. It's outstanding! The GPS on my unit has the usual issues, but why would I want to lug around a tablet for GPS! I also looked at is a value-added feature. It works, good. It doesn't, that's fine too.
What astounds me is the sleek design of the slate. I have mine Docked most of the time and love the "netbook" look. It's the center of conversation whenever people come by.
I've used it as a VNC client and server. I ran FTP servers, IRC clients, even a bittorrent client. I absolutely love it's ability to not only stream from DLNA, but actually run as a DLNA server. There's so much this little piece of kit can do, and so elegantly, it daily points out to me just how far personal computers have come from their humble beginnings in the late 70s.
I LOVE MY PRIME. If I was to change something, I would get the 64gig model, but I spent a few minutes moving large media files to microSD and USB connected drive, and have much more memory for software.
Long posts like this one would be difficult using the virtual keyboard. I touch type and the base's keyboard, even though it's chicklet is more than enough to type well.
This slate was a gift from my wife. I bought the dock; and have been loving my little netbook ever since
I love my Prime, like no other
I love my Prime, like no otherself, really. I use it CONSTANTLY, pretty much most of the day at work (I had to justify the cost by doing SOME work with the thing) I basically take all my meeting notes with it, and I have all my company appointments come through using Google Sync to Outlook on my desktop.
Thank God for ICS we use a Cisco VPN solutionat work, and on Honeycomb, getting a VPN connections was never gonna happen. I knew the solution was in ICS, so I was super happy that Asus got it out even earlier than scheduled.
I do get pissed about GPS, and will never let Asus off the hook for that screw up, but that does not negate the fact that My Prime is a stellar device. I take it down to breakfast at work and read news (News 360, News Republic, Pulse, PressReader, USA Today and Google Currents. That enough NEWS for ya?
The only current issues are that .15 blew away whatever GPS I had (it comes and goes with these frequent updates.) While that makes me a bit grumpy, as I don't have any major issues, it's a necessary evil, as Asus busts their collective butt to fix the serious issues that affect some users. These are almost a "rite of passage" for the first Tegra 3 Tablet in existence.
The other issue I see is stuttering/freezing on Riptide and Shire Runner. I am still trying to get a fix for that. Best I can do is reboot just before playing as a workaround for the present.
Why mention these things in a "What works great on your Prime" thread? Easy one. BALANCE.
It's not all a bowl of cherries running at the bleeding edge, sometimes the teething pains are quite dreadful, but a small price to pay to "boldly go where no tablet has gone before".
And no stealing my slogan there, Demandarin! Excuse me while I go see about rolling back to .14. Maybe. I have to decide on that still.
SmartAs$Phone said:
I love my Prime, like no otherself, really. I use it CONSTANTLY, pretty much most of the day at work (I had to justify the cost by doing SOME work with the thing) I basically take all my meeting notes with it, and I have all my company appointments come through using Google Sync to Outlook on my desktop.
Thank God for ICS we use a Cisco VPN solutionat work, and on Honeycomb, getting a VPN connections was never gonna happen. I knew the solution was in ICS, so I was super happy that Asus got it out even earlier than scheduled.
I do get pissed about GPS, and will never let Asus off the hook for that screw up, but that does not negate the fact that My Prime is a stellar device. I take it down to breakfast at work and read news (News 360, News Republic, Pulse, PressReader, USA Today and Google Currents. That enough NEWS for ya?
The only current issues are that .15 blew away whatever GPS I had (it comes and goes with these frequent updates.) While that makes me a bit grumpy, as I don't have any major issues, it's a necessary evil, as Asus busts their collective butt to fix the serious issues that affect some users. These are almost a "rite of passage" for the first Tegra 3 Tablet in existence.
The other issue I see is stuttering/freezing on Riptide and Shire Runner. I am still trying to get a fix for that. Best I can do is reboot just before playing as a workaround for the present.
Why mention these things in a "What works great on your Prime" thread? Easy one. BALANCE.
It's not all a bowl of cherries running at the bleeding edge, sometimes the teething pains are quite dreadful, but a small price to pay to "boldly go where no tablet has gone before".
And no stealing my slogan there, Demandarin! Excuse me while I go see about rolling back to .14. Maybe. I have to decide on that still.
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Click to collapse
Good post. Last part made me grin..lol.
I think you should just stay on .15. The stuttering in games not caused by update. I had that happen randomly even on honeycomb and early ICS builds. Not sure what exactly causes it. I know once it goes away or I get it to go away, it usually doesn't come back. I had same deal happen with 9mm game. As soon as i started up the stage, I could play for a few seconds then screen/game would stutter n start flashing. Happened several times in a row. I was about to give up on it but tried a few things first. First I made sure I had no b.s. apps or anything running. To make sure game had as much ram as possible to run with. Then I rebooted the tablet. Issue went away and has been good ever since. Even beat the game. Similar thing happened with my shadlwgun THd that came with prime, since I bought it at Gamestop. I could play for a while then game would stutter n freeze. I just exited out the game completely then relaunched it and everything was well. All my games play very good now n i have alot of them.
Have most of all the heavy duty, good graphics games. Like 9mm, Asphault6 HD, Dead space, Madden 2012, new sonic(not b.s. sonic cd..lol), Sprinkle, Backstab HD, Samurai 2 vengeance, Shine runner THD, Riptide GP THD, air attack HD, Grabitron, Osmosis HD, Sentinel, Neo Geo emulator, PlayStation emulator, Snes emulator, genesis/Sega master system emulator, OnLive....and lotz more...lol
Gaming is a blast on this device. I have the iControlPad a bluetooth gamepad for mobile devices. Works beautifully, and the popular emulators work just 100% perfect on the tegra3 while having great battery life.
I can even output it to a TV and play all those great classics like FF7, Zelda OOT, Tony Hawk 2, Starfox in HD.
Also i think point and click adventures are perfect for a touchscreen device. I hope devs see this as well and release lots of them to the market
My wife and i really love to play stuff toghether cuddled up on the couch, and adventures are the perfect games for that.
Browsing of course is superb and i like it even more than on a regular PC.
And its just something else to watch movies wherever i want. I mean yeah i could hook up a laptop to my TV before, but ah its always a hassle. Then the battery runs out after you're half way through, you need to look for a cable, then the cable is not long enough etcetc. Having the screen just in your hands, is something else.
Oh btw i dont have any issues so far. GPS works as i expected - gets a lock everytime but wont be usable for navigation. Wifi is strong all over my place.
Oh and a little bonus - my electric bill is cheaper because i dont use my PC all that much anymore
And when i'm using the prime it feels like the future has arrived. If you know what i mean
Most of you probably don't recognize my name because I only posted while we were waiting for the release of the Prime.
I generally don't post because almost everything I would post about already has a thread. And we all know how congested this forum is with useless posts.
This time I was prompted to post because I wanted to share a nice experience I had, albeit small compared to what others have posted in this thread.
This morning I spent two hours playing Riptide GP. I usually play this on balanced mode, but today I forgot to change the setting and it was in power saver mode as I played. To my surprise the game functioned great, even in power save mode! I played for a good two hours straight and I took less than 20% of my battery.
Like I said this is a small thing but as I use my Prime more and more I am realizing just how premium this device is. I'm soooo happy with my purchase.
Dock is on its way to me is a couple if weeks! Icing on the cake at that point.
desert_mouse said:
Most of you probably don't recognize my name because I only posted while we were waiting for the release of the Prime.
I generally don't post because almost everything I would post about already has a thread. And we all know how congested this forum is with useless posts.
This time I was prompted to post because I wanted to share a nice experience I had, albeit small compared to what others have posted in this thread.
This morning I spent two hours playing Riptide GP. I usually play this on balanced mode, but today I forgot to change the setting and it was in power saver mode as I played. To my surprise the game functioned great, even in power save mode! I played for a good two hours straight and I took less than 20% of my battery.
Like I said this is a small thing but as I use my Prime more and more I am realizing just how premium this device is. I'm soooo happy with my purchase.
Dock is on its way to me is a couple if weeks! Icing on the cake at that point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I recognize the name but yes, games play great on prime in power savings mode also. I think I remember seeing that the power settings doesn't exactly apply 100% to playing games or watching movies. The processor will scale as needed to push the games. That's why you played game with no issue on power savings mode. Also why you can throw any type of HD movie at prime and it'll play fine even on lowest power setting. I've seen it actually recommended to play movies in that mode for the longest battery life.
No experience is too big or too small. Glad this thread made you come out and post on the experience. We need more positivity or good experiences being let known to others. Lots of people tend to think its just issues surrounding this device. Which is far from the truth. We have this thread and the Positive transformer thread to show the flip side to this madness.
demandarin said:
I recognize the name but yes, games play great on prime in power savings mode also. I think I remember seeing that the power settings doesn't exactly apply 100% to playing games or watching movies. The processor will scale as needed to push the games. That's why you played game with no issue on power savings mode. Also why you can throw any type of HD movie at prime and it'll play fine even on lowest power setting. I've seen it actually recommended to play movies in that mode for the longest battery life.
No experience is too big or too small. Glad this thread made you come out and post on the experience. We need more positivity or good experiences being let known to others. Lots of people tend to think its just issues surrounding this device. Which is far from the truth. We have this thread and the Positive transformer thread to show the flip side to this madness.
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Oh yeah I remember reading about that as well, regarding the scaling when gaming. More important was the battery life it took while playing. Impressed that it didn't suck away more.
I'm one of the very pleased with this Prime who doesn't post much but reads almost everything here. I'm annoyed that GPS doesn't work and principally I think Asus should be accountable for this. With that being said, at no time have I ever considered returning my Prime. This thing blows away anything out there.
I wish it were bigger..
My primary goal for a tablet is to read technical PDFs and its just a tiny bit
too small for my old eyes. close though and better then my ipad.
But that aside everything works great on this beast. My device never had
any wireless or gps issues. It can see as many gps satellites as my phone
does. Playing games is fabulous on it. I stream my media collection to it with
'emit'.
battery life is great with .14 and .15, no complaints at all with the thing.
Have noticed the occasion game stutter but only in "stupid zombies"
everything else even graphically intense games dont have the issue.
still need a jabber client that supports muc..
Serial BCOK - bought online at office depot mid January update .14
My biggest complaint is that the TFP has WiFi connectivity issues. I go to the university and there are areas where other android tablets and the iPad have signal allowing people to use the internet and mine simply refuses to connect or has random slow connections.
After having the Prime for slightly over two weeks, I can give you my first impressions, review, and overview of this hyped up tablet. I must say, finding one of these really was hell for me. It took me almost 3 months for a local shop to get stock for reasons unknown. And oh, I'll also be doing a slight comparison between the Prime and the iPad(chill iPad and Android fan boys). Now I must apologize if this is a rather long winded. I'm no professional reviewer. I'm just here to voice out how I feel and to help whoever that is deciding whether or not to buy this tablet. If you disagree with me, it's alright.
First Impressions
Screen
One of the the concerns I had for the tablet was the screen. You might wondering, why I had this concern. After using a Galaxy Note, I was accustomed to the really vibrant and saturated screen known as Super AMOLED. And I had quite a hard time deciding between this or the next Samsung Galaxy tablet(probably a successor to the Galaxy Tab 10.1?). But in the end, I chose this over the latter. I'm glad to say that the screen is actually quite okay. You won't get the crazy saturation and vibrance levels of any Super AMOLED screen, but instead you'll get natural and frankly quite vibrant colours. If you already have or used an iPhone, this screen should be quite similar other than the high pixel density. Talking about pixel density, when I first looked at the screen, I could(almost) see the individual pixels. Uh oh. As I used it, I sort of got used to it. I often wondered why Asus couldn't have used a higher pixel density especially because it's a 10.1 inch screen we're talking about. Visibility under sunlight is rather; disappointing. You can try using Asus's 'Super IPS+ mode' for outdoor viewing but it only makes it slightly more visible. I'm not sure whether Super AMOLED Plus suffers from this too so I can't say much about it. Compared to the Prime, iPad 3's retina display isn't as sharp as I thought it would be. It could be due to the matte screen protector that I applied on it, but the same screen protector on my iPod 4th gen. still looks sharper and more crisp.
Performance
I'll give you a head's up whoever that is not so familiar with the specs of the Prime - it's running on an Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad Core processor chip clocked at 1.4GHz(yes, you read that correctly), a more than sufficient 1GB of RAM and a choice of 32GB or 64GB of storage space expendable up to 128GB with an SD card. Oh, and it comes with a keyboard dock as well. Seeing all those specs, it's definitely an iPad killer, right? No, not really. Until apps and the right software comes, it'll perform like any other dual-core tablet. What a shame. And that's what I felt when I first used it. Ice Cream Sandwich, Google's latest Android operating system performed rather well. I'll be honest and say, that everything wasn't exactly snappy. Even when set to 'Performance mode', the browser crashed every now and then. I downloaded and used Dolphin Browser HD too, same thing happened. I actually came to a point of thinking of selling it for something else since I was so disappointed. I tried searching for solutions and ended up doing a cold boot. That partly solved the performance issues. I guess I'll just have to wait until the next update. Until that update comes or I just feel like flashing a ROM on this, iPad just seems like a faster tablet to me even though it's only the GPU that is quad core.
Battery Life
Advertised of having 18 hours of battery life docked to the keyboard, battery life isn't exactly as impressive as I thought it would be. First off, after using the tablet for internet browsing, Facebook, Instagram checking every now and then for a mere hour and a half, the tablet consumed almost 70% of the tablet's battery. But after using it for a couple of days, it improved significantly. Last night I tested Asphalt 6 for about an hour plus, the battery went down by 18%. As I'm typing this review from my Prime, it has drained about a good 35% in an hour and a half. After reading several forums, I'm pretty sure it's because of the latest update by Asus that caused this, not the tablet itself. iPad has a similar battery consumption rate.
Apps
As we all know, Apple's App Store was the king of all application stores/markets when compared to Google's Play Market(formerly called Android Market) when it started. As of now, the tables have turned. Day by day, I see the number of apps and games for Android tablets increasing steadily. Of course, some might think generally Apple's apps are more robust and premium. And while that is true, I also personally think that Android developers improve over time and learn from mistakes. Comparing the preinstalled applications, I say Android owns the YouTube app hands down. But when comparing browsers, I think Apple's Safari has a slight edge when it comes to the looks and feel of both browsers. Generally, I'd say Google's Apps like GMail, YouTube and Google Play are better on Android.
Overview
I think this is a great tablet despite the flaws I mentioned. It's all just a matter of getting used to. Battery life, the bloat ware and performance issues can be taken care of with future updates or flashing a custom ROM. As for the speakers, investing in a pair of compact speakers or headphones will take care of that. The keyboard dock feature is actually one of the main reasons for getting this tablet. And support for mice and flash drives mean this might be a replacement for your Windows device. Of course, not everything can be done on it but for casual users this is more than sufficient to take care of your browsing, gaming and socializing needs.
And oh, the comparison with the iPad 3. I would say they both have their own flaws. The more apparent question you should ask yourself is not the specs of the tablet, but the operating system they are running on. Is it the open source that Android offers? Or is it the closed, but simpler, but more refined that Apple offers?
Pros
killer hardware
Ice Cream Sandwich
comes with a keyboard dock
good viewing angles
able to hook up a mouse and external flash drives and hard disks! Solves my problems with a tablet
SD card and micro SD card slots
HDMI ports
Cons
battery life
surprisingly sluggish despite hardware
weak speakers
ergonomics were a little weird at first
quad core doesn't really mean a thing until apps support it.
has a fair bit of bloat ware
Here are some pics:
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Yeah, they're all on Instagram more pics coming soon.
Click here for the official product page.
Twice you stated that the Prime comes with a keyboard dock. That's not true. The keyboard dock is a separate purchase. Also you are a little late to the party. There are thousands of reviews and opinions concerning the Prime. I've had mine since December 20th.
Eddie Hicks said:
Twice you stated that the Prime comes with a keyboard dock. That's not true. The keyboard dock is a separate purchase. Also you are a little late to the party. There are thousands of reviews and opinions concerning the Prime. I've had mine since December 20th.
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yeah no offense to the OP but this review is about 4-5 months late
I don't share your preference, but it's precisely that, a personal preference.
On the Apps section, you barely scratched the surface. Sheer quantity of apps not a useful measure. Also, have you seen the Overskreen Browser or Stick It! ? The iPad apps are not necessarily more robust, nor are they necessarily premium. They just cost more (considerably in some cases for the same app on both platforms). What about Amazon's Android app store? They give away a free app every day (some are crap, some are not).
There's a pretty significant difference in cost between the two, relative to what you get. The TP is simply more bang for the buck. Apple likes to sell a Toyota for the price of a Lexus and make you think it's a Ferarri. Any shortcoming is the fault of the reviewer, not the product (you're holding the phone wrong).
Your battery life sounds terrible.... where is your brightness and Super IPS+ on?
And for visibility in the sun, I never had a problem and I've tried to sit in the brightest areas to see how much the IPS affects visibility and it does a pretty good job.
I can't say I aggree with your review really, your issues and critizism just sounds a bit far fetched to me. Your pros kept mentioning features found on the keyboard doc not the tablet. SD card slot, attachable to HDDs, mouse, flashdrives, require USB slots which is on the keyboard.
A review of a tablet, but giving 50% of the pros to just the attachment, Kind of wrong don't you think?
Wow, a lot of negative comments. I thought it was a nice review. If you already own the device and you're not interested in the comments of a new owner...don't read the thread.
bedoig said:
Wow, a lot of negative comments. I thought it was a nice review. If you already own the device and you're not interested in the comments of a new owner...don't read the thread.
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as an owner of one, i was very interested to read a new review. But the review itself just didn't seem very accurate.
yoursexyhero said:
as an owner of one, i was very interested to read a new review. But the review itself just didn't seem very accurate.
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Reviews of a review. Nice.
yoursexyhero said:
as an owner of one, i was very interested to read a new review. But the review itself just didn't seem very accurate.
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Sorry, your post popped up just before mine. I wasn't referring to either of the two comments immediately preceding my own.
bedoig said:
Wow, a lot of negative comments. I thought it was a nice review. If you already own the device and you're not interested in the comments of a new owner...don't read the thread.
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It's part of building concensus. His review was fine. Better than most, but he opened himself up for ridicule with his unsupported statements about the apps and the app store. Twice, bloatware was mentioned, yet no detail of what this bloatware is. I don't recall seeing AOL, Compuserve, nag-ware Anti-virus trials, or 90-trial versions of productivity apps installed on my TP when I got it.
Many are interested in the comments of a new user, but few will take a Mulligan when it comes to inaccuracies or other unsubstantiated criticism.
Great review...Looking forward to your next review on the Motorola Xoom!!
Just messing with you man, but yes you are just a little late.
I question your battery life results.
An hour and a half of web browsing, Facebook & Istagram shouldn't use up 70% of your battery, especially if you are using the Prime with it's keyboard dock.
Even if you had the brightness turned all the way up, IPS+ turned on and were running on High Performance mode, I don't think it is possible to use up 70% of the Prime's battery in 90 minutes with the usage you described.
I have played highly demanding games like Dead Space, Dark Meadow and Modern Combat 3 for 2-3 hours in a row on my own Prime and I almost always have slightly less than half of the Prime's (tablet only) battery remaining when I stop playing.
When doing light stuff like web browsing an Instagram for a few hours a day, it is common for me to go two or 3 days between charging.
almightywhacko said:
I question your battery life results.
An hour and a half of web browsing, Facebook & Istagram shouldn't use up 70% of your battery, especially if you are using the Prime with it's keyboard dock.
Even if you had the brightness turned all the way up, IPS+ turned on and were running on High Performance mode, I don't think it is possible to use up 70% of the Prime's battery in 90 minutes with the usage you described.
I have played highly demanding games like Dead Space, Dark Meadow and Modern Combat 3 for 2-3 hours in a row on my own Prime and I almost always have slightly less than half of the Prime's (tablet only) battery remaining when I stop playing.
When doing light stuff like web browsing an Instagram for a few hours a day, it is common for me to go two or 3 days between charging.
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When I had my Prime, I tracked battery life pretty closely. I've posted about it elsewhere on this forum, but basically my battery life was about like this (balanced mode, screen brightness about 30%, non-IPS+ mode):
1. Video: Prime was great here, burning about 7%/hour. I think the 5th core was being used exclusively for Netflix, etc.
2. Ebook reading, email, etc: use was about 10%/hour.
3. Browsing: for some reason, browsing was a little more battery-intensive, at about 15%/hour. This included any app that used the browser engine, like RSS readers.
4. Gaming: heavy gaming burned between 20-30%/hour.
So, even with intense gaming, the Prime should last at least 3.5 hours. And, I'd have considered that decent enough, all considering. Toss it in the dock, and you could game for over 5 hours.
wynand32 said:
When I had my Prime, I tracked battery life pretty closely. I've posted about it elsewhere on this forum, but basically my battery life was about like this (balanced mode, screen brightness about 30%, non-IPS+ mode):
1. Video: Prime was great here, burning about 7%/hour. I think the 5th core was being used exclusively for Netflix, etc.
2. Ebook reading, email, etc: use was about 10%/hour.
3. Browsing: for some reason, browsing was a little more battery-intensive, at about 15%/hour. This included any app that used the browser engine, like RSS readers.
4. Gaming: heavy gaming burned between 20-30%/hour.
So, even with intense gaming, the Prime should last at least 3.5 hours. And, I'd have considered that decent enough, all considering. Toss it in the dock, and you could game for over 5 hours.
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browsing will always be a heavy battery burner on prime. with or without flash on. same goes for my Ipad. web browsing is very RAM intensive. it can burn up alot of ram fast. so therefore its going to burn battery at a faster rate. now ddr3 ram would probably make web browsing burn up less battery since its more energy/power efficient. but even web browsing on my Ipad burns battery faster.
As for the op battery claims, it seems way off to me. never heard of battery burning up that fast with the little bit he said he did.
Battery is something I dont even worry about on the Prime. Asus got the battery department right
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Here's a fast and dirty for anyone looking at a prime :
For the love of GOD, wait until they release the .25 update. Staying stock on .21 is just asking for suffering. The bloat is there, no doubt, mostly from ASUS putting it's own widgets in - a task killer sounds like a nice plan until you find out it's more likely to CAUSE problems than it solves.
Right now there's definitely something up with the way the kernel interfaces with the Teg 3 chipset, the .25 update apparently will cure this, which will in turn result in better stocklike releases and some inlining of new kernels for the AOSP crowd.
If you're okay with toasting the warranty, there's budding dev support, and there's some genuinely good reworks of Stock available, or for those looking for the pure AOSP experience, there's more than enough excellent choices to cover you.
It's a genuinely excellent tablet, but ASUS, no offence, but you need to make with the chop chop on getting this tablet up to full speed. B- for your software, when even single developers with some time, motivation and a working build environ can outdo what you supply.
There, by now everything else that IS worth discussing regards hardware and the android ecosystem has been covered, what I've given is a quick skinny as to the Prime's current position.
Eddie Hicks said:
Twice you stated that the Prime comes with a keyboard dock. That's not true. The keyboard dock is a separate purchase.
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Now you see that all depends on having a narrow world view and continuing the belief that the only country in the world is the USA. There are some global territories where the only option is with a dock. Like the UK for example.
Apologies, and a little more elaboration.
My apologies to everyone for doing this review so late. I'm pretty sure many of you have already gotten it. But there are friends of mine who haven't, and are still deciding. Once again, I'm no pro in this so I'll take any criticism as lessons. I'm just letting people know how I felt of this tablet. Yes, of course, I've listed many pros of the keyboard, because it's one of the main reasons why I got it. I'm pretty sure you already know that it has the killer hardware etc. but that doesn't mean everything. Usability, is. As far as I know, trying to play a movie when I was in the car was rather uneasy. I could see the movie, but it's rather unadvisable if you'd ask me. I am not sure whether my copy is faulty or whatsoever, but I hope not. I just find it kind of ridiculous that even though I purchased a high end tablet, there's still tweaking to do to make it perform as it should. I will follow up a more complete continuation of the review in the near future. To whoever that disagrees with me; you're entitled to your opinions and so am I. I find it ironic whenever some argument happens because of something so small like this. As f now, until another update becomes available or I flash a custom ROM on this, I'm not 100% satisfied with this tablet.
Eddie Hicks said:
Twice you stated that the Prime comes with a keyboard dock. That's not true. The keyboard dock is a separate purchase. Also you are a little late to the party. There are thousands of reviews and opinions concerning the Prime. I've had mine since December 20th.
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It is. It came with the dock for me. Yeah, already noted. The whole point of this review is not for the already existing owners of this tablet, but for the ones for who are deciding.
almightywhacko said:
I question your battery life results.
An hour and a half of web browsing, Facebook & Istagram shouldn't use up 70% of your battery, especially if you are using the Prime with it's keyboard dock.
Even if you had the brightness turned all the way up, IPS+ turned on and were running on High Performance mode, I don't think it is possible to use up 70% of the Prime's battery in 90 minutes with the usage you described.
I have played highly demanding games like Dead Space, Dark Meadow and Modern Combat 3 for 2-3 hours in a row on my own Prime and I almost always have slightly less than half of the Prime's (tablet only) battery remaining when I stop playing.
When doing light stuff like web browsing an Instagram for a few hours a day, it is common for me to go two or 3 days between charging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, I'll get back to you on the battery life. Maybe it just needs time until the battery will learn my usage like some reviews I've read from others. But I do notice that whenever browsing takes place, the draining becomes worse. Gaming now seems fine, and I think it'll last for about 4 hours? I've also read there has been some complaints about the latest update .21 bringing battery drain when using WiFi. Oh, and btw it's 70% drained from the keyboard's battery, not the tablet's.
Nice review!
Hopefully the next update will fix the sluggish performance and improve battery life.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
I'm on the hunt for a nexus 10 at a local staples - the majority of posts I see in here are people *****ing about performance issues and light bleed or other build quality problems. Meanwhile I do see posts about people absolutely in love with the N10 (rightfully so)
The light bleed thread seems like a nightmare - although people who RMA a device 6 times should really get a life and move on to a different product. Is the light bleed really a major issue or should I go ahead and buy one?
Sorry for the junk thread but I didn't see very many threads in here where people are actually giving credit to the N10 and singing praises. hard to guage the "fringe" vs "the average person's experience"
Alrighty...my Nexus 10 is fantastic. Staples followed through on their promised two-day delivery, I have no light bleed, and the thing hasn't crashed or rebooted once. I immediately installed Paranoid Android on the thing, didn't even once boot the stock JB it came with. Couldn't be happier.
I love mine, i have not had any issues. My battery life is really great, works awesome and i am on stock, with multiple users running.
I love my Nexus. I had a Xoom WIFI (that is now the girlfriend's) that I loved and my Nexus blows it out of the water. I have Task650 and KToonsez's AOKP on there with KToonsez's KT Manta kernel and it's a beast. Combined with ES File Explorer, Netflix and Hulu the tablet is the ultimate portable media device as well as great for browsing and e-reading.
Love it. I have a little light bleed and it doesn't bother me at all. I don't get why it matters I guess.
I love mine. It is flawless. 16GB from Google directly
I really like mine (32gb, stock rom). The screen is amazing, especially with pages that have good text renderers. The tablet also has state-of-the-art performance in day-to-day use. No light bleed at all in mine. Native resolution apps are scarce on the ground, which is a bit of an issue but one that should be resolved shortly (I hope) as Android tablets seem primed to explode in popularity.
One annoying problem I've run into is Chrome's instability. Chrome has crashed at least once per day since I got it. When I say "crash", I mean full system lock-up, requiring a hard reboot. I've resorted to using Dolphin and Firefox with no problems. Google needs to fix tablet Chrome, though.
I'm not too impressed with the (inevitable) thermal throttling that basically makes the advertised 1.7GHz dual-core speed, a lie :/ But, to be fair, most of what I do on the N10 works fine and performs just fine
But still... essentially not being able to run a demanding game for too long isn't impressive...
Hiro11 said:
One annoying problem I've run into is Chrome's instability. Chrome has crashed at least once per day since I got it. When I say "crash", I mean full system lock-up, requiring a hard reboot. I've resorted to using Dolphin and Firefox with no problems. Google needs to fix tablet Chrome, though.
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I've used Chrome for a while now on my tablet, with 0 crashes or system lockups, but have heard many stories of people mentioning Chrome crashing and etc. Not really too sure what I might be doing different though...
Best tablet I've ever used. Screen quality is astounding, everything about it as as smooth as butter, web browsing with Ocean works like a dream, gaming on it is great, no lightbleed, and it's been stable as a rock. I literally couldn't be any happier with this tablet.
I have to admit I"m only on day 2 of ownership so that may skew some things, but I absolutely adore mine. Its fast, the screen is amazing, and the build quality is quite good. Its easily the best tablet I've ever owned in every single category except battery life, and even there its not bad at all.
Do I have light bleed? Yes. However, I've gone through absolute hell with warranty repairs trying to get my previous HP Touchpad's light bleed fixed which eventually resulted in them cracking the screen and my successfully suing them in small claims court (For the crack which they claimed was my fault and warranty voiding, not the light bleed). Following that, I went through four Transformer Infinities, of which three had light bleed. Its just a defect common in IPS/PLS displays, through the three tablets I've owned (all of different manufactures) I've learned its completely unrealistic to expect a perfect one. If its not an absolutely horrible amount, live with it. If you cant, get an iPad or realize that tablet computers are NOT for you.
Do I have the creaking back plastic? Yes. Every tablet made of plastic is going to have some problems. The speakers on the touchpad are notorious for cracking spontaneously. The Note 10.1 is so thin you can actually see it flex. With devices this big made of plastic, its unrealistic to not expect some sort of cheap feel. The Nexus 10 has it pretty good compared to some of the other tablets, so live with it if you can. If you cant, get a metal tablet or realize that tablet computers are NOT for you.
Do I have the thermal throttling? I dont know yet. But realize you're running a 1.7Ghz processor in something slightly thicker than a ball point pen. Look in ANY desktop or laptop computer of equivalent speed (yes, I know x86 and ARM are not directly comparable, but go with it for this) and you'll find a massive heatsink and fan. The Nexus 10 does not have a fan because nobody would buy a tablet with such, and the heatsink is quite thin to keep the dimensions down. You still have one of the fastest tablets on the market. Think of the 1.7Ghz not as a top sustainable speed, but like the "Turboboost" mode on modern Intel i3/5/7 CPUs where it'll ramp up to that speed to complete a task as quickly as possible and then dial back to something more easily sustainable. I'll admit that Google should add something to Android where if it knows a game is running it limits its top speed to prevent this very throttling, but that's on Android and not the device itself. Throttle the CPU back yourself, live with it, or realize that tablet computers are NOT for you.
TL;DR: This is a good tablet computer. Like all tablet computers, or like anything really, you shouldn't have unrealistic expectations.
Its very good. I think Google still has a ways to go though in the tablet world but its getting much better. Still the best android 10 inch out there.
I absolutely love mine. It is lightning fast, runs more games than my Infinity, the screen is incredible and the tablet has given me zero trouble. The battery life/slow charging is only a small ding for me.
Having had mine since release, I still love it. Easily better than my iPad 3 was, and massively better than any other android tablet. So powerful. The screen is so sick. The front speakers.
I agree with those saying chrome is a pos, the aosp browser is so much better! Weird as chrome works well on my n4. There is a tiny bit of "light bleed" in the bottom right cover, but as others have said this is a fundamental characteristic of backlit screens. My TV has much worse light bleed than my tablet!
I've been using mine for 2 weeks now, this is my first and only tablet.
I love the feel and form factor of the 10. It's lightweight and easy to use with one hand or two, but it still feels sturdy to me. I love that I can pack it around the house with me, or lay down in bed and prop it up in my arms and comfortably watch some YouTube or TV shows on Hulu. The overall mobility is great, and I especially look forward to traveling with it.
I'm happy with the media content. I've been with Android since day 1, so I didn't want to leave behind all the apps and content I've purchased up to now. From what I can tell I won't be missing out on any of my core apps, magazines, movies, etc... I will concede that right now many developers seem to just be blowing up their apps to fit the 10, instead of optimizing the app to fit. I'm hopeful this will improve in 2013.
Performance wise it's been a mixed bag for me. I'm running stock and unrooted with Nova Launcher. 95% of the time navigation and usage is buttery smooth, but it's not completely perfect. I have had issues with Chrome freezing up and causing the tablet to restart, so I'm using dolphin. I've had just a few other times when it's rebooted randomly. Gaming on the 10 is overall a superb experience, however I do have issues with lag and stutter in NFS Most Wanted and on rare occasions in Sword & Sorcery. I am sort of bugged that the gaming experience is superior on an Ipad, but I couldn't bring myself to buy one just for that. All of these things are annoyances at worst - not deal breakers for me. It's embarrassing though to have the system I love have issues like these right out of the box. Again, this is my first tablet so I'm unaware of what the experience is like on other tablets and OS'es and if this is a common thing or not. The positives are that I can use this thing for 3 days and have 6 hours of screen time without having to charge it. I like that.
The screen is fantastic! Prior to receiving my tablet I'd been lurking in the "Damnit, my Nexus has light bleed" thread and had myself half scared to death that that light bleed would ruin my experience with the 10. I do have pretty severe yellow bleed in my corners, but surprisingly it doesn't really ever become noticeable in my day to day use. It bugs me that it's still there and I have requested a replacement on the basis that I expect a near mint copy if I'm paying $400 for it, but I think you can get by most of the time without ever noticing that it's an issue. YMMV. If my next one is bad I might even keep mine because I don't think I have any other issues with it.
My overall experience is very positive. I do wish that the screen bleed issues weren't there and that Samsung actually would have taken the time to calibrate the color and gamma on the panel as well. I'm a perfectionist in my work, so it dumbfounds me to thing that 2 companies like Samsung and Google could release a flawed product, but this seems to be the best choice available to me so I've taken it. My nexus is basically a $400 bedside toy right now, but I love it! Eventually I will transition to getting a bluetooth keyboard and purchase one of the office suite products and use it for true productivity purposes.
I like the device but I hate the state that it's in right now. I can't believe they released this to the public with the not only the software issues that are well known, but the usb charging to top it off.
This thing should still be in final beta stages, not out in the public for nearly 2 months already.
Well my nexus legacy will continue - just ordered the 16gb on google play (what are the chances it becomes in stock as I make this thread heh)....
It will be a battle between this and the acer w510 tablet I picked up (x86 windows 8 tablet). Definitely need to get a bluetooth keyboard case ordered though.
I really liked it when it worked. I did have the hard freezes which required reboots. they were always caused by Chrome. When I unistalled Chrome and put in the AOSP Browser it was much better. The one thing I couldn't get over was the light bleed on all 6. For the money I spent on it, I couldn't justify just having to deal with it.
Very happy with mine and even with the couple things that irk me, I am glad I got it! Great title for this thread, because I wondered the same thing.
LOVE IT! Nuff said!
I love mine and have had no reboots or freezes, but I do get some lag during hard gaming. Fingers crossed that can be fixed with updates or a new trinity/other kernel.
I bought the Mediapad without much research to replace both my laptop and Galaxy Tab s3 and I'm not very happy about small things:
1. Keyboard operation is bad, it just places in the screen while I'm typing. I believe it is the track pad but also bad integration and problems with operation in landscape mode.
2. Again keyboard. There is no Portuguese official keyboard but some Chinese clone that already broke the hooks that grab the tablet. Not detachable, no decent 3rd party alternatives.
2. No more updates to correct issues: besides no more google android updates, Huawei seem to have dropped support for what was a flagship tablet. Went from 9.0 to 9.1 and that was that.
3. I use educational apps and, again, they have a hard time in landscape mode. It might be the apps but behaviours are similar and I don't see other people complaining about my issues.
4. I rarely need to use Office stuff but I find Android Office suit very poor. The Mediapad comes with WPS Office and that works a bit better, that's why the Surface Pro crossed my mind while I was writing this.
5. Desktop mode feels like some beta product that was being developed and now will not be finished.
6. This is more personal and subjective but I really feel bad about being supporting Huawei. I also don't feel comfortable with all the data gathering and services running in the back.
There are things I wouldn't want to give up though....
1. Screen is IPS but it's very good.
2. Battery life is great, with almost 0 drain when the cover is closed. I can have it away for a week and battery will have dropped 3% or something.
The Tab s6 is a lot of money, especially after adding the stylus and keyboard. I could sell the M5 and soften the blow a bit but at this point it would have to be really worth it...
Would you upgrade to the S6? Would you seriously consider a Surface Pro instead (I know virtually nothing about these)?
I also though about an iPad, I know that IOS is much better developed for a tablet form factor but I really deslike Apple's prices, software (I have 0 experience with IOS) and I would have to run around with duplicated cables.
Opinions would be appreciated! :good:
I own both. Bought the m5 a few months after it came out. Have had the S6 since a few days after it first came out. I can't speak to keyboard issues (I've never used a physical keyboard with any Android device), but as far as the "is it worth it" question, definitely! Coincidentally, I was messing around with my m5 (rooted/LOS15 in part to rid it of Huawei spyware) a few days ago and was shocked at how what I was once fully impressed with was now a slow, unresponsive piece of junk—relatively speaking, ofc.
If your budget permits I *highly* recommend the S6, but just read a few minutes ago that there is, or soon will be, a S6 Lite.
Samsung has it's own suite of, imo, highly objectionable software, but their tablet hardware is the best, and there are are methods to disable Samsung crap, just search this forum.
I defer to others about the battery, as I use my S6 exclusively at home, and almost always have it plugged in via a 6 foot long cable; I have it set to charge to only 80%, btw.
TiTiB said:
If your budget permits I *highly* recommend the S6, but just read a few minutes ago that there is, or soon will be, a S6 Lite.
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Saw that too after posting the thread and it caught my eye by being a full size tablet. Thanks!
Kutusov said:
The Tab s6 is a lot of money, especially after adding the stylus and keyboard. I could sell the M5 and soften the blow a bit but at this point it would have to be really worth it...
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The Stylus (S-Pen) is included with the Tablet, so no extra cost to give there. Keyboard is a considerable sum though.
The Tab S6 is definitely worth it - That said I've come straight from the Tab S 10.5, it's 5 generations newer than what I'm used to, so the speed of the Tab S6 was always going to impress me. The battery life is surprisingly good though, I'll charge it once a day, granted, but I'm using it a lot and never seem to desperately need to charge.
There's quite a few people around here complaining about the screen on this, but mine is great. There are some issues when it's blending colours in video, some pixelation and noise can be seen, but overall I don't notice that much. And it's only with videos for me, not static images. But some people seem to have gotten pretty unlucky, so worth bearing in mind.
I don't use DEX mode (Samsungs desktop mode) but I've taken a look around it, and it seems pretty decent.
For me, I've no regrets about buying the Tab S6 ( I got it cheap on eBay though, £450 a brand new and sealed 256gb wifi model) but I guess the worthy question is something only you can really answer. No buyers remorse from me though, for what it's worth.
bartleby999 said:
For me, I've no regrets about buying the Tab S6 ( I got it cheap on eBay though, £450 a brand new and sealed 256gb wifi model) but I guess the worthy question is something only you can really answer. No buyers remorse from me though, for what it's worth.
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Thanks for that! I've been reading some horror stories here, especially about stand by time. 50% drain over night I guess one would read about the bad experiences and not so much when everything is ok though...
The Surface is off my list though, too big and heavy and I could get a laptop for less, for my sort of use there doesn't seem to be a point.
I'll just wait, the M5 is still usable, it's a shame they won't be fixing what needed to be improved.
Kutusov said:
Thanks for that! I've been reading some horror stories here, especially about stand by time. 50% drain over night I guess one would read about the bad experiences and not so much when everything is ok though...
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Battery drain is often attributable to misconfigured apps, or stuff running that you never ever consider even using. These problems are easy to fix. Just something to keep in mind.
Kutusov said:
Thanks for that! I've been reading some horror stories here, especially about stand by time. 50% drain over night I guess one would read about the bad experiences and not so much when everything is ok though...
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I don't see how people are getting 50% battery drain over night - That's a ridiculous amount to lose when just idling. I switch mine off at night, but I've had it on today since about 9am, I haven't used it much except some very light browsing for maybe 30minutes, and my battery has decreased to 91% it is now 5PM. So, I've lost 9% battery in 8 hours threw idling with a little use thrown in.
Anyone losing 50% overnight needs to return their tablet for a replacement. Or optimizes their apps.
TiTiB said:
Battery drain is often attributable to misconfigured apps, or stuff running that you never ever consider even using. These problems are easy to fix. Just something to keep in mind.
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I will. Just saw on your sig you also own a S5e. How's that one?
bartleby999 said:
I don't see how people are getting 50% battery drain over night - That's a ridiculous amount to lose when just idling. I switch mine off at night, but I've had it on today since about 9am, I haven't used it much except some very light browsing for maybe 30minutes, and my battery has decreased to 91% it is now 5PM. So, I've lost 9% battery in 8 hours threw idling with a little use thrown in.
Anyone losing 50% overnight needs to return their tablet for a replacement. Or optimizes their apps.
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Something very wrong there, yes! The M5 still sounds better in that aspect though, I never turn it off and I think it drains quite a lot less than that. Probably because it is very aggressive with RAM, radios and app management, one opens 3 apps and when returning to the first it has to refresh, the thing is just gone. I wouldn't trust it with more than 2 apps open.
I guess one could tweak the S6 to something similar...
Kutusov said:
Something very wrong there, yes! The M5 still sounds better in that aspect though, I never turn it off and I think it drains quite a lot less than that. Probably because it is very aggressive with RAM, radios and app management, one opens 3 apps and when returning to the first it has to refresh, the thing is just gone. I wouldn't trust it with more than 2 apps open.
I guess one could tweak the S6 to something similar...
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I think you can do that with Android as standard, if you enable Developer Options - There's an option to limit background apps and kill processes as soon as user leaves - Sure that would give the same effect.
I think battery life on the Tab S6 could be better optimised than what I have - I mean, Samsung bloat is going to take a lot, so a debloat could probably give an increase in longevity. It's fine as is for me though, I only use my Tab at home, and the battery lasts all day, even with heavy YouTube usage. I'm down to 74% now and I've been playing games and web browsing - 5 1/2 hours have past since my last post. I consider that pretty good.
I recently bought a Surface Pro 7 i5. I used it for a few weeks and decided it was junk. For one thing, Windows 10 was a nightmare to configure to my liking, and I've always been a Windows guy. There's like a baby settings menu and then the traditional control panel behind it, and they do not mesh well and there are just tons of bugs, especially with the power options. The battery life was abysmal.. I was getting about 2 or 3 hours of use. I spent hours disabling services and messing around with Throttlestop to undervolt it and that helped the battery a bit, but it was still pretty awful if you want to use it at full speed. I also wanted to dual boot linux and I wasn't able to do it properly, as the 7 is too new to really be supported. And there's no gallery app of any kind for Windows comparable to something like Quickpic, which just amazes me. Android emulators for Windows don't really work either unless you are purely interested in gaming. There were so many headaches and it wasn't passing as a tablet for me, just an undersized and overpriced laptop.
I sold it and bought a tab S6 with the money left over, and I'm much happier now. I miss the raw processing power and the flexibility of x86 for running full versions of certain programs, but I can do 95% of what I want to do on Android 9, plus many things I couldn't do on the Surface, and it's by far a more pleasurable experience. I haven't had the problems people are talking about.. screen looks great, battery life is great, theres no drain. I used to be hardcore about rooting and removing bloat, ads, etc, but theres no need to with this device, it's pretty perfect out of the box.
I don't have the keyboard and I haven't even tried Dex mode, but for general tablet use, media, and emulating games, the S6 blows away the SP7 in my view.
Is it worth the money? Meh...
Is it very good? Hell yeah.
The huge plusses for me are form factor, stylus/writing, android, keyboard cover WITH trackpad, high end tablet.
I DO think it's too expensive, especially with the keyboard cover. But unfortunately there were no real alternatives for me (bought it 4 months ago or so)... Was thinking about the surface pro as well but first, that one is also hella expensive, but I also find it too big for my use. The Tab S6 is such a nice package to take along, very comfortable to write with/on (I use it a LOT for note taking mainly).
Android is a plus because my phone's also android and my experiences with windows laptops is less positive when looking at the battery.
But it's not a full desktop/laptop replacement... Dex does not support 4k so when connected to my monitor it looks bad. Also, some specific apps don't have proper alternatives for me on android (programming, music transcribing). For general tasks as browsing, mailing, documents, even basic work related stuff (terminal work) it is perfectly fine, but just not good enough at everything.
So yeah, it really depends on your use-case. The apps you have issues with on the mediapad will most likely have the same issues on the tab s6. For me the keyboard works just fine (coming from a tab s4, which had more issues) and is a nice option though I use the stylus most of the time. It is fast, lasts quite a bit (no standby issues here as far as I can tell, but it does use a reasonable amount of battery when I actively use it).
schoolpizza said:
The battery life was abysmal.. I was getting about 2 or 3 hours of use. There were so many headaches and it wasn't passing as a tablet for me, just an undersized and overpriced laptop.
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That's that then. It ends up pretty much being my thoughts every time I look at the Surface, I really don't get it... It's a very expensive laptop, maybe with a bit different form factor... But there are more interesting things like the HP Spectre Folio, x360 etc.
Well, I've decided to keep the M5 for a while longer. Was just playing with it in a store and it is definitely better than the M5 but, for my sort of use, I really don't see much of an upgrade there considering how much I would had to spend.
Thanks for your thoughts guys!
Kutusov said:
That's that then. It ends up pretty much being my thoughts every time I look at the Surface, I really don't get it... It's a very expensive laptop, maybe with a bit different form factor... But there are more interesting things like the HP Spectre Folio, x360 etc.
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In addition to not really working as a tablet, I was also surprised by how locked down the hardware and UEFI is. It really lacks the customization you would expect from a system running a full PC operating system. Like an Apple product, you can't get the most out of the hardware you paid for.
I spent 800 dollars on the thing and really wanted to like it, but after a few weeks it dawned on me that I'm spending all my time troubleshooting annoying problems and I should just cut my losses and ditch it for the S6. The Surface Pro has power and can manage some technically amazing stuff as a tablet (I was running GTA 4 and 5 on it after a lot of research into optimizing performance) but it's so caveated by the system wide issues, hardware lockdown, and lack of tablet functionality that the extra power didn't mean all that much anymore.
Your M5 may serve you well but I can't recommend the S6 highly enough.. it's a very sleek, handy, and impressive device that is limited only by the lack of Android software development in certain cases...a full desktop-like web browser and a good PS2 emulator being at the top of my wishlist.
schoolpizza said:
In addition to not really working as a tablet, I was also surprised by how locked down the hardware and UEFI is. It really lacks the customization you would expect from a system running a full PC operating system. Like an Apple product, you can't get the most out of the hardware you paid for.
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What you wrote made me remember I used to own an HP Spectre 2 in 1 laptop. I could never get the "tablet" mode thing because it behaved nothing like what I would expect from a tablet.