Samsung Galaxy 8.9" Tab

[kgwilson]

Great thread and excellent review Ian.

 

I was in IT for 27 years utilising RF technologies of the day with forklift mounted computers & laser scanners in the early 90s, later moving to RF tags & then the wireless revolution took over. My initial attempt at retirement in 2005 took me out of this field altogether. I had experimented with tablet pcs in the very early 2000s but things were pretty clunky then. The whole iphone/ipad thing went right over my head as I was more interested in building my plane than exploring technology again.

 

Finally my old Nokia phone, converted to a pre-paid, bit the dust at the same time Coles advertised an LG Optimus Spirit for $49.50 with a prepaid SIM, $10.00 of credit & other things so it ended up costing about $30.00. The technology in this little package blew me away. Moores Law is certainly alive & well. I found out how to unlock it from the Telstra network, got a 16Gb card for $7.00 & went to Amaysim. It has cost nothing more and with my Google account synced even a complete idiot can use it.

 

There are thousands of free apps & it has certainly whetted my appetite for getting a tablet once the machine is in the air. I can't imagine why anyone wants to be locked in to the "i" thing with all of the restrictions, high cost & special charging connectors etc. Android for me (at present) but what about Windows & the Chinese O/S. It will be fascinating journey.

 

 

[ParkesFlyer]

Hey Ian,

 

It sounds like from your experience the Galaxy is very usable with it's fair share of advantages when compared to the i-pad. I'm trying to resist buying an i-pad but if I went with the Android Tablet is there a viable navigation program I can use that will let me use WACs and also see air traffic zones etc? I currently use "Bearing + Distance AU/NZ" (which I'm very happy with for what it is) on my Android smart phone. I'm aware that you sell a product (can't get onto your shop web page at the moment to get the name right, is it Ozi Explorer?) but as I understand it there is still an issue with sourcing charts, is this still the case?

 

 

[Herm]

I love my iPad... Or should I say Ijailbreak! If you want choice of apps and flying apps and don't want to spend heaps, go second hand iPad.. The market is set to keep people chasing the latest and greatest so older models sell cheap. As they say second hand does not always mean second rate... I can't do just about all the things the latest iPad does on my old model and I only spent $200. Once jailbroken you can do all sorts of things that Apple stopped you frome doing due to license issues... Things like running flash in web pages and any GPS device etc...

 

I guess owning an IPad and a Jabiru puts me right in BASH ALLY... But IMHO most bashers are those that are misinformed and rely on rumors and opinions rather than fact. Until I unlocked the ability of my IPad with a jailbreak I was blind to just what these great little devices can do for very little money. I love thrifty!

 

Here is you free stick,,,,,,Bash away..

 

Mardy

 

 

[ParkesFlyer]

Hey Mardy,

 

Well I won't be doing any bashing, I'm just up for options, and learning from others. I must say as a PC user I'm a little wary of the i-products, I'm also fairly happy with the Google solution but I'm not under any illusions, they all just want world domination!

 

My impression is that the most integrated and most popular software is currently only available for i-pad.

 

PF.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Thinking it's almost worth buying Apple just for the new map app..... Well done guys.

 

 

[Admin]

Thinking it's almost worth buying Apple just for the new map app..... Well done guys.

I like the rocky take off...hope the aircraft have strong undercarriage:

 

 

[Hongie]

@ nunans

 

http://www.mp3licensing.com/mp3/history.html

 

Read that mate... Unfortunately, I don't think apple can lay claim to mp3 much as they have contributed to its popularity

 

@ rest of the posters. I too am a "pc" man, and I don't mean politically correct. But I love the ease of use of iPhone and iPad. And as much ask would love to see ozrunways on a android, the variety of hardware and os Variations I'm sure make it hard.

 

Having said that I think my next handset will be a Samsung galaxy s3 4g when it comes out, simply because I want to be able to record calls natively, which is not possible on apple I understand as a result of the way audio is handled ( or something lol )

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Interesting article in the New York Times: Has Apple peaked?

 

"As

 

[/url]Apple

 

’s chief executive, Jobs was a perfectionist. He had no tolerance for corner-cutting or mediocre products. The last time Apple released a truly substandard product — MobileMe, in 2008 — Jobs gathered the team into an auditorium, berated them mercilessly and then got rid of the team leader in front of everybody"

 

 

 

 

[Allegro2000]

All,

 

It has finally happened I got rid of my iphone 4 to get a Samsung Galaxy Note 2. I had to wait 5 months for the Note 2, I can tell you the wait was worth it. The bigness of the phone disappears in about a day, I now look at my old iphone and think god that is small. When you are asking a phone to do so many things, trying to do it in a mini package is ridiculous. I am still converting over from Apple to Andriod which does not occur in a day in my case but the daily discoveries are exciting. With my clumsy fingers the stylus is so much faster.

 

 

[boingk]

Nice stuff Allegro, the Note really is a nice tablet/phone hybrid.

 

I use a HTC Desire X for my phone and love it. Good size but still light and very thin so easy to pocket, great processor and other techhead stuff inside to power it as well. I also have a Google Nexus 7 tablet which I hotspot to my phone, using the data from my service provider, to do business and internet stuff. Great combination of easyily carriable phone and nice, workable (but still compact) tablet. I'd recommend it to anyone.

 

As for Android... I reckon its brilliant. None of this fancypants "we're different because we want to be" b-llsh-t, just good, functional efficiency thats fairly easy to use. Very power friendly as well - the phone is getting several days battery life and the tablet gets something like 7 to 10 hours runtime (movies, internet, streaming video etc) off a charge.

 

Cheers - boingk

 

EDIT: Desire X unlocked and posted about ~$250 online, Nexus 7 16GB WiFi about the same. Add another $20 for a cover/keyboard combo and you've got a mini laptop.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

I got a nexus7 3g, its got a cranking processor, awesome screen and the latest android but its not that well made. after 20days the glue that hold the speaker and USB port started failing. took asus 10 days to action the repair.

 

 

[boingk]

Ah thats no good mate, mine seems fairly solid and 'feels good' in the hand. I will definitely say its not as 'flashy' as an iproduct but personally I could care less - it feels good and it works really well. Bought one of these case/keyboards for it off eBay and its great for typing or just throwing it in the backpack without worrying:

 

 

I've got an extra one of those, by the way, if you were after one.

 

Best processor in a tablet that I know of - Nvidia T30L. Its got a 1.2GHz quad-core processor and a 416MHz GPU for dedicated graphics processing. The RAM is DDR3 at something around 660MHz as far as I know. For reference, all this would blow away almost any desktop computer from only a few years ago. I remember when hyperthreading and multicore processors was a theoretical article in New Scientist magazine for cods sake...

 

Anywho, you know of any good nav apps for the little Nexus, fly?

 

- boingk

 

 

[fly_tornado]

just got my nexus 7 back turns out asus has no refurbed ones so I had to go back to the store I bought it from and grab one of the shelf.

 

there are a few bearing and distance au/nz and back country explorer would be a good start.

 

if you are after cheap 3G plan koganmobile.com.au are doing a $10 plan on Telstra 3G