Smartphones and Tablets news.

[n_w95482]

Originally Posted by Demigod

Interesting, I guess I can retire 3G Watchdog when I get ICS. BTW, do you know what the latest rooted ICS is for an international GS2 (GT-I9100)?

I haven't looked into the GS2 much, but these two look interesting. It looks like the ICS scene for it is exploding, so there should be a lot of choices to pick from .

Originally Posted by Demigod

I gave away my Galaxy Tab 10.1 a long time ago, haven't gotten a new tablet since. I'm a sucker for high-res screens as well and I would get the new iPad if it can do 1080p in native format (especially MKV). At this point I'm waiting for a 1080p tablet from Samsung, using Exynos and Super AMOLED Plus.

It sounds like RAP may have tried it using iTunes-friendly videos. I would imagine it wouldn't have any problems with 1080p as long as it's hardware accelerated. My Captivate is able to decode high-profile 720p MKV files in hardware with no issues and it's using a relatively old SoC. I haven't tried 1080p on it but I have a feeling it won't work.

Edit: I put a 1080p copy of Office Space on my phone and played it using DICE Player. Holy crap, it plays with only minor stuttering! I'd imagine the new iPad could probably run two 1080p videos easily .

__________________
Later.

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Last edited by n_w95482; March 21st, 2012 at 07:41..

[Demigod]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

I'll have to press my power button at least 10 times a day then.

But the email thing is not critical. I mostly receive emails on my iPad. And either way, it's more my problem than everyone's problem.

The problem that needs to be highlighted is the fact that the in-app ads are causing this kind of battery drain. I did some fact checks, and even if you turn off WIFI and 3G, or install an adblock app, the app in question still tries to poll the network connection for the ads (and receive nothing in return). Although the battery drain is not as bad as if the ads were rendered, it's still affecting your battery life.

To be frank, I don't bother turning off my data connection. Battery life isn't really that big of an issue with me, at least as far as in-game apps go. Interesting you should mention e-mail though, since the data usage (and subsequent battery drain) caused by Exchange IS an issue. It seems whenever I use push e-mail for my Hotmail the data keeps getting used every few seconds for some inexplicale reason, causing massive battery drain (it would die in 5 - 6 hours, and that's without me doing anything). I currently have it poll for e-mail every four hours or so but it's kind of annoying since I love push e-mail but can't afford the battery drain.

Originally Posted by n_w95482

I haven't looked into the GS2 much, but these two look interesting. It looks like the ICS scene for it is exploding, so there should be a lot of choices to pick from .

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out. Ah choices, choices (I feel like a kid in an ice cream store, pun definitely intended)

Originally Posted by n_w95482

It sounds like RAP may have tried it using iTunes-friendly videos. I would imagine it wouldn't have any problems with 1080p as long as it's hardware accelerated. My Captivate is able to decode high-profile 720p MKV files in hardware with no issues and it's using a relatively old SoC. I haven't tried 1080p on it but I have a feeling it won't work.

Edit: I put a 1080p copy of Office Space on my phone and played it using DICE Player. Holy crap, it plays with only minor stuttering! I'd imagine the new iPad could probably run two 1080p videos easily .

That's why I'm waiting on the Exynos. My Galaxy S2 can do 1080p with no problems, and supports various media formats in hardware (just drag and drop). What I don't like about videos on i-devices is that they only natively support a specific format. I converted videos for my dad for his iPad and I would not want to do that with all my videos just so I can play them on an i-device (takes time, effort, and money).

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[@ruantec]

Finally x86 tablets are getting better and am looking forward to get either this one or upcomming ones:

Windows tablets get a bad rap among consumer product reviewers because they're more expensive than mobile OS tablets, they weigh more and tend to have shorter battery life. Vertical market users, artists and engineers see the beauty of Windows tablets, and the ways they can make digital art come to life or simplify work in the field. With the Samsung Series 7 Slate, those who appreciate Windows tablets no longer have to suffer poor battery life or heft. The Series 7 Tablet weighs just 2 pounds, which is remarkable considering that many Android 10" tablets weigh 1.65 pounds and the Asus Eee Pad Slider Android tablet with slide-out keyboard weighs 2.1 pounds. The venerable Asus Eee Slate EP121, one of the best Windows 7 tablets on the market, weighs 2.5 pounds and runs for just 2.5 to 3 hours on a charge.

Since this is a full Windows machine, anything you do with Windows 7, you can do with the Slate. Need a keyboard to do some serious typing? Plug in a USB keyboard or pair a Bluetooth wireless keyboard. Want to dock it to a large monitor? Use HDMI to do that. Need more storage? Plug in a USB external hard drive. That makes it more powerful and versatile than mobile OS tablets.

Is the Samsung Series 7 Slate wildly better than the Asus Eee Slate? Not widly, but it brings some important advancements like a second generation ULV Intel Core i5 CPU with Intel HD 3000 graphics, much better battery life and a better 10-point capacitive touch experience. The Eee Slate's multi-touch works OK with touch, but it takes some tweaking of Windows settings to make things better (enlarging fonts, for example, to make for larger touch targets). Out of the box, we're really impressed with the Samsung, despite its smaller 11.6" display. It's easier to touch even small Windows Start menu items, and Samsung's Android-like launcher is perfect thanks to its big icons. The iPad and Android tablets are still easier to use with touch, but this is as good as it gets for Windows 7, and it's not bad at all.

Horsepower and Performance

The tablet has plenty of horsepower thanks to the second generation 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M ULV CPU. It handles Adobe Photoshop and other CS5 apps handily, and it's more than up to the task of working with Corel Painter, Art Rage, MS Office apps, web browsing with full Flash (remember this is Windows 7, no need to worry about mobile Flash) and email. You'll notice a speed improvement coming from the Asus Eee Slate with its first gen Core i5 ULV CPU, and modest 3D gaming is possible on the Series 7 Slate. There's no dedicated graphics option for the Samsung Slate, but machines this thin and light rarely support such options (cost, battery life and heat become an issue).

The tablet comes with 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM that's soldered on the motherboard and is not upgradable. It's available with either a 64 or 128 gig mSATA SSD and there's no optical drive included. USB CD, DVD and Blu-ray drives work fine.

Samsung Series 7 Slate Video Review


Samsung Series 7 Slate Running Android Apps
We use the alpha release of BluStacks to run Android apps on the Samsung-- getting the best of both worlds! You can read our article BluStacks here.


More information, battery life and conclusion:

Spoiler:

Design and Ergonomics
Samsung's trademark skinniness is here; the tablet is only 0.5" thick. The back panel is aluminum and the quality and look are more appealing than the Asus Eee Slate's white textured plastic back. There are plenty of vent holes on the back and a very basic selection of ports. The tablet has just 1 USB 2.0 port, micro HDMI, a microSD card slot, and a combo mic/headphone 3.5mm jack. Controls are minimal with only volume controls, a power button and an orientation lock button.

The Samsung Series 7 Slate runs relatively quiet and cool. In the first day we heard the fan more often because Windows was indexing files and installing updates, but after that, the fan was either inaudible or fairly quiet when it did kick in. If you play Left 4 Dead 2 or stream an hour long Flash video, you'll hear it kick up, but it's fairly quiet when doing web, MS Office and Photoshop work.

Some Slate bundles include a surprisingly small dock with a pop-up stand that supports the tablet at a useful but unadjustable angle. It's a sturdy piece that's made of metal and it has Ethernet, 3.5mm stereo, one USB port and a full size HDMI port at the rear. If purchased separately, the dock sells for $99. Some bundles include a sharp looking Samsung Bluetooth keyboard that sells separately for $79.99, though any Bluetooth or USB keyboard will work with this Windows 7 machine. The Samsung keyboard uses two AAA batteries, and is light but sturdy. It's attractive and the chicklet keys have good tactile feedback though travel is low like a laptop's. The "03" version (the model number has -03 at the end) comes with the dock and keyboard and lists for $1,299 to $1,349. If you buy just the tablet it sells for around $1,000.

The first batch of Series 7 Slates were plagued with a quality issue where the UV adhesive used to glue the glass to the casing wasn't fully cured. If you're an early adopter and have a display that's lifting and/or showing light in the corners when viewing dark backgrounds, send it back for a replacement. Our first unit, purchased retail, came with 1 corner of the display lifted, and light distortion at two corners. Our second, purchased two months later has no problems.

Display and Digitizer
The Wacom dual digitizer supports multi-touch and pen input via the included EMR pen. This is a precise active digitizer, and not a capacitive stylus experience. It's perfect for handwriting using One Note or forms, and it supports pressure sensitivity for Windows integrated applications like Journal, as well as Microsoft Office and apps like Art Rage that use the WinTab driver. Photoshop uses different pen drivers, and Samsung offers two Wacom drivers to get pressure sensitivity in Adobe and WinTab apps. You can download these from Samsung's website, but they don't show up in Samsung's software update manager for some reason. It's often hard to get pressure sensitivity working in both Adobe and WinTab apps, so we're thoroughly pleased with the Series 7 Slate, even if the drivers aren't pre-loaded. Our only complaints? There's no silo or tether cord for the pen (the tablet is too thin and compact for a silo), and the very wide screen could be awkward for digital painting and art (it's better for movie watching).

With our first unit, the display had very vibrant colors but viewing angles weren't as wide as the Asus Eee Slate. Our second unit with a fully adhered display had noticably better brightness and viewing angles. So if you buy one now, you should get a very impressive display in terms of sharpness, brightness, color saturation and accuracy: it's simply gorgeous. The Samsung's colors are accurate, but the color saturation makes photos and digital art look better than on other monitors; keep that in mind when doing digital art or photograph processing for commercial purposes.

Samsung claims a very respectable 400 nits for brightness. The display is very glossy (sure to drive artists crazy, but it's hard to find a matte display slate design tablet). Despite the high brightness, the tablet is a bit hard to see outdoors due to glare.

The tablet has Intel Advanced-N dual band WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics and thus supports WiDi (wireless display). Rather than using a micro HDMI cable to stream audio and video to an HD TV or AV receiver with HDMI port, you can use a WiDi receiver ($100) like the NetGear Push2TV HD plugged into your home AV gear and stream up to 1080p video with 5.1 sound. If you're an artist you can demo drawing technique using a big screen, or give presentations wirelessly too. Very cool! WiDi software is pre-loaded but ours complained about missing DLL files, so we manually updated our Intel graphics driver and WiDi software from Samsung's support site and got it working perfectly.

Battery Life
Refreshing: a Windows slate running on a "real" CPU (not an Intel ATOM) that has very good battery life. The tablets runs 5 to 5.5 hours on a charge with WiFi and Bluetooth on, brightness set to 50% and a few heavy apps like Photoshop running. If you just use MS Office, turn down brightness and use WiFi only when needed, you just might reach Samsung's claimed 7 hour runtimes. The 5520 mAh Lithium Ion battery is sealed inside, unlike most laptops. That means you can't swap in a spare when on the go.

Conclusion
The Samsung Series 7 Slate is definitely the best slate form factor Windows 7 tablets to hit the market, and it's earned our Editor's Choice award. It packs plenty of power thanks to the Intel Core i5 CPU and Intel HD 3000 graphics that trounce Atom-based tablets from HP, Acer and Fujitsu. The display is superb though glossy and colors are almost better than life. The touch experience is the best we've experienced from a Windows 7 tablet, and we weren't stymied when accessing menus and smaller control elements like the "x" close box at the upper corner of windows. Samsung's launcher makes the tablet friendly for those who are used to iOS and Android tablets. The Series 7 Slate should be Windows 8 ready since Microsoft supplied this tablet to Windows 8 developers in mid-2011. If you need a Windows tablet, we can easily recommend the Samsung Series 7 Slate.

Source

Sure is expensive but at the end am buying a machine and not a toy

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Last edited by @ruantec; March 21st, 2012 at 17:37..

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by n_w95482

It sounds like RAP may have tried it using iTunes-friendly videos. I would imagine it wouldn't have any problems with 1080p as long as it's hardware accelerated. My Captivate is able to decode high-profile 720p MKV files in hardware with no issues and it's using a relatively old SoC. I haven't tried 1080p on it but I have a feeling it won't work.

Edit: I put a 1080p copy of Office Space on my phone and played it using DICE Player. Holy crap, it plays with only minor stuttering! I'd imagine the new iPad could probably run two 1080p videos easily .

No, the new iPad can only decode one 1080p video at a time. They updated the GPU but didn't update the decoder.

And the problem is... only MP4 containers get proper hardware acceleration. Everything else is software in iOS. You can remux MKV containers to MP4 within a minute or two on any computer, though, and still retain subtitles + soundtracks and so on.

Originally Posted by Demigod

To be frank, I don't bother turning off my data connection. Battery life isn't really that big of an issue with me, at least as far as in-game apps go. Interesting you should mention e-mail though, since the data usage (and subsequent battery drain) caused by Exchange IS an issue. It seems whenever I use push e-mail for my Hotmail the data keeps getting used every few seconds for some inexplicale reason, causing massive battery drain (it would die in 5 - 6 hours, and that's without me doing anything). I currently have it poll for e-mail every four hours or so but it's kind of annoying since I love push e-mail but can't afford the battery drain.

Apparently, that actually has something to do with Android's implementation of Exchange.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1443559

And ICS doesn't seem to have fixed it. iOS handles that much better.

Ironically, Gmail on Android is better on iOS. Gmail on iOS needs to be set up as an Exchange account, otherwise it's iffy.

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And @ruantec, I'm sure the Samsung Series 7 has been around for a long while. In fact, I think I have mentioned it to you at some point... That and the HP Slate, which I still regard as being the best Windows 7 tablet I have handled.

The Series 7, from the brief time I played with it, wasn't up to Ultrabook standard, but the weight and heat was very off-putting.

[@ruantec]

Yeah, with the power such tablets offer and my passion for UI desing as well as knowledge i could finally let my imagination fly

__________________

Current development tools:

Visual C++.net, Visual C#.net
Visual VB.net, Visual Webdeveloper.net
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Visual Basic 6

[rui-no-onna]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

And the problem is... only MP4 containers get proper hardware acceleration. Everything else is software in iOS. You can remux MKV containers to MP4 within a minute or two on any computer, though, and still retain subtitles + soundtracks and so on.

Are you referring to switchable/soft subs? How do you accomplish that while retaining hardware decode acceleration? Any special app needed for playback?

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by rui-no-onna

Are you referring to switchable/soft subs? How do you accomplish that while retaining hardware decode acceleration? Any special app needed for playback?

You just change the container from MKV to MP4. Sounds simple, but... it is. It takes like 5 minutes for most movie clips.

If you want to be thorough, you can also use something like Handbrake to reconvert MKV to MP4 and integrate external soft-sub into the file.

After you get the converted file, drag and drop it into iTunes, sync, and enjoy.

It took me just one night to convert a whole anime series into MP4 with better compression (smaller size) and soft-sub, and then I was able to enjoy every episode the next morning. Pretty neat.

Plus it's not any different. It's just like MKV... but now I don't need special decoders or VLC to playback anymore.

[rui-no-onna]

I've never gotten soft subs to work (granted, it's been a while since I last tried) on iOS. Last I tried, my iPhone just ignored the subtitles. Any specific format for the soft subs so the iPad will play them? I've always had to spend hours encoding to hardsub my anime. Most are MKV with embedded SSA subs.

I'm familiar with Handbrake (it's what I've been using for years). Maybe I'm just using an older version, though, but as far as I'm aware, it "burns" the subtitles into the video and re-encodes. I was hoping for a solution that will allow a simple remux from MKV to MP4. YAMB appears to work but even if the output MP4 has subtitles embedded, I haven't figured out a way to get my iPhone to display the subs.

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Last edited by rui-no-onna; March 22nd, 2012 at 08:20..

[@ruantec]

Today i found this:

PaceBlade PM240 Windows 8 Tablet with Core i7

[CeBIT 2012] During our tour of CeBIT, we have spotted the PaceBlade PM 240 (thanks to a tip from Wayne Rash), and this is a rather unconventional 12” tablet as it features Windows 8 and an Intel core i7 (vPro). While most tablets focus on mobility, the PaceBlade PM240 puts an emphasis on processing power and device connectivity. It is equipped with Intel’s Core i7, and comes with a full array of ports, including Ethernet, 2XUSB, HDMI, Audio in/out, and a docking port (+dock obviously).
Users can also choose between using their fingers with the Windows 8 user interface, or use a Wacom stylus. The latter is particularly interesting for professional illustrators who absolutely need to run on “desktop” software packages. Finally, one very interesting point is the dual-battery setup: often found in professional tablets, this allows a seamless battery swapping that does not induce any downtime. Usually this is critical in medical application, but let’s face it: nobody likes to shut down their computer.

Of course, all these features makes this “tablet” look more like a laptop with an embedded display, which is exactly what it is. So, we think that customers will mostly be professionals who need to run existing apps, or Windows 8 developers who want a “tablet” form-factor and a powerful CPU at the same time.

Source

While i have to admit that the tablet is quite thick still is quite tempting thinking about the fact that is powered by an i7 with up to 8GB of ram and two batteries. However the price may be a bit high even if i haven't found any more info about it

__________________

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Visual C++.net, Visual C#.net
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Last edited by @ruantec; March 22nd, 2012 at 11:06..

[@ruantec]

Also found this which claims to be the most powerful tablet in the world:

Most Powerful Tablet: Intel Core i7 + 8GB RAM + 320GB HDD

Who the heck cares about Windows 8 running on a tablet PC when you’ve got a tablet that is more powerful than most desktops out on the market? Meet the Sahara Slate PC i500 from Tablet Kiosk. This is the James Bond of all tablets, people. Running an Intel Core i7-640LM vPro at 2.13GHz, this puppy maxes out at 2.93GHz, while using 25 watts.
The twelve inch tablet features 8GB of RAM and has 320GB of storage space, allowing you to store a large number of HD videos, high res photos, or whatever you want to keep on there! It ships with Windows 7 Professional stock, but users can select Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Embedded Standard, or openSUSE Linux 11.

Consumers who are interested in slapping down $1,749 for this device should shell out some more for a USB-powered monitor. I recommend a second monitor for all those times where a 12″ screen just won’t cut it, and with specs like those, you should be paying for a tablet that can double up as a desktop/laptop when you need one! With that in mind, you’d really be getting two computers in one.

Source

Quite expensive and i don't like the design tho.

__________________

Current development tools:

Visual C++.net, Visual C#.net
Visual VB.net, Visual Webdeveloper.net
Bloodshed Dev C++, Borland C++
Visual Basic 6

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Last edited by @ruantec; March 22nd, 2012 at 11:20..

[rui-no-onna]

Originally Posted by @ruantec

Also found this which claims to be the most powerful tablet in the world:


Source

Quite expensive and i don't like the design tho.

Back when it was first released, perhaps. I think the presence of Sandy Bridge tablets would negate its claim to fame.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by rui-no-onna

I've never gotten soft subs to work (granted, it's been a while since I last tried) on iOS. Last I tried, my iPhone just ignored the subtitles. Any specific format for the soft subs so the iPad will play them? I've always had to spend hours encoding to hardsub my anime. Most are MKV with embedded SSA subs.

I'm familiar with Handbrake (it's what I've been using for years). Maybe I'm just using an older version, though, but as far as I'm aware, it "burns" the subtitles into the video and re-encodes. I was hoping for a solution that will allow a simple remux from MKV to MP4. YAMB appears to work but even if the output MP4 has subtitles embedded, I haven't figured out a way to get my iPhone to display the subs.

I think it may have to do with the way iOS 5.1 handles video files differently. After all, now iTunes takes videos above 1080p effortlessly.

It might also just be the clips I have used. I have used .srt thus far. When I use Handbrake, I just uncheck the burn in box, and it'll magically embed the subtitle.

Also multiple audio tracks is now supported, and iPad 3 can play back 5.1 tracks and downscale it to stereo out of the headphone port. But when it goes out of HDMI, it's pure 5.1.

[rui-no-onna]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

It might also just be the clips I have used. I have used .srt thus far. When I use Handbrake, I just uncheck the burn in box, and it'll magically embed the subtitle.

Looks like this is the culprit. I don't have this option in HandBrake so it appears my version is just too old (2008/11/23: 0.9.3).

[n_w95482]

0.9.6 came out recently, maybe try that one?

__________________
Later.

[runawayprisoner]

I bet this will make some people jump with excitement:

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive-...rive-s/183.htm

It's a USB hard drive that is 100% fully compatible with iPad CCK.

And what's more, it's just an enclosure (albeit quite an expensive one, but hey, it includes its own battery), so you can use your own drive. Looks like I won't be missing out on videos, should I choose to.

Just as an idea, though, you can use any cheap $10 enclosure coupled with a $50 USB battery to achieve the same thing, but it's not in the same elegant enclosure. Then again, the USB battery also charges the iPad and iPhone... so...

[Silenus]

I hope they payed something to the Glassklart theme author.

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[runawayprisoner]

Well, in any case, I returned the iPad 3 (again, this is the third time I have rejected the idea of an iPad device).

Here's a list of reasons for whom it may interest:

1) It's less powerful than my laptop. And by that, I don't mean that it's because the iPad runs a mobile OS or anything like that, but that I can accomplish a lot more with my laptop in general. The difference in hardware is easily highlighted, and the difference in software is notwithstanding.

2) The screen on the iPad 3 is ludicrously good, but in terms of color reproduction, it's only comparable to my laptop's screen by default, uncalibrated. It's a lot sharper, I'll give them that, but something tells me the current generation just doesn't have the panel quality that I'm asking for. I was one of the lucky few souls who got a good panel with minimal defects. The general consensus is that you'd have to have won the lottery at least once to get a panel as good as mine (no screen bleed, no uneven tint, no dust, no dead pixel). Apple's QC has taken a turn for the worse when it comes to their non-Pro devices. Likely to reduce cost, but God almighty, this is just borderline bad here. It's even worse than the iPad 2, I think.

3) Heat surprisingly doesn't bother me that much. It doesn't get that warm. That said, though, the battery charge time does get me. 7-8 hours to get a full charge from my laptop? And then after that I can only use it for about 8 hours (because I keep screen brightness at max almost all the time)? This is probably one of the least efficient Apple devices I have ever used.

4) Back to the screen: while it's amazing, there is... next to nothing (except texts and DSLR-imported photos) that can max out its potentials. To put it mildly, the screen makes everything look like ****, and the problem is... everything is ****. Save for my books in PDF form, 101% of the internet, 99.9999% of the app store (you can count half of Apple's own apps, even), 1000% of book publishers, and 10,000% of consumer-grade media (photos, movies, music videos, etc...) are not ready for this kind of device, and my guess is that it would take another 365 days for all of those to catch up, by which time, hell, the iPad 4 has already **** all over this one. It's a shame, but really... I think the screen is very, very, very overkill for what is available right now. It's too far ahead of itself. Maybe when Apple has invented a mobile processor that can play back 4K contents that we'll have something to discuss.

5) 4G/LTE is useless since 4G is the same 3G we've had since forever, and LTE isn't available where God has made land (and ocean). But hey, it's closer to my home WIFI, so I should be able to stream seven-twenty... what? No, no 720p for you, sir. Your LTE connection seems so fast compared to WIFI because you are streaming 360p! Jokes aside, there's a way to get over that. But apparently, Apple can't get over itself to at least negotiate with carriers to allow 720p streaming over cellular network. And 360p looks like... urg... imagine blowing a Chip-8 game up to your 70" HDTV. It's that bad.

So half of that (I'll admit, over half) are all criticisms to Apple for failing to deliver not the software but the content. Their software is solid, their hardware is ground-leaping, but... this is way too early.

I suppose something gotta exist first for content providers to start working with it, but in all honesty, I feel Apple could have provided developers with these toys like... last year so that more apps could catch up by now. For the most part, the only thing that's taking advantage of the new screen are the texts, but seriously, if I wanted ultra sharp texts, I'd grab the Kindle instead.

Kindle was gone, but I'm not getting it back since I don't read enough to warrant a purchase, but... this one is definitely going back. I'll take a peek again when next year comes and contents have filled up.

[@ruantec]

I guess you finally see why i was so dissapointed even before the iPad3 was out. The better screen and small changes just do not justify the upgrade and it doesn't change the fact that is just a advanced toy. I got my iPad 3 last friday and after bringing a weekend with it i'm now ready to return it back today and either take my money back or take a macbook instead. The reason for that is that when i hold it besides my iPad 2 i just feel like is sort of a downgrade instead of an upgrade and while i do not like my iPad 2 that much i just don't feel any better with the new one...

Because of this and Windows 8 Metro dissapointment i've made the decision to wait the necessary time until a proper x86 tablet PC appear on the market. I'm aware that it may take a while until that happen but i know it will. Since the biggest problem i see on x86 is the software(in this case Windows 8 Metro) i made another decision and that's avoid Metro and instead create my personal one which i just started this weekend.

So far is looking like this:

Spoiler:

I managed to replicate Apples stack re-order behaviour as well as add movable controls which are dynamically loaded as plugins. I guess its going to be the best way for me since am just sick and tired of seen companies failing to create a proper software for there devices(am talking about x86). I've never said that but right now i thank God to give me the necessary skills to change that myself.

__________________

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[runawayprisoner]

It's not the actual software that I have beef with. I can work around all that.

It's the fact that the screen seems overkill no matter what I throw at it that I have beef with.

There is absolutely 0 movie content available to consumers that can make use of even 80% of that screen. And since the switch to 1080p was just finalized recently, I doubt that'll change for a long while.

There is also absolutely 0 website that can even display its content 50% right at that resolution because most websites are made for 1280 pixels across, or below.

It's insane, really, that even in portrait, the iPad 3 is too wide for most websites to fit without scaling, and when scaling is applied, most websites look like crap.

And apps are also getting updated slower because now developers have to deal with 4x larger resources on 2x the RAM available. Since all contents are currently made to fit the 1024 x 768 screen of the older iPad, the extra RAM feels pretty generous, but when things start to trickle in, 1GB will feel limiting very fast.

Not even taking into account the insane compressions involved, 2048 x 1536 interface assets are way too much for most graphics designers, and especially because there are only so many displays on the market that can properly fit that much at 1:1 scaling and still show some menus.

I don't have any doubt, though, that Apple engineers really squeezed every last drop of power out of the A5X to power that display. In terms of software, they managed to keep everything peppy smooth and perfectly responsive even at such a resolution, something they still haven't managed to get right on the Mac computers (Xeon counted). I don't think any amount of work you put into your front-end can match that. It was God-like engineering. I would keep the iPad 3 if for nothing but the fact that it browses the web better (smoother scrolling, smoother zooming) than all of the computers I currently have in the house.

Too bad the web just isn't ready for this. Perhaps if Apple were to push 4K videos as consumer-ready and Youtube was readily available in 1080p minimum, I think it may work.

[@ruantec]

My problem is that i see no use of there super hardware even tho. i find there software design excellent. I would be happier with a x86 one but as we know they are far from perfect and let alone software... hence why i decided to do that myself to fit my needs.

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Current development tools:

Visual C++.net, Visual C#.net
Visual VB.net, Visual Webdeveloper.net
Bloodshed Dev C++, Borland C++
Visual Basic 6