Can you get an $800 laptop with five times the performance of the P Series, or a $399 netbook with better ergonomics and endurance? Of course, but the VAIO P is — and will probably always be, unless it drops severely in price — a niche device meant for those that have the cash to burn on an overpriced, albeit striking little laptop. But regardless of it not being a gadget for the masses, we’d still like to see it gain a touchscreen and more than four hours of battery life. Ultimately we feel the same way we did when we concluded the first VAIO P review: “There’s some cool stuff happening here. $800 worth of cool things? That’s your call.”
I have to say that I’m rather disappointed with Sony and their release of the VAIO P11. They seem to have only added a few novel features to the VAIO P more thoughts on this later.
If you’ve been itching to get to know the iPad, head on over to our review at UMPCPortal’s consumer focused sister site, Carrypad.com. We’ve had a month to get a real feel for the iPad and published our findings in a full review.
Don’t forget to check out the iPad’s product page in our product database for full specs, news, and more.
While many other sites wanted to race to get their iPad reviews out the door, we made sure to spend plenty of time with the device before passing judgment. After about a month of use, we’re ready to bring you thoroughly experienced review of the iPad.
When the iPad was first announced back in January, it made it’s way into mainstream news, as most major Apple product announcements do. This resulted in a lot of friends and relatives asking me what it was all about, and what I thought about the device. I wanted to get technical and explain what exactly the iPad was, but I found that the easiest way to explain it to non-techies was to simply say that it is a big iPod Touch. However, I knew that was not technically accurate. After all, the iPad has an updated chip making it faster than the latest iPod Touch, has support for even more multi-touch points, and with a larger screen, it brought forth the promise of more compelling applications experiences that one couldn’t have on an iPod Touch. In the end, have these differences really separated the two? Read on through the full review to decide for yourself.
Hardware
The iPad’s design is very simple. It fits well with Apple’s desire to allow the software to be the experience, rather than the hardware. Let’s start with a brief hardware overview (there isn’t much to see!):
The iPad feels like a nice solid slab. You’re likely to be surprised how heavy it is as you first pick it up. The outward appearance of the device is quite simple; there is a single piece of aluminum that makes up the back and sides, and a large piece of glass for the screen. Aside from some very minimal buttons, that just about describes the entire device. The back of the iPad is curved, which makes it feel slightly thinner than it is and assists with getting a grip on the device when it’s sitting flat on it’s back. Without the curve, it’d be a pain to pick it up. Actually, if you were to set the iPad face-down on a flat surface, it becomes easily apparent how annoying that would be.
The iPad is undeniably grab-able. It’s dead-simple to pick up and stick in a bag before you head out of the house, and it doesn’t need to be powered down like a traditional computer. Pull it out when you get to where you’re going, and with a click of the lock button and the slide of the, er, slider, you’ve got access to a polished computing experience in mere seconds. If you know that you can get away with the iPad instead of lugging along a full blown laptop, you’ll likely go with the iPad every time.
The iPad’s home button (the only button on the face of the device) has a very pleasant click to it, just like that of an iPod Touch. The iPhone, on the other hand, has a home button with a slightly squishy feel to it.
The headphone jack holds on tightly enough to hold the weight of the device (a trait which I’ve always appreciated on the iPhone and iPod Touch), impressive considering not only the weight of the unit but the fact that it seems relatively easy to unplug the jack by hand.
The iPad weighs 1.5 lbs (680 grams) and this makes it hard to use in a particular setting. I was very much looking forward to using the iPad as a sort of digital newspaper. In the morning, I get up and I check my iPhone for emails, texts, twitter, and the latest news. I imagined that the iPad would work even better as a morning device because of it’s large high resolution screen. Sadly though, I still grab for my iPhone in the morning. The problem is the iPad’s weight. The iPhone I can easily hold and use in one hand. When you are laying on your back in bed, there is just no reasonable way to get a comfortable hold on the iPad. Because of it’s weight, you need two hands to hold it. You can’t exactly take a hand off of the iPad to click on something on the screen if you are busy using said hand to hold the device in the air. It’s easy to hold the iPad in one hand while sitting, because one’s fingers extend around the back of the device and provide leverage. If you are laying on your back, however, you can’t hold the device with one hand simply because of the physics of it. If you try to, your palm will be all over the screen (attempting to provide the leverage that is usually applied to the back of the device), and your grip won’t be secure at all. I have worked out an L-grip that works to some extent, but it isn’t half as comfortable as just holding and using the iPhone in a single hand.
The iPad’s weight and typing style (more on that below) decidedly make the iPad a couch/sitting oriented device.
Screen
Apple seems to have found the perfect balance of bezel width (the area around the screen) for the iPad. If the bezel width was too great, it would look rather ridiculous. However, if the bezel width wasn’t adequate, it’d be hard to hold the iPad without accidentally touching the screen and thus creating and accidental input. There is just enough space to hold the device securely (while sitting), but not too much that it looks ridiculous.
The display itself is 9.7 inch and runs at a resolution of 1024×768 which is an aspect ratio of 4:3 (the same standard shape you’d expect from an SDTV [NTSC]) — a departure from the iPhone’s 3:2 (480×320) display. The large multi-touch surface supports up to 11 simultaneous points of input (tested using the on-screen keyboard, theoretical maximum may be more).
The iPad’s screen is covered with a big piece of glass which makes it highly reflective. Large overhead lights (such as those found in classrooms) can be a major annoyance when trying to use the iPad. You’ll have to adjust the angle of the screen to be sure that the light isn’t reflecting directly into your eyes, otherwise you’ll have a lot of eye-strain and a tough time seeing what’s on the screen. Real-world glare is actually a bit worse than what I was able to capture on camera with overhead lighting.
Despite the reflectivity, the iPad’s screen is quite readable outdoors on a bright day; much more so than a standard laptop LCD. The iPad falls just behind the iPhone 3GS in outdoor readability, but it’s still quite good.
The screen has an oleophobic coating which is supposed to reduce the amount of oil picked up from one’s fingers, and thus reduce the amount of smudge marks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the screen had somehow missed the olephobic treatment; the iPad quite readily picks up fingerprints. Seemingly more so than the iPhone 3GS which is suppose to have the same fingerprint-resistant coating. The fingerprints aren’t too noticeable when the screen is turned on, however, you’ll be wiping it down quite a bit if you like your screen to have a perfect sheen to it.
The iPad’s screen uses a technology called IPS (in-plane switching) which offers a broad viewing-angle and little-to no color shifting when looking at the screen from severe angles. The iPad doesn’t have the greatest viewing-angle I’ve ever seen (likely because of the glass covering it), but it’s acceptable, if not above average. The colors on the screen are very vibrant, though they may not be the most accurate. I could almost swear that it makes photos look better than they really are.
The screen also has a good range of brightness. 50% seems to work just fine for me. There is an ambient-light sensor hidden in the bezel above the screen. If you have auto-brightness enabled, the iPad seems to check the surrounding light as you unlock it, and adjusts brightness accordingly. It’s very rare to see the screen brightness change while the iPad is in use. I was only able to cause it to happen by holding my finger over the light sensor while unlocking the device, then removing it afterward. It seems that it won’t change from the level that it set as the device was unlocked unless there is a very drastic change in brightness. The auto-brightness also doesn’t seem to adjust using the full range of available levels, instead it adjusts in a small window based around the user’s own brightness setting.
Bluetooth Keyboard
Looking for information on the iPad’s on-screen keyboard? You’ll find it in the software section.
I was actually quite surprised when I was able to hook up my old (but still incredibly awesome) iGo foldable Bluetooth keyboard to the iPad. We knew that the iPad would have support for Bluetooth keyboards, but I guess I sort of assumed that Apple would only allow their own brand of Bluetooth keyboard to work with the iPad. Seems I was mistaken; the iGo keyboard hooked up just fine the iPad. All of the basics for typing are there, which is great, though functions like Home, End, Pagdown, and Pageup don’t work. Moving the cursor around inside of text fields with the arrow keys does work, and you can even hold shift and use and arrow key to highlight sections of text, just like you can on a regular computer. You can also tab from one text field to another, which is a welcomed touch. When using a Bluetooth keyboard, the iPad prevents the on-screen keyboard from popping up, which is great because it leaves the entire screen area open for content.
Typing performance really comes down to how proficient you are with whatever Bluetoth keyboard you decide to use. I absolutely love the iGo keyboard and I type significantly faster on it than the iPad’s on-screen keyboard. Though it’s great to have the ability to add the keyboard for greater typing performance, there have been very few times that there has really been a need. In almost all situations where I needed to do some significant typing on the iPad, it was a task that made more sense to do on a computer, instead.
Apparently Apple’s keyboards have some buttons mapped to volume up/down and some music playback functions, and they reportedly work with the iPad. My iGo keyboard has a bunch of keys bound to special functions that are supposed to launch specific applications (designed with old Palm Pilot devices in mind), but all of them seem to be ignored by the iPad.
Software
The iPad runs a modified version of the iPhone OS (version 3.2 as of this writing). Pretty much all of the elements are there: lock screen, home screen, etcetera; it’ll all be extremely familiar if you’ve ever used an iPod Touch or iPhone. A few notable differences:
Lock screen rotates
Home screen rotates
6 icons can fit on the dock (only 4 on iPhone)
Icon layout is 5×4 (iPhone is 4×4)
User configurable background
Lock Screen
The iPad’s lock screen is almost completely identical to the iPhone lock screen with just one subtle but interesting difference. Notice the little button over there on the bottom right? Tapping that will start a slideshow (Apple calls it “Picture Frame inch) which pulls pictures from albums that have been synced to the device and have been selected by the user. In true Apple fashion, you can select from only two types of transitions for this slideshow, and can’t even adjust the amount of time that each image is displayed. Apple created a cool new transition called ‘origami’ which is likely to be copied by many others. It offers a pretty cool way to display your photos, and shows several on the screen at once, then folds or flips to a new set of images. The animations are extremely smooth and there are a few different folds that the iPad randomly cycles through as it moves from one group of photos to the next.
Picture Frame is pretty cool, and if you have a nice library of photos, it’s a great way to show them off. With just the push of a button, it turns the iPad into perhaps one of the best digital picture frames that money can buy. It drains batteries quite quickly though, so you’ll probably not want to leave it on for extended periods of time unless you are plugged in. Unfortunately, looking at pretty pictures becomes rather novel quite quickly.
It’s are shame the the Apple doesn’t utilize the huge lock screen area to show you any additional information than what’s available on the iPhone or iPod Touch. There’s plenty of space for at-a-glance information to be shown, but it functions exactly as the iPhone’s lock screen does. Even when you get a push notification from an application, the screen will only display one a at time! If you get more than one notification, you can’t tell; any additional notifications simply overwrite the one that previously popped up. They could fit at least nine or so of those push notification boxes on the home screen, and yet a single tiny box is all you get. It’s a really inefficient use of space and a poor means of conveying notifications, and for the record, there is still no notification that an email has been received from the lock screen.
Home Screen
The home screen is a grid of applications at 4×5 or 5×4 depending on how you hold it. Scrolling between pages is awesomely smooth just as one would expect. Swiping all the way to the left pulls up the ‘spotlight’ search which searches through applications, music, videos contacts, mail, calendar events, podcasts, audiobooks, and notes. The dock can hold up to six icons (up from the iPhone’s 4). Aside from launching applications or searching, the home screen really doesn’t do much else.
On-Screen Keyboard (OSK)
The OSK, in my opinion, is one of the most important aspect of the entire device. Sure, people can tell you that the iPad is all about consumption, but that doesn’t mean that users don’t need a reasonably effective way to input data. While the OSK certainly isn’t revolutionary, it is definitely functional, and is the most well implemented OSK that I’ve seen on a device that surpasses thumb-board size. When it’s all said and done, the OSK works well for URL entries, twitter updates, and Facebook statuses, but I still wouldn’t want to type a paper on it. Even if I really had to do some lengthy typing with the iPad (and my notebook wasn’t an option) I’d bust out the Bluetooth keyboard. Here is a video demonstrating typing on the iPad that I shot a few days after getting the iPad:
It might be fairly functional, but it’s a bit awkward to type on (and you might feel self conscious doing it in front of others). You’ll be tempted to type with your thumbs while holding the device, but it’s really a rather uncomfortable experience. The best way to type on the iPad is to set it down on something, whether it be your lap or a table, and touch-type similar to how you would on a regular computer keyboard. The only issue with this is that you have to float your palms above the iPad, which makes lengthy typing sessions bothersome. Keys don’t have an animated “jump inch like they do on the iPhone’s keyboard, though I wish they did. The “jump inch is a very nice piece of visual feedback, but the iPad lacks it for some reason. The only feedback you get from the iPad’s keyboard is a slight change in color upon pressing a key and if you have the volume turned up, a clicking sound. I feel that it is easiest to type when I can hear the clicking sound (some feedback is better than none).
For more thoughts on the iPad’s keyboard, and what Apple could have done differently with it, see my Typing on the iPadarticle.
App Store and Applications
Apple didn’t want to throw it’s existing 150,000+ iPhone/iPod Touch applications out the door when the iPad was released, so they made it possible to run pretty much any app from the App Store on the iPad, even if it wasn’t specifically designed for it.
iPhone/iPod Touch applications work fine on the iPad and can be ran at their native resolution, or you can double the size, to more closely fit the iPad’s screen, using a button at the bottom right of the screen (while the app is running). The iPad will remember which apps you zoomed in and which you left at their native size, and subsequently launch them at the last size that you chose. While the apps work with no problem, they are obviously designed for much smaller devices, and thus they occasionally look quite strange running on the large iPad. Apps that aren’t iPad specific still use the iPhone/iPod Touch keyboard, and while it looks strange, it actually doesn’t perform much worse than the iPad’s own keyboard
The promise of the iPad was that developers would be able to use the additional power from the iPad’s new hardware and the extra screen real estate to create rich and compelling applications. While there are definitely some neat applications, I have yet to find any “killer apps inch. I haven’t found that one app that really justifies the size of the iPad, and gives me an experience that I can’t have on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Maybe they are coming down the road as developers continue to get experience with the device, but a month after launch I haven’t found anything too compelling.
Some of the new streaming apps are nice. Netflix has an application that will allow you to watch any video in its streaming library on the iPad (with a subscription) and the ABC Player application does the same thing for many of the shows on ABC. But still, these applications should theoretically work just fine on an iPod Touch or iPhone. Just being able to watch the same stuff in a slightly higher resolution doesn’t justify owning an iPad on it’s own.
I need to clarify this a little bit. I haven’t spent money on applications in the app store for the most part. I have plenty of applications which are specifically designed for the iPad, but they are all free (except for the Atomic browser [99 cents]). I haven’t seen any pay-for applications that are “must-haves inch and thus I haven’t put any money down. Sure, I could pick up Apple’s Pages app for $10 to be able to do pretty rich word processing on the iPad, but I’d much rather use my computer, which is more flexible for a task such as that in nearly every way imaginable.
There are some good applications on the iPad, but as I said, nothing compelling that provides the killer experience that really justifies the device. There are a lot of complex reasons that explain why we haven’t yet seen killer apps yet. For one, Developers are trying to keep feature parity between iPhone apps and their iPad counterparts. What this equates to is essentially the same application on both devices, but they have different interfaces. This is good from a certain perspective, but I have to question whether or not iPhone apps really have the necessary depth to them to create compelling experiences as iPad applications. A good example of this is the Evernote application. There is an iPhone app and an iPad specific app. They are great applications, but I’m fairly certain that there is nothing that you can do on the iPad that you can’t do on the iPhone version of the application.
Another matter complicating the app issue is that Apple has some pretty strict guidelines about what “apps inch should be. The name “app inch itself is designating that these are little bits of software that have individual functions. Apple doesn’t want apps to feel like full blown computer applications, and because Apple controls the app store, devs have to bow to this desire. While Apple wants apps to maintain a particular look and feel, the iPad is crying out for full blown applications and not just apps. I can only hope that they are still coming down the line.
Web browsing is undoubtedly one of the biggest components of iPad use. It’s really a nice experience to feel like you are physically handling a web page when you are dragging around and zooming on the iPad. The relatively large screen is great for displaying your favorite websites like they were supposed to be displayed. Unless you want to use flash that is.
The most frequently cited dent in Apple’s iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch armor is that the devices don’t support the popular flash plugin that is responsible for making some content on the web function. For instance, you won’t be able to watch anything on Hulu, because Hulu uses flash to play it’s videos over the web. Unless you are watching videos from a select number of sites (which the iPad can play because they are been specifically transcoded to do so) you won’t be able to watch any flash based content on the web. This is definitely annoying and it’s hard to explain why this is to who aren’t familiar with what flash is. I’m certain that Apple’s iPad advertising would have many people believe that they can pick up an iPad and watch Hulu videos on it, but they’d be sadly mistaken when they find out that they cannot. And how does one explain to them why that is? Because Steve Job’s hates Flash? That seems to be the best answer at the moment. What it comes down to is this: Apple doesn’t think that flash provides an experience that they deem acceptable for consumers, and thus they simple don’t include it in the product. With Steve Jobs’ recent remarks, it’s doubtful that they ever will.
So as long as you aren’t using flash, web browsing on the iPad is great. Text is super readable and pinch zooming and scrolling are smooth as silk. Page loads are responsive and don’t feel that far off from a desktop experience. The iPad makes for an extremely consumer friendly web browsing device. It’s also very simply to operate, making it great even for people who aren’t very good on the computer.
I wasn’t very happy with the way that the built in Safari browser handled tab navigation. It felt really slow, so I opted to go with the 99 cent Atomic browser which really improved the browsing experience for me by making tabs much easier and faster to manage:
Music Player
The music player on the iPad (which is found as the iPod app) looks and feels a lot more like desktop iTunes than the iPhone’s version. Coverflow is strangely absent, but I don’t have a major problem with that because it was much less useful than it was eye-candy. The layout is very simple and intuitive, and unlike the iPhone/iPod Touch, you can create (then actually name) playlists right on the iPad, which is nice. Genius is also back. With one button press, the iPad will make you a playlist of songs which are meant to be similar to the song that is currently playing.
While I don’t think many people will use the iPad in ways that one would normally use a DAP, it’s nice to have a well built music player. I told iTunes to sync my “Top Rated inch playlist to the iPad so that I could make sure I had my very favorite songs on the iPad (rather than my entire library) and save the rest of the iPad’s memory for photos and movies.
iTunes Store
Apple makes money from selling devices, but they also rake in a great deal of cash by making them into point-of-sale devices. With the iTunes store, they’ve created a dead-simple marketplace for movies, TV shows, songs, and more. The sad part about this is that while the iTunes store definitely makes it easier for people to get media onto their iPad, it’s pretty much the only option. No options means no competition, so Apple has free reign over pricing.
The iTunes store is broken up by type of media (Songs, Movies, TV, etcetera) at the bottom of the page and has a pretty rich interface for browsing songs and movies. You can get previews of movies and clips of songs before you purchase, and purchases are downloaded directly to the device. You can download an entire album of your favorite artist and it will be placed neatly into the iPad’s music player, album art and all.
Performance
Battery Life
The iPad has to power a much larger screen than the iPhone, but it also has plenty of space for a big battery. Apple rates the iPad’s battery as being good enough for 10 hours of web surfing (on WiFi), playing video, or listening to music, and as many have reported, their results are quite honest. The iPad has pretty awesome battery life for these tasks, and it also seems to idle at a very low power, meaning you can let it sit around for quite a while before it runs out of juice.
I started using the iPad at a full charge on the 8th of April, and after using it casually each day (around an hour or so), it wasn’t until April 14th that I had to plug it in at 3% battery life. This is pretty astounding battery life, and definitely makes the iPad a great product for someone who doesn’t like to plug their gadgets in every single night.
Speed
Performance on the iPad is slightly better than that of the iPhone 3GS. AnandTech has a good technical report of the iPad compared to the iPhone 3GS and Nexus One. Though AnandTech’s findings show the iPad to be quite a bit faster than the iPhone 3GS, I have to say that in my own real-world tests, I scarcely noticed a difference in website load times. There was a slight difference, but it was certainly not significant enough that someone who wasn’t looking for it would pick up the iPad and say “Wow, this is much faster than my iPhone 3GS! inch With applications, the iPad seems to be a bit more noticeably snappy with load times when compared to the iPhone 3GS, but it still doesn’t feel like any sort of huge jump, it’s comparable for the most part.
Video Playback
Video playback on the iPad is a real pain. It works fine, but only if you have video that agrees with iPad. If you don’t exactly fit the type of video that Apple allows on the iPad, you won’t even be able to sync it to the device. This is a huge pain for anyone who has a big digital media collection, and doesn’t have their collection transcoded into a format that the iPad likes. Apple officially supports the following:
H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
The worst part is that iTunes isn’t helpful at all when it comes to getting your video onto the iPad. For instance, I tried syncing an h.264 encoded video with a resolution of 1280×720, but it refused to sync to the iPad. Instead of pointing out what the issue was, iTunes simply told me that it didn’t support the format. It’s a shame because this would be a dead-end for a less experience computer user they wouldn’t know where to go from there. Apple could build a video conversion tool into iTunes to help customers get their media into a format that the iPad supports, but they’d much rather have people buy videos from the iTunes store.
One issue with video playback on the iPad is that the screen is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Most films are released as widescreen (16:9), which means you’ll have black bars at the top and bottom, or you can choose to zoom the video in to fill the 4:3 shape. This equates to is either leaving the bars and wasting screen space, or zooming in and losing quality. Neither option is quite preferable.
Where Does the iPad Fit?
This has been the biggest question since the iPad was announced back in January. People had been wanting a slate from Apple for years, but when it comes down to it, where does the iPad really fit?
When Apple announced it, they literally positioned the iPad between the phone and the computer. While I still believe that the applications have the ability to shape where the iPad fits, I don’t currently feel that it is a necessary device to go between a smartphone and a computer in fact it sometimes feels redundant.
When I’ve taken my iPad out with me to test it, I’ve often been sitting out in the open reading something on the iPad when my phone vibrates. I get out the iPhone to reply to a text, and I just think about how ridiculous I look. Do I seriously need an iPhone and an iPad? The mere fact that I feel silly wielding both is probably a good indicator of the answer. It just feels redundant to have an iPad and an iPhone (the same feeling may or may not apply to those with other types of smartphones). It feels like there isn’t any special experience that I can get from the iPad, that I can’t get from my iPhone, other than being able to do the same things, but on a larger screen. The iPad may not fit into my tech strategy, but there are some places where it does fit very well.
Because of it’s size, ease of use, and great battery life, the number one place that I think of the iPad fitting is on a coffee table. It’s great for short but rich web-browsing sessions. It’s great for showing friends pictures and videos, and for looking up places to go out to eat. It doesn’t feel like a device that is supposed to go with you. I previously described it as “portable, not mobile inch and after a month, I’m still feeling the same way. There have been times that I’ve been tempted to take the iPad with me, but in the end, the iPhone feels like just as good of a choice, if not a better one. The iPad is a great around-the-house sort of device.
The iPad is probably the single best device for sharing photos, currently on the market. You can hand the iPad to a friend and let them interact with images directly. Swipe to the next photos, zoom in, all of it is great fun. The iPhone has always done this, but the iPhone has never had a screen capable of doing the photos justice. The iPad’s screen is high resolution enough and has good enough colors to really make a great photo sharing experience. Combine this with the fact that the “Places inch view in the photos app is one of the coolest ways to display geotagged photos.
If you have geotagged images, the iPad will read that data and place push-pins, on a zoomable map of the world, anywhere that you’ve taken a photo. The ability to zoom down to a location and say “Look, here’s where I was on the Earth inch then tap on a pin to pull up the specific photo and say “and here is the picture I took inch is really cool, and I don’t think that there is a better way to show off geotagged photos. But I don’t quite need that functionality while I’m on the go, which is one of several reasons that the iPad feels like an around-the-house device rather than a mobile device.
Just a Giant iPod Touch?
The iPad is undoubtedly a solid piece of kit, but it’s hard to differentiate it from a mere giant iPod Touch. With the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0, the devices will become even more similar (things like Bluetooth keyboard support and “Places inch photo view will be brought to the iPhone and iPod Touch). Early on, I didn’t want to describe the iPad as a giant iPod Touch. I wanted it to be something more, something better. It’s got that faster processor, and a nice big multitouch(ier) screen. However, when it comes down to it, the iPad lacks a killer-app (for me) and hasn’t demonstrated any compelling experiences that I can’t already have (or will soon be able to have) on the iPhone/iPod Touch. The chip inside might be more advanced, but it really doesn’t feel much faster, and definitely won’t be noticeable to the everyday consumer. Despite the promise of deeper applications, I don’t feel that we’ve yet seen them, and unless/until they start popping up, I’ll continue to tell people that the iPad is pretty much a giant iPod Touch no longer out of mere convenience, but out of experience.
It’s finally happened. The JooJoo gets an Engadget review and there’s really not much to say; because the JooJoo doesn’t do much. It’s a big browsing pad with very few alternative usage models or software. 1.2KG is, as expected, way too heavy for a single hand usage (pretty dumb when you consider that you’re going to need one hand to use the one screen keyboard) and again, as expected, has a complete roadblock/showstopper of a battery life. 2.5hrs
Trust me, when, after 15 minutes use, you start to see 1hr-something on the battery meter, it’s a horrible feeling.
Using a (old) netbook platform was never the best design decision because it’s just not small/powerful/light/efficient enough. The Intel Menlow platform would have been better.
Engadget wraps up with this:
There are just so many things we wish Fusion Garage did differently with the JooJoo. Even putting aside the fact that Apple’s $499 iPad brings more to the table than just web browsing, the JooJoo is less portable, has a worse (if larger) screen, is unintuitive to use, and ships with half-baked software. We commend the start-up on its nice piece of hardware design, but until the software is given some much-needed love and the price is seriously reevaluated we simply cannot recommend this tablet.
I’ll wrap up with this:
If you want to mess around with a tablet for web browsing, look at the Archos 7 Home Tablet that is due to launch very soon. It’s cheap (under $200) , runs a version of Android and does a lot more than the JooJoo. It won’t be as ‘big’ and fast as a JooJoo but it will allow you to check out some casual (and mobile) tablet action without having to commit to a $500, 1.2KG table-top device. Other alternatives can be found here:
Once again we had a great audience for our live open review last night. Over 600 people dropped in to watch JKK and I testing out the Viliv S10 in an extended, close-up, warts-exposed review session.
We recorded twovideos from the sessions which are up at Ustream.TV (I’ll try and get these over to YouTube soon) but as a summary, let me go through some of the things we found out.
Hardware: Both of us are very impressed with the build quality, plastics and styling of the S10. It beats every other convertible 10 inch-er out there.
CPU differences: The difference between the 1.6 and 2.0Ghz version is of course noticeable. The 2.0Ghz version is much smoother in general operation and the difference was very noticeable when we compared the use of Microsoft’s Surface demo software. The 1.6Ghz version benefits well from the fast SSD though and once I had turned off Aero, the UI responsiveness went from poor to good.
Battery life: The production samples we have don’t show remaining battery time and only count down in 10% charge increments but we took measurements throughout the session and as the meter dropped to 80% I calculated that the device would run connected, in-use with 100% screen backlight, light browsing and video clip playback for 7.5 hours. For such a slim device it’s incredibly efficient.
Heat and Noise: None. Silent and cool to touch. One small patch gets warmer but it’s hardly worth mentioning.
YouTube video playback. 720p using Flash 10.1 beta was good (only tested on 2.0Ghz)
Video. MKV, AVI, WMV. H.264, Divx, WMV9, MPeg2 all handled well. 1080p played in Windows media player. NOTE: I now see that there are some additional codecs installed on this production sample. It’s obviously tweaked in terms of video software but it proves it works!
Special features: USB file transfer client. Fast SSD. 3-point multitouch. Analogue video output. (S-video, VGA, component)
Loudspeakers: Very poor.
We talked at length about the value of multitouch in slate and laptop mode and clearly there’s a lot to be learnt here. Multitouch is new territory for me and I can see it fitting well with programmable gestures and on screen keyboards in tablet mode but I still can’t get used to holding 1.2KG of tablet. For me, multitouch in tablet mode is only going to be useful and feel natural when the weight is 800gm or less. As I said, i’m only starting the multitouch journey right now and maybe I haven’t ‘got it’ yet. If you’ve got thoughts or experience with multitouch, your input here would be greatly appreciated.
The Nokia N900 ups the ante for the N-series of internet tablets by being not only a MID and a phone, but also introducing the latest version of the Maemo operating system. In an age of increasing smartphone innovation, can the N900 stand up to the competition, or will be knocked over by soon to be released devices?
We’d like to thank Dynamism.com for kindly lending this N900 for review.
Getting to know the N900
It is important to understand exactly what the N900 is, and a bit about where it came from, before one can see exactly where it is heading. The N900 is the latest “internet tablet inch from Nokia. Chronologically, the previous version are the N770, N800, N810, and for a brief period of time, there was a special edition N810 with WiMax. Now Nokia’s latest iteration, the N900, includes a phone, 3G data access, and a serious camera.
Maemo is the OS of choice for the N-series internet tablets. I believe from its inception, it has been an open-source project which has been run by Nokia and developed with help from the Maemo community. Maemo is essentially a full fledged Linux OS, which makes these devices particularly appealing to Linux gurus. When reading this review, be sure to keep in mind that I am not even remotely a Linux guru, so we’ll be looking at this device from a consumer perspective. If you’d like to read more in-depth about Maemo, check out the Wikipedia article.
I purchased an N810 back when it was released in 2007, and while I praised the beautiful hardware design, the software (Maemo 4) had some serious hurdles to get over if it wanted to be a mainstream gadget. Devices like the (then new) iPod Touch eclipsed the N810 as a consumer internet device, and I eventually sold my N810 and opted for a first-gen iPod Touch.
I’ve been hoping that Nokia would learn some important lessons from all of the smartphone innovation that’s been happening in the last few years (in terms of software design) and would have a strong offering with the Maemo 5 equipped N900. Despite bringing a more finger friendly interface to the N900 (as opposed to a stylus oriented one), I feel as though the N900 will run into some of the same problems as the N810.
Hardware
Let’s take a brief tour around the device:
Back: Camera with sliding cover and stand.
Left side: Speaker, micro-USB charger/transfer port, wrist strap eyelet.
Bottom: Nothing but the stylus silo.
Right side: Microphone, headphone and A/V out port, hold switch, speaker.
Top: Infrared port, camera button, power button, volume/zoom rocker.
Front: Light sensor (h), front facing camera (h), proximity sensor (h), earpiece, indicator light. [h = hidden in bezel]
The N900 has a 3.5 inch resistive touchscreen which has a resolution of 800×480. The CPU driving the unit is an ARM Cortex A8 processor running at 600Mhz. Included in the unit is 32GB of flash storage as well as a MicroSD slot for additional storage. The N900 also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and of course cellular connectivity and 3G (HSPA) data (oh, and a neat little FM radio tuner).
We are actually rather intrigued by the Kohijnsha dual screen DZ series netbook as a pro-focused mobile productivity device and hope to be bringing you some first hand coverage soon. For now you can take a look at some good videos from Wow-pow-blog which has a three part DZ series video review. We’ve got the first embedded below, and you can view the other two parts by jumping over to Wow-pow.
The Eking S515 has been with me for about a week now. It was sent over by Mobilx who wanted some feedback on the product. Fine, we said. As long as we can make all feedback public, we’re happy to help. Here’s what we’ve got so far.
The EkS515 reminds us of the Wibrain i1 we had about a year ago. [Article] No, we don’t mean to say that it’s an ugly brickling but in terms of usability and ergonomics for productive UMPCs, it’s up there with the best. The Eking S515 even looks good.
The trick (as we’ve found with multiple Windows-based devices) is to get some form of mouse control under the thumb. The U820, Everun, OQO 02, M704, HTC Shift (information) and even the original Wibrain all had a mouse pad of some sort and it makes a huge difference. Fine control of the mouse for selecting icons, window elements and links becomes much easier. Double-tap to click helps too and if you’ve got the mouse buttons available on the opposite side, it helps with right-click operations.
In terms of getting things done, the S515 is one of the best slider ultra mobile PC designs we’ve tested and if you look at any other slider device between 5 and 7 inch out there you’ll find that it does pretty well on battery life / weight ratio too. 2.5hrs for 450gm is slightly less than the Compal/Agio slider MID offers but remember that this is a 1.2Ghz device with hyperthreading. Noticeably more powerful than the Compal slider.
Build quality is reasonable although we would have problems recommending this for industrial use as screen hinges are always going to be a weak point. Plastics are good and we like the rubberised finish that increases friction on the keys and underside of the device. The Mouse pad area on the right of the screen frame is a shiny low-friction finish.
When closed and held in the hand, the device feels relatively dense although when used with two hands in typical thumb-typing mode, 450gms is an easy weight to use for 30-60 minutes at a time. Strangely, the device feels and looks smaller when in the neoprene case. Magic!
In terms of design then, we’re happy with the Eking. It feels good, works well and looks OK. This isn’t eye candy but it’s a very good productivity design.
The Eking S515 uses the new 1.2Ghz hyperthreading Z515 Atom CPU which produces some really good results. Boot-up is relatively quick and navigating around the OS is easy with the mouse system outlined above. Web-sites load quickly and standard def YouTube works fluidly in both embedded and full-screen mode but we’ve got three big problems to consider.
First, there’s the 800×480 screen. While WVGA on an 4.8 inch screen isn’t a problem in itself, implementing Microsoft Windows on that resolution is. A default installation with a default Firefox set-up will net you about 50% of the area for web browsing and many programs won’t even install if they check for a minimum resolution. Some notification windows won’t even show the ‘accept’ ‘cancel’ buttons causing a huge roadblock. Tweetdeck is one of those apps. With some tweaking, you can work round these issues. (Here’s one nice tweak that removes annoying notification balloons.)
The second issue is more significant. Slow SSD write speeds (on small block sizes.) This might sound a bit technical so I’ll put it another way. Constant short-term freezes or ‘stuttering.’
The effect was seen on a previous UMPC, the Raon Digital Everun Note, and I’ve heard of the same problem on some netbooks too. The problem occurs when the SSD and SSD-controller combination can’t write multiple small chunks to memory quickly enough. Buffers fill and any program wanting to read/write from the disk simply has to wait. It’s not a problem you see on hard disks and fast SSD’s but when you experience it, you’ll know about it. It reduces performance to frustratingly low levels and limits multi-tasking capabilities drastically. On the Everun Note it was possible to swap out the SSD but on the Eking there’s no such option.
We’ve been testing an application that might help with the slow flash write problem. FlashFire is a program that promises to speed up low-end SSDs. After installing we have seen a reduction in freezing and can measure improvement using CrystalDiskMark. Longer term testing is needed on this but we’re hoping it reduces the stutter and freezing issues to an acceptable levels. Buffering of data can have disadvantages though so use this at your own risk.
The third major issue to report on is battery life. The slider form-factor is a notoriously difficult design to use if you want to keep battery capacity high so as with all sliders out there, you can’t expect to have a huge battery pack included. Take the original Raon Digital Everun for example. It’s the same size as the Eking S515 and because it doesn’t have a slider keyboard, it has a battery that is over twice the size of the battery in the Eking. The Eking has a 13wh battery and users will struggle to manage with 2.5hrs connected battery life. The device has class-leading efficiency and to put that into perspective, it could run for well over 10 hours if it was connected to a 6-cell battery pack from a netbook but carrying 200gm of battery pack is not the idea here. We just hope that spare batteries are cheap and that the docking station also includes a battery charger. [Note: In a short, uncontrolled standby battery drain test we saw the battery drop by 1% every 5 minutes indicating that even standby mode will leave you with an empty battery if you don’t turn it fully off before going to bed.]
Finally on the list of minus-points is the fan. We’ve seen a few Intel Menlow-based devices without fans this year and we’re starting to see high-power ARM solutions that are also fanless so when the fan starts up on the EKing S515 it’s a little surprising. The noise isn’t too bad and the exhaust is tucked nicely away at the rear/top of the device.
Other notes
Keyboard Focused on thumb typing. The membrane-layer keyboard is not for touch typing but works extremely well for thumb typing. Well-spaced keys with a thumb-focused width work well. We found the space key had a hard spot on the right (exactly where we want to use it) but apart from that the keyboard is good. Missing F11 key (fullscreen) and right Shift key are somewhat annoying but +/- keys are well placed together (for zoom in/out on Firefox) A dedicated Internet Explorer startup button went unused. We hope this is programmable but can’t find the information in the Chinese-language manual.
BT/Wifi The 3DSP BT/Wifi solution was fast to connect and had very good Wifi reception. We haven’t tested it for efficiency but it’s a USB-connected module so we’re not expecting it to be the most efficient implementation.
Audio speaker Mono. Loud. Acceptable. Positioned (as is the mic) for phone capability. (If that’s your bag!)
3G module We installed a Huawei 550 3G (UMTS) card and were able to get up and running with no problems. Our test device had pre-installed antennas.
Camera The Camera is only VGA resolution but to be honest, higher resolutions rarely result in better quality for video calling. I had some fun today and recorded this video demo. As you can see, Skype video works.
Notes. (Continued)
Docking station port untested.
USB client capability. Untested.
Battery life: About 2.5hrs Wifi on. 50% backlight. No remaining battery life indicator in Windows 7 or XP.
HID drivers for Tablet PC software. Untested
Stylus. Tiny. Akward.
Neoprene case. Tight but good.
Screen. Matt. Good brightness.
Touch. Light-touch.
4-hour standy test saw battery drain drop by 1% every 5 minutes. (50% in 4 hours) which is very poor.
That’s about all we have now. Our overall opinion so far is that while the design is good and productive, there are too many issues for the pro-mobile user to have to deal with and work-round on this device. For the hobbyist and researcher though, the EKing S515 offers a lot of interesting and productive features at an interesting price point.
Jkk spotted that the Sony VAIO P11 that was just announced yesterday has already been ripped apart by a Japanese site called PlusD (page in Japanese).
If you’ve been itching to get to know the iPad, 
solution screen. Sadly though, I still grab for my iPhone in the morning. The problem is the iPad’s weight. The iPhone I can easily hold and use in one hand. When you are laying on your back in bed, there is just no reasonable way to get a comfortable hold on the iPad. Because of it’s weight, you need two hands to hold it. You can’t exactly take a hand off of the iPad to click on something on the screen if you are busy using said hand to hold the device in the air. It’s easy to hold the iPad in one hand while sitting, because one’s fingers extend around the back of the device and provide leverage. If you are laying on your back, however, you can’t hold the device with one hand simply because of the physics of it. If you try to, your palm will be all over the screen (attempting to provide the leverage that is usually applied to the back of the device), and your grip won’t be secure at all. I have worked out an L-grip that works to some extent, but it isn’t half as comfortable as just holding and using the iPhone in a single hand.
