There are a few different reasons for getting a tablet, most of them revolve around the same reasons for getting a smartphone but with the need for a larger screen. The two most obvious uses are probably browsing the web from a convenient device and reading. I think tablets have quite a way to go before they can adequately do both for a reasonable price, so I’m holding off buying one for regular use until we see some good innovation. Then why would I pick up this SmartQ V7 tablet?

I needed a lower-end Android device for testing. I own a Nexus One, but that is still one of the better Android devices out there (especially with Froyo), so it’s good to have something on the other end of the spectrum for developing against. I looked at picking up a used phone such as the HTC Hero, but eventually I thought it would be more fun to pick up a cheap Android tablet. There aren’t too many Android tablets widely available in the US right now, so I picked up one in a shady back alley (of the Internet) deal. I’ve had it for a couple of weeks, so I thought I’d post a review.

Physical Factors
There is no real standard for tablet size at this time, so we’re seeing devices that are the size of large phones being called tablets as well as devices bigger than your average sheet of paper. What size is best? It depends what you’re using it for, and I haven’t made up my mind. The iPad is a very nice size for use but not so great for portability. The SmartQ V7 is in the middle range with a 7″ (diagonal) screen, and it actually fits into a cargo pocket. The screen is actually just 800×480 pixels, so the density is a little under the previous iPhones. If the dimensions were more like 1200×640, the device would be significantly more usable.

Weight-wise, it’s about one pound (480g). For some reason that makes it feel more solid (dense) than you’d expect, but it also feels a bit cheap. It is relatively durable though, which comes in handy when actually using it….

Usage
This tablet as a resistive touch screen. That means it requires physical pressure to sense touch. The advantage is that it’s cheaper to produce (than a capacitive touch screen; consider that this device was less than half the price of the cheapest iPad even after taxes/shipping/etc.) and you can use a regular stylus, your finger, or just about anything to interact with it. The disadvantage is that it’s less responsive, especially to swipe motions. The processor is not fast, so you’re sometimes left wondering if your swipe registered, and you may want to punch the tablet (or “test its durability”). For simple touch, it’s pretty good, but the processor and limited RAM can make that frustrating as well. If too much is going on at once (in other words, more than one thing), a touch can take a while to register. Sure sometimes it’s virtually instant, but other times it can be a few seconds. For that reason alone, I don’t think this product is a good choice for the average consumer (of course, it’s probably intended for tech users, considering it does triple boot).

I haven’t really played around with Windows CE on it (and doubt I ever will), but Ubuntu is decent. If you’re bored, you can play around with the simple paint program. If you don’t try to draw too quickly, the stylus is actually pretty accurate. Well, assuming you’re not as shaky as me.

As far as Android goes, it’s running 2.1, though the old home program is set by default. You can change it to the newer one, but I found that the new one had some color problems with the app listing pulled up. It doesn’t come with the Android Market, but you can find many other app sources pretty easily, and some of those have their own market app to access and downloads apps easily. This tablet works okay for browsing the web. It definitely has “stability issues,” meaning I see force close dialogs somewhat regularly.

The One Amazing Thing
Okay, so this tablet sounds pretty bad, right? Well, mostly, yeah, but it does have one impressive feature, and that’s the ability to really dim the backlight, which makes it very usable as a simple book reader (I recommend the Aldiko app), especially at night. I took a bunch of photos to try to demonstrate this compared to my Nexus One. Keep in mind, the Nexus One has an AMOLED display, which means it doesn’t have a backlight. AMOLEDs generally have a much, much larger contrast ratio than LCDs, and have very accurate blacks. That said, this tablet can get even darker than the Nexus One.

First, take a look at the clock app. Android has a great clock app that works well with a dock because it’s visually pleasing and can be made very dim (to the point where it almost seems like it’s not emitting light in a dark room). Here are two photos of that app. The first has the brightness maxed out on the tablet and phone. The second is in dim mode. I kept the camera settings the same for both photos. (For you photographers out there, the settings were F/5, 1/50 sec, ISO1600. And sorry for it being crooked… shooting photos in the dark is tricky and I didn’t want to apply any software correction that might affect the accuracy of the photos.)

Hopefully your monitor’s contrast ratio is good enough so you can see the tablet is indeed on in the darker photo. I also took some photos to demonstrate what that means for reading in the dark. This shows the devices at their brightest settings, then the Nexus One at its dimmest, and then both at their dimmest, using the same settings for each photo (f/5, 1/160 sec, ISO1250).

Some devices can’t set their displays dark enough to make that white background usable in low-light conditions, so Aldiko also has a night theme, which uses a black background with light text. I took three photos to demonstrate how this looks. The first uses the exact same camera settings as the previous three photos. Then, I let a lot more light into the camera by setting the shutter speed to 1/60 sec, and I upped the ISO to 2000, so you can see the tablet is actually on. Then I switched the tablet to the day theme (white background) and took another photo with the same, adjusted camera settings.

Other Features
This tablet has a USB port as well as an HDMI port (and it actually came with an HDMI cable!). Some people apparently use it to play videos on TVs via the HDMI cable. I haven’t tried that out, but that could be a decent use. It also has a kickstand and better-than-expected speakers, so it’s okay for watching videos on directly too. There is a stylus that easily slips into the tablet, which comes in handy for Ubuntu where many of the menu options are small. Since Android was designed for relatively small screens, the stylus isn’t really necessary. Also, it’s good to note that this uses regular (not micro) SD cards.

Conclusion
This is definitely not a tablet that is ready for the average user. The specs are pretty low, so it isn’t as responsive as it needs to be in order to avoid frustration. If you’re a developer, you could consider this tablet, particularly if you want to keep an Android 2.1 device around for testing. Still, an HTC Hero is probably a better low-end test device, and you might be able to pick up a used one cheaper than this. Of course, if your app runs well on this, it will run well on any main-stream Android device.

Dan Morill of Google said this:

Because it means everything, it actually means nothing, so the term is useless. Stories on “fragmentation” are dramatic and they drive traffic to pundits’ blogs, but they have little to do with reality. “Fragmentation” is a bogeyman, a red herring, a story you tell to frighten junior developers.

Ryan Paul of Ars Technica said this:

[R]estrictions effectively ensure that all Android devices that are intended to run third-party applications are basically the same with respect to application compatibility. In addition to mandating some consistent hardware specifications, Google has also taken steps to make the Android software more resilient to fragmentation.

And yet, we get people like Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDnet saying things like

[T]here’s already fragmentation of the platform… For Joe Average, this created an ultra-confusing marketplace where operating system versions changed every few months. It also meant that compatibility issues were inevitable.

Apparently “Joe Average” has a tough time tapping on the Android Market icon and then downloading any visible app in the entire market. Google filters out apps that aren’t compatible with your device (due to both OS requirements and hardware requirements). That doesn’t sound ultra-confusing to me.

The reality is that developers will choose the lowest level of the Android SDK that they can build their apps against to target the largest possible audience. If a developer makes a live wallpaper, it will only show up in the market for people whose devices support live wallpapers. So the only real issue is the question of whether manufacturers and carriers will push out the latest version of the OS for their phones.

OS Updates
Undoubtedly, there will be older devices that aren’t able to handle the latest version, but those aren’t the high-end smartphones, and they will have prices which reflect that. As far as the phones that are capable of running the latest version, if consumers see that X manufacturer’s phones always have the latest Android version within two months, those phones will be popular, especially through word of mouth. If consumers see that Y manufacturer never upgrades its phones, those phones will be decidedly less popular. The same is true of carriers. And, fortunately for Android, the number of carriers and manufacturers behind these devices is not limited, so simple economics will put enough pressure on these companies that they’ll be eager to upgrade. We’re already seeing all the latest Android-based phones coming out with Android 2.1 (even ones that were slated for 1.6), and they’re all capable of running 2.2. With the huge performance improvement that Froyo brings, there is a large incentive for manufacturers and carriers to ensure they get Android 2.2 on their devices as soon as possible.

iOS Fragmentation
Anyway, people’s minds are pretty set on whether fragmentation is an issue or a scare tactic. I thought it would be useful to point out how this issue affects (or doesn’t affect) the popular iPhone because you really don’t hear much about it.

First, the iPhone has some advantages in avoiding fragmentation. It is made by one company. The OS is made by the same company. The phone is limited to a single carrier (in the US). The phone has very incremental improvements at one year intervals rather than spurtive, frequent improvements.

Despite these steady improvements, there are hardware differences that are further affected by the OS running on the iPad and iPod as well. Some devices don’t have a camera, some have a 2mp camera, some have a 3mp camera, some have a 5mp camera, some have two cameras, some have autofocus, and some have flash. Some support 3G and some only support WiFi. Some have 412MHz processors, some have 532MHz processors, some have 600MHz processors, some have 1GHz processors, and some we don’t know. Some have 128MB of RAM and some have twice that. Some have a magnetic compass. Some have a gyroscope. Some can lock orientation. Some are 480px wide, some are 960px wide, and some are 1024px wide. So there is hardware variation because devices must improve, or they will be left behind.

There is software variation too. Most devices are running a 3.x version, but that will change soon as some devices are able to upgrade to iOS 4 and some aren’t. Of those that upgrade, the features supported will differ. The iPhone 3G devices purchased for $100 a few weeks ago will never officially get multitasking. Hopefully the poor souls who bought those are able to wait out a two-year contract before realizing how essential multitasking is.

With all these differences, would you call iOS fragmented? I wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t call Android fragmented either. They’re both evolving platforms. Android had some catching up to do when the G1 came out, so it has evolved significantly faster than iOS, but evolution is not fragmentation.

final Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
emailIntent.setType("text/plain");
emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, subject);
emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, body);
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(emailIntent, "Email:"));

(It’s important to note that this should be attempted on a real device.)

I ran into some trouble with sending HTML in an email because it was being interpreted as plain text both in the user’s email client and in the recipient’s. Simply changing the MIME type didn’t help, but I eventually came across the solution:

final Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
emailIntent.setType("text/html");
emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, subject);
emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, Html.fromHtml(body));
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(emailIntent, "Email:"));

Note that both the MIME type is changed and the EXTRA_TEXT is now set as Html.fromHtml(body) instead of just being passed a string with HTML in it. So far I’ve only tested this on a Nexus One running Android 2.1, but I’ll give it a try on some other platforms and see if it works.

I have to say that, as a whole, I am very happy with Android development. Though I didn’t have any real experience in Java before I started playing with Android, I found it very easy to pick up the basics. The syntax makes sense, even if it is a bit verbose at times. The Android SDK is pretty straight forward. Originally I was sticking to Vim, as it’s my editor of choice for pretty much everything, but I started to use Eclipse with the ADT plugin, which helped with all the necessary imports and catching some syntax typos. I think with a Vim interface Eclipse could be pretty cool, haha.

Sharing URLs
A really handy feature that I didn’t know about until recently is the ability to share a URL you are viewing in the browser. Long-pressing on a URL in the location bar brings up a menu with the option to “Share page” or “Copy page url” (it can also include “Save image” and “View image” depending on the context). Choosing “Share page” reveals a menu with several options. At the top are the built-in choices such as sharing “@Delicious,” but below those you can see options for specific apps. Selecting “Twidroid” allows you to share the link via Twitter from right there. You don’t have to open the full Twidroid application, and you don’t have to worry about the URL length (as it’s automatically shortened with your URL shortener of choice). Just type a few words and send away. You can even hit “Attach” to add or take a picture or video (both of which are automatically uploaded and linked for you). I don’t care if you call this “multitasking” or “app interlinking.” I call it awesome.

Shortcuts
Most people already know that Android has folders, and it even has live folders (folders which have their contents populated by an app, such as a list of Pandora radio stations), but Android also has the ability to create shortcuts. I don’t just mean shortcuts to open apps; I mean shortcuts to open very specific parts of apps.

One of the applications that I use fairly frequently is One Bus Away, which allows me to see which buses are going where and when they should arrive. The default view that opens is a map view, which I personally don’t use. I know the stops I use and the routes I ride, so I nearly always want to go to a specific stop. I’m frequently in a hurry, checking if I’ll be seconds away from catching the bus, and the slight delay going from loading the map view to loading the stop I want feels a lot longer than it really is. Fortunately, Android has the answer: I can create a shortcut directly to the exact stop that I want to view. I simply long-press on the home screen, select “Shortcuts,” select the desired choice, (potentially further customize it, such as picking a specific bus stop in this case) and the icon is created. Touching that icon will jump right to the correct spot in the app.

Conclusion
These are the types of features that are so simple but add so much to the experience of using an Android-based device. Is Android perfect? Of course not. But can it do some amazing things? Absolutely!

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666"

You may need to run sudo reload udev and/or disconnect and reconnect the N1. Check adb devices again and hopefully you’ll see “HT9CSP123456 device” or similar.

First off, we have to clarify the concept of multitasking. On a desktop, notebook, netbook, etc., you will frequently have multiple programs open at a time and often more than one is visible on the screen. In most cases, these programs are actively running (usually with priority given to the application in focus) and using some processing cycles. Sometimes the background applications do need to use resources, such as an instant messaging client or music player. Sometimes they don’t, such as when you are actively playing a game but left a browser window open in the background.

The misconception is that Android handles all these processes the same way, forcing them to fight it out in a cage match with the winner getting processor cycles. Fortunately, that is not the case.

Unnecessary Processing
Most of the time the limited screen real estate means you don’t need background processes running for applications that don’t currently show any UI. Essentially, the processing associated with an activity ends, but the activity remains in memory until that memory is either needed or the activity is back in focus (obviously this is a bit of a simplification). When an activity goes into the background like this, it typically does any saving necessary. That allows the memory to be recovered aggressively, if needed, without creating delay at the time of recovery.

Some iPhone apps actually have similar behavior, but they store their state to the phone’s storage rather than the memory. This allows you to reopen an app, starting from the same point you ended it. Clearly, both Apple and iPhone developers see this ability to quickly switch tasks as valuable, despite that it isn’t “built in” to iPhone OS.

Necessary Processing
The other key situation is something called a service, and this is where the differences between Android and iPhone OS are most noticeable. A service is a process that does not directly have UI or an activity associated with it. A process for handling the reception of instant messages is a good example. You don’t want to sit on a screen all day to wait for new messages. You want to be able to check your email, browse the web, or play a game. The service can run in the background and unobtrusively notify you of new messages.

Apple’s Situation
Apple sees the need for some apps to have background processes; the music player is a good example. Apple just hasn’t fully opened the door to letting the third-party developers run background processes. Instead, they allow for push notifications.

But push notifications are not the complete answer. They have an extremely limited 256-byte maximum payload. They are not secure. They require extra infrastructure. They overwrite each other. They are designed for text only. The application cannot manipulate the push notification data if it is not running. And, worst of all, push notifications are extremely intrusive! Implemented properly, push notifications could be the correct solution for some situations, but they currently present a bad user experience and have limited value to developers.

Additional Uses
Besides music players, instant messengers, and SSH connections, location-based services like Google Latitude are virtually useless without background processes. Another example of a background service is common in feed readers such as NewsRob. While you don’t have the app open in the foreground, it is still able to periodically fetch new feed items. That means you can later open that app without an internet connection and still read your favorite feeds. With iPhone, you have to actively open each app and tell it to cache the data for offline reading, wait, and then repeat for each app you might want to use (such as during a plane ride).

Even if you disagree
Finally, even if you believe nothing of what I have written and still believe that background processes waste a huge amount of processor cycles and drain your battery, then you should ask yourself how the Nexus One has a battery life comparable to the iPhone’s when it has a faster processor that is pushing more than twice as many pixels, it has more RAM, it runs third-party background applications… not to mention the battery is user-replaceable ($25 for an Android battery; roughly four times that for Apple to replace an iPhone battery). It must be from HTC stealing Apple’s innovation again *sigh*.

Here’s the disclaimer: I did my best to fairly show the differences between the screens of a Nexus One and an iPhone. Both phones were set to maximum brightness and were indirectly lit in an attempt to avoid glare. The Nexus One has a much greater tendency to reflect light than the iPhone. The camera (Canon 7D) was set to output to JPG because I didn’t want to subconsciously favor one display over the other when processing from RAW. The full-sized images are around 7MB each, so I created a resized version (1024×683 from 5184×3456) and, in some cases, a detailed version. The detailed version is a crop from the original image with no resizing. I just took two 512×683 crops and put them together. I didn’t label them because the Nexus One is always on the left and the iPhone is always on the right. Images embedded in this post are 400 pixels wide and link to the larger versions.

Home Screen

The iPhone’s home screen looks rather bland compared to the Nexus One. The icons are fairly similar, though you can see that the Nexus One icons are smaller and varying shapes (some iPhone 3rd party icons are different shapes, but transparency is not properly handled by the iPhone OS, so these only look transparent with a black background).

The Web – New York Times

For most people, the web browser will be the most used feature of a smartphone. These photos illustrate the difference that a higher resolution makes. Though the displays are close to the same physical size, small fonts are unreadable on the iPhone. I recommend viewing the full sized version of the detailed photo.

The Web – Image

Both phones are browsing a photo on Flickr, but you can see that the iPhone can’t display the full image at its native size (note that the Nexus One is actually zoomed in a bit on the image because the image is only 500px wide). The difference in the shadows is probably the most noticeable part of this comparison. The Nexus One appears to display oranges a bit brighter than it should. The iPhone loses detail in darker parts of the photo.

Maps – Satellite View

Though both displays a very usable, the Nexus One looks particularly crisp compared to the iPhone here.

Maps – Traffic View

I had a particularly challenging time getting these views to be zoomed identically across both displays, so don’t put too much emphasis on these. I did notice that the iPhone didn’t report construction on its maps application, but the overall data was basically the same. Again, the Nexus One appears much sharper.

PDF

Though you’re unlikely to read significant amounts on either phone, this PDF comparison shows the advantages of a higher pixel density. This also makes me question the recently-unveiled iPad as a serious reading device (its long side is only 1024 pixels, 224 more than the Nexus One, despite being much larger).

Apps – TV.com

As you can see, the TV.com app has a different interface on iPhone OS vs. Android. The Android version is able to show a lot more data at one time, though part of that is due to not needing a static menu on screen. During video playback, the actual video doesn’t take up the full width on the Nexus One. Here, you can see the greater range of colors on the Nexus One, particularly in the detailed photo. I also noticed that the iPhone’s black was a bit blue and not as dark as the Nexus One’s black. The Nexus One picked up a bit of glare but was still very usable.

Final Thoughts
One thing that really stood out during this test was how much more the Nexus One screen shows, and I don’t just mean in pixel count. Since Android has support for more than one button, applications do not have to waste screen space by displaying a menu. In most cases, that means displaying an extra row worth of information.

The Nexus One definitely has a more significant problem with glare, but it also has much darker blacks. It is a little over saturated around orange colors, though not significantly so. The iPhone screen does a good job of diffusing light, but the blacks never look fully black. The colors seem well balanced with less range, but the lower resolution really hurts the iPhone when it is next to the Nexus One.

I checked at an ATT store in person because I thought I could make a deal. I owe them less than half of my contract, so maybe I could get the iPhone for half the difference ($300), but they wouldn’t do that. Interestingly enough, the contract breakage fee is $175 (not sure if you can do this but it would actually be cheaper to break the contract and sign as a new customer than to re-sign as an existing customer!). They don’t want to give me a deal for $300 and have me go from a $45 monthly payment to a $75+ monthly payment. Instead, they want to wait until the last moment to offer me a deal, hoping that I’m really impatient. Of course, at that time other carriers might be looking a lot more appetizing. More Android devices are coming out, and the Pre will probably be pretty cheap with its sibling, the Pixi, coming out. Plus, data plans are cheaper with other carriers such as T-Mobile.

What ever happened to rewarding customer loyalty?