android compatability with ipad

TBi wrote: »

Go here. The 1st three stickied topics are all problems with the prime: Wi-Fi/bluetooth issue, GPS issue, WiFi reception issue. One topic is even named "Has anyone got a defective free Prime yet?". Reading all these posts turned me off the prime. You don't see half of these kind of posts for any of the iPads.


I don't use iCloud on my iPad, just google (and exchange and live). It works perfectly. iTunes is only to put movies and music on the iPad, if you don't do this then you won't need it. You should check if someone hacked the protocol to use winamp?


Drag and drop is nice, but you can download from multiple sources on an iPad too. All the apps are optimised and the screen on the new iPad should be amazing. For me it's no contest, a hardware and software bug ridden android tablet or a working iPad. If you are only going to use a tablet for browsing, email, movies and opening/viewing various documents then you don't need the fancy "powerful" features of android and would be better off with the stable hardware and software that the iPad offers.

BTW i'm pissed off with Apple at the moment and would buy an android tablet in an instant if they were any good, the problem is that none of them are (IMHO).

Hello mr ipad salesman,

As im sure you are aware the transformer has had firmware updates covering all the tripe youve written about above. Its now a very stable platform with better battery life and and processor than the Ipad.

oh and it has a bitching micro SD card slot for people that dont want to buy stupid accessories just to put photos on it from a digital camera.

TBi wrote: »

[CITATION]?

I posted links to all the people with issues, please post links to all the people with this new fixed Prime.

I'd bloody love if the prime had all these problems fixed. I might buy one if they are! New stock in 7 days on komplett, will have to keep the credit card out... assuming you can back up your statement.

couldnt have put it better myself

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=77314215&postcount=198

i think you will find as with most tech, its the cranks and complainers that are more vocal than those satisfied with a product. I have the same problem with an android head unit i have in my car. Its perfect has never failed but its counterpart forum has nothing but the same eejits coming on with issues. mostly because they dont know what they are doing.

And people lashing on random roms when they havent got a clue in the first place is also a recipe for disaster.

I dont know what else to say to you. Its a good tablet, a very good one. Buy one or dont up to you. You can spend your life reading forums but its only going to frustrate you.

good luck.

él statutorio wrote: »

Adobe Flash.

Camera with a decent sensor and an LED flash.

Cheaper. (not really something it can do, but still)

It's down to what you prefer. Some people prefer iOS, some android. It's not the end of the world one way or another.

browsers such as skyfire covert flash video to HTML5. It's not ideal, but it is a solution. Obviously point and shoot games are still a no-go, but they don't really work with a touch interface. in any case ICS does not officially support flash either- although it will run it. Not to mention that adobe themselves are no longer offering future support for flash mobile.

Personally, for the specs I think the iPad is pretty cheap, at €399 for the 16GB wifi iPad 2 i think it's tremendous value. There are not many dual core 16GB android tablets out there for that money, with a decent user experience. sure there are 100-150 android options, but I don't think those are comparable in terms of build quality, user experience and specs.

The new iPad has as good a sensor as you will find in any tablet. 5MP backside illuminated camera, which should be better than the one seen on the iPhone 4. This was itself a very decent quality shooter. There is still no flash, which is an omission, I agree.

Ultimately, I agree. iPad Vs droid tab ultimately boils down to a matter of opinion, I still maintain that there is very little an iPad can't do that a droid tab can. Much of it is just fandroids tooting the same old inaccuracies time and again. It's personal preference, but for me the iPad wins based on price Vs spec, battery life, build quality, apple customer care, iOS app store, 3rd party developer support, 3rd party accessory availability and the jailbreak community. Given that mix, I think the iPad is an incredibly compelling package, lacking in specific areas, but an excellent all-rounder.

Can you download torrents on an iPad? I don't know if you can or not and the use of those is debatable also but that's another thing I use my tablet for.

There are apps to make the tablet available over the network to copy files to and from it using your PC. I don't know if you can do that on the iPad. Probably.

I'm not trying to be anti iPad. Its just that iPad owners always seem to think that the Android devices are limited.

No torrents or widgets unless you are jailbroken, unfortunately. For me, it's not an issue, but it is for some.
Personally, I don't know if you can mount an iPad as a drive on a network, I imagine yes, but TBH all of my documents live on my dropbox, that way I can access them wherever. It works better for me because out place of work insists on encrypted USB sticks. So again it's not an issue for me.
I don't think Android tablets are limited, not at all. Sure the app selection is not as strong as iPad, but unless the iPad has the right selection of apps for a particular user, who cares?

Bluefoam wrote: »

My mind is almost made up to get the prime. The issue that is really pushing the descision is the fact that I often receive video files from various sources - from friends, downloads etc... And it seems that the iPad requires allot of PC work to recode the files and then to sync them. As with my phone, I know I can just plug in the prime and copy files to it.

I also plug my phone into the DVD player to play files on the TV screen. I know this is possible with the prime and it'll even connect via HDMI. I'm not sure the iPad will allow this without an Apple TV.

I think you have made a good choice. You have identified what you need from a tablet and found one that does that for you. For video, unless it is e-mailed to you and in a format QuickTime can deal with you are out of luck. Although Goodplayer seems to be getting good reviews.

HDMI out is supported on iPad 2 & 3 (not sure about iPad 1, tbh). You need (yet another!) dongle converter from Apple. Its about £30 I think, probably less on eBay.

To answer the original question, yes the iPad works well with Google services, it also works well with MS Exchange, right out of the box. Good player will probably play almost all the file types you will encounter. Namely, GoodPlayer can play AVI, Xvid, Divx, DAT,VOB,FLV,WMV ,MKV,MP4,RM,RMVB,AC3,HTTP,HTTPS,FTP,RTSP,MMS,SFTP,SMB,MMSH,MMST,RTP,UPnP and UDP etc.... the drawbacks are that I don't think mobile Safari (on the iPad 1 running iOS 5.0) is especially stable and some tasks you will be used to accomplishing on your droid will be handled a different way on the iPad, thats not to say they can't be done - just done in a different way.

Personally, I've found mine a joy to use, Im just giving my POV, as an iPad user. iOS is not as awful as some make it out to be, or as brilliant as others do. It has it's issues, it's limitations, but it works for me and I am very happy with it. IMHO, the iPad is the most well rounded package on the market at the moment, all considered.

TBi wrote: »

I'll take your one post and raise you two.

And both posted 7 - 9 days before my quoted post earlier in the thread, in which timeframe I believe the .13, .14, .15beta, and .15 firmwares were released and solved the majority of issues people had... Those XDA forums on the prime sicken me, if you read them you see its the same handful of people posting the same rubbish day in and day out bulking out the complaint threads with nonsense!

As OP posted above, he wants something that plays from a HDMI out port, can play all video codec/formats, the prime easily does that, and fantastically.

Another point I didnt see mentioned is that by staying android at lease all your paid for apps on your phone will still be available for the tablet too.

Plus the TFP also takes a 64gb sd card... Win Win!

Grassey wrote: »

Another point I didnt see mentioned is that by staying android at lease all your paid for apps on your phone will still be available for the tablet too.

Plus the TFP also takes a 64gb sd card... Win Win!

Quick question. When using apps on your tablet which are designed for a Phone, do they scale up to fill the entirety of the screen? Does this work well? My other question is are there any "hybrid" apps which have a display optimised for tablet and phone, but in one app? Im genuinely interested, as the x2 solution for iPhone apps on iPad is less than ideal. This occurs when developers do not develop a UI solution for iPad within the app. In this isntance, Apps look awful and don't fill quite the full screen, don't even get me started on the keyboard.

I love these threads lots of heated opinion, some sensible, some fanatically wrong.

As someone who have both iOS devices and Android devices (both phones and tablets) - long story but its part of my job to look into these things. Its all boils down to what you think you want to get from a tablet (or even a smartphone for that matter).

Most techie's are quiet happy to live in the "PC world" of files and folders and get frustrated when they don't see them, but we have started to move into the "Post-PC world" where files and folders are not the primary "metaphor" for computing. Depending on who becomes dominate in the end, how we interface with "computers/devices" is going to change. It might be an App centric world (with the iPad is probably the poster-child) or it might be a web-centric world (Google's other initiative ChromeOS is a good example) or even a Tile/Hub centric world of WindowsPhone7/Windows8 or possible a mixture as in Android. But the fundamental change is we interact not with files but with "services", Netflix is a brillant example of a service and iTunes is morphing into this "service" model. The web has always been about services, whether its google search, youtube, flickr etc. The change with the PostPC world (and its not just Steve Job's who realised this) is the services can be good or even great replacements for more traditional approaches to interacting with computers and for 90% of the population (and probably 90% of the activities of the remaining 10% of the population), they can use these "services" and never have to worry about maintaining or configuring their "computer/device". For the remaining people, there will always be "trucks" as SJ put it, real computers to do the heavy lifting/loading.

So, its comes down do you think you still need a "truck" or more correctly do you only have one "computer/device" in your house and does that need to be a "truck". I have one centralised "truck" in my house (actually a MacMini) but then I use tablets / smartphones /game consoles and even a HDTV to interact with the 'services' supplied both by this "truck" and by 'services' on the Internet (like Netflix or RTE player, BBC player, Hulu (via PlayMo).

Sorry, for being a bit long winded in this reply, but I think its important to know what you are getting into with an iPad. I love my iPad and its better than any other Android tablet I have used in the past year, and I have used a few. My opinion of it is mainly because I knew what I was getting and didn't expect it to be a PC device. My general comment on the Android tablets is the build quality is very poor, ICS while "familar" to PC users in some respect is a poor interface and the Android App quality is terrible. Yes there are Android "tablet" versions of the major apps but they are so obviously stretched versions of same Android smartphone apps. If you want a tablet and still need a "truck" I would wait until later in the year, as the Windows8 UI is a fantastic tablet UI and has that "fallback" ability to run all your favourite Windows Applications as a backup.

Your initial question can the iPad work with you google data and the answer is absolutely. Your mail, calendar, contacts will immediately work without problems as they are classic "post-pc" services. Ironically, I even listen to Google music (cloud hosted music offically only available in the states at the moment) on my iPad via an App I got in the AppStore (gMusic), while the same app isn't available in the Irish market yet even from Google. Google documents can be browsed and edited, Google reader subscriptions are easily loaded in the many RSS reader apps (Reeder, Pulse and Flipboard are my favourites). Even services like Google Goggles or Google Voice are available for the iPad. Google Earth iPad app is even much better than its Android equivalent IMO.

So, if you did already have a "truck" in your house (like I have) I wouldn't hesitate to recommend an iPad, here are some of the things that an iPad can do that might surprise you:
1. Torrent client
It obviously true you can't download torrents on a iPad (and even on an Android tablet I would warn you not to do it - battery won't last), but an iPad (and a Android tablet - as well as any Android phone and even a iPhone) can act as a torrent client, i.e. you need a real computer to act as the torrent server to do the "heavy lifting" of downloading the files. I use Transmission with the Web UI enabled. You can browse to PB or demonoid or whatever and copy a link to the torrent you want to download (torrent files are becoming a thing of the past as the world move onto magnet links for torrents - PB doesn't use .torrent files anymore), open the interface to torrent server (on your truck) and paste the link in and the server will happily download the file for you without wasting any battery life on your tablet. This works for both Android and iPad and there are a couple of ways to make it a bit easier, I use Transdroid on Android and a transmission bookmarklet on the iPad to remove out the copy/paste step. Key thing is it the best approach to torrenting files and it can be achieved on the iPad (and maybe fractionally easier on Android - i.e. android will register .torrent files with the browser, with an iPad you have to remember to use the bookmarklet.
2. Remote control / Remote file management
Lots of apps to do this I use Files connect for file management, i.e. move files around my MacMini "Truck" and I used SplashTop and RemoteVNC for remotely connecting to my "truck" if I have to for whatever reason.

3. Streaming content
My "Truck" has a few options for streaming, I have it DLNA enabled (which works reasonable well for Android and the game consoles) but nothing on Android is nearly as good as AirVideo on the iPad which streams video and transcodes it dynamically depending on the network quality, it even transcodes it over 3G or remotely. On a recent trip away I was able to watch videos I had downloaded via the hotel's wifi connection back to my "truck" in my house.
For audio streaming there are lots of options, if you don't want to every get into the iTunes/iCloud world, there is gMusic (as I mentioned above to use Google music service) or I have also installed AudioGalaxy (which basically remotely streams my music to my iPad and android devices).

4. iTunes / iPad as a pseudo USB drive.
I used to absolutely hate iTunes but then I learned a few settings to make it more acceptable. One key thing to do if you have an iOS device (and you are a bit techie / happy in the PC world of files / folders) is to click the "manually manage music and video" which means you can drag music and videos (mp4, m4v only - but I will explain below) happily onto your iPad without iTunes really being involved (though iTunes acts as a "proxy" for the drag/drop). Its sort of the "I know what I am doing don't annoy me button". Other things to do might be to turn off the iTunes store, Genius support and a few of the other things that slow iTunes down. Lots of Apps play AVI files (though i use the AirVideo which transcodes everything on the fly so I never worry about the format), one of the best for the iPad is FlexPlayer, and basically this will appear in iTunes once you have installed it on your iPad and you can drag drop AVI / MKV etc. files onto it within iTunes to copy them, in much the same way an Android tablet's SD card might appear and you would drag / drop videos to a movies/videos folder.
If you never want to connect an iPad to a computer you can still use say DropBox as both a cloud "file system" service and as a App. A great example of a iPad app is GoodReader which is really for reading but can play music / movies now also. GoodReader really bridges the PC and Post-PC worlds it has tremendous connectivity options, so for example, I can use DropBox, Box.net and a file share on my "truck" and remotely access what I want when I want it and play / read / listen to it or pass on whatever the file is to other applications on the iPad if I really need to.

So, in summary, an iPad can easily get at everything in the Google Cloud services (except the Android apps themselves), but think about what you want your tablet to do and if you need it to do "truck" activities I personally would wait until a Windows8 tablet comes out. The Prime is a reasonable ok Android tablet but its expensive for what it is and its main "gimmick" is the "transformation" with the keyboard. But there have been lots of problems with it: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/the-swift-rise-and-sad-fall-of-the-asus-transformer-prime-android-tablet/

If you had say an iPhone but switched to an Android phone and you were more happy with the Android phone, then I would probably suggest say a Samsung Galaxy Tab (as you should get one cheaply now). It has a much better build quality than most android tablet, its still running Gingerbread (though depending on the model it might get an ICS update) and as long as you accept it doesn't have the quality Apps that the iPad has, its will be good for browsing, acceptable for music (though I would still use AudioGalaxy IMO) and MXPlayer or MoboPlayer for video.

Anyway hope this helps.

mickoneill30 wrote: »

Elaborate on that. I have a Xoom (since April last year) and I was going to get a Prime and give the Xoom to my missus but the Xoom is too much cheaper than the Prime to justify that. I agree with your points about it being too expensive. So I'm buying her a Xoom. The iPad is an excellently built piece of kit. I don't see anywhere where its build quality is better than the Xoom. I've seen the Asus Transformer too and it seems very well built. Before the Xoom I had an Archos 10.1. While not as good as an iPad in terms of build it was still very good and for less than half the price that was fine for me. I don't think the higher end Androids skimp on build quality. I know the ones for about €100 do. But they're about €100.

Maybe I was just unlucky, but I had an original Xoom for a while and the audio plug got a bit loose and there was a bit of "give' with back, i.e. didn't feel as solid as an iPad. I had an archos also, terrible plastic quality, it was cheap and I should have known better. Played with HTC flyer for a few days (borrowed from a friend) and it was pretty solid, though I believe he has some problems with it now. I also had a Nook Color and a very cheap chinese tablet, both were poor and wouldn't last a year IMO. The Samsung Galaxy Tab had better build quality but possible I am a bit biased as I do like Samsung Android phones and even Samsung TV's.

I have used lots of gadgets over the years and for me build quality comes down to how solidly the device is put together (no loose fitting "button" or give in the case), how much plastic is used (plastic will almost certainly crack at some stage) and how many different parts are used to put it together (the more seams / joins) the more likely the gadget is to break apart or loosen when it drops. The iPad is just one piece of glass and one piece of very solid metal and strangely the lack of things like a removable battery component actually probably means it lasts longer as a gadget. Thats not saying i never had a problem with apple gadgets, one older iPhone had a defective power button, so nothing is certain about build quality.

mickoneill30 wrote: »

What's with the poor interface. If you hit the drawer button the interface is the same as the iPads. As to the settings. If somebody is familiar with Android and then looks at an iPad they can't find the settings easy. That doesn't mean the interface is poor, just that they're not used to it. We use Android phones in work. After 10 minutes of showing even the most simple users how to use it they're flying. If 10 minutes is all it needs to get enough info from somebody to enable you to use your device then the interface is not complicated.

I don't think Google have perfected the interface yet. While smartphone android (e.g. Gingerbread) is like a slightly uglier IOS with extra power user features borrowed from Symbian, Blackberry (and even older Windows Mobile) and can be simplified down, it probably offers too many ways to do the same thing, rather than perfecting the best way to do that 'thing'. Tablet Android (i.e. ICS) certainly looks nicer (Roboto font is nice) is a different mixture of UI 'ideas' borrowed for Windows/Mac, e.g Status Bar, task list etc. hence why I feel they were target PC users wanting a tablet interface. Neither Android UI (and they are very different - which is potentially another problem) is as well thought through as WindowsPhone7 or Windows8. IOS is obviously very simplistic and I imagine will be enhanced during the summer to better compete with Windows8, but for me the experience is the apps not the "desktop", though again with Windows 8 Microsoft have cleverly mixed the two together.

mickoneill30 wrote: »

People should just evaluate the tablets and see what's best for them. An issue I have is that some people buy an iPad just because it's an iPad.

Absolutely, agree and was my main point of my larger response, but I do find that most people who buy an iPad because its an iPad are not techies and are probably more than happy to live in a "PostPC" world. They are not interested in specs, don't understand what a CPU or RAM is. They were probably not that happy manipulating files and folders but do it because that what they learned (from their techie friends) but if they found a PostPC "service" which just worked they would happily live with this environment even if they had to say pay €7 a month (e.g. Netflix).

mickoneill30 wrote: »

I agree that the Prime is pricey. I was reading an article about Onlive Desktop (http://desktop.onlive.com/overview) last night though. Interesting. Only available in the US though. But a techy person can set up their equivalent pretty easily. The Prime has a nice keyboard and then you could put a Bluetooth mouse on it and with Onlive you have a machine you can use for your work. You can get a bluetooth keyboard / mouse for any tablet though but the extra hours the Prime battery gives you means you could work for 1 - 2 days on a Windows box with no plug.

.
I haven't had any time to play with a Prime yet (just briefly) and it seemed powerful. Build quality was pretty good, but I would worry that the docking connector would fail over time. From a brief playing around it didn't seem like it would really take advantage of the quad core processor. In a PostPC world you have a primary foreground app and a very controlled (to save battery life) set of background apps (its the same on IOS and Android - though Android allows the background apps to do a little more). But no Apps are optimised for the quad core and Moore's law is sort of breaking down as a quad core does not run a single app 4 times faster than a single core. Though, I do imagine some games should be able to take advantage of the quad core but probably not immediately. It was interesting that Apple talked about Quad Core GPU at the ipad event, though 90% of the reason was a 'spec' marketing reason (i.e. it is quad core bull****), but it makes sense in some respects to save battery life while offering the games (who really are the only apps I think can take great advantage from a Quad core) the ability to render better graphics faster.

As for OnLive, I have used it (its already available for the iPad) and its pretty amazing (especially for free). The Office apps worked pretty well (but a keyboard is obvious needed) and I was even able to run a video full screen within the OnLive virtual windows environment and it streamed without loosing any frames back to my iPad. If you have a "truck" I would recommend Splashtop remote (for both iPad and Android tablets) as it does the same with the same performance (better than windows remote desktop or VNC).

The Great Chinholio wrote: »

There is no tablet Android & Phone Android anymore.
Gingerbread for phone & Honeycomb for tablet were different but theyre unified under ICS now

In theory yes, but in practice I think Galaxy Nexus is the only phone you can get with ICS on it and even a maddening number of Android phones announced (not even launched) at MWC last week were still going to have Gingerbread. There are lots of promises about upgrades later in the year for the high end phones, but this happened previously and I got so sick of waiting that I rooted the HTC phone I had at the time to get to Gingerbread. So, If you go down the rooting world you can get ICS (I have ICS on my second phone a Samsung Galaxy mini at the moment).

My point is people who were used to an Android phone having a Gingerbread (that the Android phone experience they know) and ICS is different (especially on a Tablet).