The HTC Flyer, the Motorola Xoom, the LG G-Slate, the new Samsung Tab, and others besides. That's the Android line up for 2011. Amongst those Tablets we've got dual cores, 3D screens (no glasses required), 3D picture and video recording, front and rear facing camera's, HDMI outs, USB Hosts, SD card slots, 3G and if you're in the states 4G, and all sorts of nice software features and all the goodness we've come to know and love from Android - full Sat Nav as standard, native Flash support, Desktops and Widgets and allllll that jazz.
Flanking the squadron of Droid Tablets we've the Blackberry Playbook and the WebOS driven TouchPad from HP. These two have the disadvantage of being pretty much a cold start. Blackberry are looking to overcome this by putting an Android App emulator in the Balckberry OS, allowing them to instantly run the vast library from the Android platform. HP are maybe relying more on the platform capabilities - the OS is ultra-smooth, but then, it was on the Palm phones and they hardly sold at all. All the HP WebOS phones and Tablets will have contact based communications - that's a nifty thing I'd like to see expanded on. Have a website up on your phone and decide you need to see it on a bigger screen - just brush the phone against the tablet and the browser on the tablet will open up and go right to it. One feature and and slightly more smooth scroll... I don't know if that's going to be enough but... good luck to them.
That leaves the defending champion - the iPad. This week we'll find out what's in store for the iPad2, and it's all over the web what that might be. Dual core? Thinner and lighter of course. Extended battery life? Perhaps. Better GPU, no doubt, near field communications (the touch based sensor thing like in the HP WebOS Devices), probably. A camera? Almost certainly on the front for video calling, maybe on the back too. Rumour has it the iPad2 wont hit the shops as soon as they should have because there was a last minute change to the hardware spec which caused something of a bottle neck in production. This could be a new killer feature, planned all along but held back from manufacturer to ensure secrecy. It could be that the iPad2 wasn't expecting so much from the rival camps and decided they should follow suit with something they were going to leave off. Who knows. But whatever the iPad2 brings, there's one thing I'm looking intently for. The elephant in the iOS room so to speak. Adobe's Flash.
Full disclosure - I'm probably going to get the iPad2. I had intended to get, well, nothing, or an Adroid Tablet if the price was right. I was hoping HTC would bring out a equal to their brilliant Shift device from years ago - dual OS, triple form factor - something similar with Windows7 and Android would be epic and I'd get it in a heart beat, probably even if the price wasn't right :P But no such bravery from HTC this time round - and considering the Shift came before it's time and hardly sold at all... I can't blame them. Anyway, I happen to have a need for an iOS device, since KPM are in the business of Apps at the moment, and I have no need for an iPhone nor iPod Touch. I was going for the touch as the 'cheapest' iOS thingy but then I saw the price, and after I'd stopped laughing I figured, rather than paying that much for something I really have no use for at all beyond app testing, I would rather throw on a hundred or two more but get something that at least will find a use for itself. So I'm expecting to get the iPad2, and I'm quite looking forward to it but for one, well, two minor niggles, and the first is Flash.
My hope is that Apple will allow me to use Flash on the iPad2. It's not really likely but as much as people try to tell me I don't use any Flash, I'm afraid I simply do. I'm certainly able to tell when I'm using Flash and to what extend, and I promise you it's out there on the web. Tonnes of the stuff. It's everywhere - and tell me it's dead as many times as you like, but you'd be delusional is all.
People say it's buggy and crashes, and can not run well on a phone or tablet OS, but I have an Android phone and I use Flash on that all the time - I don't recall a single time it's crashed, and I've never noticed glaring bugs. So while I might have believed someone telling me Flash can't work on a phone 18 months ago, Google and Adobe have proven this assertion flatly wrong.
People say it guzzles battery life. And I suppose on this point you could be right. Although... only when you actually choose to use it - it's not like it's running in the background draining the battery and in fact it wont even auto load on a web page unless you want it to. It's happy to politely wait for you to press the flash object, and only then will it load that particular object. It's really simple and uses no battery at all. When I do run some flash on a page, it uses battery no more heavily than an App does, so to say, "Anything that uses battery should be outright banned" would be a reason to ban the Apps too. Even 3G and calls. Certainly video calling will suck the life out of the device at the same rate. And the iPad has *plentiful* battery, being as it's essentially no more demanding than the phone but with huge battery. No no, battery hasn't been a problem for my HTC Desire and I'm sure the iPad2 could best the Desire for battery life. Also, FYI, Flash is now on version 10.2, which has less battery consumption than it did when Apple first issued the ban.
So it's alive and kicking, it works well, and it's as battery friendly as half a dozen features that aren't banned. HTML5 is not an alternative to every capability of Flash. So come on! It's one thing saying it'll be the end of the world before it's been successfully done on another platform, but now it has, drop the pretence and let me use Flash. They don't have to install it by default - I don't mind having to download the App from Adobe - but let it be an option at least.
My other hope for the iPad2 is that both the 3G and WiFi versions have GPS. On the last model, the WiFi version lacked GPS. I don't need a 3G version, since I've got an Android phone I can create a wireless hotspot and share the 3G contact from that without another contract. But I *do* want GPS still, since Apps we make will sometimes use it and... well... why wouldn't I want it? I suppose they imagine if you don't get the 3G version - you will have no other possible means of using the iPad outside your house. Or... more to the point, they want to make it less useful outside the house if you don't stump up for the 3G. I hope this attitude fades with the 2nd generation in face of competitors features if not just not to be adversarial towards their customers, but I know the GPS components Apple uses are integrated onto the 3G parts, and it's unlikely they'll have a "GPS only" version of the component to put in when the 3G isn't to be used but... a boy can dream.
And that's it. Flash and GPS. Lacking those two basic features is just about the only way the iPad2 may fall short, and given that it's a premium priced product falling short is the biggest reasons I find it difficult to hand over my pennies.
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Phil
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