Battle of the Budget Tablets - Nook Color vs. Galaxy Tab
by Vivek Gowri on May 25, 2011 12:52 AM ESTRound 2 - Usability
This is an interesting one. We have two screens here that have the same resolution, but really don’t feel like it. One of the things that Samsung did with the TouchWiz UI on the Galaxy Tab is that they made all of the UI elements a lot bigger. It’s like taking Windows and changing the DPI of the icons to 120 or something. Side-by-side with the unchanged Nook Color, you almost feel like the screen resolution is significantly lower, until you put the same image or website on both.
It’s not a good thing or bad thing, it’s just different. I personally liked having the smaller icons on the Nook, but at the same time, the Galaxy had a larger keyboard that was easier to use, so it was a bit of a tradeoff.
The Galaxy was smoother to use than the Nook; the same stuttering and lost frame issues I saw in Nook OS were still there in Gingerbread. I’ve heard that a lot of that can be fixed through overclocking, installing different launcher applications, and the like, but I wanted to get a feel for how a quick root would be. And overall, I must say it was pretty good. I enjoy the stock Android UI, especially in Gingerbread. It’s a refreshing experience compared to some of the things that Motorola, Samsung, and HTC tend to do to Android.
With that said, there are still some bugs. I ran into a weird one where I locked the device, came back 10 minutes later, and the phone-menu-browser launcher at the bottom had somehow lost the phone and browser buttons. Not that I necessarily minded, since the phone part of it was completely useless to begin with. The weird part was that after I ran the battery life test and rebooted the device, the application menu button was gone too. Another lock/unlock fixed that, but it’s a little weird. Unfinished, probably, would be the best way to describe it.
Which is how most of these community projects go - if you follow the nightly builds closely, I’m sure a lot of these little things will be fixed. If you’re not on top of those things, you just have to learn to deal with those issues.
I did like that the Android community had seen fit to give the Nook ROM software buttons for menu and return (located in the right corner of the top bar in Android), but the lack of hardware buttons wasn’t necessarily optimal. You get used to it, yes, but compared to the Galaxy, it just feels unfinished.
Honestly, I like the stock Gingerbread ROM better than anything running TouchWiz, but for lack of polish, I think I’ll give Samsung the small victory here too.
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mrnuxi - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Just checked and it's no longer available. Too bad, woulda bought one.Hrel - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I do not understand how you can have an article, particularly one targeted at budget tablets, and not include Archos. Seriously! WTF! Archos, you guys need to check them out cause apparently you've never even heard of them. They really are the ONLY viable choice for tablets from 3-10inches.VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Still waiting on a review unit, but based on my experience, I wasn't impressed by what I saw from them. I did like the 101, especially for the price, but the 70 wasn't very good. I'm not sold, I need to see more features and better screens from them before they can seriously contend in the Android tablet game.MobiusStrip - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
GPS. Any list of tablet specs should indicate whether it has GPS.notty22 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
For 350.00 you can get the Ipad (1) refurbished. Thats with new battery, shell. Just bought 1 for the living room coffee table. Holds up well to the 500 dollar Ipad 2 in most respects.http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals...
sme855 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
hi friendsplz tell me the cheapest price at which i could buy a genuine and sealed galaxy tab 7" 3G
without contract
plz help me
i will really appreciate.
plz reply at:
sme855@gmail.com
oreo81 - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
What about the Dell Streak 7? I know the screen is 800x480, but it has Tegra 2. And it's under 300$ on amazon and newegg(no taxes), so its really only about 30 bucks more than the nook. I really wish the local BB had one so I could check it out, as I just picked up a nook the other day and am contemplating taking it back. Any thoughts?VivekGowri - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
Its fast, but man I really hated the screen when I played with it. I didn't realize that it was so cheap for WiFi only; T-Mobile is still selling the 3G one at $449...Honestly, I'd give up a lot of that power for a WSVGA resolution - I liked the Galaxy Tab (3G) a lot more than the Streak 7 when I had them side-by-side at the Nvidia CES booth.swaaye - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
I've been using a NC for about 2 months now and have some comments about it.First of all, right now, it is a neat tablet to get because it's cheap and so you get a taste of tablets for a low price. However, this market is changing every day and I expect the NC to lose this value in not too long.
-the headphone jack has low audio quality. Noise and distortion.
-raw buggy software and it may always be that way. It's even slightly unstable because they are trying to make custom kernels and it's difficult with the kernel and driver source available.
-Android 2.x is not great. The internal browser is terrible with its memory management issues that cause hitching and its complete lack of GPU acceleration. Opera Mobile is fast but somewhat annoying in its features and UI design.
-DSP is not HD capable and there are no HD codecs available for it so I expect it will never do HD video. Even when overclocked the CPU isn't fast enough to play 720p H.264/VC-1 on its own. It's battery slaughter without the DSP anyway.
-the internal flash memory is very slow, about like a class 2 SD card. Boots slow, app install slow, web browser caching impacted slightly as well.
Personally I'm looking forward to some new 7" tablets with Honeycomb or another OS, and Cortex A9 or better. But the Nook Color is as I said an interesting first look if you haven't played with a tablet.
mushu - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
If you're using the 2.3.62 kernel with CM7, make sure you have the latest bootloader (comes with the latest nightly) and give either moboplayer or vitalplayer neon a try for playing your videos :)