Acer Iconia A500 - Honeycomb on a Budget
by Vivek Gowri & Jarred Walton on June 24, 2011 4:00 AM ESTCamera Performance
Using the rear facing camera on a tablet has always been an iffy proposition to me, and the Iconia is no different. From an ergonomic standpoint, it’s all wrong. Literally, all wrong. Doesn’t matter which device you’re holding - iPad, Xoom, Galaxy Tab, Transformer, anything. You just look and feel really weird holding up a 10” piece of glass and metal. I got so many weird looks from passersby as I was taking the photo and video samples. But manufacturers are putting cameras on tablets, so we’ll evaluate them.
The camera app is just the default Honeycomb one, which we’ve looked at before. It’s a well designed app, with all of the core options laid out in a circle just under the right thumb, and a prominent capture button in the center.
Image quality, unfortunately, is not so hot. Images look alright compressed to web resolution, but viewed 1:1, they’re relatively noisy. You get more detail than the Transformer’s camera, and images end up less washed out, but overall picture quality is a bit worse than the Xoom and trails the Galaxy Tab 10.1” by a decent margin. I’m not sure how much it matters though - smartphone cameras get used a ton, tablet cameras really don’t. I’ve had a number of tablets over the last 9 months or so, and beyond camera samples for reviews, I don’t think I’ve ever used the rear facing camera on any of them.
The front facing camera here is decent, though it suffers in low light conditions as in the sample image I took.
720p video is recorded at 30fps using the AVC video codec with 96kbps single channel AAC audio. Honestly, the end result isn’t too great, with the video exhibiting some ghosting and generally lacking the fluidity that we tend to expect from higher end smartphones these days. It’ll do in a pinch, but don’t expect great videos out of the Iconia regardless of the HD resolution.
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VTArbyP - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
As usual, it takes me a while to figure out for myself why something becomes a hot. My iPod Touch was a revelation in comparison to the Palm Pilot it replaced. Who knew an MP3 player would become what it is!My view is that tablets are the fulfillment of the promise of a "paperless" society. The User Interface works; much better than any before it. The batteries last long enough, and color / video / 3d abilities give it scope for growth far beyond paper or even e-ink readers. If you read the end of this article, you see that the tablet works best in place of paper, books, web browsing and such. You simply don't need to print much with a tablet around - much more so than with its smaller forebears. Add back a stylus and hand written notes can be easily added. Meanwhile, Asus has the pseudo-netbook NAILED in the eee pad transformer. All the pieces, size, UI and apps, are here for tablets to save the trees and go far, far beyond printing!
When you think of a tablet in this light, you can guess at the future. Tablets will add i/o: 1) to use them as an extra display for your "bigger iron" be it a PC or a game console. 2) to transfer any and all info (work / play / whatever you are doing) to and from PCs / Smart Phones and the Cloud. You may have noticed that display ports have disappeared from new Macs, Thunderbolt will do all data transfer including video. I'd stake good money that the iPad 3 will have Thunderbolt and use it in the way I described.
I haven't even touched on the convertible smart phone / tablets out there or coming soon! Beware though, it's not that one "smart item" will replace what went before, rather that all of them will work together for a complete solution.
Frankly I find this vision of the future almost scary. I'm just glad that I can see a world with little use for paper coming beforehand.
VTArbyP - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
Over edited post, sorry folks! Line 1:"becomes a hot." ought to be "becomes Hot." 2nd paragraph: "Add back a stylus and handwritten notes are easy." should replace the "Add back a stylus and hand written notes can be easily added." sentence.ex2bot - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - link
(A relatively minor point:)Jarred gives his overall take on tablets without ever using the leading tablet and its superior (in size and scope) software library?
In my experience with the iPad 1, I don't use my laptop nearly as much as I used to. Mine is a bit of a special case in that I'm not able to sit at a desk for more than a couple hours due to a disability. The iPad lets me surf the web, read books and magazines (Zinio and Kindle!), play games, and do anything else that doesn't requre lots of typing while lying down. I'm sure the Android tablets have the similar advantages.
I do agree about the gaming being limited. Games tend to need real buttons.
Ex2bot
henryvol - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
Oct. 6, 2011 After about a week of using my new Acer Iconia A500 the unit developed an issue where the battery would not charge. This was an intermitent trouble whereby at times the unit would charge the battery for a few seconds or maybe a couple of minutes before stopping the recharging process. I used multiple power adapters with the same results from each. I performed a factory reset and a hard reset on the unit but, the resets did not correct the issue.I contacted Acer Support and sent the unit in for repair. I received the A500 back from the repair facility 8 days later still with the battery charging issue. They returned it to me without repairing or correcting the issue.
I contacted Acer Support this morning and again returned the A500 for repair.
After searching some of the Acer A500 forums, I found that other users were experiencing the same issues with their A500 tablets. If the power adapter is connected the battery status indicator indicates 'Discharging' but, the battery percentage stays the same. When the power adapter is removed, the battery percentage indicator begins to decline. When the power adapter is connected, the A500 battery does not charge.
Based on my experiences with this product and the Acer Repair Service, I would not purchase an Acer Iconia A500 again and I would not reccomend this product. Acer Service/Support has not offered to replace my defective A500.
khernau - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
That looks great! I would love to get something like this. I have an old laptop, but it's not working right now. I need to see about getting some acer repair parts for it. Hopefully it can be fixed!http://www.acerparts.ca