Battle of the Budget Tablets - Nook Color vs. Galaxy Tab
by Vivek Gowri on May 25, 2011 12:52 AM ESTRound 4 - Cameras
The Nook doesn’t have a camera, so Samsung wins by default. With that said, I never missed having cameras on the Nook while I had it. I understand the allure of having a front facing camera from the videoconferencing point of things, but I never figured out why I would need a rear facing camera on a tablet. I’m not going to complain that they have them, but just given the usage model of tablets, I’m not sure how often most people use the rear facing cameras. Usually with tablets, you’re just sitting somewhere, either at home or somewhere like a Starbucks or a library, and generally you don’t need to take pictures of stuff there. It’s like putting an outward facing webcam on a notebook - sure, I’m sure someone somewhere would find a use for it, but for a vast majority of users, what’s the point? It’s why the rotating webcams on laptops died out long ago; it was a part that had little to no usage model.
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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 :)