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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Aikouka - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
You can change the control method for Real Racing HD. There are actually quite a few different options ranging from "we pretty much drive for you" to "good luck controlling everything on a tablet" :P.VivekGowri - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Yeah, basically.stevessvt - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
I purchased the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 last weekend, hoping to love it as much as I do my HTC Thunderbolt. The 2 main programs I wanted most for it are Netflix, and Yahoo chat. Neither one is available for it. I found eack ones APK's on line, but they still wouldnt work. I brought it back and bought an iPad 2, even if they dont make a specific app for it, at least the iPhone specific apps work just fine. Shame, really, the GT 10.1 is a beautiful machine.berrykerry789 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
I wanna win :)shabby - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Budget not found in a $449 honeycomb tablet, now this $349 archos 10" tablet sounds interesting...http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/23/archos-intros-8...
Confusador - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
I've been waiting for this review, even though I'd already decided to wait for Kal-EL, so it's nice to see that it was not lost. I do have to echo what others have said that it's nice to see the included USB port, despite the otherwise lacking hardware. Now that Android has USB host mode, I can only hope that others will start to do the same.Randomblame - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
We will not see amazing android games until some actual game studios start developing for the platform and I fear that won't happen. They like stability, slow progress. Until the mobile/tablet market starts to slow down I think we're in a wait and see game. Direct x 7/8 era games werent that bad remember everquest? Ultima online? with bluetooth peripherials tablets can have buttons and controls but honestly we just need games that kick ass! Pocket empires is one I am incredibly addicted to despite it's ridiculously buggy crappy controls and interface. Once you figure it out it's fun and you can get past the nes style top down boring graphics. Because it's got something deeper game play! We need an epic game that gives us a reason to buy a new tablet every 6 months...vision33r - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
Because all the big studios are busy in iOS land. New high quality iPad games comes out every week in the App Store. For example, Castle Attack HD for iPad was FREE last few days. It's a high quality tower defense game.For the past few years I have not found more than a dozen games on the Android market that is of high quality. Way too many low quality and poorly optimized games.
Can't blame the devs, fragmentation hurts software development and a lot of android users are just cheapskates and drive all the quality developers away.
yyrkoon - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
What "big studios" would that be ?What for Win8, and then you'll see some real development happening.
softdrinkviking - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
this looks like its about the same LCD as the xoom?i tried that one out in the store, and the ipad and the LG pad (forgot the name) beat the pants off of it in view angles.
even in the store's controlled lighting, i found the xoom hard to see and i had to tilt it around a lot until i found a sweet spot to view.
for someone without great eyesight (me), it's really essential to have a great screen.
these devices are basically big screens, so it should be the best part.