Apple v Android.

[think positive]

I think he means texts? Comes through on messages, little green box, was just there,didn't download it!

[djh]

Apples free texts use the normal phone number, Whatsapp and Viber need special numbers, which is a lot harder.

We have iphones and ipads, as well as an android tablet. The Apple things leave the android for dead.

[John Wren]

[stui magpie]

[HAL]

What was your impression?

[think positive]

[Tannin]

All fair points, Stui. On the other hand, the damn things don't have a bloody keyboard, and so far as I'm concerned that makes them pretty much unusable for anything other than reading, and if I'm going to read anything long enough to be worth mentioning, I'll take a proper book or a at least a decent-sized screen, thank'ee. I quite often go to sit outside over breakfast if it's a nice day, and think that a tablet would be handy just for that - reading the paper and such - but I have a netbook which is every bit as portable and has a remarkably usable keyboard, and the reality is that I've used it exactly twice in the couple of months since I took it home for exactly this purpose. Sometimes I go inside to make more tea and think about taking it outside with me, but I hardly ever do - it's either back to a real computer (inside) or I take the tea back out and read something on actual paper.

The gradual improvement of screens will change that, one day, but it hasn't yet. Once we get good quality reflective light LCD screens - something that has been on the technological horizon for decades now and still not happened - you'll be able to read a tablet in direct sunlight just as easily as you read the Herald-Scum (paper version). But, of course, if they can make a reflective screen (i.e., one that is lit by the light falling on it like a book or a corn flake packet, rather than the light transmitted through it like a computer screen) to go into a tablet, they'll have the same screen on the real thing, with a real keyboard and a real mouse substitute - so chances are, I'll still not want one.

Some other random points. Tablets generally run either IOS or Android (or in some thankfully rare cases Windows Metro) and compared to proper operating systems like Windows or Linux or BSD, these are carp with a capital K. Limited, restrictive, toy-like, and above all, locked in forever to the walled garden of the app store. This is a gross limitation, and one that I won't wear for one minute. With an iPad (or equivalent other-brand object), any program that I buy MUST be distributed through a centralised, American-owned, tax-dodging, censored, spied-on commercial "app store" which not only takes away our right to buy any software we want and create and sell any software we want in any way that we (the buyer and the seller) agree on, it also imposes a massive 30% greed tax on top of it.

I wouldn't piss on the "camera" in a telephone or tablet. Seriously, they are dreadful. I'm not a DSLR snob, not by any means, but I do insist on some basic level of functionality and quality in a camera, and phones don't have it.

Properly set up modern computers with modern software have fantastic battery life and resume from standby just as fast as any tablet. Don't look at your old steam-driven XP laptop, look at (say) a current-model Thinkpad running current-generation software. (Windows 8, once you stop vomiting long enough to discard the appalling new Metro UI and transform it back into the proper computer it always should have been (takes two minutes if you know how) is a good example. Starts up from cold in a few seconds, and from standby in no time at all.)

Oh, and the local storage capacity is way too small. I have 2TB in my Thinkpad (just barely enough!) and 20TB in my desktop. Flash RAM is improving all the time though, so that will come.

Tablets are too big to take to the pub with you. That brings us back to phones. I'll probably get a smart phone one day, when my dumb phone finally expires, but not unless they can do something about the shocking battery life.

I'll tell you what would tempt me: a giant phone/tiny tablet. Something the size of a paperback novel (i.e., just barely pocketable). Yes, they make these now. But it needs to include a real QWERTY keyboard (fold-out, of course), be capable of running a proper operating system, and above all go for a week on a single charge. Show me one of those and I'll pay the asking price without question.

The one reason I might get a smart phone or tablet sooner is that (among other things) I code web sites for people, and it's hard to code up sites that are compatible with phones if you don't have one to test with. (I don't bother with my own personal sites - if you really, really want to look at high-resolution photographs of wildlife on a tiny three inch screen, you can code the damn thing yourself!)

[Tannin]

[stui magpie]

Not a lot of argument with many of your points except the portability. I'd much rather surf the net on a tablet than a laptop and the pinch and zoom feature means easy viewing.

Yeah the lack of a physical keyboard is a downside but it depends on what you're doing. Anything more than a sentence and I get frustrated with the on screen keyboard on a tablet but it's fine for short stuff. I've actually seen people typing documents on an iPad but I think they're insane for more than 1 reason.

Basically, Laptops are more business professional tools and tablets (despite the marketing) are much more personal and recreational.

The good thing about Android BTW is that as an open source system if you're a tech head you can get a phone or tablet and replace the operating system including all the bloatware with vanilla Android and customise it yourself. I have an old Android phone I'm going to do that do one day just to see if I can make it work.

[John Wren]

[think positive]

[luvdids]

Oh geez, the hits just keep on coming for Samsung. What a debacle!
Now they have to have gloves & specially insulated boxes to return their bombs... I mean phones.

http://pickle.nine.com.au/2016/10/12/12/04/samsung-galaxy-note-7-return-kit

I'll stick with my iphone thanks.

[stui magpie]

Pissed off with that, I was looking to upgrade my note 4 to a note 7 at the end of the year and the buggers recall them just because the explode?

I'd take an iPhone as a gift and sell it to someone but no interest in using one.

I'll either get the new Galaxy or look at one of these https://madeby.google.com/phone/

[think positive]

[David]

Had Apple, went to Android, going straight back to Apple the minute this contract ends. Oh, how many things I took for granted.