Nvidia CEO Disappointed With Android 3.0 Tablets

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.
It is a price point problem," he said in an interview with Cnet. "The baseline configuration included 3G when it shouldn't have. … Tablets should have a Wi-Fi configuration and be more affordable. And those are the ones that were selling more rapidly than the 3G and fully configured ones.

Bingo! I don't even have a smartphone... 3G or 4G. I don't want to pay $15-$60 extra each month for a phone internet connection. I have wifi in my house, I have wifi at work, I have wifi in friggin McDonalds, my doctors office, and my local car dealership.

WIFI should be the PRIORITY.
 
I don't see the point of android or iOS tablets. Their just like smartphone without the phone and a bigger screen. Windows tablets make more sense because I can use my windows programs instead of feature limiting apps.
 
I don't see the point of Android or iOS tablets. There just like umbrellas without the long handle and canopy. Umbrellas make more sense because I can hold them overhead and they they have features like largeness to keep the rain off me and are lightweight.
 
I agree with most of the statements above... not big on tablets, because i think they cost too much.. i wouldn't mind having one in the den as a quick web browser..., but not for more than $250. The previews i've seen of Honeycomb look WAY more polished than Apple's grid of icons...
The Asus eeePad Transformer is the tablet that currently most intrigues me, as the price range, at $400, is very good, although, i'd need to keyboard attachment, so i'm looking at back to $500-$550 again, nogo...
The one statement above I don't understand is why 1080p support is so big to everyone, your screens are 1280x800, so all you need is 720p playback... the iPad 2 is 1024x768?!, LOL... unless you're running HDMI, 1080p playback isn't necessary on the tablets (until at least those new Samsung screens just announced come out)
 
I pay 25 bucks a month for mobile 4g internet on my phone with tmobile, I pay 30 bucks a month for cable internet for my desktop, and I DO NOT want to purchase any more internet connections for my tablet!!! Wifi and tethering through my phone are the only realistic options.

Does one person need to spend 100+ dollars a month for a gazillion different wireless connections to the internet? Tablets have got to deal with this issue...
 
... Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, however, isn't so impressed with how sales are going for Android tablets... well the chipset is already outdated and the platform is uncontrolled... so... no hard standards... in result... crappy experiences... no matter the high system specs...
 
I've tested Windows 7 based, Moto Xoom, iPad2 and even the BB Playbook.

As much as I hate to say it, iPad2 is most polished indeed. But they played it smart, getting the initial iPad out...and everyone else struggling for an entire year to come up with a better product. Too bad the iPad2 is released and they haven't done much more than emulate. If all they can really do is say "Well, we have Flash and they dont!" That's pathetic.

iPad security shortcomings on the enterprise side aren't going to be around long and can be a non-issue if used as thinclients anyway.

I hate to give it to Apple...but nothing else is coming close.
 
I've had my Xoom for a month now, and have turned on my Laptop at home all of 3 times - Once to re-encode my shows, other to chat on Steam (awaiting an API for Android) and finally to backup my Xoom. I'm not much of a gamer any more, far too busy - but I have little complaints about the hardware other than the placement of the power plug. Android 3.1 is now out and it fixed several of the bugs I had any real problems I had before... but still waiting for Google to enable the microSD slot. Despite the lack of apps for Android Tablets, more and more come out each day. I have not rooted my device yet to unlock things like Hulu support and what-not (sure is tempting...), but I'm holding out until the bugs are cleared out. Can't knock the performance one bit - HD Video playback is pretty sweet on an actual 16:10 screen. Flash aside, one other thing that my Xoom does well that the iPad can't do is work with SharePoint (Firefox 4) which I use for work daily. Eventually, I won't have a need to turn my PC on at all.
 
Android tablets are seeing crappy sales because the companies are trying to adopt Apple's pricing scheme despite far inferior marketing and brand recognition. If they cut the costs and dropped the prices down to $200 or lower $300 range (in other words, mid-range netbook level, where they should be), I would bet that their sales would easily swamp Apple's.
 
[citation][nom]zkevwlu[/nom]Basically, tablets are superior to $500 laptops/netbooks in EVERYWAY conceivable except for software support. If you don't need specific work related softwares and just want a portable device for everyday word processing, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, web browsing, and watching movies, the honeycomb tablet is a way better choice than a laptop for the same price point.[/citation]
1) Nobody can help you if you pick out crappy laptops because you don't know how to shop. Especially if you don't notice that you have a laptop with a 32-bit OS and 6GB of memory. Fail! Plus your overheating GPU was probably a POS Nvidia bumpgate-era IGP.

2) A Zacate-based laptop will wipe the floor with your tablet in everything but battery life, and even the battery life isn't bad. How long do you run away from a socket?

3)Word processing, spreadsheets, and powerpoint on a Honeycomb-based tablet? It's a Full On Double Failbow!
 
[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]After researching for the past 3 weeks on what tablet to get, playing around with as many as I could get my hands on I got an iPad2 this week. Flame me all you want but it is the most polished of them all at this point. I get my Droid Charge tomorrow so I'll have a sweet 4G hotspot to use it with (I live in Boston). Although I've heard Verizon has been having issues with its hotspots ie staying connected via the Thunderbolt and Charge. I've been with RIM for 3 years now but after using the PlayBook, which I had high hopes for, I was completely disappointed with it and that was the last straw for me.[/citation]

Not a big surprise. For some reason certain tech geeks like to bash Apple because it is popular and do so with a passion. Its hilarious. Saying iPad is just a toy, iSheep, etc... iPad is actually a very useful hardware and used at my company. Its for from perfect but I can get exchange email and run 90% of the apps I need for work.

I also have no problems with iOS competitors since competition breeds better products for the consumers :) I once worked for Nvidia and Jen-Hsun is actually a very cool guy. But it is difficult to over come a solid product from Apple unless it is completely superior. So for Android is not.
 
The companies are forgeting the real benefit of having android as the OS should make their product sell at lower prices. This will make it more better at getting more market penetration which will lead to more sales even if the selling price is lower.

It seems the opposite is happening though. The price range of these android tablets did not meet the expectations of many eager buyers, as andriod gadgets have been touted in the past to be more affordable. We thought that it would at least be sold at &150~$250. More than this range and people would instead prefer a netbook.
 
[citation][nom]lamorpa[/nom]It's a computer you can hold in your hands when you don't have to do much input (surfing, reading email, etc. media), with a screen much larger than your smartphone. Do you see it now?[/citation]
no i don't...that's why i have a cell-phone....any pad is a waste of money...that's what i think
 
[citation][nom]lamorpa[/nom]It's a computer you can hold in your hands when you don't have to do much input (surfing, reading email, etc. media), with a screen much larger than your smartphone. Do you see it now?[/citation]
if o don't have to do much imput, tell me how is the info going to get onto the device?....bte, cell-phones have a feature called "ZOOM" are people that lazy to use it?
 
Once a tech company had analyzed the component cost of Ipad, it was estimated to be around $250. Hence, it will be unrealistic to expect any tablet with similar spec to be sold at $250 or so, not at least until the components price fall further. So for those who are looking for owning a Ipad like tablet for $200 or less, it will not happen in the near future.

Ipad2 is a very polished product indeed, and it has lots of app in the app market. The shortcomings are Apple has intentionally not allowing certain video media format on the devices, such as MKV etc. Hence re-encoding is required. In addition, there is no expansion port to swap in and out the video or even music collection easily. A 9.7" tablet size can be too big for some people.

Now looking at Android devices, they usually support any video media format, and comes with microSD or SD expansion ports. They comes in various sizes and prices. The cheapest tablets are typically made by China and carry low price tags. The cheapest can be as cheap as $150 or so. However, those in these price ranges are typically running on older chipsets and Android 2.x, probably with a resistive 7" screen. And battery life is normally half of Ipad or less. There are also China tablets which run with better hardware, such as 10" IPS capacitive screen, faster chipset etc and cost more.

See below:
http://mp4nation.net/blog/2011/03/the-big-players-chips-in-the-shenzhen-tablet-market/

Three vendors, namely Motorola, Acer and Asus has already launched Android 3.0 tablets, all come with 10" screen with 1280x800 resolution, and better cameras than Ipad2. NVidia CEO was apparently refering to Motorola Xoom in his comment, and it was priced way too high to effectively compete with Ipad2. Meanwhile, all over the world people are having troubles actually finding an Asus Transformer tablet as the demand is so great that Asus cannot meet it. Hence the remark that Tegra2 has failed to make an impact is really too early. These are the early days of Honeycomb tablet and it will need to wait until the vendor can ramp up their production to determine how many units of Honeycomb tablets will be sold.

Many people have claimed that current batch of Honeycomb tablets have problem playing high profile 1080p or even 720p video smoothly though. This seems to be a software issue as many cheap China tablets mentioned above, has been able to playback 720p or 1080p high profile video smoothly, while running on older and inferior hardware, on Android 2.x OS. NVidia and Google should really look into issue such as this instead of merely being "disappointed".

Some Android tablets comes in 7" form factor, which is a lot more lighter and portable than Ipad2. I myself regularly carry Samsung Galaxy Tab in my pocket (which mine is big enough to fit). It is basically around the size of a paper back and weighs only 400g. Some would prefer to carry a smaller phone but a bigger form factor helps a lot for those with worse eyesight.

Finally, a AMD Fusion based netbook has no issue playing back 1080p video smoothly as well. So those who wants a video playing netbook should avoid Atom and go with AMD instead.
 
[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]if o don't have to do much imput, tell me how is the info going to get onto the device?....bte, cell-phones have a feature called "ZOOM" are people that lazy to use it?[/citation]
How much energy do you have to put in each day imagining you cellphone screen is 7 or 10"? Or do you wear magnifying glasses? Zoom is irrelevant when I need to see a whole page. Most non-news web pages do not format below 1024h, and if they did, they would look like garbage.
 
He says all the right stuff, again. 3G shouldn't be in tablets by default, though availability is nice. Some people don't want to deal with ~$150 higher pricetag at purchase and then a contract.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.