Tablet Wars 2011

2011 is the year of the tablet with most of the major manufacturers coming out with tablets its easy to get confused and befuddled as to which tablet to choose so I’m here to help you sort through the clutter and fanboyism/fangirlism and get to the cold hard facts.

First thing is first there are three (3) main camps that folks are rallying around and these are IOS, Android and Windows there are more than three OSes out there such as QNX, WebOS, and the up-coming Linux OS for tablets. The reason I have left out these OSes is the lack of support and interest their respective companies seem to have in them so they will not be discussed for the rest of this article (well maybe in another article).

Lets start off with the IPad and IOS while not the first out of the gate it has the distinct privilege of being the most commercially successful and recognizable of the lot, it paved the way for the tablets we see now to be accepted by the community at large and not to be seen as an obscure piece of tech that only  the geekiest among us desire. The beauty of IOS is it’s simplicity, there is one physical button, a home screen and a menu which presents access to all your apps as well as the settings in one menu. Navigation is fluid and controls are easy enough to grasp. Its simplicity is also its weakness, the reins of the device are never truly given over to you, you are essentially being locked in a beautiful garden, its nice there and everything you need is provided but you are still very much locked in.

Android on the other hand is an amusement park with lots of different exits the only catch here is that in order to leave through one you have to have a little technical skill or at least be able to read and follow instructions very well, but even if you don’t leave you are still in an amusement park with lots of different things to do and see. Even with an unrooted device the level of customization is still staggering, to the point that no two devices can really look the same, from changing wallpapers and ring-tones to downloading icon and skin packs. If you get into the rooted side of things then the possibilities really open up with different versions of the OS that groups or individuals have created many of which are better than the stock OS or at least have features baked in that are not included ion the stock OS.  

Windows on the other hand is a relative unknown at this point since we have to wait for Windows 8 to actually show up but its Windows and everyone will pretty much be familiar with it. Right now it is a mixed bag with so many persons already on the Android and IOS and with Windows historically being such a heavy OS I have to wonder what is is gonna be like on smaller processors, I am looking at the incredibly dull performance of netbooks and I am left to wonder if their tablets will be more of the same.

Who runs the world? Apps

Apple is the king of the Apps heap for the moment with about half a Million apps and Android has well over 100000 but all numbers aside most of this is fluff, casually browsing the different app stores the number of actually useful everyday apps is shockingly low. How many calculators, tom the talking cat apps does someone really need, the fact is that any really useful apps that appear on one platform usually turn up on the others given enough time. There are only a handful of apps for the Windows platform so not much to discuss there yet.

Gaming

Mobile gaming is huge for both casual and hardcore gamers. Casual gamers have the likes for simple puzzle based games, tower defence, and platformers but nothing really to attract the hardcore crowd until now, with studios like Rockstar releasing GTA on the Android and IOS platform we are witnessing a shift in the types of games available to the masses. By far the most exciting thing to me are the emulators, I can play old and new classics on my tablet sure the touch screen is a little wonky but I that is easily remedied with a bluetooth controller (which I purchased from gamestop) So now I can play FF7 and Tenchu (I own both on disc already) on my tablet without missing a beat. Windows could be a bit more exciting in that arena with the rumoured ability to load up Xbox games, and since it is windows I foresee Steam making huge profits on this platform.

The future

Android’s future is looking bright with the coming of ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) which will unite the OS and end fragmentation, the new quad-core processors which promise even zippier speeds and more horsepower to properly deal with those power hungry apps. The IPad 3 is coming probably next year with a rumoured dual-core processor, better camera and improved display, of course this is all speculative at this point. Windows is a mystery at this point but I would imagine, tight Bing integration, xbox live integration and tiles, its really wait and see but 2012 is definitely gonna be another big year for tablets.

The choice

Which one should you pick well that is really up to you and what your preferences are there are differences between the platforms so your best bet is to try before you buy, don't rely sole on reviews and reviewers can also have their biases, also watch a lot of video reviews so you can get a better sense of the device but hands on testing is the best so if you can get in a store that has one on display or better yet tell them to take it out of the box so you can test then you should do that.