Have tablets reached the end of the road for performance?

FlyingAppel wrote:

For movies i want to have at least 1080p. Some might say you don’t need that on an 8inch device but i do notice a difference.

It’s really the viewing angle which matters, not the screen size. If you watch an 8" tablet at a distance of 30 cm (say), it is equivalent to watching a 55" TV at a distance of 2 m. You will certainly notice the difference.

Could it be that they focus on other things then processor power in tablet development? A more powerful processor will also consume more energy and dissipate more heat.
Most likely they favor battery endurance, heat control and weight more then processing power.

Also I don’t know if the market demands more processing power (most likely not, as there are no tablets with more processing power). Not a lot of processing power is needed for watching movies and using social media. When not a lot of customers are willing to spend more money for the higher processing power tablet, no producer will manufacture them.

I have used Ipads at work for a couple if years and never had them overheat, even in direct sunlight at the nr2 window of 737 and 747. They work as they are supposed to and are easy to maintain remotely by the company.

For personal use i always used android tablets (asus transformer, google nexus and lenovo tab4 8 plus). The last 2 i used for skydemon as well. As i was deadheading/jumpseating a lot i had them loaded with movies and comics so for me the screen was a major selling point. For movies i want to have at least 1080p. Some might say you don’t need that on an 8inch device but i do notice a difference. At this moment the newest 8inch android tablet is the samsung tab8 lite. It is partly marketed to children with special cases and the small form factor. The big problem for me is that it doesn’t come with a full hd screen.
Lenovo has an 8inch offering as well but as far as i know it is already a few years old and doesn’t have that great specs either now.

Because i will start flying ga again i renewed my SD subscription and tried it on my lenovo but it wasn’t up to the job anymore after more then 10y.
For my birthday my wife got me an ipad mini and i have to say (although i don’t like to admit it) that i love it so far. It is the only decently specd small form factor tablet on the market. Another positive is that it is a lot easier to find accessories for the ipad mini then for any other small form factor tablet

For the normal to large tablet form factor (10inch and higher) android does have good performing tablets but i prefer the smaller form factor.
At the moment i am also using an lenovo duet chromebook (was a free gift with my new phone) and while it does do everything i need it to do, it is still a bit to large to easily handle it. A second problem with the chromebooks is that developpers/companies aren’t that interested in it so i also still need my windows pc for some tasks. The only time i like the larger screen while still being a tablet is when watching a movie on board an aircraft.

LeSving wrote:

Since it was brought up. I think it’s more correct to say that pads have evolved, and evolved sideways in a way. For instance, my wife uses, and have done so for many years, a Microsoft Surface for work. It’s the only “PC” she got, and it works perfectly as a PC and as a tablet.

My wife used Surface for work for some time, until the company decided to kill it.

Peter, I could not find any authoritative source that would confirm which tablet is faster, please keep in mind that you need fast CPU, memory, peripherals etc.
There are “overall device testers” and the picture is uncertain. Please also keep in mind that for smaller screen people use mobile phones rather than tablets, and I’ve my Android phone for SD a few times (quite convenient).
And about how much processing power is need for a specific app? As much the head of development is permitting the dev teams to use, not a single MIPS more.

Since it was brought up. I think it’s more correct to say that pads have evolved, and evolved sideways in a way. For instance, my wife uses, and have done so for many years, a Microsoft Surface for work. It’s the only “PC” she got, and it works perfectly as a PC and as a tablet.

I have a 8 inch tablet I use exclusively for Sky Demon. It’s not fast, mostly due to memory restrictions, but as a tablet for SD (only) it is perfect, and more than fast enough and a phenomenal battery life, about 8 hours or more with SD. Don’t know exactly because I have never run out of battery. It also has sim card and a GPS, so it is a 100% stand alone device, a ridiculously large phone is probably the most precise definition.

I also have a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5. It’s a Chromebook, but also works just perfectly as a pad (the screen can be bent around, and then it is a pad). It runs Chrome apps and Android apps. It does so with the power of a Pentium 3. What it doesn’t have is sim card and GPS. It will never work as a standalone “SD device”, and is way too large for my taste anyway. It does however work perfectly with my Android phone, which is one main use case for this device. It also has a phenomenal battery life of 10-12 hours. It’s a PC/Pad perfect on the go, on holidays, at the cottage and so on, always online (with my phone mostly or WiFI).

Peter wrote:

Would you be able to update this thread ?

@Peter, what should I say here? It all depends on what you compare with what. If you compare latest high-spec Samsung with latest high-spec iPad, then the performance is going to be enough to run, for example, SkyDemon or Garmin Pilot with no problem on both of them.
If you compare old no-name Andorid vs new iPad, then iPad rules. If you compare old iPad vs new high-spec Samsung, then Samsung rules, etc.

After having a chat with our internal mobile devs, I’ve been told (by people who would do the app performance sizing and work with marketing on what features we could safely offer), that modern Android tablets and phones are OK, compared with Apple. More so – in terms of market share for the mobile device count, Android is well ahead, so just ignoring it for a certain app is not a very wise choise, especially keeping in mind that (at least subjectively) Apple overheats more easily. Although, I have a feeling that ForeFlight is aimed more at the Jet/TP IFR pilot-owners in the US and not the VFR pilot-renters in Europe.

alioth wrote:

The main point it’s incorrect to say Java doesn’t support pointers (references), it’s actually more correct to say that Java doesn’t support not using pointers!

The most correct thing to say is that there is no pointer datatype in Java, but that pointers are most certainly used in the implementation.