I’m currently wrapping up a review of the latest Honeycomb tablet, the Toshiba
Thrive. Quick spoiler, it’s one of my favorite Android tablets yet, but I still
wouldn’t buy it nor recommend it to anyone outside the dedicated Android
fanbase. Just like the rest of the Honeycomb tablets, it lacks any compelling
feature over the iPad.
Don’t mistake what I’m saying here. I like the Thrive. It’s well built, has a
low price, and more I/O ports than other tabs. I also like Android as a whole —
I love my Droid X — but outside of several Google services which are available
on the iPad, Honeycomb tabs still don’t have a legitimate advantage over the
similarly priced iPad. That said, not all is lost. Google is committed to the
platform, as are the dozens of CE brands with Android tablets. The addition of
just the following five features would help move Honeycomb tablets closer to
mainstream.
Tighter Android phone integration
It should be pretty much accepted that Android 3.x tablet buyers own Android
2.x phones. That’s the target demographic and so there should be some
inter-platform love. RIM does it with the PlayBook and even the Touchpad talks
to webOS phones. Why not Android tablets then?
Receive a call on your phone? How about a pop-up on the tablet. A SMS message?
That should be readable on the tab. It just needs to be simple things. Even
tethering isn’t a necessity although it would likely make the cut, seeing as
how it would allow carriers to more easily sell data plans.
The best part, from Google’s and OEM’s perspective at least, is that this
feature set is highly marketable. These functions show consumers how a tablet
would fit into their life differently from a laptop.
To be fair, it’s likely that this kind of integration is forthcoming in Android
4.0, but that’s not much comfort to people thinking of buying a tablet today. A
few features in this area would make the whole Android lineup stronger.
Native support for external storage
The Xoom takes a lot of flack for featuring a non-functional microSD card slot.
But it’s not Motorola’s fault. It’s Google’s and an issue that needs to be
rectified immediately.
The US-market Xoom is a Google Experience Device, which means Google controls
system updates and features. External storage support is not built into
Honeycomb. Other manufacturers use their own Android modifications to include
working USB hosts and flash memory card readers. Motorola does the same thing
with Xoom sold in other markets.
The lack of external storage support is still one of the iPad’s most talked
about downsides. Most Honeycomb tab buyers at this early stage want an
anti-iPad and that means the ability to use the tablet how they see fit.
Tablet makers have found a way to work around Google’s ignorance. That’s silly.
Google needs to bake the support directly into the OS and include a competent
file manager.
Robust media file support
Buying a tablet for media playback is surprisingly hard right now. Your best
bet, if playing back media is your primary goal, is to stray from the
mainstream and look at Archos’s offerings. You see, each tablet supports
different media formats, but tabs from smaller companies tend to support the
most. Several Marketplace media apps solve the lack of support by including a
3rd party software decoder, but I’ve found most of those apps to lack basic
functionality and tend to randomly freeze the tablet.
There isn’t a silver bullet here as it’s not all up to the OS; media format
support often depends on the tablet’s hardware platform. But something needs to
be done. Once again, Honeycomb tablets need to be a sort of anti-iPad and
feature capabilities not found on its biggest competitor.
Killer apps
Google did a decent job on Honeycomb’s standard apps. I really like 3.1′s beta
browser navigation and the mail app. What Google needs is a killer, must-have
app, even if it’s from a 3rd party. Skype comes to mind.
Skype’s Android app is fine. It works well even on Honeycomb tablets, but the
company has been slow updating the app to support video calling. It’s limited
to just a few phones now. Skype alone would make a new use case for Android
tablets as millions of users would be able to video chat with people on
computers, iPads, iPhones and Android phones. There’s no need for Google to
build a Facetime clone when Skype can do it for them.
Of course Google might not want anything to do with Skype now that Google + is
all the rage. For better or worse, Google wants people to video chat in
Hangouts. Skype’s massive user base still makes it a better killer app for
Honeycomb.
Lenovo sort of solved this issue by adding Netflix in the just-announced
IdeaPad. It’s the first Honeycomb tablet that’s Netflix-certified for media
streaming. Chances are, thanks to the required hardware-level DRM, the app
won’t find its way onto other previously-released tabs — at least not
officially. Still, at least one killer app is here.
More apps
As much as Honeycomb tabs need that one special app, the platform just need
some more damn apps to begin with. Android 3.0 was released six months ago and
there are still just a handful of Honeycomb apps. Most are ports of existing
apps and even less have a user interface that takes advantage of the larger
screen.
Part of this is because the Honeycomb marketshare is just so small right now.
Why spend R&D money on a platform that only a few hundred thousand people use
when you could develop for iOS and reach millions? Google needs to do
something, though. Without apps, a tablet is just a slate device with a web
interface. That’s a hard sale to even dedicated Android fans.
The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet is the first Android tablet I’ve been excited about
since the Xoom. It seems to pack most of what I want out of a tablet sans the
Android phone integration. It’s priced right at under $500, has an affordable
digitizer pen, and is loaded with quality apps. (besides Netflix, that’s in the
IdeaPad)
Android 3.x tablets are better than Android 2.x tablets. Likewise future
Android tablets will outclass the current crop in every way. It’s just sad, at
least to me as an Android fan, to watch Honeycomb tablet after Honeycomb tablet
fail to live up to its potential. It seems that manufacturers wasted their
budget on design and marketing rather than innovative or compelling functions.
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