Let me be unabashed about this. I am in love with my
Android. And, I have been quite vociferous about it. I have two of my office pals who have joined me. To explore a new world - a world of possibilities. I have been musing over what gains can be had by investing in a tablet, now that I have an Android phone. What is it that a tablet will enable? The recent launch of the
Honeycomb based
tablet (canvassed for openly in a previous post) from Samsung prompted me to research and introspect on this topic. A bit more seriously.
The tablet has been around for quite a long time.
Ancient civilizations in the geographic region of Mesopotamia used a clay tablet to record and catalog data. These tablets were typically arm length in size and had inscriptions that were built of angles and edges. The wedge like nature of this script has led archaeologists to call the clay tablets as cuneiform (from cunei in Latin).
Tablets were used by the Sumerians due to ample supply of clay. This was in contrast to the Egyptian civilization where papyrus was used. Clay tablets continued to be used by the successors - the Babylonians and the Assyrians.
The tablet as a form factor has been in vogue since quite a while!
More important is the fact that these early attempts at writing as a means of communication led to the development of
language. With sounds attached to words and symbols. In a recent TED talk, Mark Pagel describes how language has been the discriminator, the crucial factor that allowed humans to develop and nurture technology. Language and by extension any form of communication allows
collaborative learning and cooperation. Learning from each others experiences. That is what separates us.
That has been the principal force behind mobile technologies and platforms.
Communication. Collaboration. Cooperation.Even the history of PC tablets is quite interesting. Not many know that in 1989, Samsung manufactured a tablet for a company named Grid Systems Corporation. The tablet was called
Gridpad and was derived from Samsung's Penmaster. It was a novel concept then and introduced us to touch screen interfaces operated by a pen/stylus.
Samsung's tryst with the tablet too has been for quite a while!
The PC tablet evolution subsequently fell into the hands of various companies, including GO, Fujitsu, Microsoft and of course Apple. The new revolution has now begun with Samsung and Google. An important difference between then and now has been the Internet. While there might not be much use for a stand alone tablet beyond cataloging, the
possibilities are endless when a tablet is linked with the
Internet. It becomes an unsurpassed innovation.
A disruption. Of behaviours. Of interactions. Of our lives.
It becomes the
ultimate disruptive innovation.
But wasn't the Netbook supposed to be the great enabler. Well, yes, but the netbook did not provide a different user experience. It became a low end laptop with the same nuances that people wanted to get rid of. Like reading in cramped spaces. Inability to browse the web without a keyboard. Portability. Rather than adding value it took away from users what they were accustomed to with a laptop. This is amply evident in sales figures for Netbooks vs touchscreen devices. In 2010 there was a decline in netbook sales. And it was not small. 40%.
The Netbook is dead. Long live the Tablet.Fast forward. August 2011. Today. It's a battle of giants. It's a bipolar world again. The philosophies of the approaches are different. One has embodied
open innovation. The other continues to innovate within closed doors defying theories of innovation. Is it an aberration? Resting on one man's vision, not sustainable in the long run. Well, only time will tell. For me, I believe that open innovation will succeed. And this is evident at the pace the Android has evolved. From Froyo (Frozen Yoghurt) to Gingerbread to the recent version named Honeycomb.
What happens when two disruptive innovations combine? It becomes a galactic scale super nova.
It becomes a Galaxy Tab.
The recently launched 10.1 which is marketed as the 750 in India is the latest innovation from the Samsung stable. The specifications are very enticing. Enough muscle. Enough grey cells. Enough storage. Enough, actually more than enough to enable you - to collaborate and communicate and innovate.
From hardware and design the slimness of the device is both functionally as well as aesthetically valuable. It is truly a tablet - a tablet the Sumerians would envy. A tablet that would hold their entire library of clay tablets. On one machine. In my opinion, from the portability perspective 500 odd grams and the extreme slimness is a definite win for the user. The primary purpose why I would like to own a tablet is
portability. And, I don't want to lug around some heavy fat piece of hardware, do I?
I concur with other opinions in the blogosphere. The design of the Galaxy Tab 750 is an engineering marvel. Like I mentioned before, the tablet's success is deeply tied to the Internet. And, with this model comes a browser with support for flash enabled sites.
From the view of technical specifications, the 750 is powered by a dual core
Tegra 2 processor. Well, basically what it translates into is better video and web performance and also enables better multi tasking. I see that the NVIDIA processor will be standard specs for all Android tablets today - as it helps take the
user experience to the next level. The network specs are all state of the art - what one would expect from a state-of-the-art device. I still however would have loved to see a few USB slots though.
With 1 GB RAM and multiple ROM sizes, it's quite sufficient to say that you wont be wanting for memory for now. But as the tablet evolves in future this would seem very much frugal. The same that we see now for Laptops which are equipped with 8 GB RAM.
What this tablet provides you additionally is the TouchWiz UX. It is difficult to provide an opinion without experiencing one. But a rather
descriptive review I found from the Android Community speaks well of the new interface. The new interface is very important for the Tab and for telling the hyper-loyal Apple community, there are far better alternatives ;-)
The Honeycomb comes with a lot of
new features including resizable widgets, USB support, support for pointer devices via Bluetooth! All in all, I think the theme here is better usability. A better end-user experience.
What else do I like? It is difficult to be more particular without having your hands on one :-) There are the Samsung hubs. I particularly dig the thought of integrating all my messaging in a single interface. So the social hub is a big win for me. That is the communication enabler. And with the extensibility provided by the apps functionality would not be impeded. For me watching videos (YouTube, TED), reading ebooks in either epub or pdf format, writing books/articles and video chatting is what I would use it for. And of course the occasional games and last but the most important, get on the WWW.
Devices such as the Samsung Tab 10.1
enable. They have the potential to disrupt the way we have been accustomed to interact with mobile computing. They free us from constraints. And provide us -
a galaxy of possibilities.To doctors, they enable patient review, medical history at their fingertips. To lawyers, they provide easy access to legal information and their cases. To children, it becomes their schoolbag that contains their textbooks and notebooks and their games. To businessmen they enable collaboration and communication. To creative artists they provide a digital canvas. At home the television is personal again. To writers and avid readers a plethora of books...and so on the list goes on.
The possibilities are endless. An impact similar in magnitude to early writing on clay tablets and the development of language. The electronic tablet marks the second revolution.
Next is what?
