Acer Iconia Tab A500

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by robtillotson

I picked one of these up today -- I had originally thought I would get an EEE Transformer, but the combination of its unavailability and some more thought about whether I actually wanted to buy the keyboard dock (which is required to have any USB ports at all) led me to grab the Iconia instead.

It's my first tablet so I don't have extensive experience with anything else to compare, but so far I like it a lot. It feels solid and fast, the screen is nice (the EEE's is apparently better, but I don't feel like anything is wrong with the Iconia's... and it beats the heck out of the repurposed netbook screen in the Viewsonic g-tablet that I almost bought last week).

It's running a pretty stock Honeycomb with some added "shelf" icons in the launcher, a couple of game demos, and some redundant media player apps. I'm not planning to use it to read prose (I prefer e-ink for that), but I expect it to be excellent for comic books and PDFs...

The only problems I've noticed so far are (1) the USB interface seems to use some other protocol than mass storage, such that it only works with Windows and not Mac. A SMB-capable file manager is a reasonable solution to that, I suppose. (2) I haven't managed to get the GPS to get a proper lock yet, and (3) Acer's DLNA client doesn't like my media server for some reason.

Also, I don't think it's been rooted yet, if that's a consideration.

--Rob

Excellent. Will look forward to your impressions after a bit of usage!

[robtillotson]

Well, now that I've had the Iconia for a few days, some updates and comments:

Not charging from USB is pretty standard for tablets. You just don't get enough current from a USB port or even a plug-in adapter to charge a tablet in a reasonable amount of time, so they use small 12V (or 18V or whatever) supplies instead.

I finally got the GPS to work. It was just taking its sweet time to do a cold start I guess, because once I tried it again outside at home it finally locked on after a couple of minutes of running GPSTest. I think perhaps I have been spoiled by how fast the GPS locks on my phone when it's connected to the mobile network, but at least my Iconia isn't defective.

Contrary to some of the rumors, the wifi-only Iconia does not have a secret 3G modem in it. The SIM slot is just an empty hole. Presumably there will be a 3G version at some point.

Thanks for the pointer to Android File Transfer. It doesn't seem to like my Mac at all, but it turns out Dropbox or a USB stick are just as easy

I agree that the screen depth could be an issue for some applications. Definitely worth thinking about if you're likely to notice the difference.

Things move fast in the Android hacking community -- since I posted my first message the Iconia has been rooted. Haven't done it myself yet though.

--Rob

[kennyc]

Thanks for that Rob!

[tipstir]

Interesting, good video review I must say. I was kind of wondering would this be like the HSN ACER W500 10.1" sold for more over the past Easter Weekend for $599.99, but that had ran Windows 7 HP at 32-bit on AMD C-50 x64 x2 Dual Core 1.6GHz with SoC (system-on-chip) ATI GPU on the die, 2GB DDR3, 32GB SSD and all the video that was played on ran smooth. It uses ACER Ring Touch Screen Overlay that crashes. They had offered the dock keyboard, but that one had two prongs sticking up and with male USB connector and those tend to break off if handle not carefully.



ACER W500 Shown above

As for A500 graphic wise the Tera2 going to be released with Tera2 3D, later Quad Tera 3 3D it's own GPU higher speed for the Video side.



It seems that A500 is using the first gen of the Tera2 and not using the newer Tera2 3D @ 1.2GHz shown above in the tablet. There is a Quad core coming soon. Although the Android DEV Coders has the Xoom Tera running at 1.5GHz OC (over clocked).

I see by the video the tablet can't handle true 1080p video. My prior eLocity A7 with Tera2 was tad slow in video performance at times, but not always. It had played a 1080p video video without any issues, no jitter, no shuttering like I see in this video by Lisa.

[SCION]

Originally Posted by robtillotson

Well, now that I've had the Iconia for a few days, some updates and comments:
...
--Rob

Appreciate the update. Good news about the GPS!

[Noah98]

Originally Posted by SCION

My girl, Lisa, is on the ball with a review. I can't tell you enough...you're the best!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMmS8ObCMbA

Lisa is the best! Why can't all reviewers be as thorough and objective?

[tipstir]

I had gone today to test out the ACER A500 at my local BB store. I was there for several hours to get to test it along side was Motorola Xoom and the RIM Black Berry PlayBook. For the money the RIM was better, but the screen is 7". RIM and the Ipad2 look as vivid and sharp as each other. Next to the RIM would be Motorola Xoom still no support for the MicroSD card not working. As for the ACER to me it odd looking and huge. It was faster than the Xoom but PlayBook was faster and really for the money was better. It does cost $50 more than the ACER A500 $449. Xoom was $799.

Odd how the Xoom has more Live Wallpaper, Wallpaper than the ACER A500.

[bobcdy]

I had posted this on another forum, but decided this was a better location so I posted it again in a modified form:

Today I purchased the Iconia A500 tablet. Went through set-up and then tried epubs and pdf book files on it. The epubs worked great BUT the Google Books pdf files essentially crashed the app. Either the image pdfs would not show any text, or would only show very small text (scarcely readable), and even then would not consistently turn pages. Perhaps it's a memory problem - the Iconia has only 16 gig internal memory, and the two google pdfs files were 20 and 57megs.

I checked further, and found that even if I extract 10 pages from a Google Books image pdf, the ereader app (LumiRead) still does not work properly, so it's not memory related. If one uses landscape mode, the pdf (and the 57 meg pdf file also) show text but both only with very small size. As soon as one goes to portrait mode, then the screen blanks out and nothing appears as one turns pages except for the page edges appearing during an apparent page turn . Again, totally useless for reading pdf files because one can't use portrait mode at any text size or larger text sizes with landscape mode.

Unless there is a better reading app than LumiRead, it looks like I'll have to return the tablet tomorrow because the main reason I bought it was for pdf's. The wifi, etc. are nice extras but fundamentally it appears to be completely unsuited to my needs.

[tipstir]

No it's only 1GB of RAM and 16GB for Internal Storage (like HDD but it's memory for apps and the OS. Not for running the tablet operations. So you have 1GB of RAM. It should be 2GB or 4GB of RAM. These companies need to install more RAM. 1GB is not enough today. What's going to happen down the wrong with expensive tablet and your only have 1GB of RAM. But lucky these apps are Flash base so they don't require much RAM.

Yes this tablet is not a good device. You need a better panel. Try the RIM it's in the Mobile section. I told BB why don't you have all the tablets in one area. They told me they're going to do that. Well should have been done already,

[bobcdy]

Thanks tipstir for the info.

I tried a different pdf reader app: ezPDF Reader from the android app store for .99c, with the new app almost all worked fine and the reader gave a beautiful, very clear, rendering of the pdf text. However, it was painfully s-l-o-w!! About a minute to 'download' each page. After about 5 pages I couldn't stand it any longer and gave up. Apparently the tablet doesn't have enough memory to incorporate much into memory so it must download each page, flushing the previous page with the resultant slowness. Not really useable for image pdf files although probably fine for text pdf's.

Yes, it's back to BestBuy tomorrow. Now I need to set everything back to default, get rid of my email address, wifi password, etc.

[robtillotson]

The problem with the RIM is that while its physical design is nice, as is its OS, it has a pretty big flaw for the average user: it doesn't do email and calendar itself, only through a tethered Blackberry -- and not even then, if that Blackberry is on AT&T, yet. That's a pretty big function to leave out, at least compared to the nice native email apps on Honeycomb and iOS. Also its app store is in its infancy and they don't seem to be doing the right things to encourage developers to support their platform in addition to the two major ones.

I've tried a couple of scanned PDFs in ezPDF and didn't find them slow, but they weren't from google so perhaps they were lower resolution or something. Text PDFs and mixed text/graphics do work quite well though. I wonder if RepliGo is any better... but it costs $5 I also just picked up Quickoffice Pro HD but haven't tried its PDF reader too extensively yet. (It's too expensive if that's all you want it for though.)

[bobcdy]

I wasn't sure about the resolution of Google Books scans, so I converted a page of a scan to tiff and checked with photoshop cs3: resolution of the tif file was 600 dpi. I always use 300 dpi for my own scans because 600 is very slow to complete a scan. Perhaps the problem is the high resolution of the pdf file, but I have looked at a Google Books pdf on my Sony 950 and had no difficulty with it using the reader that come with the it.

With the problem I'm having, I wonder if the Android op is the real problem; if so it may be that all of the new android ereaders may be equally poor for high res image pdf files (?)

[tipstir]

I think ACER needs to go back to the drawing board with this line of tablets. Xoom issue with the microSD card should get fix one day. Tera2 is such a popular CPU but right now what do have else to put in? Rockchips are quick but lack good 3D support, Samsung CPU, Free bla bla Chips VIA ones now, everyone has 1GHZ or some sort of Dual core. More like 2D CPU. The other ones aren't any better. So Tera2 or no Tera2. Quad Core might do it for Tera but the prototype one they had looked promising. That might be ready when Android OS 4.0 appears.

Yesterday prior to Best Buy I had got my air cut but since my barber is so busy I had once told him to get WiFi in his Salon. So I decided to take my COBY 7015 with me it comes with a leather like case with kick stand. I it found his free WiFi from Cox. I had asked him while it's called TJ's Cafe and not the Barber shop. Looks like he and TJ's sharing the cost.

Anyway I was up and running looking at my USA TODAY mobile app and reading the top stories. This is how it should be. I couldn't see myself carrying that ACER or Motorola in my glove box an taking it with in to his Salon. In any case COBY 7015 or higher is pretty much what I see that works for what you pay for it. Paying more to get what the same or less? My prior A7 was Tera2 I wasn't impress by dual core it seems sluggish at times.

All this hype into that CPU. Already they have the replacement Tera2 3D at this rate that won't be in newer devices until Fall at this rate.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by Noah98

Lisa is the best! Why can't all reviewers be as thorough and objective?

Lisa is fantastic. I love her reviews, and I always look out for them when I consider purchasing a new device.

[rfog]

I'm just starting to play with my A500 and if device is very good and fast (faster than my iPad 1), and has a lot of better font rendering, and multi-task works better than in iOS, available apps are very crappy. For PDF, I've tested ezPDF and RepliGo, and both lacks a lot of functionality and speed compared with iAnnotatePDF and GoodReader. Same PDF in iPAD works sightly faster than in my A500. I do not know if it is because the underlining layer is Java (and Java is very SLOW), or because the programs aren't optimized.

For ebooks I'm testing FBRreader and CoolReader (and some others with less functionality than these). In landscape text is a lot of wider, in portrait too. CoolReader has two column mode, but even they are wider than desirable...

And a lot of appls crashes, even Kindle app.