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Richey79 · 11-02-2010, 06:10 AM

As regards rooting this device and installing a comic-book reader style app, Engadget's Samsung Tab review has some relevant bits (for the current ecosystem): http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/s...xy-tab-review/

Third-party applications ... All of those scaled the 7-inch display quite well -- there weren't any formatting issues or pixelation -- however, that experience really depends on the app at the moment. For instance, Angry Birds looked beautiful on the larger screen. Seriously, it looks so incredibly awesome on the larger display that we spent the last four days replaying the game! Apps like Pandora, Facebook, Twitter, TweetDeck, YouTube also scale well, but other apps like USA Today, Engadget, Raging Thunder 2 Lite, and Speed Test don't. The latter apps are still usable, but you've got to deal with an incredibly large border of blank screen around them.

Samsung claims that any app that abides by Google's coding and design standards should work just fine, but even the apps that do scale obviously weren't built or optimized for tablets, so the experience really is like having a larger smartphone. We don't need to tell you how many of these companies could build better tablet apps if given the right SDKs -- we've seen them all do it with the iPad. Of course, the iPad was in a better situation at its launch: Apple had rolled out development tools for creating larger screened apps and a few of them we already available in the iPad app store, but Google has provided no such direction yet. We've heard that engineers at the Googleplex are in fact working on optimizing apps for tablets with the Honeycomb release and possibly rolling out a separate section of the Market, but until that happens it really comes down to trial and error and living with smartphone-sized designed software on a larger display.

Much as I am not a fan of Apple, I have to admit that I don't think we would have the current crop of smartphones and tablets without them. Also, their ability to integrate their hardware and the software running on it is not going to be challenged by Android tablets for a few months yet.

Of course, the good thing is that older devices (specs permitting) will be perfectly capable of running newer builds of Android and will benefit from any marketplace developments that occur.

11-02-2010, 06:10 AM	#133
Richey79 mrkrgnao Posts: 241 Karma: 237248 Join Date: May 2010 Device: PRS650, K3 Wireless, Galaxy S3, iPad 3.	As regards rooting this device and installing a comic-book reader style app, Engadget's Samsung Tab review has some relevant bits (for the current ecosystem): http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/s...xy-tab-review/ Third-party applications ... All of those scaled the 7-inch display quite well -- there weren't any formatting issues or pixelation -- however, that experience really depends on the app at the moment. For instance, Angry Birds looked beautiful on the larger screen. Seriously, it looks so incredibly awesome on the larger display that we spent the last four days replaying the game! Apps like Pandora, Facebook, Twitter, TweetDeck, YouTube also scale well, but other apps like USA Today, Engadget, Raging Thunder 2 Lite, and Speed Test don't. The latter apps are still usable, but you've got to deal with an incredibly large border of blank screen around them. Samsung claims that any app that abides by Google's coding and design standards should work just fine, but even the apps that do scale obviously weren't built or optimized for tablets, so the experience really is like having a larger smartphone. We don't need to tell you how many of these companies could build better tablet apps if given the right SDKs -- we've seen them all do it with the iPad. Of course, the iPad was in a better situation at its launch: Apple had rolled out development tools for creating larger screened apps and a few of them we already available in the iPad app store, but Google has provided no such direction yet. We've heard that engineers at the Googleplex are in fact working on optimizing apps for tablets with the Honeycomb release and possibly rolling out a separate section of the Market, but until that happens it really comes down to trial and error and living with smartphone-sized designed software on a larger display. Much as I am not a fan of Apple, I have to admit that I don't think we would have the current crop of smartphones and tablets without them. Also, their ability to integrate their hardware and the software running on it is not going to be challenged by Android tablets for a few months yet. Of course, the good thing is that older devices (specs permitting) will be perfectly capable of running newer builds of Android and will benefit from any marketplace developments that occur.