Quote:
Originally Posted by badgoodDeb
Ooo, you're tempting me! I got a $10 Android phone last Christmas, to use for audible books -- but have never really used it yet. A tablet sized device might be more play-worthy. I'll have to think about this. I really should learn the basics of Android usage.
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The defining issue for me is form factor.
My phone is the smallest, cheapest feature phone Samsung makes, used with a pre-paid plan. All it does is calls and SMS, and that's all I
want it to do. Everything else is something else's job. My issue is that the "everything else" generally really needs a bigger screen than a practical phone can have. The 7" screen on my tablets is at the low end of what I find usable.
The use case for my first Android tablet was eBook viewer. At $20, if that was all it did it would be more than worth the price. As it happened, there was a lot more it could do.
The use case for this one was "digital camera that was also an Android tablet", and I'm in the process of exploring its use as a camera.
Android is a Linux OS, with a Linux kernel under the hood. If you know something about Linux, what you know will be broadly applicable. Android does set things up differently from things like Ubuntu, so the file system won't have the same layout. Android also assumes you will access device functions through a touch screen GUI, and the GUI will be optimized for what the device is intended to do.
For instance, the Amazon Kindle Fire and the B&N Nook tablet devices use Android, but they are intended as eBook viewers, with a vendor UI designed for acquiring and reading books. They can be rooted and become general purpose Android tablets, but most users have no need to do that. (My SO got a used Nook tablet to DL and read eBooks from the NYPL. I
could root it, but it did what she wanted out of the box and I didn't bother.)
Rooting here was intended to provide more control over the device and let me remove stuff installed as system apps that I didn't want. Many potential buyers might be happy with the device as delivered. (And a major plus was that 5.5GB of the internal flash is available as application storage. Even after installing a boatload of stuff, I still have 2.5GB free. There is no pressing need to remove things to reclaim space, and I haven't yet. I've just disabled what I don't expect to use.)
If you do succumb to temptation, let me know and I can assist.
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Dennis