ICD Gemini Tegra 2 Android Tablet

[Sonist]

From Stuff.

Sounds interesting:

11.2" screen with 1366x768
Tegra 2 1GHz chip
512MB RAM
Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1
five-axis accelerometer
SIM card slot for voice calls and 3G data
full GPS
FM radio
front and back cameras
full Flash support
1080p support
40W, 6-hour battery - user replaceable

Priced supposedly like an entry-level iPad.

Due in August.

[HansTWN]

Sounds great until you read the 512MB Ram. That is less than a good phone. Why try to save pennies and ruin the experience for the user?

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Sounds great until you read the 512MB Ram. That is less than a good phone. Why try to save pennies and ruin the experience for the user?

It's RAM not ROM. I am pretty sure ROM will be 4 GB and expandable with whatever card they mentioned.
Which phone btw are you talking about? My iPhone 3G have 128MB of RAM, 3Gs and Droid - 256MB. Only Nexus have 512MB.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by dmikov

It's RAM not ROM. I am pretty sure ROM will be 4 GB and expandable with whatever card they mentioned.
Which phone btw are you talking about? My iPhone 3G have 128MB of RAM, 3Gs and Droid - 256MB. Only Nexus have 512MB.

HD2 on T-Mobile has more, the Incredible/Desire has more (1 GB, I think), the HTC Evo will have 1 GB. By the time the ICD will finally be available 1 GB will be standard for advanced Android phones.

Of course, Apple doesn't allow multi-tasking on the 3G in part because they have provided too little RAM. Even 256 is very little.

For a tablet 2GB should be the minimum these days.

[Sonist]

The iPad seems to do fine with 256 megs, as noted here.

So, this one doubles that.

[dmaul1114]

Yeah, it's amazing how fast the iPad is with that ram.

You have to remember that the iPhone OS, Android etc. aren't so memory intensive like full computer OSs are, when looking at ram, processor speed etc.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

For a tablet 2GB should be the minimum these days.

If you were running Windows, sure. It's not.

[astrodad]

It sure could be an iPad killer, but without the ecosystem, sadly, it will not even be a competitor.

[LDBoblo]

Lots of things to consider with regard to RAM. My old bottom-end netbook (EEE PC 701) has 512mb stuffed into it and it runs quite snappy with a fairly streamlined install of Windows XP (cold boot to web browser in <20sec). It won't be a gaming rig or a Photoshop terminal for me, but it's quite respectable. With a good SoC solution and a mobile OS, I supect a rather paltry amount of ram can go a long way.

Originally Posted by jplumey

It sure could be an iPad killer...

Ugh.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by jplumey

It sure could be an iPad killer, but without the ecosystem, sadly, it will not even be a competitor.

Huh? Why?

When I compare the apps I have on my iPhone, virtually all have equivalents (often exactly the same) on the Android side.

[etienne66]

From the article

An nVidia Tegra 2 1GHz chip and 512MB RAM inside take care of the heavy lifting, enabling genuine multi-tasking of Android apps. ...The 4GB onboard storage is expandable by SD card, ...

The 512MB is RAM not ROM and has nothing to do with storage. For a Linux OS 512MB isn't a tremendous amount, but it is more than sufficient to run applications. The iPad has only 256 MB of RAM according to this Wikipedia article.

ROM stands for Read Only Memory and is usually no more than a few megabytes. It usually contains the boot code that starts the system up and then the OS is read from the storage.

Etienne66

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

HD2 on T-Mobile has more, the Incredible/Desire has more (1 GB, I think), the HTC Evo will have 1 GB. By the time the ICD will finally be available 1 GB will be standard for advanced Android phones.

Of course, Apple doesn't allow multi-tasking on the 3G in part because they have provided too little RAM. Even 256 is very little.

For a tablet 2GB should be the minimum these days.

Wrong. HD2 has less - 448 MB (hackable to 576), Incredible/Desire - 576 MB, EVO - 512MB.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by dmikov

Wrong. HD2 has less - 448 MB (hackable to 576), Incredible/Desire - 576 MB, EVO - 512MB.

HD2 European/Asian version has 448, US version has 576 (which is why I mentioned T-Mobile HD2). I have to recheck the Evo, it is not out yet. I have read 1 GB. Anyway, we are comparing phones to tablets -- tablets obviously should have a lot more, since it makes sense to run several applications side by side. On my phone I only run, music, TV news, messaging apps, etc in the background.

And it wouldn't cost much to go from 512 to 1024, battery life may be affected, though slightly. Sure you can optimize with 512, but more always will mean faster and smoother operation.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

HD2 European/Asian version has 448, US version has 576 (which is why I mentioned T-Mobile HD2). I have to recheck the Evo, it is not out yet. I have read 1 GB. Anyway, we are comparing phones to tablets -- tablets obviously should have a lot more, since it makes sense to run several applications side by side. On my phone I only run, music, TV news, messaging apps, etc in the background.

How much would you intend running on a tablet, I think for the vast majority of people they would use a similar amount of apps on their phone or a tablet and it would tend to be a similar sort of list to the one you have.

And it wouldn't cost much to go from 512 to 1024, battery life may be affected, though slightly. Sure you can optimize with 512, but more always will mean faster and smoother operation.

Battery life will be affected, there is no may about it and unless you actually work in this field then you won't know to what degree, but given that companies don't just keep ramping up the memory on portable devices, doesn't that tend to indicate to you that they have a reason beyond simply cutting costs? If a phone or tablet is more than happy to multitask with 512 then adding more memory would simply be adding costs and reducing battery life for no real benefits in actual usage which seems a fairly poor trade-off just to win some arbitrary pissing contest about specs.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Crowl

How much would you intend running on a tablet, I think for the vast majority of people they would use a similar amount of apps on their phone or a tablet and it would tend to be a similar sort of list to the one you have.




Battery life will be affected, there is no may about it and unless you actually work in this field then you won't know to what degree, but given that companies don't just keep ramping up the memory on portable devices, doesn't that tend to indicate to you that they have a reason beyond simply cutting costs? If a phone or tablet is more than happy to multitask with 512 then adding more memory would simply be adding costs and reducing battery life for no real benefits in actual usage which seems a fairly poor trade-off just to win some arbitrary pissing contest about specs.

There definitely are real benefits, faster and smoother operation being the main one. But they do take the easy way out, lowering speed and limiting functionality to extend battery life. Instead of looking for other ways to optimize their systems -- a trend which the iPhone started. If more RAM would have no benefits, why would anyone offer more? After all, they are increasing RAM, just at a glacial pace.