Tablet and Mobile

Archive for September, 2011

Some time ago, I took my (then) Apple iPhone 3GS and jailbroke it. Why? Because I could and because I was sick of Orange trying to charge £10 a month for letting me share the 3G connection with my laptop.

That’s all history now, Orange have been kicked into touch in favour of the vastly superior THREE company and I now share unlimited 3G with my various devices.. When I moved up to the iPhone 4 I really could not see the point of jailbreaking the phone – but the Apple TV2 is different.  One of the biggest uses for Apple TV is to watch movies and guess what – you’re stuck with iTunes on your PC and Apple format movies.

Neither of the above is a problem for me – but converting movies to Apple format is not something your average person has much time for (couple of hours per video)… and so I took the plunge and had the thing jailbroken using the latest Sn0wbreeze (yup, that is spelled correctly).

The process is easy enough and takes a matter of half an hour including setup but the results are spectacular. Now I can watch movies and listen to music in a variety of formats. Not only that but I also have access to a NetGear ReadyNas Duo, an inexpensive and rather neat network backup device which just happens to be able to stream to the Apple TV – which means no more need to leave a computer on to access movies, pictures and music on the Apple TV. Between the low cost of Apple TV2 (sub-£100) and the Duo ~(sub-£100 excluding disks) – and the nature of the Duo which means with 2 disks you have redundancy (both store identical content – so if one disk goes down you continue on as normal) I now have a reliable solution for handling media at home without using a PC and without lengthy media conversion to suit Apple. It just so happens that software is available for both iPad and iPhone to handle this scenario also.

So is it worth jailbreaking the Apple TV2?  Most definitely – but if it turns your box into a stone – you are of course on your own – follow the Sn0wbreeze instructions carefully.

Update – at the time of writing – Apple TV 2 on the latest software (IOS5) cannot be successfully and usefully jailbroken – which is a shame. Of you want to use jailbreaking – don’t upgrade!

The title of this blog is misleading as the two tablets are not in the same league – but this is no doubt how the press will play this for a while until we all get used to the idea that Amazon has finally decided to go into the colour tablet market.

Feel sorry for those who’ve just bought a Kindle as the price of the existing models is about to drop – considerably!

So – what IS the “Kindle Fire” and how does it stack up against existing models such as the iPad 2? 

Firstly price, you can’t beat the expected retail price of $199 or around £130 IF the display quality is up to it – and that we’ll only find out with time.

The Kindle Fire is a 7” (as against 9.7” for the iPad) display Android Tablet that comes fully set up for getting you to buy Amazon products (books, magazines, movies etc. – the latter being something the existing Kindle could never handle due to the slow screen speed). The resolution is lower than the iPad at 1024*600 as against 1024 * 768 but frankly this is not as important as screen quality – I’ve seen many 7” tablets with similar but watery displays that you just would not wish to own.

So what does it NOT do? The Kindle Fire has NO cameras, NO Bluetooth, NO HDMI, NO expandable storage and we don’t yet know how much memory it will come with though STORAGE-wise it will have 8Gbytes.

At 0.45” it is a little thicker than the iPad but then, being physically smaller, at 14.6 ounces it is refreshingly LIGHTER than the iPad 2’s 21.1 ounces  (sorry to give measurements in old-fashioned imperial, I’m getting the info from US sites as there’s not much on the UK front yet, given that the tablet has only just been announced).

Processor is at this time unspecified but will be dual-core and the claimed battery life is 8 hours though that does not say under what conditions. The unit DOES of course come with WIFI.

The format of the tablet is WIDE – ie cinema-style and so this is much better suited to movies than the iPad – though conversely way LESS suitable for book reading.

Release date, sometime around November – though the UK launch might take a little longer, who knows at this stage.

Will it do well – of COURSE it will do well, given the marketing punch of Amazon – it CAN’T FAIL.  Is it an iPad-killer? No, not a chance. It’s not even in the same league – however it might make those who’ve been put off by the limits of e-reader screen technology (and it’s lack of capacitive touch technology) finally take the leap away from reading paper.

For me, the main areas I’d be concerned about at this price would be screen quality, touch experience and battery life. We’ve no information on that yet.

Would I buy one? Well, NO, because I have an iPad – but if I didn’t? That would depend on a number of things – very tempting for movies for example for travelling – but is 8Gb going to be enough? No, not unless you only want to keep half a dozen movies on there – so that leaves the question – will the USB connection allow for external storage? Preliminary specs say NO but we’ll take that with a punch of salt.

The iPad has the fantastic Apple store – the Kindle is not going to have that – and the VAST bulk of APPS available on the Android market are of no great use to tablet owners – certainly Android has nothing to touch the likes of GoodReader and many of the other Apple-based tools – for streaming media, for doing work etc. –but then we’re not comparing like for like.

At the end of the day however it may be APPs that make or break this product – we’ll soon find out  – but not until AFTER the great Christmas rush – surely they can’t fail to sell millions this Christmas?