Android is open. Releases are frequent. The source code is available to everyone, even Apple. This gives some pause to developers because they must navigate many Android releases, different API levels and a variety of hardware targets. Planning an iOS software engineering project is comparatively simple with one major software release per year and limited hardware targets. best android tablet
What appears to be chaos to the iOS developer is a source of variation, innovation and competition.
To appreciate the chaos, look at this week’s announcement by India’s Karbonn of a $125 Android 4.1 Jellybean 7 inch android tablet. The Karbonn Smart Tab 1 is the product of an Indian mobile design team, Mips, the American RISK microprocessor core designer and Chinese fabless SoC manufacturer Ingenic Semiconductor. The Smart Tab 1 is designed for the 1-billion-strong Indian market.
It is a variant compared to the $200 Nexus 7, and the Smart Tab 1 buyer gets something less. I won’t compare all the specifications, but the Nexus 7 has a full portfolio of sensors (E-compass, GPS, NFC, Hall Sensor) where the Smart Tab 1 has only a gravitational gaming sensor. Nexus 7 has a bigger battery and a better screen.
I’m sure in a side-by-side comparison the integration of Android 4.1 features such as “butter” is better on the Nexus 7. Butter is an innovative improvement in Jellybean that increases the smoothness and consistency of graphic response to gestures. Maybe some compiled games will expose some glitches in the Mips port of Android, but these problems will be solved in iterative designs.
Openly chaotic Android has motivated many independent initiatives. Mips has ported Android to its core CPU architecture to increase licensing of its cores. Using the proven Mips architecture, Ingenic is building low-cost volume processors specifically for the Asian markets for Linux and Android. Karbonn, the mobile phone arm of India’s United Telecom Limited, is producing a tablet designed and manufactured locally for the indigenous market and sold through Karbonn’s and UTL’s service centers. best cheap android tablet
This inexpensive tablet entry is not so exciting because it’s cheap, but rather it is hugely exciting because half a world away a reasonably sophisticated tablet can be built with a feature set and at a price point that fits a large market from an emerging independent Android hardware and software ecosystem.
What’s more, it did not require the manic consumer focus of a company like Apple or Google. Rest assured Apple’s rumored 7-inch tablet will be better, sell more units and get more news. But after 20 or 30 Android product introductions by indigenous companies around the world like Karbonn, the Apple version won’t be that much better and the engineering community supplying Android components and products will be significantly larger and stronger. android tablets for sale
Related stories:
1. The Best Cheap Android Tablet for Actors
2. Android Tablet PC systems Guide To Buying A Slate Computer
3. Android tablet gaining share, thanks to cheap devices
4. Compare Ipad Two with Android Tablet?
No comments:
Post a Comment