Thursday, July 21, 2011

New Toy

My parents generously bought me an Android tablet - a Samsung Galaxy 10.1.
The team from Whitefields Community Church in Longmont, CO brought it over for me when they came out to serve at our English Camp, so I've only had it since Saturday, and am still learning the ins and outs of it.
I'm looking forward to seeing how I will be able to use it. I am planning to preach from it - and am looking forward to not having to print anymore, and having all my sermons and messages saved on one portable device. I have also been using the tablet here at camp a lot to look at and update the excel sheets we use for camp and for the church accounting. Whenever someone comes to me with a question I can easily access the information they need.
I've also been reading a lot on it with Kindle - which is awesome on it - as well as using it to blog during the camp.
I expect that my laptop will gather quite a bit of dust in the near future, and that I will mostly use it for writing sermons and papers for school and for uploading photos from my camera. It's hard for me to see tablets totally replacing laptops, although I'm sure that time is coming soon.

I had debated between getting an iPad or the Galaxy tab, as they are the same price, but decided on the Android for the following reasons:
- I have an Android phone, use Google calendar, Gtasks, Picasaweb, Google Docs and have all my contacts synced with Google - and on Android this all synchronizes so well.
- It has a great screen with higher resolution than ipad.
- It runs flash. Using it to browse the web is not like using a big phone, because you can do everything on it that you could do on a laptop.

The only thing that was enticing about the ipad is that there are more apps available. But as the Android market share grows, more and more apps will be made for Android tabs.

Anyway, I like this new toy.

5 comments:

  1. Since I'm in Germany, I am thinking of buying the Galaxy Tab 10.1. But I can't decide between the old one (fits in my jacket, because it's 7 inch) and the new one (more optimized UI, because it's Android 3.1). What would you do? :)

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  2. I guess it depends on what you want to use it for. I intended mine as a laptop replacement. The 7in. one is cool too, but i prefer the big one. And the 3.1 Android is pretty cool too - definitely different than the 2.3 that is on my phone.

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  3. Do the apps look different on the two systems? For example Google Mail, Maps, Calendar, Docs... And how is the camera? Did you know that there's a keyboard docking station for it, with which it looks like a netbook? Look at this: http://www.24android.com/de/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/galaxy_tab_10_1_keyboard.jpg

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  4. Yes, there are many apps that look different. Gmail app is excellent, calendar is great. There is a YouTube app for tablets that is really nice, and there are other tablet specific apps in the market, such as a great can news app. Plus that office software is included for free, which is great, as that is one of the main things that I will be using.
    I know about the keyboard dock. It looks great, but i didn't want to spend more money.
    The camera is good. I took this video with it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OuLGs5nN_U&feature=youtube_gdata_player
    Here's a photo: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/a5gzDTkpvuBiE5Hdq92jcqziRr7nq96fChSwiQq9zbg?feat=directlink

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  5. Joel - were you able to get the tablet before they took it off the market in Germany? Interestingly it is still for sale at Vodafone in Eger, although it might be a different version from the one I have.

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