Android Phone Tips And Tutorial

At the high end, the iPad, and now the iPad 2, is the benchmark tablet to beat, with top-notch, seamless design paired with a robust app store. In between these bookends lies the rest of the tablet field, with early Android tablets (anything running a version lower than Android 3.0) ranking closer to the JooJoo end of the spectrum and newer Android tablets like the Motorola Xoom and upcoming second-generation Samsung Galaxy Tabs taking aim at the iPad. 

A tablet is a touch-screen media device that is actually most similar to a very advanced portable media player—or an MP3 player with a much larger screen. Tablets are basically lightweight versions of laptops in every sense—they weigh less, and they're lighter on features.

Apple's iOS is the mobile platform used by the iPad, as well as the iPhone and iPod touch. On the iPad and the iPad 2, iOS works very similarly to the way it does on the iPhone, with certain tweaks made here and there to take advantage of the tablet's larger 9.7-inch screen. Google's mobile OS, Android, is a different story. 

There are several iterations of Android, but only one—Android 3.0, a.k.a. Honeycomb—is designed specifically for tablets. Right now, only one tablet offers Honeycomb—the Motorola Xoom—and that makes it the iPad's most viable contender, for now. Android lacks a strong selection of apps. Even with the newly announced Amazon App Store, the number of Honeycomb tablet-friendly apps that work well is very low. 

Apple's App Store is well-curated and offers deep selection—no competitor can come close to claiming this right now, partially because apps made for Android tablets have to work across multiple screen sizes, while iPad apps are designed specifically for one device. First things first: When you hear the term "10-inch tablet," this typically refers to the size of the screen, measured diagonally, and not the size of the tablet itself.

Apple continues to offer the iPad in one size only (9.7-inch screen). Right now storage tops out at 64GB of flash-based memory, with many of the quality tablets we've seen available in 16, 32, and 64GB varieties. If you want to use your tablet to get online anywhere, you should opt for a model with a cell radio.

With the release of the iPad 2, Apple caught up rather quickly to its tablet competition and added front- and rear-facing cameras for stills and video. The Xoom has a higher quality rear-facing camera than the iPad's lackluster offering, but the bottom line is: the cameras on all of these tablets are currently more toy than tool. It's also worth pointing out that any Android tablet lacking Honeycomb, like the Dell Streak 7, is not running an OS intended for a tablet, and thus, its apps often offer a weak user experience. Like with most gadgetry, you get what you pay for, and tablets are no exception.