I must say. 4h + of continuous SD using 4g, and not reception everywhere. Still got 60% battery capacity left. My old Nexus would hardly manage 1-2 h.
The later Huawei products also don’t get access to the google app shop (the “playstore”). That is a major drawback, obviously, unless it gets resolved. There are various hacks which solve this.
I am still on my old Samsung T705. Never overheats or shuts down in sunlight… runs everything I need in the plane. It has a contract Vodafone SIM card in it (£9/m) and acts as a backup phone when travelling.
Off_Field wrote:
When the current one finally does become useless I hope there’s a decent replacement available.
I think there always will be. There will always be a niche market for Android tablets. They may be nowhere as fancy spec vise as the newest phones, but they take advantage of the phone development, using the same software and mid spec phone hardware packed in a large screen and a large battery giving spectacular battery life and no heating problems. And they only cost 1/5 to 1/10 of the newest top of the line phones.
My new 4G tablet literally IS a phone 100%, only with an 8 inch screen. There is a newer version with 8 core CPU, but it’s not available here, and I don’t think it has 4g either. Huawei has a substantially better specced device, cpu vise, but I haven’t found that one around here either.
My use is SD, electronic instructor log and IPPC. For those uses it is excellent. More than fast enough, big enough, really long battery life and 4g (can be used everywhere). At €160 it is a no brainer IMO. In 4-5 years it probably will be too slow, and I will get a new one at €150 ish. I can even use it as a regular phone, although that looks kind of silly 
(An Apple device is out of the question for me, hate those things )
Telephones seem also to have gotten comically large to the point of being close to a tablet.
I’ve got a galaxy tab s2 and it’s pretty perfect for me as I have to use it on my knee. I find the tablet, ideal for running skydemon, having some documents electronically on it and running OS maps whilst green laning but don’t really use it for anything else. I do remember the step in speed between my previous nexus 7 being really great.
When the current one finally does become useless I hope there’s a decent replacement available.
At 3.5GHz or so, PCs, servers, etc, have to go sideways, by having more cores. I am typing this on a 12 core i7 on which all 12 max out when doing say movie rendering. I built it in 2016 when it was about the best available. But for some reason tablets, notably android ones, have not gone to the “20 core etc” phone processors which are all the rage now. It could be that Apple own the top of the market so android tablet makers have focused on the “cheap” sectors.
But I also think a lot of people don’t use tablets anymore, and Apple own most of the market where people need a tablet. In aviation this is particularly driven by almost all aviation software (all US software?) being IOS-only, for various reasons which specifically include making bootlegging harder. The apps are functionally crippled, however.
A lot of people live in a world of “instant comms”, not reading more than a line of an email, and you can do that fine on a phone. The fact that people pay up to 1.5k for a phone proves that they see value in this “convergence”. Travelling power users can still get a laptop; I used a Thinkpad X230 for years, still have it, and now have a Dell XPS13; both of these are quad core i7 and really find even for movie rendering. So tablets are getting squeezed out.
Peter wrote:
But tablets have generally stopped in their development some time ago.
It’s almost the same for general-purpose PCs. Servers and gaming machines are getting faster, but general-purpose desktops and notebooks have lately remained largely the same in terms of CPU performance, memory, etc. The main improvement is the energy efficiency, some notebooks can now operate for 10-12 hours on a single battery charge vs. 3-4 several years ago.
There just isn’t much choice in android tablets these days. I don’t know why development just stopped. But tablets have generally stopped in their development some time ago.
No, just a regular screen. Flew yesterday in both in bright sunshine and terrible rain (thunder storms). I had no difficulties reading it. The screen has 350 cd/m2 according to spec sheet.
Anti-reflective screen?
Just bought a new tablet. My old Nexus 7 eventually became too slow.
Not many Android tablets available actually. But I find one Lenovo Smart Tab M8 4g. Not the fastest tablet, but runs unmodified Android 9, has 4g as well as WiFi, and all the of the GPS systems.
Nice looking. Same height as my old Nexus, but slightly wider. Much larger screen, due to minimal bezel.
Tried it yesterday with SD in flight. 2 1/2 – 3 hours flying, and it had only used 1/5 of the battery.
Just perfect for SD IMO. Really impressed all in all. And it only costs around 160 €.
