[cgfw201]

I got an S3 back in July, love it and completely see what the Android thing is all about. It beat my iPhone in just about every department.

My iPad had a fault last week, and was replaced as new under warranty. A good time to sell it and move into the Android tablet world, I thought.

Sold my iPad 2 for £295 and picked up a Nexus 7, T3 Magazine Gadget of the Year, Stuff Magazine tablet of the year etc. What could possibly be bad about it.

Well, having played with it for a couple of days, I’m really, really disappointed by it.

I used my iPad for reading newspapers (Telegraph & Guardian), watching Sky Go, watching iPlayer and other TV shows either via 4od or iTunes paid for stuff.

I can’t do any of those on the Nexus 7. I don’t quite know what to use it for now!? It’s basically just a big wifi only version of the S3, just with less apps. The newspaper 'readers' like Google Currents and Pulse are crap, and dont have 90% of the content or functionality you get from an iPad app.

Think I’m going to take it back and get a refund, but if the below questions have positive answers I may reconsider:
- Is there an Apple Newsstand rivalling newspaper & magazine hosting app on the horizon? It’s incredibly useful when they days newspapers are automatically downloaded to the tablet at 5am ready for the commute.
- Sky Go, iPlayer, 4od – none of these seem to be compatible on 7” running android 4.2, why not?
- Downloading tv shows. In the UK there seems to be a licence issue where it’s impossible to download TV shows, either via Google Play, or Netflix or any other app. When is this going to change?
- Hardly any apps seem to be optimised for 7". Everything seems stretched, has huge empty spaces or has crap resolution images. It's awful.
- One more thing that's really bloody annoying. Rearranged my homescreens, deleted the unnecessary nonsense that they put on there and now have a screen with apps and a screen with widgets - and THREE EMPTY SCREENS THAT I CANT DELETE! Apparently the only way to get rid is to download a launcher like Nova. Firstly that's ridiculous, secondly I tried one on my S3 and it just made everything look , so not keen to do it again! Really annoying.

Really disappointed that I’m disappointed, but I am. Love Jelly Bean and the look & feel of the device, just can’t use it for anything!!
Any reason I shouldn't take it back and get an iPad mini? Hate Apple but can't make myself like this massively inferior product! I know it's half the price, but it has about 20% of the use!
Cheers

[johnwccres]

There's a Guardian app, dunno about Telegraph. Iplayer app works fine. No Sky Go for Android except selected phones, that pisses me off too.

Too many home screens? Just don't go to em :-P

[VoltaicShock]

- Is there an Apple Newsstand rivalling newspaper & magazine hosting app on the horizon? It’s incredibly useful when they days newspapers are automatically downloaded to the tablet at 5am ready for the commute.

I haven't looked at the links but here are some newreaders

- Sky Go, iPlayer, 4od – none of these seem to be compatible on 7” running android 4.2, why not?

If none of these are compatible with the nexus 7 just download it on your phone and create a backup of the app then install the apk on your nexus 7 (this works for most apps)

Sky go: (no idea what Sky Go is)

4od: (never heard of this either) <-- If you can't install it on the nexus 7 just install it on your phone and backup the apk then put it on your nexus 7

iPlayer:

- Downloading tv shows. In the UK there seems to be a licence issue where it’s impossible to download TV shows, either via Google Play, or Netflix or any other app. When is this going to change?

This has to do with the UK and not sure you can get around this. (We have some of that here too)

- Hardly any apps seem to be optimised for 7". Everything seems stretched, has huge empty spaces or has crap resolution images. It's awful.

More and more apps are being optimized now. For example HBO Go was just updated for the Nexus 7 (Apple has this issue as well)

- One more thing that's really bloody annoying. Rearranged my homescreens, deleted the unnecessary nonsense that they put on there and now have a screen with apps and a screen with widgets - and THREE EMPTY SCREENS THAT I CANT DELETE! Apparently the only way to get rid is to download a launcher like Nova. Firstly that's ridiculous, secondly I tried one on my S3 and it just made everything look , so not keen to do it again! Really annoying.

Find something to put on those screens such as your news readers. I put one off stuff on the other screens.

Hope this helps!

[cgfw201]

There's a Guardian app, dunno about Telegraph. Iplayer app works fine. No Sky Go for Android except selected phones, that pisses me off too.

Too many home screens? Just don't go to em :-P

The Guardian app is just the phone app but stretched with loads of white space, it's nothing like their iPad app which automatically downloads the whole days paper each morning which can then be consumed offline throughout the day. The Telegraph are releasing a Kindle Fire version but nothing for other Android tablets.

The home screens thing is ridiculous, surprised they havent fixed this with an update.

I'm taking it back today for a full refund, think I will go tablet free for a couple of months and wait and see if developers produce any decent apps that meet my needs for Android, otherwise I'll have to reluctantly go back to the dark (and expensive) iPad mini side.

[blaze5]

I might get a lot of hate from this but oh well Android tablets just aren't great because no tablet optimized apps I received the nexus 7 as a gift and I love it because of the size but I hate using stretched out phone apps I love my Android phones Nd will never go back to and iPhone but for right now and iPad is the way to go

Sent from my PC36100

[cgfw201]

Refunded.

Hopefully I'll be back in a couple of months when they launch the Nexus 7 HD or whatever the next one will be called and there will be a solid library of apps which compete with the basics like Apple Newsstand and iTunes TV library which makes the iPad massively superior at the moment. Shame, as Jelly Bean, Google Now and the look and feel of the device are top notch. Just no functionality.