Hey guys,
I've been using my new Nexus 7 exclusively the last 72 hours to get a feel of it and see if I am going to keep it and buy in, at least partially, to the Android ecosystem. I'm not an Apple fanboy (PC guy all my life) and pretty brand agnostic. I'm just a tech geek and enjoy gadgets regardless of the badge on it (fanboys annoy me to no end). I'm also one that enjoys customization and tinkering. But I've only owned iOS devices, 3 iPhones and 2 iPads in the past, all got the jailbreak treatment (my 5 is heavily mod'd). The new Nexus 7 was a good opportunity I thought to get a decently spec'd tablet with a plain vanilla experience. Here are my impressions and maybe a few helpful members can steer me in the right direction if I'm overlooking something..
1) Incompatibility - I understand that fragmentation is prevalent in the Android world with so many devices all running different OS versions. However I find it pretty irritating that I get the latest greatest from Google and some of the major apps and games are no compatible, yet. Something that I've never experienced with iOS. What I experienced with iOS was vice versa, old hardware not running the new apps. What is the usual time table for the bigger app devs to update? Generally a few days? Months? Never?
2) Crashes - App crashing rarely happened even on my JB'd idevice with JB'd apps. On my Nexus some apps just either fail to run at all or crash randomly and very unstable. It seems to be a crapshoot for me if i download an app from the Play store if it will run stable or not. Probably a silly question, but is there anything I can do to improve this? Granted it has only happened for 5 of the 20 apps I have installed, but still...
3) Malware - How prevalent? Should I be worried? So far the only repos I've installed are Amazon, F-Droid, and G-Jar which claim to be reliable. Worth getting an anti malware like AVG on there?
Other general impressions good and bad..
App selection - While not as good as iOS I do like having some of the apps I could only wish that were on iOS. Really liking the deep app integration and customization.
Watered down apps - Yeah you guys are probably already aware, but being my first Android device it was very apparent that some cross platform apps are a much deeper and improved experienced in iOS, at least on tablets. UI polish and even some big features are just not in the Android counterparts. Has this been improving?
Some lag and overall performance - For the most part it's generally smooth. But it does hiccup on occasion and there are a few apps that just run horribly bad. My younger daughter has a mini and we did some side by side real world comparisons, despite the 7 having on paper what looks to be vastly superior specs, the mini actually was smoother/snappier and loaded some apps quicker. I realize that iOS is extremely optimized and does a lot with less hardware, so my question is how has Android progressed in this area? From what I gather Android keeps getting better and better, especially the past year. With that said, I'm not disappointed at all with the 7's current performance.
The OS - iOS is bland and stale to me. If it were not for jailbreaking I'd probably ditch iOS all together. iOS 7 looks to be moving into the right direction but it's lacking innovation and seems to be just copying. I'm really enjoying the Android's OS and sheer customization.
Hot hot heat - I thought my iPad 3 was hot, but my 7 heats up a ton when running games like Real Racing, particularly in the top right corner of the device. I assume this is normal?
So far I'm enjoying my Android journey... The device's size and OS will probably keep it in my stable of devices. The iPad 3 will probably still be my go to content consumption device at home but the 7 will be my on the go unit due to the portability (slipping it in my pocket with ease is nice).
Thanks all
I've been using my new Nexus 7 exclusively the last 72 hours to get a feel of it and see if I am going to keep it and buy in, at least partially, to the Android ecosystem. I'm not an Apple fanboy (PC guy all my life) and pretty brand agnostic. I'm just a tech geek and enjoy gadgets regardless of the badge on it (fanboys annoy me to no end). I'm also one that enjoys customization and tinkering. But I've only owned iOS devices, 3 iPhones and 2 iPads in the past, all got the jailbreak treatment (my 5 is heavily mod'd). The new Nexus 7 was a good opportunity I thought to get a decently spec'd tablet with a plain vanilla experience. Here are my impressions and maybe a few helpful members can steer me in the right direction if I'm overlooking something..
1) Incompatibility - I understand that fragmentation is prevalent in the Android world with so many devices all running different OS versions. However I find it pretty irritating that I get the latest greatest from Google and some of the major apps and games are no compatible, yet. Something that I've never experienced with iOS. What I experienced with iOS was vice versa, old hardware not running the new apps. What is the usual time table for the bigger app devs to update? Generally a few days? Months? Never?
2) Crashes - App crashing rarely happened even on my JB'd idevice with JB'd apps. On my Nexus some apps just either fail to run at all or crash randomly and very unstable. It seems to be a crapshoot for me if i download an app from the Play store if it will run stable or not. Probably a silly question, but is there anything I can do to improve this? Granted it has only happened for 5 of the 20 apps I have installed, but still...
3) Malware - How prevalent? Should I be worried? So far the only repos I've installed are Amazon, F-Droid, and G-Jar which claim to be reliable. Worth getting an anti malware like AVG on there?
Other general impressions good and bad..
App selection - While not as good as iOS I do like having some of the apps I could only wish that were on iOS. Really liking the deep app integration and customization.
Watered down apps - Yeah you guys are probably already aware, but being my first Android device it was very apparent that some cross platform apps are a much deeper and improved experienced in iOS, at least on tablets. UI polish and even some big features are just not in the Android counterparts. Has this been improving?
Some lag and overall performance - For the most part it's generally smooth. But it does hiccup on occasion and there are a few apps that just run horribly bad. My younger daughter has a mini and we did some side by side real world comparisons, despite the 7 having on paper what looks to be vastly superior specs, the mini actually was smoother/snappier and loaded some apps quicker. I realize that iOS is extremely optimized and does a lot with less hardware, so my question is how has Android progressed in this area? From what I gather Android keeps getting better and better, especially the past year. With that said, I'm not disappointed at all with the 7's current performance.
The OS - iOS is bland and stale to me. If it were not for jailbreaking I'd probably ditch iOS all together. iOS 7 looks to be moving into the right direction but it's lacking innovation and seems to be just copying. I'm really enjoying the Android's OS and sheer customization.
Hot hot heat - I thought my iPad 3 was hot, but my 7 heats up a ton when running games like Real Racing, particularly in the top right corner of the device. I assume this is normal?
So far I'm enjoying my Android journey... The device's size and OS will probably keep it in my stable of devices. The iPad 3 will probably still be my go to content consumption device at home but the 7 will be my on the go unit due to the portability (slipping it in my pocket with ease is nice).
Thanks all