My father in law wants to get my mother in law a tablet for Christmas and I can't decide which one to go for. I'm leaning towards the Galaxy 3 as it has a ten inch screen and is down £100 to £180 in argos. I've read the reviews which point to it not being as good as the Nexus 7 but the 10inch screen could be important as her eye sight isn't great. Anyone got the Galaxy 3? The Hudl 2 is pretty cheap and has favourable reviews, one downside being battery life at just under 7 hours of looped video which to be honest doesn't sound bad to me at all, my galaxy 2 lasts less than that and isn't as powerful and doesn't have an HD screen.
I have a Galaxy Note 10.1 after trying the Nexus 7 and I much preferred the extra screen space. If your mum in law has eyesight issues then go for the Samsung. The only downside of the Samsung is the amount of bundled crap ware that is installed. Most of it will never be used. But it can be placed in a folder out of the way. Can you link to the Argos one by the way?
Galaxy Tab 3 Well she wears glasses but her eyesight isn't that bad, I think my father in law is sold on the Hudl 2 seeing as it's only £109 using a voucher code.
For general (read: older generation) use I imagine the Hudl would be a good bet. The battery life probably won't be too much of an issue as I imagine it won't be used 24/7. With the galaxy tab 3 I don't imagine it's a lot better than the Hudl - just will have a bigger screen. Samsung have moved more towards the Galaxy Tabs being their lower end offerings and the Notes (Note 10.1 etc) being their higher end models
We've got a Hudl 2 and the screen is pretty good for those with poor eyesight, me included. Pros: 1920x1200 IPS screen, great for Movies and reading (although the Night Mode App might be necessary to turn the brightness down for comfortable reading if you have eyesight problems) Slot for up to 32GB MicroSD card. Supposedly will work with a 64GB card but can't find evidence of this and haven't got a card to try it. Good performance particularly if you replace the sluggish (at times) Tesco launcher with another (I use Nova Launcher) At the moment a £10 voucher for Blinkbox books and £10 voucher for Blinkbox Movies included in the deal Reasonable sound quality from the speakers. If Tesco's cock up the order you get an extra one free. Admittedly this might not happen again. Cons are: Battery life is poor It's heavy for the size It has Auto contrast which can't be switched off so every now and then you'll see the screen adjust the contrast Tesco widgets are a bit sluggish (see above re: alternative Launcher) Difficult to transfer Apps to the SD card Start up sound is annoyingly loud and can only be removed by rooting the tablet.
Whatever you do, don't get a 2nd hand 2012 Nexus 7. Mine has for all intents and purposes been bricked by the Android Lollipop update
Yeah, got the OTA update to Lollipop pushed out, waited for as long as I could and was then given no option other that to update Now, its soooo slow to respond, almost to the point that the screen times-out to black before you can even unlock it, especially if you change its orientation; apps crash randomly, facebook is the worst - it lasts ~5secs. I have searched forums/googled for solutions; there are none, only thing talking about is clearing your cache partition, which I have now done twice, but it only speeds it up slightly, and first boot afterwards it takes absolutely ages to initialise everything (obviously) so you have to leave it about 30mins before its useable. Barely used it since the update, and every time I pick it up now I end up splurging a string of expletives, and putting it down after 15 minutes of trying to get it to do anything. Last I checked it doesn't seem that Google is doing anything about it Crapbag: sorry for the rant/thread highjack
The Lollipop update makes your 2012 Nexus 7 run like it's wading through treacle - so much as to make it virtually unusable Apparently, one option is to reset the tablet and reconnect to your Google account without restoring the settings, but that's hardly an option. Best recommendation until Google fixes it is to avoid applying the update.
I also have the galaxy 10.1.... and I use it for everything! cracking piece of kit. as for the nexus being slow, try booting into recovery and clearing the cache. This sometimes works.
Think I will be resorting to the factory reset tonight. It'll be annoying, as I'll have to re-install all my apps, but it will probably cull the ones I don't use much. Just got to remember to copy off my file/downloads/etc to my PC first... First time I've been stung by the "update software/device no longer works/must buy new one" scam upgrade path... Yup, done twice now. First time, I got a boost (once it had initialised everything) but second time had no noticeable effect. EDIT: double-post d'oh!
Another device option to consider is the Lenovo Yoga 10 or the 10 HD+ if your budget can squeeze in a bit for that one. I've been using mine for a few weeks now and absolutely love the style of the built-in stand and the device didn't have too much bloatware pre-installed so you don't have to spend too long removing junk. It's a bit weighty with the moderate sized battery cylinder made of metal and the metal stand, though that was an obvious design approach to make it stand up with no risk of it falling over. The cylinder part also gives you something to grip when you hold the device in portrait mode, though it can feel a bit cold to the touch. My only real negative is the volume of the sound it plays during the system start-up, it's terribly loud because of the two Dolby stereo speakers so if you turn it on at night you are guaranteed to wake up the entire house.
Let us know whether or not this actually works. It's the only solution I've seen offered other than the clear cache option which, as you've said, doesn't really work. Otherwise, I'll put CM11 on it instead. Back to the OT: I was seriously looking at the Nexus 9 until I noticed that it had an Apple-like 4:3 screen. I like my 16:9 screen, dammit!
The cache clearing can help, but it's hit and miss. It sometimes improves things for me, for a day or two, but it doesn't stop the random crashes to desktop. Android Police are keeping a list of the latest updates for the nexus series, but 5.0.1 has yet to appear for the 2012 Nexus 7. AP clicky Another option is to roll back to Kit Kat, but I'm making do with 5.0 for the moment.
UPDATE: After backing up some files to my PC, I performed a factory reset, and then set up the device as a "New Device" rather than pull down backedup files/apps/data etc. from Google. So I'm now running a clean build of Lollipop and its as snappy and responsive as I ever remember it being yay! Have left it installing updates to all the "native" android/google apps, so will report back again once I've had a chance to play with it this evening and install some 3rd party apps... Whooop! Whooop!
UPDATE 2: Having now installed some 3rd part apps (Facebook, Facebook messenger, LinkedIn, Hotmail/Outlook, etc.) its still as responsive, and Facebook no longer crashes after 5 seconds Still seems responsive/snappy which is great, so although a pain as you'll need to reinstall your apps etc., a Factory Reset seems to be a reasonable 'solution'.
Just to clarify (with apologies for the thread hijack), it's not just the factory reset, but in the setup when you get asked to restore your backed up settings, you must answer No.
