A cut-price tablet computer? Whatever Next...

What can I say, they are jumping on a bandwagon and trying to cash in on a market while it's still developing.

The only thing that surprises me is that there aren't many more companies doing exactly the same (yet!).

Everyone can see what happened with the digital music player market, the fact that Apple's iPod had managed to near monopolise the market, and anyone who can seems to be trying their best to stop this happening with the tablet market. Everyone wants a piece of the market before the 'boom', which the iPod saw around 2005.

Finally, to build on the comment about this not being part of Next's core offering, realistically, things like iPods are seen more as a fashion statement than a functional device. I knew people while I was in school who would buy a very cheap MP3 player, and a set of iPod earphones, so that when they went out, everyone would think they had an iPod.

It looks more like the hardware being the problem than Android, most of the android phones are very responsive to touch. It just looks like next bought in some cheap tat with a bad touchscreen, then got their logo silk screened on it.

An operating system can only be as good as the hardware it's running on. If android can run on a phone perfectly well, there's no reason it can't scale to tablet PCs, however, Google has already stated that Android less than and including version 2.2 is not ready for tablets, that's coming with the new version "Gingerbread".

Google are already on record saying that Android is not optimised for use on tablets so I'm not really surprised by this.

I suspect we'll see either the next version of Android being developed to support tablet use more, or a fork of the development to create a separate version specifically for these use cases.

Mind you, you still wouldn't ever get me using an iPhone or iPad. Yes controlling everything to the degree Apple does ensures it runs a little smoother, but I dislike the controlling censorship that this sort of behaviour seems to create.

Android’s independence from hardware manufacturer is its strength, yes there will be duds like Rory found, but then there’s choice, on features, functionality and price. In some ways you get what you pay for, but at least you can choose your price level. Unlike apple which is, one device, one set of features, one price and no choice.

It was my understanding that Google would rather manufacturers use Chrome for tablet devices rather than Android, which they've specifically designed for smartphones. Then again, like GavChap said, there's no reason that Android can't scale up to a tablet provided the hardware is sufficient. Looks like in this case, the hardware wasn't. The point is, though, that consumers have a choice with Android. They can buy a low end device for a low end price tag and put up with the poor performance, or they can buy a high end device with a high end price tag and get excellent performance. I suppose the advantage with that situation is that those not fortunate enough to be able to afford a high end device can at least get something... With Apple it's all or nothing.

I don't think Google would be too worried. Afterall MS Windows system also does't run on all hardware. Sometimes they put it even on minimum requirements met laptops and then ofcourse doesn't run as expected. Especially after additional SP are installed...

While Android performed poorly on the menitoned tablet, there is no reaosn not to try and install another system on it. Maybe Ubuntu would work better?

Rory Cellan-Jones.

"To be fair to Next, I suppose there is a possibility that I got a faulty version."

perhaps not, I'd like to think that "..it takes an age to boot up. The Next symbol appears first, then the Linux penguin and an Android logo" is indicative of an unsympathetic (and 'rushed' through) s/ware implementation.

Interesting - @£180 you can be sure Next is making a whacking margin.

The key here is Android and the sooner that Google market and Android + format for tablets the better to give Apple a real run for their money.

The key question is what does iPad 2 bring? We can probably look forward to an optimised OS extension for the iPad which in turn will bring front and back cameras, improved battery life, would be fantastic if they included USB for better connectivity, handwriting recognition (to Apples highest grade) and IR so it could be used as a standard family super remote control.

Guess we only have about 7 months to wait.

Again it’s the same story. Apple's software (arguably) & hardware quality with the iPad is miles in front of everyone else (not to mention their brilliant track record at mobile tech) - but just at that premium price.

Android OS is like the Windows to a PC, and Apple iOS and its iPad hardware is the Mac equivalent.It's just up to you which one is the most cost effective over time, and what you’re going to be using it for.

I think that the iPad 2 has to knock the socks off competition, or Android OS will be findings itself on some pretty good quality hardware soon I feel.

Come the Next Sale, they'll be grabbing armfuls of them to go on ebay that afternoon...

tablet PC's and E-readers are just a waist of money for untill you are able to replace a warn out battery without haveing to send the tablet PC or E-reader back to the manufacture or just throw them away once the battary has worn out you will be throwing good money away for as most of todays batteries can only be recharged 500 times if you are a heavy user of a computer or you do a good lot of reading then these devices are not for you not yet that is not untill you are able as you are with todays laptop computers to be able to go out and buy a new battary off the shelf when yon can these devices will have some kind of appeal

@Thomas, I'm pretty sure Google has said Chrome OS is not for tablets either. Rumour is that the next major version of Android (3.0 - Gingerbread) will partly be aimed at tablets.

The Next tablet appears to be a rebranded Zenithink - and demonstrates that not all 10 inch touch screen displays are equal.

The only place good quality 10 inch (9.7 actually) capacitive touch screens are going, right now, appears to be into Foxconn City - and they only emerge again, when they're fitted into iPads. There's no point trying to compete for components, against a factory that employs a third of a million people, and Hon Hai more or less sealed up the market for good screens in these dimensions at the first hint of the iPad contract - even shopping around for the best supplier (TPK Touch lost out to Wintek, in the deal to make the final product).

The ability to produce top quality screens in this size is now emerging elsewhere, of course, but there's a recession on (for instance, TPK will have had about three months head start on everyone else; simply by having failed to fill Foxconn's order books, they will have been alerted to the existence of a very sizeable potential market, about to appear). However, the release dates and prices going onto the first 10 inch Android offerings do not suggest that people are finding them easy to source for.

I think the reason everyone else is making 7-inchers, right now, is because this was a screen format with some production volume in the market already (they are used in kiosk systems, and in the classier sorts of ATM units) and there are some good units, to start from.

One positive aspect of these is it's apparently a reasonably affordable way for developers to get their hands on an Android device. Having said that I've also been led to believe that you can get pretty much the same device appreciably cheaper on Ebay...

Market forces normally dictate that you get what you pay for so the conclusion of this article comes at little surprise.

@tom153uk

"... but just at that premium price."

I agree with all of what you wrote except this bit when talking about the iPad. On the contrary, I think the iPad currently represents excellent value at the current price. Admittedly Apple's other products often have premium price tags but usually less than the anti-Apple bigots would have you believe and usually justified in terms of the product quality IMO.

I do hope that competition drives the iPad price down over time but no other company seems able to deliver anything seriously competitive with the iPad at the same price point. The Samsung Galaxy Tab seems to be the first potential contender with a more expensive price tag than the closest iPad. Only paper specification comparisons seem to be available at the moment but there seems to be nothing there to justify a premium for the Samsung (for me at least). It will be interesting to read the in-depth, hands-on comparisons once it starts shipping.

Can't wait to see more entrants in this market segment. Fiercer competition for Apple should yield better products for us all to choose from.

Just waiting for the first "Who needs a tablet anyway?" and "Pox on the gadget freaks - especially Apple ones." comments. :-D

When buying any table or mobile device NEVER purchase anything with a resistive touchscreen. These are incredibly cheap, but *completely* useless.

Always Always Always Always Always Always Always buy capacitive touchscreens!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

tommed:

Up until a few years ago all touch-screen devices were resistive - that includes the Palm, and two iPaqs I've owned...nothing wrong with resistive in its place.

What exactly are you banging on about?

It doesn't sound like a faulty version. Just sounds like the software isn't optimised with the hardware and Next just put their name on a cheap product to try to cash in on the tablet market. Can't blame them or any other business trying to get a slice of the tablet market.

What incompetent journalism. It's worrying that someone who runs a technology blog use a resistive screen as if it's capacitive and then blames the operating system. Yes resistive is not too great compared to capacitive, but then the device is only 180 quid - so what do you expect? If you are going to report on technology you shouldn't be swayed by people poking fun at you ego - typical BBC.

@ James
You appear so driven to read what you want into this story, that you forgot to read the story. (I don't see the operating system being blamed, here, so put the bayonet down: your straw man is not only dead, but never lived.)

The story talks about how a high profile company like Next, could end up giving casual users a negative first impression of Android, through promoting it on a cheap device, like this Zenithink ZT-180.

Sticking Android on a cheap big resistive touch screen device and calling it a tablet is doomed to fail.

Even a well built tablet will have a few problems with Android due to the fact Google themselves have pointed out that the current version of Android is not intended for tablet hardware.

This is precisely the reason why so many people hate Microsoft and Android, and love Apple, or vice versa: the "hands-off" strategy versus the "hands-on". There's very little actually wrong with Google's and Microsoft's products, but their complete lack of control over what cheap piece of hardware they are loaded on unfortunately means the frustrated customer eventually prefers to buy something that works, and buys Apple.
Apple's "hands-on" policy may be restrictive to developers, and a few customers, but it does ensure a good quality user experience.
What's really needed is, I feel, a loosening of the rules on Apple's part, and a tightening of the rules on their competitors, to find a happy middle ground: Apple should license their software to other devices, but maintain a strict control over the quality of the hardware, and Google/Microsoft et al should also not throw their OS's over to just anyone who asks. This would create a benchmark for devices to achieve: if a device fails to reach the minimum quality required to get any OS installed on it, then it would force the manufacturers and designers to make better quality devices.

@Graphis - in the 90's, Apple did allow Mac OS to be run on other companies' hardware and they almost collapsed as a result. I doubt they'll open the doors for that to happen again. That's why they acted so quick taking Pystar to court, too.

Mr. Cellan-Jones, thank you for this. Other comments have said your column isn't exactly an incisive or in-depth report on the technology nor on the softwares running on it, and this is true enough, but you did do at least one very good thing: you introduced us to a supplier of quite inexpensive portable computers that may well influence the market enough to make the pricing level of sub-two-hundred pounds a standard for this form of device.
And as Gregor300 said, @6, installing a better, smaller, faster and far more useful Operating System is but the work of a few minutes, if it goes well. Indeed, this device, or something very like it, might even run Windows-7 under a VM inside a unixxy OS.
You don't give any description of how powerful the kit is, so we will need to go to the Next, or the Zenith, site to find out. Okay, been there, done that. The thing ships with a 2GB onboard SSD system drive and another 8GB SD-card storage. Not a lot of room if you're thinking in Windows terms, but more than adequate for a couple of Linuxy OSes and some user data storage area.
MicroSD cards go up to 64GB, at least, so, assuming the machine can read them, this makes it potentially quite a powerful bit of kit for around £200.
Powerful enough for most schoolkids, roving reporters and a host of other types of users.
True, the battery isn't particularly impressive, but there are portable chargers out there that can help. There are even solar-powered chargers that might be compatible.
This machine might not, by 21st Century standards, be a high-end gaming PC or a replacement for a 12-core Mac Pro, but, compared to the machines that Cassini has, or the kit that Galileo used to image Europa, this is a supercomputer. And Next have not only priced it withing the range even quite lowly-paid working people could possibly afford, they have opened up an entire new market for cheapish gear. The would-be fashion victim crowd.
Mr. Cellan-Jones, your report is, at best, superficial and overly critical. You seem to have not bothered to look at this machine with any great imagination or vision. You don't mention even trying to tweak it a little to make it run better, something any bright ten-year-old would have done. And something that helps even with Apple boxes.
You seem to have been very biased against it from the moment you saw the lack of a bitten-apple icon.
I suppose that were it to come with a Twit button you would have spent far more effort on it?
Over all, I think I am far more impressed by the machine, and by Next's vision and courage in trying to market things like this, than I am with the BBC's version of "technology reporting".
To be fair, I, too, have a bias I should admit to. I don't Twit and I'm not on Facebook. Though I do have a Mac.
And I do see one very obvious part missing on the Next/Zenith box, something even Apple have neglected to add onto their portables. There aren't any finger-loops. A couple of strtategilally placed loops would make holding these things far easier, safer and more comforatble.
I wonder why *no* portable comes with loops?

2 words: EPIC FAIL

This has got to be a joke, right?

Oh, for goodness' sake! All you people constantly complaining about Rory's and Maggie's blogs not being in depth enough about techy subjects for you... I suggest you scroll to the top of the page and re-read the blurb again: this is a blog about how "how technology is changing our lives." Maggie's blog is "for stories about technology from Silicon Valley." Both are coming from a completely different angle to whatever you seem to think these blogs should be about. As far as I can see, both Maggie and Rory are fulfilling their stated remits.
If you want to read tech specs, go and buy a magazine, or check out other blogs: these blogs are not by geeks for geeks, they are for the rest of us LOL.

I'm not surprised Android's causing issues on a tablet. O2 and HTC can't seem to make it work on some phones. Suggest you dig a little deeper into issues Desire owners are having with 2.2 and phones failing to boot etc, there is plenty of noise on various forums and the customers service experience I've had with O2 has been atrocious. I'm not surprised Next's suppliers have had trouble integrating when it's not working on smart phones.

Has April Fools come early?!

Next offering a cheap piece of garbage like this will do harm to the Android reputation.

Friend-to-cats

Can't you see him trying to get into the settings? He can't!

Some commenters don't seem to realise that this video was not Rory's only attempt at using the machine - if you read the article underneath it is clear that he has used it for much longer than the video.

From this blog entry, one could easily get the impression that this Next-branded Zenithink is the first Android table device Rory Cellan-Jones has come across, and he is unaware that of the better-specced 7-inch devices that have been available for a while (e.g., the X5A HeroPad), or the recently launched devices from big names like Samsung and Toshiba.

But that is impossible to believe. As a tech journalist with a prominent job at the BBC, he will regularly be in receipt of press releases from vendors, and will have seen devices at trade shows and similar events. He will also be aware of devices talked about on other tech blogs.

A quick search reveals that, indeed, Rory Cellan-Jones looked at the Toshiba Folio 100 (a 10.1 inch widescreen format tablet due out this month), and the Samsung Galaxy Tab (a 7 inch device with camera, phone and some other fancy extras) about six weeks ago at a trade show, and he mentioned them briefly in a blog entry.

Weirdly, though, he expressed the thought that consumers would find the Samsung device, at half the size of an iPad, "unwieldy". I dunno about Rory, but to me, the iPad's 10-inch dimensions are more unwieldy. Why does the device need to be so big? It could justify being that size if it had a keyboard, but then it would be a touchscreen netbook, not a tablet. Of course, that would make it far too useful (and ordinary-looking) to merit all the buzz it's enjoyed of late. After all, nobody at all talks about the flip-screen Lenovo IdeaPad S12, do they? As a product, it's just too sensible to deserve our attention, I guess.

Rory, I think your desire for a competitor to Apple is doing your readers a disservice. The iPad is in a market all of it's own, and I think it will be like that for some time. Even Google has pointed out that Android isn't ready for form-factors other than phones, and many are concerned that it isn't providing a great service to phone customers either. Android is a cheap knock-of of Apple's iOS, developed and managed by an advertising firm (Google), and taken up by electronics firms that invest very little in R&D (why else would you jump at a free 3rd-party OS). The predicted mess is starting to show. New applications are showing up in the marketplace for some phones and not for others. Whether they work or not is also a lottery. Many are finding their phone can't be upgraded to more recent Android releases (although the phones are very recent) or the upgrade is a nightmare.

You also keep mentioning Flash as one of Androids key strengths. Why? It's mediocre at best on phone, and often just plain terrible. Read the experiences of reviewers:
https://blog.laptopmag.com/mobile-flash-fail-weak-android-player-proves-jobs-right
and...
https://newteevee.com/2010/08/31/video-flash-on-android-is-startlingly-bad/

Flash is a pain even on the desktop. I can watch BBC news perfectly on my iPhone (with no Flash), but not on any of our desktops (using Flash). It just doesn't work, despite spending hours reinstalling and testing everything associated with Flash (and contacting BBC tech support). Why do you keep touting this as an advantage?

I'm pleased to see that you've stopped referring to Apple's App Store as a 'walled garden', but referring to "its determination to impose such a rigid template even on outside developers" isn't a big improvement. It's usually called "quality control", and its one of the reasons Apple enjoys such loyalty from their customers.

The tablet appears to be manufactured by a Chinese firm specialising in look-alike telephones and laptops. We had a couple of their tablets at work for study; very very similar to this one. The problem with the screen is that it is resistive rather than capacitive, and then they put an additional layer of plastic over the top, making it essentially useless to use, too. They can't even suspend properly; you have to turn them off and then wait for them to boot again. Dreadful, horrible, cut-corner rubbish. It gives Android a bad name, but it should really give Chinese producers of cheap knock-off stuff a bad name. Even Google says Android is not for tablets. Yet.

MyBBCName wrote: "Rory, I think your desire for a competitor to Apple is doing your readers a disservice."

Are you sure Rory desires to see a competitor to Apple? He has so far ignored or brushed aside credible competitors like the Lenovo IdeaPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, without giving them either a review or indeed any serious consideration at all, and instead given a very long and detailed, and very negative review of an ultra-cheap device with a brand that has no credibile history in the tech sector.

Consider the Galaxy Tab: it's half the size of the iPad - which users are likely to find much more convenient. It has two built-in cameras, HDMI out, an SD slot and Flash, as well as other features that the iPad lacks, and it sells at the same price as the iPad. Rory was shown this at a trade show, and his only critique was the surreal one that the size would make it "unweildy".

Then there's the Lenovo S10-3t. It is highly unlikely that he would be unaware of this product, which is a 10-inch notebook that converts into a tablet when the screen is swivelled round, but he has never mentioned it, though it has received rave reviews from others.

He did mention the Toshiba Libretto a while ago (before launch). This device has two touchscreens, and folds down to half the size of an iPad. It has an amazing and highly innovative feature set, which Rory has not apparently seen or tested, but the blog entry where he mentions the Libretto is one where he is somewhat dismissive of the Toshiba brand in general (he suggests, rather flippantly, that they would be more successful if they renamed their products iTosh).

If I were a suspicious person, I would suggest that Rory was deliberately avoiding giving attention to any competitor that could present a realistic threat to Apple's iPad.

MyBBCName further wrote: "Android is a cheap knock-of of Apple's iOS"

I don't know why you think that. Google bought the company that was developing Android in 2005. They patented some of the tech that went into Android in 2006. Apple iOS was launched in 2007. Are you trying to say that the Android guys were, in 2005, copying an operating system that nobody outside Apple saw until two years later?

Gammaton49 wrote: Consider the Galaxy Tab

Why? It's more expensive than the iPad. It's also based on Android, and even Google has stated that this isn't ready to be scaled beyond phones yet:
https://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/google-android-not-optimised-for-tablets--715550

No one can even be certain that Google will ever push Android onto tablets in light of the fact that it seems to favour Chrome for this purpose. The Galaxy Tab is essentially a scaled-up phone, hence the criticism that it is "unwieldy". It's too large to carry around like a phone, but too small to match the functionality of the iPad. Like all products aping the iPad, it has been rushed out to try to cash in on the market Apple has carved out.


Gammaton49 wrote: "Then there's the Lenovo S10-3t [and] the Toshiba Libretto"

These are just Windows laptops, the kind of excuse for a tablet Microsoft has been trying to foist on people for the last decade. There's a reason they've bombed on the market - you're simply better off with a real laptop. Windows - and Windows applications in particular - aren't designed for a touch interface. Why else would Microsoft have completely abandoned their previous Windows-centric mobile OS in favour of the completely new Windows Phone 7?


Gammaton49 wrote: "Google bought the company that was developing Android in 2005 [] iOS was launched in 2007"

The interface is *everything* when it comes to the success of the iPhone and iPad, and Google has simply produced a poor imitation of these products in Android. When Apple released the first iPhone, it was a thoroughly polished and immaculately designed product. That's what got everyone's attention. Android phones didn't start arriving until a year later and were rough and amateurish by comparison. That's the sort of quality I would expect if they simply rushed through an imatation of the iPhone. Are you trying to say they spent over 3 years developing something that looked worse?

When the iPhone appeared, no one had anything - in production or development - that touched it. That's why Apple has enjoyed so much success. Everyone else has followed in their footsteps - go into any phone shop, and everything looks like an iPhone wannabe.

Google's core business is selling advertising space, not developing consumer products. I'd rather do business with a company like Apple (where it tries to please me, the customer) than a company like Google (that will exploit my personal information on behalf of the advertisers they serve).

during this video the presenter is rather ruthless with the device, it is a cheaper alternative to the ipad and will obviously be lower spec and respond slower. The load time seems no different to an apple devices first power up much like the first time you load up an ipod, apple devices stay in standby until the power cuts out and then have a slow reboot. much like most pc,s and mac computers. this device obviously turns itself off completly when the power button is pressed unlike its competitors.