The kind folks at HTC who I met at Lotusphere were kind enough to provide me with an HTC Jetstream Android tablet to kick the tires on. Those who follow me know that I am a huge fan of Android, prefer it over iOS, and have been in search of the right Android tablet for some time now with no luck. I am not going to bore you with the Jetstream’s specs you can read them yourself, but the hardware is nice. My main point of comparison is against my Droid X (running Gingerbread), and my original iPad (running iOS5), the Jetstream shipped with Honeycomb (3.1) with HTC Sense 1.1 on top of it.
Hardware
The 10.1 inch 1280 x 800 display is nice, I am finding though that I notice fingerprints more on the screen than I do on the ipad, not sure why, maybe different types of glass, or how I have the screen brightness set, but that is only a minor annoyance. The volume control is on the left side, I think the button is a too large, I find myself hitting the volume control when holding the tablet, regardless of the volume control the speakers are excellent, great sound quality.
The 8 megapixel rear camera appears to be decent quality, though I still can’t get used to holding up a table to take a picture or video, the from facing camera is 1.3 megapixels and not great quality.
The power connector is on the bottom of the tablet when held in landscape mode (bottom as defined by the front facing camera being on top), a very inconvenient place, I prefer the side location on the iPad, much better for charging while using. In addition the Jetstream does not use a MicroUSB but rather a proprietary cable to charge. I don’t understand the fascination with manufacturers avoiding standards for charging/syncing devices (yes I mean you to Apple), do they make that much additional revenue on these cables that it is worth it? Can we please just have a standard and stick to it.
With 32 GB of data built in, and an microSD slot that supports up to 32 GB the device has plenty of storage. Battery life has been excellent, comparable or better than the iPad.
HTC also included the HTC Scribe stylus, some interesting functionality, but I haven’t played with it much and doubt I will carry a stylus around.
Software
This is my first experience with Honeycomb, and it definitely takes some getting used to. Android is moving away from the 4 physical keys on early phone model, to virtual keys on screen, good idea, just takes some getting used to. The nice thing is that which ever way you orient the device the Home, Back, and Application switcher keys are always in the same place on the screen.
Best I can tell the Jetstream is only sold by AT&T, my first complaint is the same I have against every Android device manufacturer and carrier, the tablet is full of bloatware that can not be removed with out rooting the tablet. I have no need for NFS Shift, Lets Golf, and a variety of other apps pre-installed on the device. The Jetstream is a 4G capable device, but since I did not purchase it from AT&T I have no data plan, right now it is WiFi only same as my iPad. I would like to find a pay as you go sim card with a data plan for occasional use, though right now it does not seem that AT&T offers that option (suggestions welcome).
Most apps I have used scale fine on the tablet screen, there are a few that don’t work properly on the tablet, I also notice that some of the apps are not yet updated to place the menu options in the new UI style so there is a bit of inconsistency between apps, this is obviously and Android issue.
The one big problem I have found is syncing Videos, I installed HTC Sync, and it does a good job syncing music (though I don’t really keep music on my tablet), a couple of months ago I finally figured out how to convert videos properly for the iPad, grouping TV shows and properly tagging them. While HTC Sync connects to Windows media player, they don’t appear to sync in logically grouped order like they do on the iPad. A real shame since the Jetstream has more space than my iPad and the expandable memory slot. Suggestions welcome, will play with this a bit more when I have time.
Overall, the Jetstream is nice hardware, decent Android experience (hoping for Ice Cream Sandwich), and for apps it has replaced my iPad, if I can solve the video issue it would completely replace my iPad.
On the flip side, I don’t see a lot of these tablets being sold at $600.00 plus a 2 year AT&T Contract, HTC might be well served to come out with a WiFi model at a more competitive price.
Space Shuttle Discovery and other Images from Washington DC
Mon, May 21st 2012 7:11a Mitch Cohen I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days last week in Washington DC. Last time I was there was back in 2012, it was great to be back there again. For me the highlight of the trip was our first stop to see the Space Shuttle Discovery. Here are some images of Discovery and others form the trip.
Visit the set on Flickr to see the photo descriptions [read] Keywords: application
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Test Your Backups
Wed, May 16th 2012 7:11a Mitch Cohen Hat tip to Andy Donaldson for pointing me at this, great reminder to not only take backups, but test them.
How Toy Story 2 Was Almost Lost Forever [read] Keywords: twitter
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Repeat After Me
Thu, May 3rd 2012 7:11a Mitch Cohen Yes I watched the whole game last night, though I was really fading at the end.
Bart Simpson Chalkboard Generator [read] Keywords:
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Audio Manager for Android
Mon, Apr 30th 2012 10:11a Mitch Cohen It’s been a while now since I used a Blackberry as my everyday phone, one of the features I miss most is the Profile manager and the ability to easily switch from one profile to another. I have looked at different solutions for Android and finally found AudioManager which suits my needs.
AudioManager lets you create different profiles, and set rules for when different profiles activate. So I now have my phone automatically switch from my daytime settings to my nighttime settings (S [read] Keywords: blackberry
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Farewell Old Friend
Fri, Apr 20th 2012 8:12a Mitch Cohen This morning it was time to say farewell to my old car a 2002 Saturn SL2, I am amazed it made it this far, the transmission has been having issues for a while now, and recently it would no longer go in reverse which was the end of it. I thought about just dumping the car in the backyard but in the end decided to donate it to an organization that can hopefully make some good use of it.
Here is the car being towed away
Here is the rest of the set
[read] Keywords: javascript
My Grandmother Would have Loved This
Thu, Apr 12th 2012 6:12a Mitch Cohen Back in 1991 (yes 1991) my grandmother enrolled in a class titled “How to speak computers with your grandchildren”, unfortunately she was the only person to sign up for the class so it was cancelled. She passed away in 2004, she was obviously just a little ahead of her time, she would have loved this. [read] Keywords:
Happy Fourth Birthday Abe & Jack
Fri, Mar 23rd 2012 6:13a Mitch Cohen Hard to believe it was four years ago today that Abe and Jack were born.
Here they are last night enjoying their Carvel* Birthday Cake
* no birthday is complete with out a Carvel Ice Cream cake [read] Keywords:
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Managing your Files in the Cloud Made Simple with Otixo
Mon, Mar 19th 2012 8:11a Mitch Cohen I find that I have files stored in a number of places these days, Google Docs, Dropbox, Amazon S3, box, and Picasa to name a few. A while back I came across Otixo which allows me to access all of them in one place, and move files between the services all from one dashboard. Here is how Otixo explains their service:
(wouldn’t it be nice to see IBM Connections Files, and IBM Smart Cloud on their list of supported services?)
Otixo also supports WebDAV access to your account, allowing you [read] Keywords: collaboration
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