Is it really all honeycomb's fault?

[pilgrimredux]

As with many others on this forum, I'm very disappointed with the Thinkpad tablet. I bought the 64GB model last year, imagining that after some successful tests I would purchase them for my whole research group (5-10 devices), and we'd all exist in some research-optimised stylus-enhanced synchrouniverse. 'Fraid not. Will not be buying any more, and in fact if there were any way at all I'd like to get my money back. But I won't recall tales of endless hangs and force closes, since you've heard them all before, but I want to know if it can really all be down to Honeycomb?

My first experience with Android was about 2.5 yr ago with an Archos 70 tablet. It was quite laggy, crashed and hung a bit, but then again it was a forced Android+HDD hybrid, was cheap, etc. I then saw Android 2.something on my brother in law's Galaxy S2 and it was amazing. So I got the expensive Thinkpad tablet, on a research grant. Hangs/freezes all the time. Have had some nice moments with the stylus (editing PDFs and taking notes) and games but this is a million miles from a business producitivity device. But then I just got my first android phone, a Xperia Ray running Androind 2.4 and it flies. It never ever force closes. Exactly the same applications which take ages to start up on the Thinkpad and often produce "not responding" warnings - e.g. touchdown, dropsync, basically everthing - ping up in seconds on the Xperia Ray. What is going on - the Ray has far less processing power than the Tablet, and it surely can't all be down to having to manage a bigger screen. Looking back at them now, the Lenovo is almost as laggy as the Archos. Effectively I have paid £600+ to take notes on a screen and not on paper.

So... at the end of all this, I am wondering - how much is due to Honeycomb being basically rubbish (in which case I have - admittedly faint - hopes of ICS helping), and how much is down - in some way I don't understand - to Lenovo building a poor device? It is extraordinary that a not-particularly-high-end phone blows it away on the same apps.

cheers,

Rob

[jiv]

I know what you mean. I have a 1y+ old Nokia (single core 680MHz processor + 256MB RAM) that outperforms the TPT, and can read from almost any USB stick in any format (unlike the TPT), acquire GPS signals quicker, and take decent pictures (plus a whole lot of other things).

I wonder how many people would actually have bought the TPT if it didn't have stylus input (I know I wouldn't). That's pretty much the only thing that sets it apart from the rest. I know for sure this page wouldn't exist if not for the stylus.

[mtalinm]

I think your post is actually a good case that it *is* Honeycomb's fault.

Recall that the Android phone and tablet versions were somewhat forked, with Ice Cream SAndwich promising to unify them. To my knowledge, Honeycomb has never been shipped on a phone (though I'm sure someone has hacked it).

My Android phone (HTC Thunderbolt running Gingerbread) works flawlessly and is the main reason I bought the TPT. I likewise have been grossly disappointed by the TPT's responsiveness and reliability, and to jiv's point I definitely wouldn't have bought it without the stylus. Ironically, I've since learned that a $10 stylus for my iPad clips onto the case and is held tight by a clever plug that fits in the headphone jack. At this point I pretty much wish I hadn't bought it.

A friend of mine with a Galaxy Tab 10.1 says the same things - it's buggy, slow, etc.

But I think ICS is going to be great. Google knows it has a black eye from the tepid sales of Android tablets generally, so I imagine they will have spent the time to get it right instead of rushing it out the door as they did with Honeycomb.

Now if we didn't have to wait until June...

[twospirits]

I know I may sound like a broken record saying this over and over but besides Honeycomb, alot has to do with the bloatware that many manufacturers add to a device and not having access to bootloaders. The development community has enhanced numerous phones and tablets from being laggy, or basically unuable into one that is. The Cyanogenmod developers are one such group. So good in fact that one of their developers was recently hired by a manufacturer to enhance their products.

Case in point, device A is shipped with loads of apps that slow down the system. Developers are given access or (devise a way to unlock the bootloader) and give the device the ability to move apps to the sd card, and or remove some if not all of the crapware. Introduce better kernals, and battery saving techniques. Result, a much faster more user friendly device that lasts and satifies the customer.

One has to remember that Honeycomb isn't really as open source as some claim and due to Google concentrating on ICS, left alot of manufacturers with a slow, laggy product and certainly not one suited for buisness.  

I do believe that the introduction of ICS will give the Thinkpad a new breath in life, but to fully push it into the realm of outstanding, the development community needs to partake in its code and have access to it freely.  

I only paid $425US for my 32GB Thinkpad with folio & dock, and even then I think thats was too much for what I get out of it, I feel sorry for those that paid full price and only have a tablet that doesn't lives up to their expectations and needs. 

TS