Multi-touch tablet PCs can be many things for many people. For some, it's a netbook replacement, for others, it's almost a desktop replacement. Some consumers just want an e‑reader that can also browse the web on while on the subway. Some have no use for any tablet.
For new devices like multi-touch tablets, it's difficult for manufacturers to pinpoint what consumers really want, which explains the recent series of craptablets being released. In this article, I will address features I personally want in a tablet, but I’ll also address features I feel I don't need. Tech wish lists are pointless if you say you want a device that is has super great features as well as an impossibly low price.
Even if you don't want the exact tablet I shall describe, I think you'll agree it fits a niche that current tablets are progressing towards, but have yet to fill.
List:
Display: Super AMOLED, IPS LCD, Pixel Qi?
Multi-Touch: Capacitive
Form Factor: 10" x 8" x .5"
Processor: 1 GHz
OS: Future version of Android (Flash, small, real multitasking) or some Internet browser OS (e.g. Chrome OS, joojoo OS)
Storage: Small OS: 8GB, SD or MicroSD slot, Internet browser OS: Whatever
Battery: 5+ hours
Camera: Front VGA
Ports: USB, headphone jack
Buttons: Home, back, mute, volume, on/off/lock
Antenna: Wifi, Bluetooth, no 3G/4G
Other: Speakers
Price: Small OS: $500, Internet browser OS: $200
Further Description:
What I really want: What I would like is a web-browsing device that I can leave on my coffee table. Something to look up YouTube videos on and browse IMDb while watching TV. I'd occasionally browse the web or play mini-games on it on long flights. In short, I want a big version of my smartphone. I think this is what many people want out of a tablet, especially those who want a large (9"-13" screen) tablet. I think the closer a large tablet comes to meeting these specs, the more that tablet will succeed.
Display: A Super AMOLED (Samsung Captivate) or IPS LCD (iPhone/iPad) screen would be a plus I'd pay extra for; both are very bright and colorful. High resolution is also nice. But neither of these screen desires are a dealbreaker. A regular LCD would do me just fine. This won't be my main computer; it's just a tablet for casual use. I'm not expecting a bright e-reader screen, and I don't need a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio for the movie clips I'll be watching. A Pixel Qi screen would be the best because its e‑Ink‑esque low-power mode would make the tablet a great e-reader in case I do end up reading books on it, but, again, it won't make or break the tablet.
Multi-Touch: No brainer here. The reason for this tablet revolution is the easy-to-use, responsive capacitive multi-touch screen. Resistive just won't cut it anymore.
Form Factor: Here is where I may differ from many tablet enthusiasts. I already have a smartphone and it has a 3.5 inch screen. I don't need another phone-sized screen. Don't get me wrong, I've visited many a website and am currently reading 1984 on my tiny phone screen, but my entire reason for getting a tablet would be the large screen that makes viewing websites, e-texts and short videos more pleasant. That's why I want something roughly the size of a sheet of paper. A 8"x10" screen would be a beautiful 12.8" in diameter, slightly bigger than the 12.1" joojoo screen and quite a bit larger than the 9.7" iPad screen. Pocketable? No. Portable? Hell yes, as long as the weight was a three-ish pounds or less. Something smaller would be fine as long as it's over, say, 9" diagonal. Any screen under 7" is definitely useless to me.
Processor: 1 GHz seems to be just fine. HTC Evo's Snapdragon, Samsung Captivate's Hummingbird and the iPhone 4's/iPad's A4 all seem like sufficiently speedy 1 GHz chips. Perhaps there's some minute difference in battery life, but I don't care.
OS: Here's the thing: I'm tired of iOS. I'm tired of their App Store policies and I'm tired of them locking down the platform. I'm intrigued by Android and writing apps for free in Java on my PC rather than paying a developer's fee to use the ungodly abomination that is Objective-C (only on Macs). That's why, although iOS is a good tablet OS right now, I want my tablet to have a future version of Android, when Android is tablet-ready. Word on the street is that Android should be tablet-ready (support higher resolutions, etc.) either with Gingerbread (due by December) or Honeycomb (due early next year).
I also would accept a web-browser-based OS like the joojoo has, except not crap. Google's Chrome OS should be released by December, which should be decent, given the excellence of Android. However, it can be assumed that any tablet with a web-browser-centered operating system would do little other than browse the web, so this reduction in functionality would mean that the tablet needs to be sold at a cheaper price. Tablet manufacturers should feel free to cripple the hardware (processor, RAM, graphics, storage, etc.) of a web tablet as long as they get that price down.
Alternatively, the extra functionality of Windows would be nice on a tablet, but Windows 7 just isn't tablet ready. The next version of Windows might be multi-touch focused, but Microsoft never releases two good operating systems in a row. Take my word for it: the first good MS OS that works well with multi-touch won't come out for another 10 years. There will only be decent tablet PC skins over Windows.
Storage: This depends on the OS. Web-based operating systems don't require the storage of a tablet OS. If my tablet has a tablet OS, I'll want to fill my tablet with music and movies. If not, it needs just enough memory to store my web cookies and to stream video. So for a tablet OS, I'd like 16 GB of storage, or at least a SDHC slot, so I could add 16 GB or 32 GB of storage.
Battery: This is the other big one. Less than 4 hours seems to be the Android standard, yet the iPad promises around 10 hours of life. When Gizmodo used the iPad heavily, they still got almost 6 hours. I think any phone or tablet should last at least the duration of a long flight, around 5 hours. I don't think this is too much to ask, especially when you consider that the battery life will eventually decline.
Camera: A tablet is too large to use as a regular camera, at least any tablet large enough for me. Holding a 8"x10" device and taking pictures with it would look and feel ridiculous. So I'm not asking for a for a camera on the back (although, I'll gladly take one if it adds little to the cost). I would, however, like a camera on the front for video chatting. Just chatting doesn't require high definition video, so a VGA camera will do just fine.
Ports: Headphones, I think, are pretty standard. Only USB is something that Apple sadly forgot to include in the iPad. Sure, you can buy a $30 camera connection kit to transfer photos by USB (and SD card), but I want the ability to hook up cameras, printers, webcams, external hard drives, phones, and other peripherals, and I want it build into the device. Sure, nothing will work with the tablet until peripheral manufacturers create special drivers for Android or whatever OS the tablet uses. Eventually they will create the drivers and then the tablet will be infinitely more useful. If it's just a web tablet, USB isn't a necessity, but it'd still be nice to have the promise of someday being able to print web pages from my tablet.
Buttons: Apple likes to make simple, easy-to-use devices. Someone must've told them at some point in time that less buttons == simpler. Actually, it's almost the opposite. I certainly understand not wanting to connect a full keyboard to your device so that users won't be searching for the Scroll Lock button, but it really limits the functionality of the device when you have only one physical button (not including volume buttons, mute and lock). Wouldn't it be easier to press one button to bring up the task list/iPod controls and one button to bring up voice commands instead of double-clicking and triple-clicking?
Android phones have it right with their four buttons (Home, Back, Menu, Search). However, I'd settle for just a "Home" and "Back" in addition to the mute, volume and lock buttons.
Antenna: Wi-fi and bluetooth are standard, so nothing to talk about there. But here's another item where I may differ from the crowd: I don't need 3G/4G. This device will mostly be used at home and places where there is wi-fi (coffee shops, airports). Sometime in the near future I will have a phone with free tethering and I won't need any other satellite data devices other than my phone. Satellite antennas always increase the price of the device in addition to the monthly price plan required to get them to work. I already pay $25 for mobile Internet and ?? dollars for my home Internet. I don't need another monthly Internet bill. I probably differ from most people on this, but as long as tablet makers release a wi-fi only model, I will be happy.
Other: Speakers. For showing people funny YouTube videos. Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wife!
Price: The final key. $500 is a nice round price and the cost of a wi-fi only iPad with a nice 16 gigabytes of storage. I don't think it's absurd for me to ask that the next generation of tablets to cost this much and have the additional features I've specified above. By April 2011, the iPad will have been out a year and the decent-looking Galaxy Tab will have been out for 6 months. I'm hoping tablet manufacturers can accomplish this by sometime around then.
If not, a web-only tablet is something manufacturers could definitely throw together by then, since it doesn't need the same awesome hardware and software as a regular tablet. But it better only cost $200 or so.
Other tablet enthusiasts' concerns:
Wait, what about GPS/a-GPS? I have a phone for this.
What about HDMI? It has a large screen, it has speakers. I don't need it to hook up to my TV, although that'd be awesome and I'd pay a little more for it.
You forgot to say it has to be a 16:9 ratio. I don't care about black bars on the screen as long as the display is big enough to show everything. With a 12"-13" display, I'll be able to see everything just fine. Plus, there still is a lot of non-16:9 video out there, like most YouTube vids, which would likely compose 90% of the video I'd watch on this.
Fast boot up? Sure, but most phones' boot up times are okay to me. This thing would be asleep most of the time—not off—so it's not super important.
Apps? If the OS isn't Android or iOS, shouldn't you mention a requirement for apps and an app store? I have a phone for apps. I want a web browser; and for a full tablet OS, I also want a media player. The web browser will have Adobe Flash, so I'll have plenty of "apps" on the interwebs.
Did I leave anything out? Hit me up in the comments.
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