samsung galaxy tab 2 10.1 vs google nexus 7? please help, techie types, my head is swiiiiiiimming.

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

i know that the nexus is the winner on spec, BUT they work out much the same price-wise and i think i'd rather have the bigger screen of the samsung. (i have the note 2 as a phone, as per previous MN recommendations and i do love it).

any advice?

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

(obv i'll just be using it for fraffing around, iplayer, some cloud working etc).

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

bumpity-bump

[reddwarf]

If you already have the note 2, why you need a tablet too, if mainly for faffing? (I ask cos umming and ahing bwn getting the Note tablet, or note 2 phone.

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

because i'm enjoying faffing so much on the note 2 that my faffing has increased exponentially... but the damned children will keep stealing my phone.

[PedroPonyLikesCrisps]

If you like your note 2 then the Note 10.1 is the natural tablet to get. Personally I don't really see the point of getting a 7 inch tablet when you have a 5.5 inch phone. Go big! Plus you can enjoy all the S-Pen goodness that you can on your phone!

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

agreed, but i can get the tab for a hundred and eighty-odd quid, which is around my budget. the nexus is coming in at 170... i know it's much better but yes, can't really see the point of the small screen when i am already noted up.

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

pathetic bump

[PedroPonyLikesCrisps]

My point exactly. Go for the Note 10.1

[BertieBotts]

I would go for a 10 inch tablet too if you already have a Note. 7 inch seems pointless in that situation :)

[BertieBotts]

PS you do know that they will just start stealing your tablet instead?

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

pedro, you keep saying the note 10.1... are you getting mixed up between the note and the tab? there's about three hundred quid in it, so presumably some spec differences.

i have a phone, which is 5.5, and yyy the children steal it. so the tab would be for them to use. i've seen a couple of people hating their samsung tab 10.1 on here, though, but am not sure if they're just frustrated ipadders.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

You could always get the Nexus 10?

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

i could, but it's so much more expensive. i can get the nexus 7 for £170, or the Samsung Tab 10.1 for £180, so far as i can see, that's the choice at that price point. BUT, is the tab shite?

[niceguy2]

Given the choice, I would always go for the 10" tablet over a 7" for adults.

The 10" screen is going to be much easier to read, use and type on. That will more than outweigh any marginal performance increase from the Nexus.

Remember, you will be staring at the thing for hours. A large screen will be better.

The only exception to that would be if you were travelling a lot with it or for kids who are smaller so the 7" screen is probably more usable for them

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

cheers, niceguy, appreciated. i had a look/feel at them today and was really surprised at how tiny the 7 incher is (fnarr). the housing has a black margin of about an inch around, so it's much bigger than my note 2, but it seemed much of a muchness screen-wise.

basically if the tab 2 is just a big phone, i'm happy enough with that... i really do love the note.

[ProtegeMoi]

Where are you finding the 10 inch Samsung that cheap?

When I looked the 7 inch Samsungs were £160

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

well it's really £238 but there's a fifty pounds cashback from samsung so... £188?

[niceguy2]

Well the Tab runs ICS whereas the Nexus runs Jellybean. Specs-wise the Nexus is faster. Jellybean is also faster....but that screen is just too flipping small.

Plus you are right amicissimma. The Nexus runs vanilla Android which is quite boring to be honest. The Samsung uses Touchwiz which is slightly nicer looking.

[HauntedLittleLunatic]

The nexus won't run iPlayer cos it doesn't support flash.

Apparently there is a jiggery pokery way round it but I haven't looked at the details.

[BertieBotts]

No there's an easy way around it - BBC have released a media player app which the android tablets use instead of flash, so iPlayer works on all android tablets (well, all decent ones anyway, not sure about the cheapies that don't have access to the play store)

It won't play 4od without jiggery though but it's not too difficult to do. However it's slightly buggy for me and doesn't always play properly, mainly because the workaround involves using an outdated version of flash and the player doesn't like it.

[BertieBotts]

But IIRC doesn't Aitch have some kind of TV-watching job anyway? She probably doesn't have to rely on catch-up services like us mere mortals

[AitchTwoOhOneTwo]

i do not.

hey will i be able to get flash on the samsung tab?

[BertieBotts]

If it's running the latest Android, no. The workaround is to enable non-market apps temporarily and then go to the adobe cache page here and download the highest number version for android 3.

Once you've installed you can disable non-market apps again. It does work on android 4, but it's not the latest version of flash, so some flash applications don't like that and tell you to go and download the latest version, which of course you can't.

I have no idea why they discontinued it and didn't make any kind of alternative to view/play existing flash applications, it makes no sense to me.

[BertieBotts]

Gah! For android 4, even.