A Critics view of the Sony Tablet.

[smellyonion]

Having owned the hardware for 2 months, i think it is a great time to put forward my criticisms of the tablet so that sony can seek to improve the future updates/ product.

1)  "Playstation Certified" is a Gimmick. 10 expensive old school ps1 games hardly qualifies it to hold that title. I tried one of the free ones and it was so terrible to control (still no ds3 support after 3 months) that I unistalled it to save space (which still isnt expandable), £4 is a ridiculous price for what it is. If shadowgin is £3.50, why would I pay £4 for a 15 year old game which doesnt control properly. Crash is impossible to play past the first 2 levels as that game requires pin point precision. The title range has not been expanded since launch. A emulator on android whill allow me to play any ps1 game with controller support.

2) Pricing and offers which segregate early buyer. The sony S can now be had for £269 in currys (£300 with voucher code-£30 for quidco) so soon after launch. What incentive do early adopters have in purchasing early again? None, bad marketting strategy and not showing a lack of value for loyal customers will cause a future sony tablet (if there is one) to simply not sell. Then you have the offers, which gives buyers free goodies again early buyers were excluded even though the music and games were given, the free movies are still in purgatory. The games were not so good PS1 tittles (no mgs or tombraider?), the music member ship I  have not been using as I simply do not understand the purpose of it, the movies looks more promising but again for £4 I would want to watch it on my tv and this would require 1.5gb free on a tablet with only 9gb usable with an expansion slot that cannot be used as expansion.

3) DLNA, Dlna is only useful if you have movies or picture stored in one of sonys surported formats. Playing an AVI video through the tv using the tablet is not an option as DLNA is tied to sony apps. Something as simple as using the tablet to broadcast youtube video onto your tv is unsurported as agian it must be a video or picture used inside sonys video or picture browser app, making DLNA pretty much useless. There is no way of outputing anything else onto your TV.

4) Remote app could have been so much more. Integrated with an EPG and even twitter would of made it so much better. The screen is wasted, a 1200x800 is used just to display buttons of one device. Could it not have been used to display 2 or more devices on the same screen? how about using the tablet to browse what is upcoming whilst watching a particular channel on the TV. Some people like to network while watching a channel on tv  and twitter integration would of allowed this. Another option could have been combining the bluetooth for the ps3.

5) Storage and SD card suport. The inbuilt storage is Bad, at 9gb (with 16gb version) usable, of which 2gb has been used by sony with the playstation games and their apps. The solution, sony argue, is the SD card slot. To begin with all apps and games and their data must all be on the tablet memory itself. Install a few of those tegra games and its full and that is not taking into account the playstation games which average 500mb each. If apps only are your concern then you will fair better as they are mch smaller in size. Simply combinding SD and inbuilt memory would solve the issue. IE app data on the sd card and only the small launcher file on the actuall device. To view a picture on an SD card, you must go to file transfer open the picture, click yes to some message and view it from the card. Now you want to go to the next picture, no you dont sompy flick, you have to do the entire process again.

6)several bugs. Bugs include keyboard which lags (although that was meant to be updated), sound loss after no use for a while, camera creating 500mb  file when used. File transfer crashes when alot of files are on a large card, copy and paste works when it wants to.

That is my list so far. This does not include any benefits (and there are loads) but it is simply a list of critisisms that will hopefully be of use to sony for improvements.

If anyone has read the art of war by Sun Tzu, It suggests that you will not be successful if you attack the enemy stronghold. This is what sony is doing, they are going head to head with the big players in the tablet market. Sun Tzu also argues in the use niches, ie something which the enemy does not have. The sony tablet has several niches, DlNA, playstation, remote control. Sony affectively did bad attempts at all of them, if they had focused entirely on something which the competitor did not have, they would be successful.

For example with regards to the playstation aspect, if the Ps3 could wirelessly stream games to the tablet through wifi, the user could therefore play their games anywhere in the house ( with ds3 connected to the tablet of course). Or even two player games, one could use the tablet screen. This is a niche exploited and with decentl advertisement would prove highly successful and I even think nintendo has something inmind like this for the wiiu.

Thanks for reading.

[iawilso7391]

I totally agree with what you say! I bought sony tablet day it was released and im very disappointed with the playstation games and other other things! all my friends told me to buy ipad2 and I now regret not listening to them! im very disappointed  that early buyers didnt get free films! im now thinking of selling my tablet and cutting my losses and buying a ipad! I was even thinking about buying new psp wen its released  but think I will give that miss now and other sony products!

[moh_tiger]

hello

may i suggest that you add to your critique the positive aspects so there is a much more balance view. i would also like to see a comparison made against the ipad. post like this are useful as hopefully sony reads them and updates are issued to adress some of the concerns raised.

[breedBenR]

Perhaps your list would be more clear if you split critisism to the Sony Tablet Hardware and configuration of the Operating System from critisim on native Sony Apps on the tablet. I like that you kept point 6, the straightforward bugs as a seperate entry.

Some of your points [e.g. SDcard limited memory within point 5], I would say are more fundamental than others. These are the ones that have no workaround. These regard the External SD-card (non)integration with the datastorage available in the operating system, Also fundamental, I would say, are the large amount of internal memory lost to operating system and preinstalled software+gamedata+demo [it would be good as this would be fixed, but I think we have to wait to Android 4.0 update before that becomes possible] and the comments on the Playstation compatibility versus the actual playability and game title availability [usb-driver to fix, content to grow].

.

Other points are not fundamental [e.g. troublesome way to view pictures on the external SD_Card using just the native apps within point 5]. To me that part of your post reads as if you are simply unhappy with 'default options' that Sony presented you on first install. But it is a Tablet! it is intended to have software installed of choice of its owner. Simply use the Market and download the apps, using the favorites of other users as starting point.

Talking DLNA: The tablet cannot be a full media station given its limited storage [fundamental point within your point 3]. I beam video from the web to my TV with my tablet using a third-party app talking the DLNA protocol to my throwing-ready rendering hardware.  I just do not use the Sony DLNA app for this [non fundamental part of your point 3]. Realise that also your rendering hardware (TV or BluRay/DVD/MediaPlayer) has to be ready for throwing to do this, not just the tablet 😕

The tablet is sold as a player of web content and for stuff that would fit on an SD-card, and a remote control for cloud-based or home media-server contents. If you prepare well, you can take two or three full length movies at 720i on the tablet for entertainment during a longer trip. You cannot take your whole collection.

I like your ideas in the last paragraphs.

[smellyonion]

thankyou for your good feedback. yes is is a good idea to categorise the issue up.

I understand what you say in reference to customising the sd card viewer but the problem is that none of the file managers I have tried can see the sd card. so for actually navigating the card you do seem to be stuck with the filetransfer app unless you transfer your content onto the device memory which we have already established is not good.

in regards to the dlna which app are you using to beam webcontent, can you beem the entire display onto the tv as in games, webbrowser, apps etc?

I agree with the points last two paragraph. yeah it is likely that we will have to wait till ics as there is no point in updating honeycomb when they will have to do it all again for ics.

[sehuxle]

Have you tried file manager HD, it certainly does see the SD card

I bought a 32gb card and have a number of videos on it that I access directly via file manager HD.

[heavygoods]

@smellyonion:  both of the file managers I've tried access the SD card without any problems.  You need to make sure you've set your home directory one level up from the "SD card" folder (which is the actual tablet expansion memory) so you can then see all the root folders on the device.  The SD card itself is accessed through the "SDcard2" folder IIRC

[breedBenR]

exactly: in filemanager HD press the icon with the up-arrow to go from /mnt/sdcard to /mnt, then navigate to /mnt/sdcard2 . You can bookmark this directory the first time you use the file manager app, then next times you navigate there even quicker. In image viewers and ebook readers etc it works similar. Some apps do not allow navigation or customizing the directories to scan (e.g. Sony's apps in their current versions). These will need to improve with more and more tablets with 2nd sdcards coming up - or they will lose user base.