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Any use for a Samsung tablet while shooting/editing/in the field?
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[John Rofrano] “A tablet is one of those things you didn’t think you need before you bought it, and can’t figure out how you ever lived without it after you do buy it. I use my iPad all the time but I could have never told you how I would have used it before I bought it. Whether a Samsung with have the breadth or quality of Apps that an iPad does I do not know.”
This is kind of what I suspect would be the case. I’ll check again about it. Sprint is offering the Samsung tablet (people are telling me the Nexus 7 is better, but I think they like it more for leisure) for $20/m with a data plan of something like $11/m. Not too bad.
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[Angelo Mike] “…for $20/m with a data plan of something like $11/m. Not too bad.”
Well… that depends. If the data plan for the tablet is $10/m then you’re paying $240 for the tablet over two years. Make sure the tablet is worth that much because at the end of 2 years you have paid $240 and have nothing (you don’t own the tablet) and a Samsung 8GB Galaxy Tab 2 7.0″ is only $169! So depending on which Samsung tablet it is, it could be a bad deal as well.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I don’t own it? How does that work? I thought I was buying it, not leasing it. I keep my phones from Sprint after I upgrade, I figure it would be the same for a tablet.
What do I need the data plan for, anyways? I wouldn’t pay for that. I need a computer to carry around.
You’re probably right about doing the payment plan. I think I’ll wait until I can make a firm decision.
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Or just get one of these puppies: https://www.amazon.com/ZTO-Capacitive-Multi-Touchscreen-Widescreen-N51/dp/B008RMEXME/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380050171&sr=8-1&keywords=zto+9+inch+tablet
I bought one back in March and am really happy with it. MP4 video looks stunning on it! -
Added to my amazon wishlist, thanks.
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[Angelo Mike] “I don’t own it? How does that work? I thought I was buying it, not leasing it.”
Perhaps I misunderstood. When you said “a monthly payment plan” I thought you were renting it. If you are buying it on time that’s a different story. It would still be a good idea to make sure you are not paying too much for it.
[Angelo Mike] “What do I need the data plan for, anyways? I wouldn’t pay for that.”
Once again sorry if I misunderstood your original post. I thought you said that it was a package deal for a tablet and a data plan for $20/mo. You would need the data plan if you wanted to access the internet while in the field away from Wifi. I don’t have a data plan for my iPad because I saw no need for it. I just use it on Wifi.
[Angelo Mike] “You’re probably right about doing the payment plan.”
I may have just been confused about what they were offering you. It sounds like they are trying to get you to buy a data plan by offering a tablet but I might be wrong.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
[Rick Shorrock] “Or just get one of these puppies”
There you go… a tablet for less than $100. That’s why I said to be careful about what they are offering because a “tablet” could be anything while an iPad is a very specific thing.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Well, either way, I think I won’t go for the payment plan and the rest. I could afford it, but that’s also lenses and other items I could get that are more important to me. I could always use my phone as a wifi hotspot.
I’ll go for the $100 tablet at some point. If I like it and feel it’s inadequate, I can decide more from there.
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If you’re looking for most kinds of apps, they’re on Android as readily as on iOS. I use my tablets for camera control, video preview (my recently-damaged Asus tablet has a clip-on keyboard with extra battery and full SD card and USB interfaces — also allows backing up SD cards to NTFS or exFAT formatted HDDs in the field), etc.
If you’d like to do any sort of music development on them, you need the iPad. Android’s audio system is using older Linux components which, like most of the audio APIs throughout the history of Linux and UNIX, have weird latency problems. That’s been fixed with newer audio subsystems in Linux itself (a buddy of mine does all of his music production on Linux using free tools… kind of a masochist, but it’s possible), but not in Android. Playback is just dandy, but it’s not a good DAW or instrument controller.
Samsung specifically has the Note series, which adds another dimension if you’re into photo editing on a mobile. They include a Wacom digitizer pen, which is dramatically more accurate than your fingertips on the capacitive touchscreen (touchscreen is in there, too). Microsoft’s been including a similar thing on their Surface Pro (of course, that’s a full fledged PC, more of a convertible Ultrabook than a tablet), to give you the accuracy you need to control standard Windows applications without a mouse.
In short, yeah, they’re useful for lots of little things. Nothing you can’t do with a laptop and a smartphone, though some of the more useful aspects of both in a single 1-1.5lbs device with all-day battery life and pretty stellar screen quality these days (the latest Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 has a 2560×1600 pixel IPS screen). Of course, you’re paying for the premium features here, as you are in the iPad.
But I’d watch out for $100 tablets; they work, but they’re using older technology, and this has been a very fast moving market so far. Samsung’s already shipping tablets with 3GB RAM, the practical limit until they move to 64-bit chips next year. Apple’s got less RAM, but just released the next iPhone with a 64-bit ARM SOC of their own design, and you can bet that shows up in a new iPad in a month or so. An cheap tablet may not run today’s apps; same goes with an older iPad model.
-Dave
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Still, Something like that is very handy when you
want to show prospective clients your work out in the field.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-461-9019
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