Re: Possible Android Tablet?

[Sean Fidler]

The Motorola Xoom is coming to the USA in Spring. It will have more processing power, screen technology and the most stable tablet specific operating system by far. This Tablet could EASILY manage the sunlight and processing requirements of a soaring application. If someone was smart, they would redesign SeeYou or another basic soaring software for Android and become fairly successful selling it. Soaring software is 99% of the problem and its surprising to me that custom hardware and old Windows CE, PDA and Mobile is the standard such as with the Oudie. The profit margin on a bundles piece of hardware/software is probably the biggest obstacle. Would people pay $200-300 for software they could run on their Android phones or Tablets. I would. I think the Oudie and PDA stuff stinks, but dont really want to pay 5k for a new system that will be outdated in 2 years. And I suppose the 500-700 for the tablet is a cost as well, but at least you could use that for many personal purposes as well as soaring!

[Max Kellermann]

Sean Fidler > wrote:
> If someone was smart, they would redesign SeeYou or another basic
> soaring software for Android and become fairly successful selling
> it.

Already happened, XCSoar runs on Android (experimental, will be
finished by spring):

https://market.android.com/details?id=org.xcsoar

More than 800 unique installs of an experimental version is what I
call "successful" in such a small niche.

Try it, it's free!

Max

[Darryl Ramm]

On Feb 7, 6:42*am, Sean Fidler > wrote:
> The Motorola Xoom is coming to the USA in Spring. *It will have more processing power, screen technology and the most stable tablet specific operating system by far. *This Tablet could EASILY manage the sunlight and processing requirements of a soaring application. *If someone was smart, they would redesign SeeYou or another basic soaring software for Android and become fairly successful selling it. *Soaring software is 99% of the problem and its surprising to me that custom hardware and old Windows CE, PDA and Mobile is the standard such as with the Oudie. *The profit margin on a bundles piece of hardware/software is probably the biggest obstacle. *Would people pay $200-300 for software they could run on their Android phones or Tablets. *I would. *I think the Oudie and PDA stuff stinks, but dont really want to pay 5k for a new system that will be outdated in 2 years. *And I suppose the 500-700 for the tablet is a cost as well, but at least you could use that for many personal purposes as well as soaring!

---

While I agree the Zoom is interesting as a tablet. What makes you
think a Xoom will "EASILLY" be daylight readable? Usable with some
effort maybe, but "EASILLY" I think not. It has a fairly standard LED
backlight transflective screen that is unlikely to to be anymore
daylight readable than other tablet devices which all have similar
screens and backlights.

The best hope for a true daylight readable screen is probalby a Pixel
Qi display (which is nearly monochrome in daylight so will likely need
some thought in software). It is unclear if leading manufacturers are
really going to use those screens - i.e. is the market big enough vs.
other tradeoffs (e.g. consumers probalby want lower latency for video
and wide angle color viewing (with IPS screens) than monochrome
daylight support offered by Pixel Qi). OLED and DMD based displays in
tablet sizes are a long way away IMNSHO.

The Xoom should be interesting to software developers as it was the
development platform for Honeycomb and so its presumably the platform
best shaken out and the one that developers will want to get their
hands on to start ports/testing of app software on Honeycomb.

Darryl

[jsbrake[_2_]]

Wouldn't the Xoom be too large, as well? It has a 10.1" screen... and
my original question was politely shot down for just such a reason.

I guess this is all dreaming, anyway... I can't afford to upgrade from
my little Navigon -- I need to pay for my wife's launches now that
she's learned to fly.

[Darryl Ramm]

On Feb 8, 11:44*am, jsbrake > wrote:
> Wouldn't the Xoom be too large, as well? *It has a 10.1" screen... and
> my original question was politely shot down for just such a reason.
>
> I guess this is all dreaming, anyway... I can't afford to upgrade from
> my little Navigon -- I need to pay for my wife's launches now that
> she's learned to fly.

The Xoom and similar tablets may well be too large for mounting on
many panels but there are already folks carrying around iPads etc. to
occasionally pull out and use in flight for charts, weather, other
info etc. I see the main interesting use of these larger tablets as a
pre and post flight devices that can occasionally be pulled out and
used in a cockpit. It would be interesting to see the pre- and post-
flight (e.g. flight analysis, scoring) area will be addressed in
future by soaring software developers. But it is hard to justify doing
a lot there today since there is not yet huge adoption, there are two
new main competing tablet platforms (iOS and Android) and the iPad for
example has some I/O device connectivity restrictions. There are
already some quite interesting general aviation apps for the iPad for
example.

To me the main interest in the Xoom is its *the* Honeycomb platform
for a whole raft of different developers to play with.

Darryl