If you’re thinking that I’ve ventured to a rather taboo topic … stop … take your mind out of the gutter, catch your breath and scroll down to the bottom of this post; you will see it is labelled “Technology”.
I was recently reading about the soon to be released Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, which replaces the fairly popular 7” Galaxy Tab, considered to be one of the best tablets available. It was revealed quite early that the Galaxy Tab 2 would be a 10.1” tablet, but that other sizes would be released as well. There have been lots of rumours of a 7” version of the Galaxy Tab 2, and I have been quite interested to see how Samsung improve the Galaxy Tab in the 7” Galaxy Tab 2. Then a while ago, a Samsung representative told Pocket-Lint that the Galaxy Tab 2 will not be 7” version, saying “Tablets should be bigger than 7-inch”. I believe that the representative and Samsung are missing the point. The thing that made the original Galaxy Tab a great tablet was the fact that it was a 7” tablet. Mobility is a good selling point, and by going for a larger tablet means one loses the mobility.
Several companies seem to understand the idea of mobility … BlackBerry has opted for a 7” display in the PlayBook tablet, which certainly looks quite interesting … Dell has gone with a 7” display in the Streak 7 … HTC chose to use a 7” display in the Flyer … just to mention a few. While several other companies seem to prefer going for larger tablets, most notable is Apple with the iPad. The iPad 2, which released today, has a 9.7” screen; the same size as the original iPad. I am guessing that Apple realized that they have reached the biggest screen size that was feasible for a tablet, because if they had believed that bigger is better, then they would have increased the screen size of the iPad 2 to a size larger than the original iPad. Samsung, however, do seem to believe that bigger is better, why else would they increase the screen size of the Galaxy Tab 2 to 10.1” … other than that they thought that this would make the Galaxy Tab 2 better than the iPad 2.
You must be wondering … is a 3” difference in screen size really such an issue? Maybe I should start my explanation with a little bit of history. The original idea of a tablet PC started in the late 1980s with the idea of removing the keyboard from a computer, and using a pen in its place … possibly inspired by several things, such as the original Star Trek TV series, which in 1966 had crew using electronic “clipboards” with “electronic” pens. This became known as pen computing. Initially there was a lot of hype around pen computing, but by 1993 everyone realized that pen computing wasn’t very good, and so everyone became very critical of it. This resulted in a crash in pen computing, and by 1995, it had completely died out. In 2002, pen computing was rescued by Microsoft, who reinvented the idea and named it “Tablet PC”. There were 2 reasons why the idea originally failed: firstly, because the technology just wasn’t that good yet at the time … and secondly, because the idea of using handwriting (and a pen) wasn’t easily adopted by users who were used to keyboards. By 2005, Microsoft began to point in the direction of simpler and smaller tablets, and in 2006 the first “Ultra-Mobile PC” was released, which happened to be a 7” tablet. The term – “Ultra-Mobile PC” – came to mean a device with a screen that is no larger than 7-inches.
The tablet has also been linked to the idea of reading ... companies have realized that a tablet is ideal for reading. To this end, companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have released their own tablet variants … electronic book readers: Amazon’s Kindle and B&N’s Nook. Based on how popular these electronic readers are, it is fairly safe to say that the tablet has been embraced as a reader.
So to apply the “reading” metaphor to my discussion of tablet size, I can explain it like this. A 7” tablet is about the size of a soft-cover “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (actually, the original Galaxy Tab is almost identical to this book’s dimensions) and weighs about the same as a soft-cover “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. This means that a 7” tablet sits very comfortably in your hand … so it is ideal for reading anywhere. It means that if you’re reading a book like Harry Potter on your tablet, the text on screen can look exactly the same size as the book. On the other hand, a 10” tablet is about the size and weight of the international student version of “Wheater’s Functional Histology: 3rd Edition” … doesn’t really fit in your hand, not very comfortable to hold … and best read at a desk.
The size of the larger tablets is just a bit too big to hold in your hand, this means you have two options: either you hold the tablet with both hands, or you rest the tablet on your lap. If you hold it with both hands, this completely negates the capacitive touchscreen … there’s no way you can use the touchscreen with your fingers when both your hands are busy holding the tablet, not unless you have a third arm. In the end, the only real option is to rest a large tablet on top of your lap … so maybe a large tablet should rather be called something like “laptop” … no, wait … there is already something called a “laptop”. So what makes a large tablet better than a laptop? Some smaller varieties of laptops (called “netbooks”) also have the same 10” size screen … actually, the screens in some netbooks are also the touchscreen type. If you’re going to rest something on your lap … why not rather get a netbook … then you can have the 10” screen (possibly touch-enabled), and you get a keyboard thrown in for free … no more fiddly typing on the screen and blocking your view with your fingers.
Maybe you disagree, and think you can manage holding a large tablet with one hand; let me put it to you lie this … an average large tablet weighs between around 1kg (2.2lbs), which makes it about the same weight as 3 full cans of coke. Have you tried to hold 3 cans of cold drink in one hand for 5 minutes? How about 30 minutes? True, maybe the iPad 2 only weighs 601g (1.33lbs), but that is still about 2 cans of cold drink ... and it's about twice as heavy as some of the 7" tablets.
Trying to balance a large tablet on one hand also seems rather foolish … it’s going to be quite a loss when it falls and breaks. Let’s face it … a large tablet is not something you take with you wherever you go. Imagine standing in the queue at the airport … you want to check what your ticket number is; problem is the ticket number is on your large tablet. So you pull it out of your backpack … now you’ve got a problem, where are you going to rest it? If you leave the queue to go sit on those chairs, you’ll lose your place in the queue. The person in front of you in the queue is not going to like you resting your tablet on his back … so you have to settle for sitting on your hunches so you can rest it on your knee.
A large tablet is not that focused on mobility. I find it concerning when companies like Samsung decide to abandon the smaller form factor, because to me, it is only the smaller tablets that are actually practical. Ok, maybe if you only a tablet at home and use it on your coffee table, then maybe a bigger screen might be better for you … but that that really defeats the purpose of having a tablet. A tablet is more about mobility, about taking it with you wherever you go … and for that reason I believe that a large tablet doesn’t make any sense.
Agree with me or disagree with me … whatever works for you.
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