Tablets
    17 years
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How many here use a tablet?
Four years ago I got my first tablet, an amazon firehd 10 (11th gen). It was dirt cheap at ~$100 at qvc or overstock. I wasn't sure if I had a use for one and didn't want to spend too much money.
The firmware device came with also permitted google services to be installed, so playstore apps was a possibility.
This thing is slow, but with a decent screen (11").
Turns out tablet use was prevalent mainly in bed - to check email, some web browsing, texting (google voice).
Four years later, battery life started to diminish, and this thing was very slow. Memory management sucked. Open several browser tabs and it would have to reload the first tab when switching back to it.
I decided this was the year to upgrade.
I'm not a samdung fan,in part because they tend to lock their devices down, no root or bootloader unlocking. Also I think they're over priced.
Lenovo had a deal on tablet with last year's flag ship cpu - Snapdragon 8 gen 3. Technically that soc came out in q4 2023, but was common in most flag ship devices in '24.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/tablets/android-tablets/yoga-...
Screen is a bit larger but not overly too large for bed use - 12.7". It comes with 16gb of ram and 256gb storage compared to 4gb ram and 64gb. The extra ram was a selling point. Even samdung devices only come with 12GB.
Rooting this thing was possible without unlocking the bootloader. The latter will only come into play if I ever decide to install third party roms.
Why root? For one, it makes app backup possible. Not all apps have an export/import function. I use vivaldi for the browser as I like it's layout and UI. It has a sync function but that requires using its cloud. In addition, the sync function is partially broken. It synced favorites and speed dial but not history and passwords.
With root access, something like 'swiftbackup' can archive the entire userdata folder and restore it when need be.
From the amazon tablet, I noticed vivaldi likes to use lots of storage space for cache - upto 10% according to something i read on the vivaldi forum.
This is not acceptable. Lots of storage wear and tear for effectively garbage files. Through some scripting, I set up a ramdisk folder mapping it to the vivaldi cache folder. All cache is now on the ramdisk, limited to 1GB of space. With 16gb of ram, there's still plenty left.
After some debloating and optimizing im impressed with the tablet. It's not without its quirks (not all apps works well under android 16), but for the most part a good improvement over the amazon turd.
/rant off
For music
I've had three tablets. All were initiated off my desire to use them to display piano music. I started with a Samsung model chosen to a considerable degree because the display was closer to the length/width ratio of my music scores, where the standard form factor wastes space.
But, while largish for a standard tablet, it was nowhere near big enough a screen for my aging eyes to read music a page at a time, so I had to turn it sideways, displaying a half-page at a time, and suffer difficulty in scanning, for example a piece of chamber music printed at 5 systems/page.
That Samsung died, and as I was in a crunch time to a performance, I replaced it with an identical model to avoid learning time.
Most musicians who use tablet-displayed scores use ForScore running on an Apple tablet.
For my third tablet I jointed them, buying an Apple-refurbished iPad Pro a generation older than then current. That has served me well for five years now, without noticeable battery life loss and very few troubles.
As my computing is on a Windows PC, and my carry-it-with-me device is a smartphone, the iPad sees almost no use unrelated to music display, though I do occasionally remember how much bigger and better the display is than the one on my ereader, and load a Kindle book to it so I can actually see illustrations usefully.
personal GPS user since 1992
@archae86 I've watched a
@archae86 I've watched a number of David Hicken's yt vids (https://www.youtube.com/c/EnchantingMusic/videos). He uses some kind of tablet with a foot actuated button to advance pages.
Depending on your instrument and eye sight, a monitor may be a better option than tablet. Said display could still be driven by a tablet (most support video out via the usb c). I'm sure your fruit device supports such functionality as well.
Tablets
How many here use a tablet?...
I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab Active PRO SM-T547UZKAXAA in February 2022. It is pretty much a "one trick pony" for us. It is used in our Can Am Maverick UTV to run the Polaris Ride Command app for trail navigation. Water-resistant rugged tablets are a bit less common than most other consumer grade tablets.
If I were looking for a tablet today and didn't want/need a water-resistant rugged tablet, I might consider a Google Pixel tablet. They tend to have less bloatware on them than Samsung tablets. I saw some at a Best Buy near me this afternoon for $249.00.