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Samsung's lovely illegal tablet: Why no one wants to know

Even without injunctions, it's a hard sell

What are we building here? Is it a computer or just a fancy picture frame?

Performance is excellent, the Tab did not exhibit too many creaks and grinds as the machine loaded up with running applications, and it executed the portrait-to-landscape turn smoothly. The TouchPad is badly let down by its performance, I found, and takes far too long to start applications. You end up cursing the multitasking rather than being grateful for it.

Android's Honeycomb is where things start to get sketchy. Google's browser is fabulous, and blows Safari away for performance and functionality. It doesn't have as many sophisticated features as the third-party options available for iOS, such as those on offer from Opera or iCab. But nor did it have the murky font rendering of the HP f'slab. Annoyingly, it continues a first-generation flaw: insisting on showing the mobile (typically iPhone-optimised) version of websites.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

But many of the design choices that made Android sellable on a mobile simply don't suit a larger device. Notifications feel clumsy, and the back button was either made larger or removed. And given the dilemma of opting to be a computer or a media player, it tries too hard to be a computer. I appreciate that scaling a UI so beginners can grasp it and experienced users can perform advanced tasks quickly is a real design challenge. But despite the advantage of burying the underlying file system, Honeycomb is still too fiddly and fuzzy. Beginners need a deterministic system – not one so many different panels and screens. The UI drastically needs to be simplified.

When Phone UIs don't scale

Apple constantly gets away with quite staggeringly odd design decisions in an effort to simplify things and maintain consistency. The iPad was widely criticised at first for its Noddy home screen; there were no software or hardware concessions made regarding multitasking or task-switching. But the result is something my two-year-olds can easily navigate, and which really doesn't need a manual.

Now you may argue that Apple has simply postponed the day it has to incorporate more sophisticated features into the UI without breaking its simplicity. Perhaps you're right: we'll see how well iOS 5 fits the bill. But the Honeycomb experience is one that exposes that manufacturers' dilemma: what are we building here? Is it a computer or just a fancy picture frame – a media player?

After 18 months, I don't think they know. For Apple, the iPad is really something that drives people to "stuff" – to music, web pages, social media streams and eventually to TV and movies – and gets out of your way in doing so.

Oh, I forgot something. Battery life, you ask?

Eh, it's Android. You have a guess how good it is. ®

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