1. Android started as a Smartphone operating system,
but has now become a dual-purpose operating
system for mobile phones and tablet computers. The
latest incarnation of Android - known as Android 3.0
or Android Honeycomb - is specifically designed for
tablets.Whilst slate PCs running Android 2 or
Android 1 operating systems are available to buy,
before you choose to go for one of these, you need
to understand that these are limited versions of
Android not specifically designed for a large screen
tablet PC.There has been a large development team
working on Android 3.0 at Google to really establish
it as a competitor to iOS on the iPad and this means
it's now a highly polished operating system with an
application, video, music and games eco-system to
support it.Android is an 'Open' operating system
which means any manufacturer, developer or even
user can customise the code that it's written in. This
gives great flexibility and a huge range of hardware
devices to choose from, but does mean that there
are many versions of Android.You can get lots of
apps for Android but if you want to future proof your
purchase, it's advisable to buy an Android 3.0 tablet
as all the latest apps will run on it.Android has its
2. own app market called the Android Market. The
latest tablets have direct access to Android Market
from the tablet user interface.If your tablet doesn't
have the Android Market available, you can still
side-load apps onto the device but you'll need to get
instructions from the open source community or side
load them on manually.Make sure you check the
specification details and user reviews before
selecting your Android slate PC as the actual
experience can be inconsistent across models. An
advantage of Android tablet PCs over the iPad is
that they run Flash web video, but different models
handle it better than others.Upgrades usually
become available as new versions of Android
become available but you usually have to wait for
the manufacturers to release an update specific for
the tablet.The success of Android will be dependent
on developers building apps and games for these
devices. There are a huge number of Android
Smartphone apps that work on a tablet but only
around a thousand Android apps specifically
designed for a slate PC - expect this to change over
the coming years.Android on tablets will continue to
evolve and become more and more polished. It
already is the closest challenger to iOS (the iPad
operating system) and will continue to grow
stronger.
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