I have an HTC phone (ICS), which does a whole lot of what I want to do, although as other have noted, there is no mouse, and some sites just plain need one.
I got a Logitech wireless keyboard for it, and I can write long posts, emails, and even long papers when needed. However, even with the keyboard ($50 or so), the screen really is limiting, especially when I use VNC for remote control of a desktop.
So my wife, having heard my gripe about screen size asked me what sort of tablet would solve that problem. And so I went on the great tablet hunt.
I looked at a lot of tablets. I discarded the iPad early on, since there are applications I will want to run (like emulators) which are expressly denied on the iPad.
The eventual choice came down to the Asus TF700T Transformer, which has an available keyboard that also extends the battery capacity to about double, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, which has a sort of stylus/pen, the S-Pen, which permits greater precision in such things as drawing and handwriting recognition. The Note has double the RAM, but they benchmark out to similar performance.
I finally settled on the Galaxy Note over the Asus Transformer. My reasons were two-fold. While I really liked the idea of a keyboard with integrated battery extender, the actual keyboard is missing the F-key row, which is required for remoting into desktop boxes. The other reason is that the Asus, built around the Tegra 3, really only grants performance advantage to those applications actually tuned for that processor.
With the Note, I can get either the Microsoft Wedge wireless keyboard (which also has an available mouse gadget), or the Targus wireless keyboard, both of which do have the F-key row.
I've had the Galaxy Note for two weeks now, and I'm finding it very useful. The two front-facing stereo speakers do a good job of filling a room with sound, and I can listen to streaming radio while surfing Web. With the off-line option for Google Maps, I can grab the entire area where I live and work and have all the GPS I can eat. WiFi reception strength is impressive, picking up nodes that my phone will miss.
I can bang on it for a whole day and still have plenty of battery.
Yes, the rear-facing camera is not as good as the one in my phone, but it works just fine with barcode scanning software, and the flash will double has a flashlight, given a free download app which does that.
It's a keeper.
Until I can afford the keyboard I want for it, I'll re-pair the Logitech wireless keyboard to it.
Oh, and I do in fact have a great little Acer notebook-class laptop (14-inch, two-spindle, high-cap battery) that will also run all day and have 20% or more battery at day's end. The tablet won't actually replace it, but I can drag it around the house in ways that a laptop just doesn't do.
Oh, movies? Yes indeed. Nice performance.
