Yes I bought one on Friday night at the local Fry's Electronics. I have 15 days to find out if it is a worthy successor to the A500 before I keep it or return it.
With the tablet being virgin, I ran two benchmarks and the tablet scored slightly lower than the Transformer Prime which was a surprise. I believe Quadrant said around 3350, and AnTuTu benchmark was 10,313. Not bad but not awesome, I am confident rooting and setting the cpu at max speed at all times will improve, but for now I have to deal with the throttling built in with the cpu. I can verify the screen does not have the screen door/grid effect of the A500 (nice!). I have put the bluetooth thru the paces and it works well. GPS is slightly above average it is not perfect but it works. My Galaxy SII has a 9/10 GPS and works really well, my A500 I give 6/10 on GPS, this is right in the middle, I give it 7.5/10. Battery life is nowhere near 10 to 12 hours, I averaged about 6 to 7 on my first two charges, again with 100% brightness and extreme use at all times, you may get better. Tablet gets very warm/hot almost all the time I use it, A500 did not do this, maybe an issue for some, and it may even interfere with wifi signal, I need more time to confirm. Once I decide I am keeping this then a case should hide the heat, right now it is very noticeable. The nice thing is you can remove the bloatware on this thing (very cool). On your homescreen click on the top right 6 dot grid to get to your Apps and widgets and long press on a bloatware app then drag it to app info instead of putting the shortcut on your home screen, you then have an option to force stop and/or disable (nice). I have verified with task killer that the app no longer auto runs in the background. By doing this I have on average 500 to 600 meg free ram at most times which is very cool. 1080p mkv and mp4 bluray rips of movies do work even with the stock video player app, I was not expecting this and it is a huge plus. HDMI out for movies is acceptable, is it as good as an actual bluray, no way, but it is 85% as good and good enough for me. Speakers are ok on this thing, not great, the dolby mobile will enhance the sound, but it will make any decent external speakers sound like crap. I recommend only using it to boost the internal speaker volume as needed, otherwise keep it off as the unnatural bass it produces is horrendous. Finally, tablet gets warms when charging, tablet charges very very slowly when screen is on, very disappointing as the A500 charged crazy fast whether screen was on or off, clearly this screen is a monster battery hog.
There you have it, first impressions, I am on the fence about keeping it right now after 2 days. One week at work tethering to it should make up mind by next weekend.
Ask away if you have any questions!
With the tablet being virgin, I ran two benchmarks and the tablet scored slightly lower than the Transformer Prime which was a surprise. I believe Quadrant said around 3350, and AnTuTu benchmark was 10,313. Not bad but not awesome, I am confident rooting and setting the cpu at max speed at all times will improve, but for now I have to deal with the throttling built in with the cpu. I can verify the screen does not have the screen door/grid effect of the A500 (nice!). I have put the bluetooth thru the paces and it works well. GPS is slightly above average it is not perfect but it works. My Galaxy SII has a 9/10 GPS and works really well, my A500 I give 6/10 on GPS, this is right in the middle, I give it 7.5/10. Battery life is nowhere near 10 to 12 hours, I averaged about 6 to 7 on my first two charges, again with 100% brightness and extreme use at all times, you may get better. Tablet gets very warm/hot almost all the time I use it, A500 did not do this, maybe an issue for some, and it may even interfere with wifi signal, I need more time to confirm. Once I decide I am keeping this then a case should hide the heat, right now it is very noticeable. The nice thing is you can remove the bloatware on this thing (very cool). On your homescreen click on the top right 6 dot grid to get to your Apps and widgets and long press on a bloatware app then drag it to app info instead of putting the shortcut on your home screen, you then have an option to force stop and/or disable (nice). I have verified with task killer that the app no longer auto runs in the background. By doing this I have on average 500 to 600 meg free ram at most times which is very cool. 1080p mkv and mp4 bluray rips of movies do work even with the stock video player app, I was not expecting this and it is a huge plus. HDMI out for movies is acceptable, is it as good as an actual bluray, no way, but it is 85% as good and good enough for me. Speakers are ok on this thing, not great, the dolby mobile will enhance the sound, but it will make any decent external speakers sound like crap. I recommend only using it to boost the internal speaker volume as needed, otherwise keep it off as the unnatural bass it produces is horrendous. Finally, tablet gets warms when charging, tablet charges very very slowly when screen is on, very disappointing as the A500 charged crazy fast whether screen was on or off, clearly this screen is a monster battery hog.
There you have it, first impressions, I am on the fence about keeping it right now after 2 days. One week at work tethering to it should make up mind by next weekend.
Ask away if you have any questions!
