Hello! I need a recommendations on tablet to buy. Since I'm absolute newbie on this field, I'll describe my requirements as full as possible. The other day I've been on a trip with my friend and since I didn't have any navigator/netbook/tablet we were sharing his devices, some old HTC smartphone with android 2.x and ipad. So, I had a "luck" to try these in production, if you can say so. Speaking about "luck", I found this ipad is very inconfigurable and useless one for any of simpliest tasks I needed to do. Basically, since I'm looking for a device for education and travelling, I need these simpliest things: 1. first of all, it has to live long on battery. it doesn't have to have a lots of flash space or nice gpu or cpu, i don't need all that, i'd like to have device that is able to live like up to at least 10 hours while used mostly in text mode, browsing non-bloated websites. By saying 10 hours I mean 10 hours of real work. Would be way nice if there's even more long-living devices out there. 2. (software)ability to use offline maps (of course with online + GPS modes), I would like to save specific locations in closest possible zooming and ability to disable/enable english titles of local objects name. For instance, google maps full browser version for usual, desktop computers, has so-called "English" option in maps menu, which you can toggle. It was not possible on any apps for ipad I had installed that time. 3. (software) web browser, which is capable of using offline storage(don't lose open tabs contents when I close application/disable tablet screen/reboot, and also support loading html files from local filesystem). I've already heard that most popular browsers for android may not be able to load html files directly from my friend who spent few minutes trying to check that for me, I'm not sure if there is any workaround like running local http server on directory with saved stuff and navigate there. There has to be some workaround for this, if you have a suggestion, please post it along. 4. WiFi and 3G support. GPS, of course, is a must. However I don't care about bluetooth and other link types. 5. (software) Full support for cjk (Chinese Japanese Korean) text input. 6. (optional, if possible) if it supports general phone networking, both GSM and CDMA modes should be available. 7. (optional, if possible) USB port (connect memory cards via adapter to transfer pics from cameras, or just flashdrives or hdds) What else would you want when travelling? Speaking about ipad again, I found out that neither google chrome, nor builtin safari(not to mention it had a limit on tabs!!!), not even opera can help you in terms of caching pages, more than that none of these allow you to spoof your user agent and you always get buggy, feature-cut mobile versions of sites such as google maps. Where you of course cannot manipulate language of map or/and other options. And it's a big pain finding a buttons to switch to full mode which doesn't always work well either once being switched to. I don't know if I'm asking much from tablets, since I never owned one, but I'll need it by December. Note that I don't have time for patching OS. If a device you suggest comes with older version of OS that doesn't support some of software features I listed above, and you personally did never successfully upgraded it to latest OS version, do not suggest the device. I don't have time to play around with it and then suddenly find out I am unable to efficiently use it just before the trip when I already don't have time to pick and buy different one. Please only suggest device if it's based on your personal experience and you can claim that specific feature from my list is true for your suggested tablet, and please add your comments on device's cons, etc, something that can't be found on specs. If you NEVER took that tablet in your hands, DO NOT suggest anything about it. Tech specs are telling only a small part of REAL story these days. I hope you understand what I mean. What I had found so far myself My current quick search over wikipedia results in two possible devices that seem to be fitting my requirements (theoretically, I don't know if they really do): 1. Acer Iconia A511 - it is quite perfect match, although it looks like a great overkill for my purposes, it can last quite long with it's battery. 2. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Both may be quite overkill for my very basic tasks, but I don't really mind the price if it handles these tasks excellent. It would be very helpful if you did your own tests of batteries and can provide your own results. Thank you!
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