What tablet apps are you running and do they work as "tablet" apps?

[Jim Barr]

After receiving a shiny used Nook Color from Ebay, I immediately flashed the latest daily of CM9 (ICE) to EMMC and played around with it for a while. I installed several "tablet" apps from the Market, and I was very impressed by the formatting and presentation.

Unfortunately, performance was marginal at best, so I decided to flash the "official stable" version of CM7. I installed the same tablet apps as before and noticed that they were not displaying in "tablet mode". Landscape, yes, but not tablet-formatted.

For example, running Pocket Informant in landscape mode in CM9 provides a nice graphical notebook-like format, but CM7 displays the same as a simple landscape calendar, much like on my DROID Bionic.

So from this, I conclude that CM9 is a "real" tablet OS, while CM7 presents the Nook Color to the apps not as a tablet but as a high-resolution phone. Can anyone else confirm this? I absolutely LOVE the performance of CM7--it really flies and is very responsive--but long for the true "tablet" functionality of CM9.

That said, I'd love some input about how landscape mode works on the OS you have installed, and what "tablet-mode" apps actually render as a tablet.

1. What version of the OS are you running?

2. What "tablet" apps are you running?

3. Of those "tablet" apps you are running, what actually render as "tablet" apps?

Thanks!

 

[boomn]

So from this, I conclude that CM9 is a "real" tablet OS, while CM7 presents the Nook Color to the apps not as a tablet but as a high-resolution phone. Can anyone else confirm this?!

Yes, that is 100% correct. CM7 is based on Android 2.x and CM9 is based on Android 4.x. Android 2.x was designed for phones, Android 3.x was the first version to be designed with tablets in mind (and only tablets; phone functionality was stripped out), and Android 4.x folded both capabilities back into a single OS version. Because of the rush-job Google did in order to release Android 3.0 to compete with the iPad they didn't release the source code, which means it couldn't be properly ported over to the Nook Color or other Android tablets that were built with Android 2.x. However, they did release the full source code for 4.x in November which means this is the first time we have the source code for a version of Android actually designed for tablets

Because of these differences many apps have been built to require Android 3.x or higher (which includes CM9) in order to show the tablet layout. Maybe some of those are arbitrary but I'm sure others are taking advantage of system calls and/or UI calls that have only been added to the API since Android 3.x

 

[MrColdbird]

Wait for the new hardware accelerated build fattire & co. work on right now.
It should be able to speed up things quite a bit thanks to a new SGX driver release.

 

[Sam Adams]

It's still really early in the game. There's only one official ICS tablet out there - the Asus Transformer Prime. People were expecting many more ICS tablet announcements at CES a few weeks ago - didn't happen. I expect it's because ICS is based off of Honeycomb which didn't exactly set the world on fire and wasn't a big draw for app developers. But now that the ICS is going to be a joint phone/tablet OS - it should spark developers to greater heights. I also think the 7" form factor is going to be more and more popular also... and apps will be developed accordingly. Reader apps like Kindle look great on the nook because they were developed for the smaller form factors... others should follow suit.

 

[user17600]

Only a few games built for phone (Monopoly and some dice game the kids play are the ones that come to mind) don't render properly on the NC (running CM9). Otherwise, there are a few that won't do landscape (some of the ESPN and some cookbook apps), but I've had good luck otherwise.

 

[Sam Adams]

Huh - Monopoly runs fine on my emmc install of the latest 2/2 nightly - and it did on the others as well...

 

[Jim Barr]

I was playing with X-Plane on CM7 with great success. Can't wait to see if it works on the 2/2 nightly.

 

[spr8dogg]

I agree with the OP. As I am currently going back and forth between cm7 and cm9 the apps are not responding in the same way. Perfect example is gmail. Love the interface on ICS! However, it's just not the same experience on cm7. Google's Currents is the same on both. Google Docs (the newly updated version) seems to work the same on the both as well.

 

[pdanders]

After receiving a shiny used Nook Color from Ebay, I immediately flashed the latest daily of CM9 (ICE) to EMMC and played around with it for a while. I installed several "tablet" apps from the Market, and I was very impressed by the formatting and presentation.

Unfortunately, performance was marginal at best, so I decided to flash the "official stable" version of CM7. I installed the same tablet apps as before and noticed that they were not displaying in "tablet mode". Landscape, yes, but not tablet-formatted.

For example, running Pocket Informant in landscape mode in CM9 provides a nice graphical notebook-like format, but CM7 displays the same as a simple landscape calendar, much like on my DROID Bionic.

So from this, I conclude that CM9 is a "real" tablet OS, while CM7 presents the Nook Color to the apps not as a tablet but as a high-resolution phone. Can anyone else confirm this? I absolutely LOVE the performance of CM7--it really flies and is very responsive--but long for the true "tablet" functionality of CM9.

That said, I'd love some input about how landscape mode works on the OS you have installed, and what "tablet-mode" apps actually render as a tablet.

1. What version of the OS are you running?

2. What "tablet" apps are you running?

3. Of those "tablet" apps you are running, what actually render as "tablet" apps?

Thanks!

AFAIK Tablet mode only exists for honeycomb and newer. Any Android device on a 2.x build is seen as a handset.

That should explain what you are seeing

---------- Post added at 11:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 AM ----------

It's still really early in the game. There's only one official ICS tablet out there - the Asus Transformer Prime. People were expecting many more ICS tablet announcements at CES a few weeks ago - didn't happen. I expect it's because ICS is based off of Honeycomb which didn't exactly set the world on fire and wasn't a big draw for app developers. But now that the ICS is going to be a joint phone/tablet OS - it should spark developers to greater heights. I also think the 7" form factor is going to be more and more popular also... and apps will be developed accordingly. Reader apps like Kindle look great on the nook because they were developed for the smaller form factors... others should follow suit.

I never used early builds of Honeycomb, but the version on my wife's transformer is great. Granted I prefer ICS on my transformer prime... but the versions (which I assume are more stable and way less buggy) of honeycomb out now seem really good