So, on Friday I saw a Galaxy Tab S3 in CeX (a chain of tech second hand shops). It was over £100 less than the full price in Currys and was actually in A1 condition. Not the 4G variant, but I can always tether to satisfy that problem.
I decided to take the plunge as my Lenovo Yogabook really wasn’t working for me. Funky as it is to look at, the Yogabook running Android Nougat is actually pretty piss poor. No window mode support, just split screen; and to add insult to injury the OS is buggy and has been abandoned by Lenovo so will never be fixed or updated. The styles implementation is lacklustre to say the least and borders on gimmicky. I hardly ever found myself grabbing the stylus as it was so bad!
Enter the Tab S3 – a very capable tablet created by Samsung who, whilst I won’t say are perfect, are much better at keeping their flagship devices running for a somewhat longer time with updates.
The Yogabook was traded in and the money used to buy a keyboard case (from Argos as CeX didn’t have any in).
Yes. It’s so much better!
If you like Android, I suggest getting a Nokia phone next time you upgrade. Their phones are under the Android One program which guarantees at least three years worth of updates and fixes. You’re also running stock Android. I recommend the 7 Plus and 8 Sirocco, but I’m sure many others will come out. They’re pretty durable too! I use an iPhone 8 Plus myself, but I am starting to get bored with iOS.
So many people I know are really bored of iOS. The “it just works” analogy really doesn’t keep people interested anymore. As for phones and tablets, it’s the stylus I need. I use it so much, hence me being on the Galaxy Note.
The joke is, the “it just works” philosophy isn’t even true anymore. Apple’s software has really taken a nosedive on the quality front. Functions intended for one operating system version are often delayed because they can’t figure out how to fix bugs, and even after numerous beta testing (both public and developer), they still can’t get it right. Both iOS and macOS suffer on this lack of quality control and it has started bleeding through Apple’s hardware output as of late, too.
I saw the issue with the new MacBook Core i9. Linus Sebastian (Linus tech tips) had to buy one because Apple won’t send him their tech to review anymore – he managed to get it to heat throttle after just a few minutes of load. Who the hell lets that sort of major fail through quality control? A laptop with a mega powerful processor that you can’t actually use because of heat dissipation issues?
You couldn’t be more right! Apple seems to think everyone wants thinner devices even if that isn’t the case. They’re willing to sacrifice usability and compatibility just to shave off a few millimeters and it’s not worth it. Not only is cooling affected, but keyboard (the butterfly mechanism is incredibly thin and it starts failing after a year or two of continual usage), amount of ports (only four USB-C ports and nothing else) and build quality too. Apple is claiming that the i9 issue is just a bug that they’re fixing on an update. Good luck with that.
Honestly, I’d rather go thicker. I had a Galaxy S6. It was ridiculously thin, but the battery life was diabolical.
I then upgraded to the S7 after Samsung realised the S6 was too thin and people actually preferred battery life over thinness.