When out to buy a tablet, points which may seem irrelevant while choosing one may not be so irrelevant after all. Hardware are the integral part of any device and that, along with the software, decides that how much functionality you are going to get out of your device. Many a times we miss to pay attention to minutest of detail and end up buying a sub-quality product. Well, let’s never let that happen ever again.
After you have selected the operating system of your choice, say Android, iOS, Windows or Blackberry OS, getting familiar with the tablet hardware is the next logical step in the right direction. Many a times, users completely base their buying decision on the hardware offering itself, which is not a bad thing, since almost every tablet gets your work done.
Here is the list of components of the tablet hardware that make a device possible to run.
1. Processor – Although faster processor means faster performance, it’s not true all the time. For example, Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus has a 1GHz solo processor and HTC Desire C has 600 MHz solo processors. Both of them are Cortex A5 processors clocked at different speeds. But the real world usage has shown the HTC Desire C is better, and in most cases same as Ace Plus at multi-tasking and handling resource heavy apps.
Newer and better performing processors are flowing out regularly. But this also means that they will be more power hungry in terms of battery.
With more tightly integrated software with hardware, the fuss with processor choosing will fade away soon.
2. RAM – The Random Access Memory as we know it, the larger the better. Well, it’s true. RAM is the part of the tablet where most of the live work is done. Its amount determines how many apps you can keep open at once. Question is, how much of it is enough? Well, for tablets in the market now, 1GB is the norm and 2GB should be more than enough for all your tasks. Anything below 512MB doesn’t make sense and should and must be avoided.
3. Display panel – The panel on which everything is displayed should also be one of the important criteria to consider. Although TFT (thin film transistor) and Active-Matrix LCD displays are the most popular with budget tablets, premium tablets have IPS (in-plane switching) LCD and OLED (organic light emitting diode). IPS and OLED provides better colour gamut and contrast, while OLED does that by consuming less power.
Resolution should also be taken into mind. 800 x 480 in 7-inch tablets are norm, higher is always better.
4. Touch-screen – Even though almost all the touch-screens are capacitive these days, they don’t really put up to their respect. There are many shoddy touch-screens which return abysmal responses and don’t register light touches. The screen has to be pressed to have a response generated. Beware of such touch-screens.
5. GPU – Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are something not many people discuss before zeroing in on a tablet. This is one component of your tablet which will handle all your graphics oriented work like games, movies, physics of apps etc.
According to the various online tests and benchmarks, Mali 400 GPU has been regarded as the fastest, followed by Adreno 220, Adreno 205 and Adreno 200. Tegra 3 and Tegra 2 are independent processor platforms and have in-built GPUs. Tegra 3 is by far the best mobile platform CPU+GPU combo. Please do note that there are three versions of Mali 400 GPU; quad-core MP4, dual-core MP2 and single core MP1.
6. Memory – Okay, this is a no brainer, more the better. Look for devices with larger internal memory since many apps take the space of internal memory to install. The last thing you don’t want to happen with you is installing a new app and you can’t simply because you have internal memory full. Go with devices with or more than 2GB internal memory in case of Android. For the rest tablets you don’t have to worry about that much since iOS doesn’t allow you to insert an external storage device and Windows 8 comes with plenty of internal storage.
7. GPS- GPS or Global positioning System is desirable at price above Rs. 10,000. It helps you know your location with the help of your GPRS network and satellites for live navigation. Indeed a great tool to have in your device.
So that was it, our list of important hardware components to consider. Do comment below and let us know about your opinions and which components you think should be important.