[Tfug] OT: Android tablet display size

[Zack Williams]

> I'm mostly wondering about the display.  It has a 7" 800x600 display.
> That's really close to my phone except physically larger.  The problem is
> that I don't really have any experience with tablets.  Is this a reasonable
> size?

From: http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html

At 142ppi should be slightly higher resolution than an original iPad,
so it would be decent, but not great.

> Will Android do the right thing and scale the visuals so that I can,
> for example, fit more on the tablet's home screen than I can on the phone?
> If it matters, it comes with Android 2.3 and there is an Android 4.0 update
> already available.

Android has different device size/density profiles:

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

I'm not sure how easy it is for an end user to switch between these.

> My only major complaint with the specs is that they left out Bluetooth
> support and I actually have a few BT devices I like to use.  Maybe somebody
> on TFUG knows the answer...  is it possible to use a USB Bluetooth dongle
> with an Android device?  Clearly, if it was just Linux the answer would be
> yes, but Android uses a heavily modified Linux base.

Most firmware loadouts only support the hardware known to be in the
device, so it's probably not as simple as plugging in a USB dongle and
having it work. Given the ability to run your own kernel/bootloader,
it's likely you could patch it so it works, but this is probably quite
a bit of trouble.

I'd definitely make sure you could get a 3rd party kernel (Cyanogen or
similar) for it, just to futureproof the device in terms of software.

- Zack