Exploring Android tablets

Android tablets are very similar to Android mobile phones. The main specification difference between an Android phone and an Android tablet is the physical size and screen resolution. Generally, Android tablets work on lower PPI than a mobile. However, there is no hard-and-fast rule or any specific system to measure that.

The minimum requirement to run Android was a 200 MHz processor, 32 MB RAM, and 32 MB disk space. Android requires an ARMv5 or higher processor, although Android 4 requires ARMv7. Previously, starting age tablets had almost the minimum hardware system.

Tablets evolved from the concept of a tablet computer; they consist of a touchscreen display, camera, microphone, speaker, and a few physical buttons. Tablets are typically larger than phones or PDAs.

One of the minimum configured Android tablet is Coby Kyros MID7047, which is shown here (image source: http://www.evisionstore.com/catalogo/coby_mid7012-4g.jpg):

The following table shows its specifications:

In the year 2013, Android tablet sales were about 62% with a volume of more than 121 million devices. To add more to the number, the Amazon Kindle Fire sold about 7 million devices.

As the volume of Android tablets has increased, the configuration is getting better. Let's have a look at a tablet configuration released in June 2015 by Sony. The model is called the Sony Xperia Z4 (image source: https://tecneticoc1.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/z4tab.png):

The following table shows its specifications:

We can clearly observe the huge configuration difference between the two tablets. The funny fact is that both the configurations coexist in the market even today, and people are buying them.

Android tablets are generally bigger and heavier than smartphones. They also have better battery capacity. So games for tablets should be energy efficient. However, modern age tablets do not differ much from smartphones. The size of the smartphone is getting bigger, and smartphone features are being added to tablets. Now, one can even use a tablet as a phone.