Thursday, 16 June 2016

Best Tablets

A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile computer with a touchscreen display, circuitry, and battery in a single device. Tablets come equipped with sensors, including cameras, a microphone, and an accelerometer, and the touchscreen display uses the recognition of finger or stylus gestures replacing the usage of the mouse and keyboard. They usually feature on-screen, pop-up virtual keyboards for typing. Tablets may have physical buttons for basic features such as speaker volume and power, and ports for network communications and battery charging. Tablets are typically larger than smartphones or personal digital assistants with screens 7 inches (18 cm) or larger, measured diagonally.

Tablets can be classified according to the presence and physical appearance of keyboards. Slates and booklets do not have a physical keyboard and typically feature text input performed through the use of a virtual keyboard projected on a touchscreen-enabled display. Hybrids, convertibles and 2-in-1s do have physical keyboards (although concealable or detachable), yet they typically also make use of virtual keyboards.

The format was conceptualized in the mid-20th century and prototyped and developed in the last two decades of that century. In April 2010, the iPad was released, which was the first mass-market tablet with finger-friendly multi-touch and a dedicated operating system. Tablets experienced a rapid rise in popularity and ubiquity and became a large product category.

The tablet computer and its associated operating system began with the development of pen computing. Electrical devices with data input and output on a flat information display existed as early as 1888 with the telautograph, which used a sheet of paper as display and a pen attached to electromechanical actuators. Throughout the 20th century devices with these characteristics have been imagined and created whether as blueprints, prototypes, or commercial products. In addition to many academic and research systems, several companies released commercial products in the 1980s, with various input/output types tried out:

A key component among tablet computers is touch input. This allows the user to navigate easily and type with a virtual keyboard on the screen. The first tablet to do this was the GRiDPad by GRiD Systems Corporation; the tablet featured both a stylus, a pen-like tool to aid with precision in a touchscreen device as well as an on-screen keyboard.

The system must respond to touches rather than clicks of a keyboard or mouse, which allows integrated hand-eye operation, a natural use of the somatosensory system. This is even more true of the more recent multi-touch interface, which often emulates the way objects behave.

Mini tablets are smaller and lighter than standard slates, with a typical screen size between 7–8 inches (18–20 cm). The first successful ones were introduced by Amazon (Kindle Fire), Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet), and Samsung (7-inch Galaxy Tab) in 2011, and by Google (the Nexus 7) in 2012. They work the same as larger tablets, however with lower specifications when compared to the larger tablets.

On September 14, 2012, Amazon released an upgraded version of the Kindle Fire, called the Kindle Fire HD, with higher resolution and more features compared with the original Kindle Fire, though it remained 7 inches.

In October 2012, Apple released the iPad Mini with a 7.9 inch screen size, about 2 inches smaller than the regular iPad, but less powerful than the then current iPad 3.

On July 24, 2013, Google released an upgraded version of the Nexus 7, with FHD display, dual cameras, stereo speakers, more color accuracy, performance improvement, built-in wireless charging, and a variant with 4G LTE support for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

In September 2013, Amazon further updated the Fire tablet with the Kindle Fire HDX.

In November 2013, Apple released the iPad Mini 2, which remained at 7.9 inches and nearly matched the hardware of the iPad Air.

Nokia entered the tablet space in May 2005 with the Nokia 770 running Maemo, a Debian-based Linux distribution custom-made for their Internet tablet line. The product line continued with the N900, with phone capabilities. The user interface and application framework layer, named Hildon, was an early instance of a software platform for generic computing in a tablet device intended for internet consumption. But Nokia didn't commit to it as their only platform for their future mobile devices and the project competed against other in-house platforms and later replaced it with the Series 60.

Following the launch of the Ultra-mobile PC, Intel started the Mobile Internet Device initiative, which took the same hardware and combined it with a tabletized Linux configuration. Intel co-developed the lightweight Moblin (mobile Linux) operating system following the successful launch of the Atom CPU series on netbooks.

The blue wavelength of light from back-lit tablets may impact one's ability to fall asleep when reading at night, through the suppression of melatonin. Experts at Harvard Medical School suggest limiting tablets for reading use in the evening. Those who have a delayed body clock, such as teenagers, which makes them prone to stay up late in the evening and sleep later in the morning, may be at particular risk for increases in sleep deficiencies PC apps such as and F.lux and Android apps such as CF.lumen and Twilight attempt to decrease the impact on sleep by filtering blue wavelengths from the display. iOS 9.3 has "Dark Shift" built-in that shifts the colors of the device's display to be warmer.

No comments: