I've taken the Android tablet as prescribed... now what?

July 7, 2011 4:40 PM

I recently bought an Acer Iconia A500 Android tablet. I had two questions about it though: Does anyone have any Android tablet (honeycomb) specific app recommendations, and should I root the device and why?
posted by Admira to technology (4 answers total)

If you don't know if you should root the device, you might as well not do so. Rooting can void your warranty, and could open the door for possible file system corruptions if you don't know what you're doing. With the spanking new Android OS on that tablet, there's not much benefit in rooting.

That said, have a look at the discussions over at XDA about your device.

I have a Galaxy 10.1 and really enjoy it. Here are a few tab apps that I'd recommend to get started with (you can find them by searching the market for the name):

Newsr RSS reader
News360 (news aggregator with scrolling image view)
Google Music Beta
Gmote (remote control/streaming media from your PC/Mac)
Pinball HD Pro ($2.99 3d pinball with excellent graphics)
Amazon Kindle
Google Books
Vortex Galaxy Live wallpaper
Google Skymaps
Google Earth
Dropbox
Google Talk (the video chat feature works pretty well)

The usual bevy of Android apps also tend to look and perform well on Honeycomb tablets.

So far, I've just used the stock browser and found it fast and bug free (earlier versions of Android had issues). Have fun!
posted by Horselover Phattie at 7:02 PM on July 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

Asus Transformer user here, and even as an inveterate tinkerer I've found no compelling reasons to root so far. I'm more concerned with getting OS updates quickly which I'm worried might be more difficult after rooting.

For apps, I have a daily look at this thread on Transformer Forums. My 'must have' is Thumb Keyboard (cursor keys!) and the CNN & Bloomberg apps look good on tablets if news is your thing. Finally take a look at Dolphin HD browser; very slick & good bookmark organizing features.
posted by punilux at 3:07 AM on July 9, 2011

Oh, DroidIris is another good tablet app. It does hi-res image searches and lets you easily set the desktop wallpaper from the scrolling results.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 12:40 AM on July 10, 2011

Also, I don't know how I managed to live prior to Splashtop.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 10:10 AM on July 19, 2011