Has anyone made a DECENT Android iPad rival yet?

[d000hg]

Samsung Galaxy Tab is the closest you are going to get for now.

Has everything you asked for, albeit in a smaller form factor than the Fondle Pad.

First review I read isn't too inspiring, and at £550 you could get an iPad, which doesn't have phone capabilities but is a bigger screen. This seems really expensive, given Apple's brand strength I imagine competitors would have to offer comparable products a bit cheaper to get interest.

[DaveB]

First review I read isn't too inspiring, and at £550 you could get an iPad, which doesn't have phone capabilities but is a bigger screen. This seems really expensive, given Apple's brand strength I imagine competitors would have to offer comparable products a bit cheaper to get interest.

Or USB, or SD slots, or a camera, or HDMI, or GPS. And it's cheaper than a 3G iPad.

Not saying buy one, but it has a few more bits than a standard iPad than just phone.

[d000hg]

Sure but a big screen is a big deal IMO. I don't imagine things like USB/HDMI are really a big deal for the target demographic considering these are aimed at mainly web-based activity. I'll just email you the file, if I want to watch HD TV I'm not really going to plug my iPad into the TV because the whole point is I use the iPad for browsing WHILE watching TV.

[DaveB]

Sure but a big screen is a big deal IMO. I don't imagine things like USB/HDMI are really a big deal for the target demographic considering these are aimed at mainly web-based activity. I'll just email you the file, if I want to watch HD TV I'm not really going to plug my iPad into the TV because the whole point is I use the iPad for browsing WHILE watching TV.

That's fine when your at home, but what about when you want to plug it into a TV somewhere else to show a load of other people the HD movie you've got on there. Or you want to do a quick file transfer to someone else's machine without the hassle of getting authenticated to a secure wireless network.

[d000hg]

In those use-cases, I have a laptop. Faffing around to find a HDMI cable or messing about copying files onto a memory-stick are not really what pads are about IMO, a netbook fits the bill better.

If the pad was running a 'proper' PC OS rather than a phone OS, then the things you mention might be more relevant. But on these pads, you're going to probably be doing document editing in g-docs. When your pad can run OpenOffice or Word, it stops being a pad and starts being a touch-screen PC.