Originally Posted by
brianatbb Here's a little experiment I did to demonstrate why I am disappointed with my PB.
Last night I was viewing photos in Dropbox on my PB and noticed they were very slow to load. Typically, a couple would load, then a lag (several seconds at a minimum) then maybe a couple more would load, then more lag, then a message saying Dropbox was not responding.
I fetched my Samsung S2 phone (same ram, 50% faster clock speed) and found I could load the same photos with virtually no lag, no app crashing, etc.
So this morning I decided to repeat the 'test', but a little more rigorously, and with the addition of my HTC One V phone (half a gig of ram, same clock speed as the PB). I lined them up, abaout 30 feet from the router, rebooted the HTC and Playbook (not the Samsung), cleared the cache on all, turned off flash and java on the Playbook (just in case), and launched Dropbox. It opened smoothly on both phones but crashed twice on the PB before it launched. Curiously, both times it crashed it launched with a configuration of folders that I had changed the night before, even though I had cleared the PB's cache. Whatever. All three are now open. I start loading pics. On the SG, initially they took about three seconds each to load, and about twice that on both the HTC and PB. Clearly, they were still loading in the background, so I waited a few minutes to let that happen, went back to the start of the photo queue, and tried flipping from photo to photo. On both the phones, it went quickly and seamlessly. On the Playbook, it loaded several photos, then balked. After about 20 seconds it loaded another, then the message about Dropbox not responding. I pushed the 'wait' button, it came back, but would only load photos very balkily, meaning, a few seconds, or more, between each. ... I just went back to the devices, after writing the above, to finish the experiment. The phones ran smoothly through the remaining eight photos in the folder, the HTC a split-second slower (no surprise with half the ram and slower clock speed). The Playbook again had the 'Dropbox not responding' message when I went back. Got past that, flicked the photos. Three loaded, then it balked. After about 10 seconds another loaded, then it balked again. Gave up.
Nothing about this experiment surprised me. This has been my experience of my PB from day one. I now just laugh when people on CB claim the PB's QNX is such a finely tuned operating system that it doesn't need the mega specs of android devices. The truth is just the opposite, when my android phone with half the ram can run circles, or at least load photos, around the Playbook.
Granted, this was a test of an android app, Dropbox. But that doesn't really matter since BB is missing so many common apps (like Dropbox) that PB owners who don't want to settle for a crippled (is that word PC?) tablet experience have to go the android emulator/sideload route.
By the way, for what it's worth, my router tells me the Mbps rate for each device is currently as follows:
Playbook 19
Samsung 11 (the slowest)
HTC 39