I’ve had a Toshiba Thrive for the last three-plus years. It is the first tablet I’ve ever owned, and it has generally done alright serving my purposes: primarily email, games, music, limited browsing, and occasionally watching a movie. However, it has always seemed a bit on the slow side to me. And recently, it has been prone to incredible lag time when performing simple maneuvers like switching between apps, occasional spontaneous reboots and other minor annoyances.
I don’t know a ton about tablets, but I wonder if these sorts of issues can be resolved by a factory reset (or whatever the equivalent might be) or some other method, or if the Thrive is just an inferior product that I should replace. I’d like to be using my Thrive more, but it just doesn’t seem up to the task right now. Has a typical life-cycle been established for tablets?
3-5 years would seem like a probable life cycle to me, depending on how cutting edge the device was when you bought it and what you do with it. Part of the issue is that even the simple apps you might be using like your browser or Twitter, Facebook, etc all get updates with the assumption that people are using more modern devices and yours is left to struggle with an increasingly underpowered processor and antiquated version of Android. A factory reset won’t change the fact that you’re probably running Honeycomb or maybe Ice Cream Sandwich.
I’m in the same boat with a 2011 HP Touchpad rooted to run Android and my wife and I just replaced our Galaxy S2 phones this spring. Everyone has their own tolerance for how long they’ll muddle through but the slow downs, wonky behavior and general sluggishness are real.
I guess I made it about 3 years. I believe mobile technology has advanced a lot recently.
I thought I didn’t mind the slow downs, and the quits. And then I couldn’t get the latest OS. And then I couldn’t get a few apps that I wanted. And then my husband got a new tablet for his birthday.
And then… I decided even though I wasn’t doing anything “important” with the tablet, I still enjoyed using it. So I bought a new one. I haven’t regretted that decision.
I have an original Nexus 7. It still works, but the Lollipop update made it so sluggish I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. Got a new Samsung Galaxy 7-incher and I’m back in business. So call it two and a half years.
I’ve got a Thrive, and run into similar issues. I’m dithering between a new tablet or upgrading the phone (HTC One S, not as old but also falling behind the curve) to one of the current phablets.
My iPads have lasted about two years each. I’m on my third one now, so I’d say two to three years.
Once it really slows down, I get another for my birthday or Christmas. They’re still usable, just not really fast anymore, and the apps quite working or crash it.
I made a mistake on my first one of updating my operating system whenever Apple released a new one, and it made that poor thing so sluggish that barely anything worked. I don’t update the operating systems anymore and the last two have done much better.
I have an original Nexus 7 too, and last week I reset it to factory settings. It didn’t make any difference as I’d always left some space on the memory free, as it slows down as it fills up.
It only really slowed down when using Chrome, and I was in denial as it’s a Google branded tablet, but I downloaded Opera yesterday and that seemed to do the trick.
Ha, that’s exactly what happened to me too. I did a factory reset of my Nexus, and it didn’t seem to help much. But I got a Samsung Galaxy on sale, and I love it.
My iPad2 will be 5 years old this summer and is incredibly slow, but what’s worse is that it crashes all the time. I’ve always installed updates as they come out, but like a previous poster, probably wouldn’t do that again. I think it’s on its last legs but don’t really want to spend the money on a new one just yet.
I have one someplace (the Vx), not sure how the battery would be. It was a great little gadget for it’s time. I used to pair that with my cell via a cable attachment and would browse the web and check email, Steve Jobs obviously saw me do that and then made the iPhone.
The Palm VII had a built in cell phone, so perhaps the first smartphone.
I needed a new iPad because my iPad 2 was covered in tape, cracked, and crashing all the time, and could barely load WWF.
My phone company gave an iPad mini for “free” (minor increase in contract, but it’s mine, not a lease), and it’s blown me away. The technology has changed so much. It’s so fast. It’s so light. It’s so perfect. It works on my phone company’s network for no extra data charge (and unlimited data, to boot). If you’ve been holding on for more than two years, TREAT YOSELF.