Developing on a Tablet?

So I am interested in getting a tablet and using it to for Unity development (for stuff that doesn't require that much GPU power) for when I have some free time but I don't have my pc or laptop with me.

I found 2 tablets with dual-boot android 4.4 and windows 8.1, which is great since my old android phone is bad for games.
One is PIPO W3F ($150) and I like it more.
The other one is Chuwi Vi8 ($100) and it is about as good.
Both are quad core with 2GB RAM and Intel HD Graphics.
And both have an attachable keyboard which comes separately.

I am interested if you think those could run Unity for non-advanced games?
And did you use a tablet for Unity?

 

I think the Galaxy Tab S and MS Surface Pro is good. You need more ram than that I think to comfortably use it.

 

i7 surface pro is excellent for the unity ide, struggles a bit with unreal (depends on project complexity). Don't think it would be much fun on a lower specced device though. Honestly producing certain types of content on a tablet is awesome but for actual development nothing beats a good keyboard (love the Logitech k810 for tablets if you're determined to go the tablet route) and mouse which can cost more than the tabs you've mentioned.

My advice is to expect to spend around $1600 on a decent tablet if you intend to do any real work on it. A $100 tab can sketch, take notes and browse the internet. I have used cheap tabs as rdp clients before which is cool in the right circumstances but again they're just not designed for anything more than web browsing and even that can be janky.

Apple are trying to break into this space with their new 'cheap alternative' iPad, anyone tried to do production grade work on of these? Would be interested in the outcome...

 

Dude I just wanted to be able to code for 30 min and see if there are compiler errors and maybe test some code in a not demanding game. Nothing close to serious development.
Do you think those tablets could accomplish that task?
I don't have $1600 to spend on a tablet lol. That's why I was searching for cheap tablets. Maybe in the future though.

 

Surface pro would be useful for designer because it has pen with pressure senstitivity and it should be cheaper than cintiq. Those cheaper devices you listed, though... I wouldn't buy any of them.

No, I don't think so.

For programming work, I'd invest into multi-monitor desktop workstation. In the worst case I'd look into buying a laptop.

Those devices have 2GB RAM each, and even if they're supposed to be able to run Windows OS, I doubt you'll be able to work comfortably on them. That's just my opinion, though.

Frankly, spending that cash on decent keyboard (or some minor software) sounds like a better idea to me.

 

Just curious why is pressure sensitivity such a good feature for designer?

It's in a different class but personally I was curious about MS Surface Book which is more like a laptop but it looks like no vga port so not for me.

 

@neginfinity Did you even read my post? I said I have a pc and a laptop. And I want something that I can carry in my backpack.

I'm only looking for recommendations of low-price good-enough tablets for programming. I don't need anything close to what some designers might need.

 

If you are serious about development on it, 4 gigs of ram is the absolute minimum I would work with (ideal is at least 8 though). If it's mostly for testing, they look like a good baseline for low-end hardware. You don't want to be developing on them though. Unless you never intend to have more than a single program open at once (like Unity and an image editor or modeling program, or god forbid you use Chrome), you will be pulling hairs every time you have to wait for the simplest things to happen because you're out of memory.

 

In theory something like MonoDevelop should be fairly light weight. If you are just coding on the go and checking for compiler errors you might not even need a Unity install.

 

Have you tried using a tablet for any form of text entry without a keyboard? Those initial tablets you linked will certainly run Unity, but unless you're bringing a keyboard with you they won't be comfortable for any amount of coding. I recommend a tablet along the lines of the ASUS Transformer Book. I've seen them as cheap as ~$120 refurbished.

http://www.asus.com/transformerbook/

 

@Ryiah I did say you can buy an attachable keyboard for them. That's why I'm considering getting a tablet after all.
No sane person would use a virtual keyboard for coding.

@RockoDyne "ideal is at least 8" (gigabytes).
For a program (Unity) that doesn't even use 200mb unless you import a lot of models/textures?

 

I'm typically on a windows 7 install that I can catch at rest (without anything running) using three gigs of memory. If I'm actually doing something, I've probably got a dozen different programs running and I'll likely sit at over five gigs in use (and this is before running art programs that will take everything they can).

If you are the magical unicorn that is incapable of multitasking and only runs a single program at a time, you might just make it work. I just assume you're on the ADD spectrum, like the rest of us, and do ten different things at the same time.

 

I've run unity on worse specs than you mention in tablet form. It'll run but pretty darn slowly even on basic scenes. If your use case is truly as casual as you mention it'll do in a pinch (like if your stuck on a plane), but for even most casual uses you are going to prefer/use the laptop if you have to do more than 5 minutes of work. For tablets that don't have specs that suck it's going to be a lot more than $150 and when $$ is the largest concern you can get those higher specs cheaper in laptop form than in the surfaces or equivalent.

 

Surface Pro seems like a solid choice. I'm actually looking into it right now since it runs Windows I don't lose out on all my other tools as well.

 

Yeah, I did. You want a $100..$150 tablet for unity development which seems unrealistic for me.

Those requirements are incompatible with each other, because you want to run unity. If you just wanted to program, you could grab something that equivalent 15 years old laptop, install desktop-less linux on it and program in vim/emacs using whatever language you want. Tablet would handle that too. However, you want to run unity on it, and that raises the bar quite high.

I'm not sure where you get those numbers from, but they're invalid.
Empty scene in unity uses at least 900 megabytes of ram. If you make a mistake of accidentally trying to bake anything with enlighten (by default that checkbox is on), it can easily allocate 20 gigabytes or more (I'd expect table to overheat and drain batter once unity starts trying to bake anything). The editor is less memory hungry than unreal, but trying to stuff it (along with operating system) into 2 gigabytes of memory is not a good idea. Total system memory load on windows 7 with unity running is usually between 3 and 6 gigabytes of memory. And keep in mind that you're gonna need to run either mono develop or visual studio in addition to that. While monodevelop is lightweight, visual studio is frigging elephant. So, yeah, you need a bout 8 gigabytes of ram to work comfortably with unity and on 2 gb ram tablet the system will be heavily swapping the pagefile around.

You're going to need tablet that is comparable to a mediocre PC, and that means expensive tablet.

 

I have spent hundreds for mobile gadgets with similar intentions like you. Not trying to run unity but do digital painting or make music on the go, etc.. I agree that it seems pointless to try and run unity on a 150$ tablet. I have an asus eeepc with 4gb ram and I didn't bother installing unity on it because even firefox runs excruciatingly slow. The best on-the-go-use I got out of it is playing Jagged Alliance 2 and fiddling around with freeware vst synths in reaper, that's about it.
I have come to realize that possibly the most important development work I do is done with pen and paper and I suggest you give that a try. Alternatively buy the cheapest kindle and just read some good books on gamedev topics.

 

Empty scene on Windows 10 with Unity 5.2.0f3.

The number reported as total memory usage is more than simply applications. It's also including memory used to cache commonly accessed files. Memory usage on my system is currently at 3.4GB out of 8GB, but Unity is only ~130MB of that.

Or Script Inspector 3. It eliminates the need for an external IDE.

 

Alright, I used wrong metric for determining program memory use.

However, it doesn't really matter what the memory is being used for. The numbers I mentioned reffered to physical memory only, without swap file, with non-empty scene memory usage will climb and when physical memory use reaches about 95% of total available ram, the system will start hitting the swap. Then you'll be experiencing periodical slowdowns and hiccups. You should also keep in mind that unity is not exactly light on the CPU. Your system uses 3.4 while the tablet has 2 gigabytes avilable.

The point is, the OP will be better off reading books on the train or getting ebook reader.

:-\
Frankly, I'd expect to see suggestion to use vim, emacs, jedic or notepad++ instead of this.

 

Lots of these tablets use the same internal design and the screens are often a fake resolution because the real resolution is to low and Windows won't work so this makes the screens blurry and ugly (Unusable IMO) Also the build quality seems low on the ones I've used and the cheap Android tablet I have the USB pot fell out.

The large one doesn't seem to be that kind though so I'd say if you just want one for coding on a train or something go for it (Obviously if you have lots of money buy a Surface 3 or something) but make sure to look at it in a shop or something first to check that everything is good.

This is not true, I had a powerful laptop a while ago and purchased a mid level Surface Pro 3 (i5 8gb ram) and it's perfect, I ended up giving my laptop to my mum because I didn't use it. I also use a computer with a i7 4770k, GTX 970 and 32gb of ram during the week and it has no performance benefits for me and only can get me into trouble if I have a bad piece of code that isn't a problem on that computer but on anything else it is.

 

They can run unity perfectly fine I guess. I have my PC 7 years old with 1 GB RAM and 128 MB onboard graphic card and I can run unity just fine! Yeah I don't need to build a new android apk every time I want to test the performance

 

What's your definition of "perfectly fine"? Nothing about that PC says "perfect" to me.

 

I am really confused about how you would use the Editor. Are you going to use a mouse? Or are you actually using the touch display? If you are using the display while trying to keep up a decent development speed, isn't that exhausting?
Personally, when I'm on the way, I am using Textastic on iOS devices to program rather than Unity itself.

Then I must be insane because I'm programming on my small iPhone 4S's virtual keyboard?

Also, there are many apps that can be used for developing assets. You probably don't even need Unity all the time, right? Unless, of course, you buy all your assets from the Asset Store and build your game more or less in Unity and MonoDevelop only.

 

Most tablets have a usb port. I don't think it is practical to use touch screens expect for drawing.

I actually saw a review of one of the tablets I mentioned where the guy plugged in a normal keyboard, mouse and TV and played minecraft.

What's your letterPerMinute score on that? xd

I'm willing to bet your ram usage often goes above 1gb. What os are you using? I just realized winXP is supported by unity editor. Is it winXP or linux?

 

Yes, both of those tablets you linked in your initial post have some form of HDMI. If someone couldn't afford a new PC it would be trivial to buy one of those tablets and hook it up as a desktop. All you would need are adapter cables and those are very cheap.

Personally though I wouldn't choose either of those. I'm not a fan of having anything less than 4GB of memory for a modern system and the Onda V919 fits that for $239. There may be a cheaper one on that site but the search features were horrid so I haven't checked further.

 

By the way you will want to start saving up for a new system if you want to continue using new releases. One of Unity's developers who frequents the Linux beta section mentioned that they are likely going to ditch 32-bit support for the editor at some point in the future. I cannot imagine your computer is 64-bit with those specs.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/32-bit-version-planed-or-no.350335/#post-2267569

If you cannot afford a new desktop then you may want to consider a tablet with adapter(s) as even the cheapest Windows tablets out there are typically 64-bit.

 

That's a very nice solution. Unfortunately it is not dual-booted so I'd still need to get a new android device.
I could dual-boot it myself, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea?

 

There might be a dual-booting tablet with better specs on that site, but their search tool is literally broken for me.

 

I use windows 7 and I never have RAM problems when working only with unity. But I often get BSOD when I work too long like 7-9 hours a day continuously

My brother has a great laptop and he is saying when he gets a job he will buy a Mac and give the laptop to be. But it will take 2 years more at least. My father is not ready to get me one . But the only thing I want current is the IAP and 5.3 will not be dropping the support. Oh and I almost everything had dual OS installed and I can too run 64 bit windows 7 and I also have Intel Pentium Dual Core which I think is 64 bit.

 

I did a words per minute test on iPhone 4S and got about 45 WMP. So I type at about half the speed compared to a regular keyboard. Still, I just don't like carrying "unnecessary" stuff with me, so that I don't have to watch out for it. When it comes to the phone however, I take it with me anyway. So I may as well code on it.

 

That's when you start buying cases for your tablet that have a built-in keyboard.

 

Well, personally, I don't even like carrying tablets with me, because it won't fit in my pocket. In fact, I don't even like the size of newer iPhones. In my opinion, they are just too big. And I guess there is no iPhone case that has a built-in keyboard, is there? The buttons on such a keyboard would be pretty small. However, I thought about using a projection keyboard. But this will also require some sort of "cube" to carry around and just like a virtual keyboard, it has no haptic feedback either.
Maybe some of you don't know that, so here you can take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard
It's pretty hip and stuff.

 

You can't have "no ram problems" with this hardware configuration, because your system should be swapping all the time.

I suggest to save up and upgrade. about 8 gigs of RAM, 1 gigs of VRam (on some sort of nvidia gpu) and multicore cpu.

 

For your consideration: It is advisable to test your apps on low (or lowest) end devices, to reveal performance bottlenecks. An activity might take 2-3 seconds to load on a low-end cheap tablet, or a ListView might scroll jerkily, while your high-end dev tablet will not show this. I have found that for Android, this means using the emulator for bottleneck tests - you might consider upping the provided RAM to 1024MB though, this makes it somewhat usable. Also, you could use a ramdisk for the emulator image.

For day to day development, I would also go with the Galaxy Tab 10, since you come to design your app specifically for dual-core processors. Or, ~100 bucks cheaper, the Motorola Xoom (but hurry up, I read that they already stopped production ).

 

This one's Dual Booted and is about the same price as the one Ryiah linked above, also 4gb ram http://www.everbuying.com/product1081123.html

 

Wow the Onda tablet @Ryiah posted is cheaper on their actual site. http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v919-air-ch-9-7-inch-4gb-ram-intel-tablet.html

 

Just popped in to say I glanced at the forum thread titles real quick and misread this one as Developing on a Toilet. lol Which may have been an interesting discussion in its own way.

 

I think the OP wants to use this tablet on the toilet so your not entirely wrong...

 

Yeah he will never waste time for pooping then

 

I'm tempted to get this one, http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v919-air-ch-9-7-inch-4gb-ram-intel-tablet.html. They have a keyboard case for $20 on the site too. I just need to get a Bluetooth mouse and I'm good. I'd also get an external HDD so I can transfer data between my desktop and tablet then...

 

Check Amazon for "iPhone Case Keyboard". You'll see quite a number of them. Most of them slide behind it.

 

I see. Thanks for the hint! Maybe I should try one of these! I'm not sure if I would be able to type quicker, though. I'm not sure, but I guess one of the main reasons for typing slower on iPhone is the lacking space, too. Anyway, I will take a closer look!

 

Sounds like the specs some people are using to develop and bake lighting in Unity 5 and then complaining "it takes like forever to bake my scene". Haha!