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Raspberry Pi vs Android 4.0 Thumb PC : disappointing Pi is sadly not ready for prime time TV

Performance

androidrasppisidebyside

The Raspberry Pi suffers from a huge performance disadvantage because of its reliance on an SD card for its system and program memory store. Use a standard speed SD card and you’ll barely be able to browse the web because it will be so slow, with timeouts and problems with anything other than the simplest websites (a quick look at the memory shows that there’s typically a mere 70MB of free memory to play with at any time).

We went out and bought a more expensive (!) high speed SD card for the RaspBMC system and things improved a bit, but running stuff on the Pi is still sadly slower than a turtle on vacation. Menus shift at glacial speed, browsing is tedious and forget about trying to get stuff like YouTube or Plex working, they either don’t work at all or work sporadically at best.

Of course much of this is because we have no clue how to overclock the processor, optimize the O/S for the small memory space or how to configure the various software components, but that’s the same enthusiast issue again. We wouldn’t keep bringing this up, but we’re not sure how many average school kids have the time, ability or inclination to grapple with this kind of stuff en route to learning about computing. You might say that it’s vital, but surely that’s similar to asking someone to strip a car engine to learn to drive?

The Android Thumb PC is not super swift either, but it leaves the Pi in a smoking heap of dust in comparison. Menus work in a couple of seconds, you can navigate around without frustration, and things like installing apps from Google Play and running YouTube videos work flawlessly out of the box. The only real problem we found was that the WiFi connection can be a little flaky from time to time, which means that you experience a little stutter on streaming Plex video, or sometimes YouTube HD videos fail to load entirely.

But overall the viewing experience is actually quite reasonable, and once these little Thumb PCs start to get beefier dual core processors and more RAM, we’re sure that general performance will really start to impress.

Software and Peripherals

rasppiandroidkeyboard

Here again we fear that the intractable Linux implementation on the Raspberry Pi really makes it suffer compared to the Android alternative. You really need to take care in choosing your peripherals, and even the most generic Linux software, even if it’s standard for Ubuntu, often won’t work with the custom Linux on the device. Also, while you can use USB hubs to extend your accessory capabilities, you’ll need to make sure it’s a powered one, and compatible, otherwise you risk blowing or disabling the Pi motherboard.

The Android Thumb PC comes with a standard 2.0 USB port, standard Android O/S and an OTG USB port for things like external hard drives. It even comes with an adapter in the box, which we used to connect up a Verbatim 32 GB external USB high speed SSD flawlessly in seconds. There’s also a microSD card slot which will deliver up to 32 GB of extra storage for your apps, which makes it a great little system for music and/or multimedia of all sorts. The fact that the system will also play most popular codecs like DivX and 1080P MPEG-4 out of the box really sets the seal on the power of the Android platform for this kind of media task.

Overall Conclusion
We’ve probably annoyed a fair number of Raspberry Pi lovers, but from our experience the product as it stands is not really suitable for any kind of use outside the strictly enthusiast Linux crowd. Notwithstanding the awesome community help and support, most ordinary people – and that includes many teachers and children – just won’t have the patience to work through the many issues with becoming productive with the Pi on a general basis.

That’s not to say that the Android box offers more flexibility, but at least it can be set up and run with minimal hassle by most people. And before you start to complain that you can’t program on the Android box, remember that there are these programming tools already available for Android right now, and no doubt more will appear over the coming years.

JoyToy – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.sourceforge.soopy.joytoy.android
iProgram – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andreig.droidscript&hl=en
Frink on Android – http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/android.html
Turtle Graphics (Logo) – http://www.appbrain.com/app/turtle-graphics/com.darkgadgeteer.turtlegraphics
Catroid – http://code.google.com/p/catroid/
About BASIC! – http://www.laughton.com/basic/
Mobile BASIC For Android – http://www.mobilebasic.com/en/android/13-mobile-basic-for-android.html

So what do we recommend?

androidrasppibare

If you are a Linux expert or happy to learn more about the operating system, then the Raspberry Pi is a great place to start, especially if you have simple needs and a stock of existing AND COMPATIBLE peripherals you can plug and play with. In this case, you’ll be paying minimum price for a system that can be used for a huge variety of tasks in education.

If you’re after a cheap media box, a plugin computer for your TV, or anything which requires solid performance alongside stable expansion capabilities, then we feel that the Android 4.0 Thumb PC is a far better bet, and probably at a much better price. Android has something like 600,000 apps available on Google Play, it is a familiar face on most of the world’s best smartphones and therefore has a learning curve which is much gentler than the Pi at this stage.

We love the open nature of the Raspberry Pi, the fact that it is bound up with a caring non-profit vision and that it is never likely to become tainted by commercial pressures and influence. For educational users this is an ideal partner. For the rest of us non-geek mortals, it may just be one or two Terminal commands too far.

Update: We were so upset and disappointed when the Pi failed to live up to our expectations, that we went back and did some additional testing to make sure we hadn’t missed anything in our review. First we adjusted the orientation of the Pi to ensure an optimal line of sight for the WiFi, then we tested the Edimax WiFi dongle on another computer running Linux to ensure it was working perfectly, and we also tried a quick test running RaspBMC on a wired Ethernet connection.

The results did not change with these additional tests. The Pi was still incredibly slow and unresponsive, with numerous time outs and load fails.

Finally we tried installing the latest version of RaspBMC, but after an hour of installation, it failed with a blank screen which we could not fix.

rasbmcWiredFailraspbmcfail

Above -our wired connection test of the Pi was no better than the previous WiFi experience.

raspbmcReinstallStartraspbmcReinstallFail

Above – these shots show the sum total of over an hour’s worth of attempted upgrade of RaspBMC. The installation hung on the last screen ‘Relax, XMBC will resume shortly’. It never did.
(click on thumbnails to expand) .

Rating (device as a media center)

Raspberry Pi: 4/10 – great idea, shame about the under-powered implementation

Android 4.0 Thumb PC: 7.5/10 – lovely design, a slightly beefier spec will make it outstanding

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18 Comments

  • All well and good, but will I ever be able to use the Android option to run RISC OS?
    Android is wonderful, I'm not suggesting it isn't, but for a measly few pounds I'll be able to put a RISC OS computer in my pocket to take with me to while away the long, boring night shifts.

    • Aaaand…I rest my case. :)

  • More that one RISC OS fan reading this site it seems!

  • Don't forget that Raspberry PI wans't specially made for Media Player.. It is a learning and tweaking device… The Media player thing is a bonus. It is normal that any Android device would perform better as it was originally designed for multimedia/apps.

    regards,

    Zeto

    • Yes absolutely. However we thought that since there was a significant amount of interest in the RaspBMC option, people would like to see how well it actually performed in real life. The answer surprised us.

    • Have you tried the Xbian, instead of RaspBMC ?? It is a "derivate" of RaspBMC but much quicker. Besides that you now have a Overclock option in the raspi-config. Try it and let the community know your findings.

      regards

      Zeto

    • Yes I started with Xbian, and switched to RaspBMC because I couldn't even browse properly with that O/S. I didn't see the overclock option, so I'll try and take a look at that later.

      I have a feeling that the overclocking will only marginally improve matters though, since it seems it's a lack of processor oomph and RAM that's really doing the performance damage. But of course I'm not an expert.

    • Hi again, I had a friend of mine who bought a Pi just for media player. He told me yesterday that the best software/os he could find (also the faster) was the OpenElec PVR (don't know exactly what version). Give it a try.

      regards, Zeto

    • Hi Zeto, thanks very much for the tip.

      I took a look at the recent announcement here – http://openelec.tv/component/k2/item/250-project-… – and one of the things that immediately strikes me is I'll have to go through yet another round of tedious configuration/script implementation to get the WiFi dongle working with this O/S (if I can find someone on the forums who has done it already).

      It's just too much bother really. But I appreciate the fact that there are options, even if they're specifically for tech experts.

  • Any one help me i wana install media player for my android , but i have no idea how can i do that i also load setup for media player but its not running.

  • Excellent article – I've been looking for a media center / portable PC and the raspberry pi fans are so enthusiastic I was tempted to go ahead and just try it, given how cheap it was. Like you, I quickly discovered that the $25 PC was going to cost more more than $100 and didn't have the muscle to even play AAC audio. Thanks for sharing.

  • Hi,

    If you install the raspbmc distro on a fast usb stick you should notice a signficant increase in performance. When installing the distro on your SD card just click the USB installation checkbox.

    Cheers..

  • Perhaps the XBMC builds for the RPi have improved; perhaps the blog writer had a bad build. I am a non-techie and have no experience of Linux or XBMC. I was disappointed with the lack of apps on AppleTV and wanted to see what the excitement was about the RPi. I bought a Pi £30, Belkin wifi usb £9.99, Nokia charger, £2.99, transp blue case £5. I downloaded the XBIAN version of XBMC and used a GUI app on my Mac and installed it to a 4GB class 4 SD card. First boot worked perfectly, recognising the WiFi USB and responded to my Samsung TV remote with CEC, a keyboard is completely unecessary. I was able to install thirty add-ons in fifteen minutes including BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, Demand 5 and several streaming video players. We've watched a half dozen catchup TV programmes and two full length 720p movies in the first two days. It is an amazing device and we've had only one programme hang – probably due to the fact that the version of XBMC I've downloaded is a nightly build. I'll be putting a stable release on another 4GB card and will see how it goes.

    • Riight…so you're a non-techie and you're talking about 'stable releases'? Wow, excellent. Glad you're enjoying it. :)

  • I would like to thank you for the efforts you have put in writing this blog. I am hoping the its same high-grade blog post from you in the future as well. In fact your creative writing skills have inspired me to get my own blog going now.

  • Excellent article and review! I now have made a decision about my real TV needs. Good bye Raspberry pi… hello android TV! now I need to find a good source of streaming tv and I’m all set!

  • this review is very outdated with the release of NOOBS for the Raspberry pi. All you do with it is copy the files from the archve to a sd card. stick it in the pi and power up. It can install differnt os’s for the pi onto the same sd card. I also must say that ive yet to find a USB mouse or keyboard that has not worked for the pi. And i had plenty of Spare USB chargers from my android phones laying about. The other points of the compaints were also rather moot. I think its time to redo the comparisons with the mondern releases of the Disrtos for the pi.

    • Thanks for the update, interesting to hear. Unfortunately I sold my Pi shortly after the review, so we haven’t got another one to test, but at least you’ve given some new context for our readers to chew over. Thanks again.

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