The web browser on the Transformer Prime, or rather Android 4 leaves something to be desired. Two very noticeable issues are viewing the tab bar and constant lock-ups.
It’s quite nice the way you can scroll the web page tab bar left and right at the top of the screen with your finger, to see all the tabs and switch to the other open websites. But there is no indication of if there are open tabs to the left or the right of the screen that you can’t currently see. You have to actually scroll to find out. In the desktop version of FireFox for example, there are arrows indicating that you have open tabs to the left or right when you can’t see them all. So it’s very annoying and time wasting to look for open tabs.
And on my tablet, the browser constantly locks up, especially while opening a website in a new tab, refreshing an existing open page, or even clicking on a link. The tablet locks up while it’s “busy” I assume, and only when it finishes whatever has locked it up does it display a dialog window offering to “Wait” or “Force Close” the app. But by this time it’s already given you control back, so pressing “Wait” takes you back to the running app. Pressing “Force Close” would only kill the app and make you open it again. This would make sense if you could have done so when it first locked up, but is pointless after returning control to you.
I’m also finding that when the tablet sits dormant for a while, as in Standby mode, that sometimes the Wi-Fi Internet connection is screwed up. I don’t believe it’s the router, as it only seems to be happening with the Prime. For example it will show a 2 Mbps connection (instead of 54 Mbps) and not allow you to load any pages. There doesn’t seem to be a “Disconnect” feature in a wireless connection in Android 4 like there is in 2.x, so you have to switch to another wireless connection, and then switch back to get it to work properly again. Unless you want to select “Forget” and then re-enter your pass-phrase on “Connect”, that’s really convenient!
Once again, in my personal opinion, Android 4 sucks in usability compared to version 2.3.x. Yes it’s prettier and has more bling and flash, but it does not work as well. And the things I do like about Android 4 could easily be accomplished in apps and widgets. Just like the last 2 versions of Windows since XP, there is no real world functionality improvements in Android 4 that we didn’t have in 2.x, Just like comparing Windows 7 and XP. Both newer versions (Android 4 and Windows 7) are prettier. But for real world power user functionality, it’s a step back if anything. At best it makes it more attractive initially to the new inexperienced user.
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