Should I upgrade to Jellybean or no?

[masterz13]

I just got my TF300 this afternoon and love it. I haven't had any of the wi-fi issues people are talking about, and I'm on a college network. Are there any major reasons to upgrade to Jellybean or no? And how is battery life on it?

 

[Metroid Prime]

Haven't got much knowledge on JB only thing I have heard is that it's a step up from ICS.

 

[jericko]

My wife and I (2 tablets) both love the JB upgrade, the GUI is ALLOT faster, we both think we are getting better battery life and no issues at all.

 

[Dubbin1]

About the only thing you will notice is things are a bit smoother. Other than that and "google now" you won't notice much of a difference.

 

[barney_rebel]

May as well...

 

[peterc10]

I just got my TF300 this afternoon and love it. I haven't had any of the wi-fi issues people are talking about, and I'm on a college network. Are there any major reasons to upgrade to Jellybean or no? And how is battery life on it?

AFAIK there are no wifi issues with the tf300. People may be confusing it with the tf201 (transformer prime) which did report issues with wifi and GPS caused by its metal case. The tf300 has a plastic case.

I would recommend you update to Jelly Bean. I had no problems doing so and my tf300 is now quicker and slicker.

Battery life is good, especially with the keyboard plugged in. I have not measured it, but have never got anywhere near running the battery down yet with or without the keyboard attached.

 

[masterz13]

AFAIK there are no wifi issues with the tf300. People may be confusing it with the tf201 (transformer prime) which did report issues with wifi and GPS caused by its metal case. The tf300 has a plastic case.

I would recommend you update to Jelly Bean. I had no problems doing so and my tf300 is now quicker and slicker.

Battery life is good, especially with the keyboard plugged in. I have not measured it, but have never got anywhere near running the battery down yet with or without the keyboard attached.

A keyboard defeats the purpose of a tablet. I will never understand why people waste $150 on a dock that essentially turns it into a $500-600 netbook. For that price, I could just get an ultraportable that has an i5, 4-6gb RAM, etc.

As for the Jellybean update, I went through with it. It's basically the same as before. It could just be me, but it seems ICS had slightly smoother performance on the home screen and in Chrome, and JB has caused some of my apps to crash since they're not fully compatible. Sadly, Asus forces the update on you. You can delay it, but the pop-up appears and eventually downloads the update anyway. Kind of annoying.

 

[peterc10]

The keyboard was the main reason I bought this tablet rather than a Samsung. I wanted a laptop replacement that I could use on short business trips that could act as both a quick easy to use tablet and a business machine.

So quick switch on and reply to emails while waiting in the departure lounge for the flight (with keyboard not attached). And the ability to work on more detailed emails as well as documents using a decent keyboard whilst in the client's office during the day or the hotel at night. And I can still use it as a tablet at other times. So the best of both worlds.

And in the UK the tf300 is normally only sold complete with the keyboard.

 

[NYCHitman1]

A keyboard defeats the purpose of a tablet. I will never understand why people waste $150 on a dock that essentially turns it into a $500-600 netbook. For that price, I could just get an ultraportable that has an i5, 4-6gb RAM, etc.

As for the Jellybean update, I went through with it. It's basically the same as before. It could just be me, but it seems ICS had slightly smoother performance on the home screen and in Chrome, and JB has caused some of my apps to crash since they're not fully compatible. Sadly, Asus forces the update on you. You can delay it, but the pop-up appears and eventually downloads the update anyway. Kind of annoying.

I wish I had saw this thread previously, and was able to tell you to hold off. Root/unlock was definitely a better option for this device.

 

[Miths000]

JB has upped general responsiveness and smoothness substantially for me. Where on ICS I would frequently get "stalls" for up to several seconds while doing things like loading heavy web pages, with JB those pauses of unresponsiveness have almost disappeared (Opera Mobile has become my current favorite browser - just like Opera has been my preferred desktop browser for years - but the others I've tried also seem to have gotten a boost under JB). And it's not just web browsing, scrolling lists in other apps and just general perceived speed of the entire interface has been notably increased.
Smooth as butter it still isn't quite though - I'm actually a bit surprised that a fancy quad core CPU can't do in terms of responsiveness and smoothness, what even single core PC CPUs could do years ago (I have no experience with recent iOS devices, and none with any iPads at all, so I don't know how they might compare).

The only problem I've had with the JB upgrade is that a small portion of my videos will no longer play in hardware mode in MX Player and a larger portion won't play at all in eg. the native player of QuickPic. However it's just a matter of finding another player, and BSPlayer has handled everything I've thrown at it yet on Jelly Bean - and it actually turned out that I also liked the player better overall than MX Player.

 

[simonmoore1986]

No flash support, you never miss it until it's gone! Ive also found the keyboard to be weird somtimes, but much smooth e r and chrome is the browser i was waiting for! Dolphin was poo!

 

[barney_rebel]

New firmware update today...

 

[peterc10]

New firmware update today...

Yes I got that in the UK too. Now says it is Android 4.1.1. I think it was 4.1 before. Not seen any difference yet. Does anybody know what the changes are?