Upgrade StorageZotero on mobile: iPad [Air 6 13" 2024 M2 or Pro 2018/2020/2021 12.9"] or Android [OnePlus Pad 3]?
Longtime user of Zotero, I'm choosing between iPad (Air 13 M2 or an iPad Pro from 2018/2020/2021) on the one hand, and OnePlus Pad 3 on the other, primarily for Zotero PDF annotation with extensive freehand writing. Looking for experiences from users who, ideally, have tried both platforms (or at least one of these specific devices).
I use freehand annotations extensively; OS-level ability for handwriting and voice to text working smoothly in Zotero’s notes/comments is also important. I am looking for a large screen (13") that is readable outdoors. And I'd much prefer a 4:3 form factor.
My initial inclination is for an Android tablet: I am a Linux user and find iPads even more constraining than Androids, etc, etc. However, I think that an iPad could be a better choice. (So I’d especially value input from Linux users who chose iPad for Zotero—was it worth the trade-offs?).
The main reason is that I believe the Zotero mobile experience is probably better on the iPad. The Zotero app for iPad was released in March 2022 and thus it has a three year advantage over the Android app. In addition, there is a much larger diversity of Android hardware than of iPads, so I guess the range of possible issues in Android is larger and it is easier to end up with an Android device in which barely anyone else is using the Zotero app. Thus, I guess that, with an iPad, one can expect that most issues will have already been ironed out. I also think that the iPad app has some functionality that is not (yet?) available in the Android app (from the details provided by the settings, to opening multiple PDFs and displaying their titles, etc).
The main iPad I am considering is the iPad Air 6, 13", 2024, M2 (which I can find used for a reasonable price). Alternatively, an iPad Pro, 12.9", from one of 2018, 2020, 2021. One specific question about the iPad (Air or Pro) is how readable will it be outdoors. Some reviews mentioned it is not great, and its 600 nits are slightly above the 522 (maximum) of my current Samsung tablet, which are barely enough. Does anyone have experience using these device outdoors with Zotero?
For Android, there are few tablets with a form factor of (or close to) 4:3 and size of about 13". My preferred option would be the OnePlus Pad 3, which has excellent reviews and can go up to almost 900 nits (so outdoors use should be no problem). However, I have found almost no details about the pen and pdf annotation experience; a few users report some lag of the pen, and occasional glitches with palm rejection. I'm particularly interested in whether this model experiences the freehand annotation issues documented here (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/126421/debug-id-d918391774-android-app-freehand-draw-slow-and-wrong-rendering?new=1) or the annotation toolbar overlapping the pdf text (though the 4:3 ratio likely avoids this). Does anyone have any experience with this device?
It is hard for me to gauge how much better the Zotero on iPad experience is (are there specific Zotero features that work notably better on iPad vs Android?), and how much it can offset the presumably better outdoors performance of the OnePlus, while also factoring in the potentially limited community experience with Zotero on the OnePlus. I'd be grateful to those of you who have both kinds of devices if you can comment on it.
I use freehand annotations extensively; OS-level ability for handwriting and voice to text working smoothly in Zotero’s notes/comments is also important. I am looking for a large screen (13") that is readable outdoors. And I'd much prefer a 4:3 form factor.
My initial inclination is for an Android tablet: I am a Linux user and find iPads even more constraining than Androids, etc, etc. However, I think that an iPad could be a better choice. (So I’d especially value input from Linux users who chose iPad for Zotero—was it worth the trade-offs?).
The main reason is that I believe the Zotero mobile experience is probably better on the iPad. The Zotero app for iPad was released in March 2022 and thus it has a three year advantage over the Android app. In addition, there is a much larger diversity of Android hardware than of iPads, so I guess the range of possible issues in Android is larger and it is easier to end up with an Android device in which barely anyone else is using the Zotero app. Thus, I guess that, with an iPad, one can expect that most issues will have already been ironed out. I also think that the iPad app has some functionality that is not (yet?) available in the Android app (from the details provided by the settings, to opening multiple PDFs and displaying their titles, etc).
The main iPad I am considering is the iPad Air 6, 13", 2024, M2 (which I can find used for a reasonable price). Alternatively, an iPad Pro, 12.9", from one of 2018, 2020, 2021. One specific question about the iPad (Air or Pro) is how readable will it be outdoors. Some reviews mentioned it is not great, and its 600 nits are slightly above the 522 (maximum) of my current Samsung tablet, which are barely enough. Does anyone have experience using these device outdoors with Zotero?
For Android, there are few tablets with a form factor of (or close to) 4:3 and size of about 13". My preferred option would be the OnePlus Pad 3, which has excellent reviews and can go up to almost 900 nits (so outdoors use should be no problem). However, I have found almost no details about the pen and pdf annotation experience; a few users report some lag of the pen, and occasional glitches with palm rejection. I'm particularly interested in whether this model experiences the freehand annotation issues documented here (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/126421/debug-id-d918391774-android-app-freehand-draw-slow-and-wrong-rendering?new=1) or the annotation toolbar overlapping the pdf text (though the 4:3 ratio likely avoids this). Does anyone have any experience with this device?
It is hard for me to gauge how much better the Zotero on iPad experience is (are there specific Zotero features that work notably better on iPad vs Android?), and how much it can offset the presumably better outdoors performance of the OnePlus, while also factoring in the potentially limited community experience with Zotero on the OnePlus. I'd be grateful to those of you who have both kinds of devices if you can comment on it.
The system itself just provides a bit more of a polished experience on iOS. Scrolling and drawing are going to be smoother, things like palm rejection work reliably and don't vary by device, there are built-in system integration features like dictionary lookup… Or, a big one for us: while you can save to the mobile apps from the browser on both platforms, on iOS we have access to the actual webpage document, whereas on Android we only get the URL, which means we can't save any content behind a login.
Even the third-party cross-platform PDF framework we use is just more capable on iOS. We've been reporting issues to try to bring them to parity, but that's a case where any app using this very popular framework is just going to be more limited on Android.
In terms of the Zotero app itself, the iOS app has a multi-year head start, yes, and so both has more functionality and likely has fewer bugs. But the Android app should be fairly close behind in functionality, or even occasionally ahead — e.g. the Android app has PDF metadata retrieval, which is only in the beta on iOS. (But the iOS beta also has EPUB support, which is still a little ways off for Android.) Our goal is to keep the apps at as close to parity as possible. But there are just some things — like saving of gated content — that we can't currently offer on Android or that we're unlikely to offer until they're provided in a consistent way across devices by the system.
I should have said that I've been using Zotero on Android tablets, one way or another, for some time: for 10 years I've used my own conversion of the Zotero sqlite db to Referey, an old Android app that could read the old Mendely db format, plus using Syncthing to sync the PDFs ---https://github.com/rdiaz02/Zotero-to-Referey---; I had/have tried Zandy, Zotable, Zed, Zojo, ZotDroid, ZotEZ2, Zoo, and workflows based on Zotfile, as well as BiBTeX Android apps on the exported bib file (all documented in the Zotero-to-Referey repo). I now realize that probably I should have moved (or at least given a try) to iPad a while back.
I think what is forcing me to think about this now is that having a very smooth, as close to flawless, experience with Zotero, is probably gaining more weight (as I also consider getting a larger tablet).
Edit: I finally went with the iPad and got a used Air 13". So far, a nicer Zotero experience than with Android.