Android for EFB instead of iPad?

[Treblesum81]

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/O/open_source.html

Oh I understand what it means, which is why I said "arguably". Just try telling that to the FAA. =)

My understanding is that no tablet can be used as primary navigation at this point anyway (please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've not been able to find any reference to them in the FARs as of yet), and their use is only as a backup to paper maps and installed instruments. That being said, if they are ever certified in such a manner, I doubt the FAA will authorize iPads and leave Android and Windows devices out in the cold (though why you'd ever bring a Windows device into the cockpit I would never understand... even their demo models blue screen on startup). My guess is they will give a blanket policy requiring the devices to meet certain standards and that will be the end of it.

As for the large number of Android devices causing a problem with development, I don't think its nearly the issue you make it out to be. The very nature of the beast means that all of the hardware sets have to have a reasonable degree of commonality to be able to easily adapt the OS to run on all of those devices. In addition, if they really were so difficult to code for, you'd see apps only being released for a few devices rather than all of the devices running a version of the OS because a dev would have to develop 50-100 different versions of their program just to net all of the devices and even the big development houses just aren't going to do that. What is much more likely the case is that they are limited by the actual Android versions, of which there are more than a few, but the most likely result of that is that devs release apps for a certain version of Android or later (4.1.1, 4.2.2, etc.), but that all devices capable of running that OS version will be able to run the app. Of course, the quality of the hardware may come into question then, as was mentioned earlier when greg1016 pointed out that his device GPS was no good at high speeds, or Bernoulli Fan's Tab 2 conking out over LA.

 

[Calvin and Hobbs Meter]

My understanding is that no tablet can be used as primary navigation at this point anyway (please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've not been able to find any reference to them in the FARs as of yet), and their use is only as a backup to paper maps and installed instruments. That being said, if they are ever certified in such a manner, I doubt the FAA will authorize iPads and leave Android and Windows devices out in the cold (though why you'd ever bring a Windows device into the cockpit I would never understand... even their demo models blue screen on startup). My guess is they will give a blanket policy requiring the devices to meet certain standards and that will be the end of it.

As for the large number of Android devices causing a problem with development, I don't think its nearly the issue you make it out to be. The very nature of the beast means that all of the hardware sets have to have a reasonable degree of commonality to be able to easily adapt the OS to run on all of those devices. In addition, if they really were so difficult to code for, you'd see apps only being released for a few devices rather than all of the devices running a version of the OS because a dev would have to develop 50-100 different versions of their program just to net all of the devices and even the big development houses just aren't going to do that. What is much more likely the case is that they are limited by the actual Android versions, of which there are more than a few, but the most likely result of that is that devs release apps for a certain version of Android or later (4.1.1, 4.2.2, etc.), but that all devices capable of running that OS version will be able to run the app. Of course, the quality of the hardware may come into question then, as was mentioned earlier when greg1016 pointed out that his device GPS was no good at high speeds, or Bernoulli Fan's Tab 2 conking out over LA.

It's not a huge issue. It's just an issue. And no, I don't think you could ever use the iPad as a primary means of navigation; just the same as you can't use a panel mounted Garmin.

 

[z987k]

It's not a huge issue. It's just an issue. And no, I don't think you could ever use the iPad as a primary means of navigation; just the same as you can't use a panel mounted Garmin.

I don't see any problem with it under VFR though.

 

[Calvin and Hobbs Meter]

My understanding is that no tablet can be used as primary navigation at this point anyway (please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've not been able to find any reference to them in the FARs as of yet), and their use is only as a backup to paper maps and installed instruments. That being said, if they are ever certified in such a manner, I doubt the FAA will authorize iPads and leave Android and Windows devices out in the cold (though why you'd ever bring a Windows device into the cockpit I would never understand... even their demo models blue screen on startup). My guess is they will give a blanket policy requiring the devices to meet certain standards and that will be the end of it.

As for the large number of Android devices causing a problem with development, I don't think its nearly the issue you make it out to be. The very nature of the beast means that all of the hardware sets have to have a reasonable degree of commonality to be able to easily adapt the OS to run on all of those devices. In addition, if they really were so difficult to code for, you'd see apps only being released for a few devices rather than all of the devices running a version of the OS because a dev would have to develop 50-100 different versions of their program just to net all of the devices and even the big development houses just aren't going to do that. What is much more likely the case is that they are limited by the actual Android versions, of which there are more than a few, but the most likely result of that is that devs release apps for a certain version of Android or later (4.1.1, 4.2.2, etc.), but that all devices capable of running that OS version will be able to run the app. Of course, the quality of the hardware may come into question then, as was mentioned earlier when greg1016 pointed out that his device GPS was no good at high speeds, or Bernoulli Fan's Tab 2 conking out over LA.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/114911-ubisoft-developing-for-android-hard

http://www.intomobile.com/2011/04/04/developer-survey-android-more-difficult-than-ios/

That's just an example relating to the market place and such, but there are others regarding hardware. It's just mainly a more spread out entity than the apple product is.

 

[rframe]

My understanding is that no tablet can be used as primary navigation at this point anyway.

Under IFR no handheld device at all is approved (and likely never will due to the fact that even fully certified hardware must be validated for each install). However, nobody can argue against the increase situational awareness that a GPS with a moving map can add to a flight, even if that's a backup non-certified device.

Under VFR it doesn't matter what you use, you aren't required to have anything.

Also there is no requirement to carry a paper map. You need the information relevant to the flight. How you get that is determined by you (part 91, 135 and 121 are more specific).

My guess is they will give a blanket policy requiring the devices to meet certain standards and that will be the end of it.

They already do. The PIC must determine that a portable electronic device doesn't interfere with the safety of the flight.

As for failures. I'm not all that experienced of a pilot, and I've had COM's and IFR certified NAV radios fail... so the standard isn't all that high to begin with

 

[Calvin and Hobbs Meter]

I don't see any problem with it under VFR though.

It's pretty accurate. I wouldn't have any issues using it if my life depended on it, and it is pretty nice thing to have flying around VFR in an unfamiliar area. Therefore, I pay the extra 75 dollars a year so I can stare at the pretty blue dot.

 

[killbilly]

In the ridiculous airspace that is the DC SFRA, I get a nice warm fuzzy feeling having my iPad and the airplane GPS working. And if I take a plane with a wonky GPS (our fleet has a couple) it's double nice that the iPad supplements the chart and eyeball.

I had a regular-sized iPad and switched to the mini for flying purposes. Much better in the airplane. Better battery life, too. I do miss the retina display, but that's a minor complaint. SteveC - I dunno if you've tried out your mini in the cockpit yet, but I can wholeheartedly endorse it.

 

[Treblesum81]

Ok, so setting aside the holy wars and returning to the original question, it would seem that both Android and Apple tablets are viable options for in-flight use, as long as they have a decent GPS. It would also seem that, though Foreflight only comes on iOS devices, the only real gripe with the Android apps is that they aren't Foreflight. I guess that just leaves the issues of personal preference for brand / size and company use, the former being a big Android for me, but the latter apparently being an iPad. I guess that leads the the question, put to those who work for companies who use tablets as policy, does the company then provide the device, or are you required to purchase your own, and if the former is the case, are you required to use it only for work related activities in the way you'd be expected to use an office desktop?

 

[Calvin and Hobbs Meter]

Ok, so setting aside the holy wars and returning to the original question, it would seem that both Android and Apple tablets are viable options for in-flight use, as long as they have a decent GPS. It would also seem that, though Foreflight only comes on iOS devices, the only real gripe with the Android apps is that they aren't Foreflight. I guess that just leaves the issues of personal preference for brand / size and company use, the former being a big Android for me, but the latter apparently being an iPad. I guess that leads the the question, put to those who work for companies who use tablets as policy, does the company then provide the device, or are you required to purchase your own, and if the former is the case, are you required to use it only for work related activities in the way you'd be expected to use an office desktop?

Overall, tablets are provided by our company just the same as paper charts are provided and paid for. Essentially, the iPad belongs to the aircraft/company, and if the pilot quits or gets fired they leave the iPad behind. Per our OpSpecs each aircraft is required to have two iPads in the cockpit at all times which is the reason why the company provides them. Also, per our OpSpecs only one iPad can be turned on at a time during aircraft operation, while the other one is considered the "backup" and must be charged 100% and turned off. If you have a way to charge them in the cockpit then we can use both simultaneously.

Some of our pilots leave them to charge in the office when they aren't flying, while others take them home to do updates and such.

I'm sure there are companies out there that would expect you to use the company issued tablet for work related purposes only. In my case, I purchased my own and put foreflight on it with a company credit card; which allowed me to not worry about taking it with me other places. When I move to a different company I will just reimburse them pro rata for the yearly cost of ForeFlight.

Stomp16's company is approved for iPads if I remember correctly. I don't think they provide the hardware for their pilots, but it might be an option... Maybe he can shed some light on how they do it.

 

[Stomp16]

Probably goes without saying, but we didn't need approval [from the FAA] due to being pt91 and under 12,500 gross. When we first started some 4.5 odd years ago we went with paper charts and EFB's were just coming on the market. About 6 months into operations, it was getting very difficult to find charts in the field as more and more FBO's stopped stocking paper charts. We'd run all over an area like L.A. to find charts just to relocate the next day. It got to the point that it was affecting our production so we looked into EFB's. We purchased and outfitted our fleet (I think 6 or so birds at that time) with what turned out to be a TERRIBLE EFB. I don't recall the brand at this time but when I get into the office next I'll dust one off and report back. We used these for about 4-5 months and then came the Ipad and Foreflight. Talk about a huge step in the right direction. Compact, easy to use and could be charged in the cockpit via the "cigarette" lighter/charge plug. We liked these so much that they were unanimously approved and we purchased backups as well. To this day, I believe all of our pilots are very happy with Foreflight and we completely did away with paper charts. The only con (if you can really call it that) is when it comes time to update the charts. If you're in a hotel with a semi-ok wifi signal, it may take 2-3 days to update everything. The Ipads are aircraft specific and stay in the plane (as opposed to being issued to individual aviators). We also have a backup to the two Ipads for approach plates as the G1000's are loaded with Jepp Charts.

Edit to Add: Here's a good link talking about Ipad use in aviation.

 

[MercFE]

Have been using ForeFlight on an iPad 2 for the past year and a half... When I went to upgrade to an iPad with cell service, thought long and hard between the mini and the 4. The reviews that the mini would be ideal in the cockpit started to make me lean in that direction.

However, after messing around with a coworkers mini for quite a bit, I decided to go with the iPad 4. Besides the full screen for the entertainment value outside the cockpit, inside the aircraft the extra screen real estate is vital for the use of my military flight pubs. Running data charts off the smaller screen would have been brutal, if not impossible.

While mounting the mini to a yoke would be a immensely handy function, be sure you look at ALL the functions you will be using the tablet for before deciding on any certain form.

 

[Getburned]

What's the best app for international flying?

 

[Treblesum81]

@Stomp16: I'm interested to see what that terrible app was so I can be sure to avoid it at all costs, whichever device I choose to go with.

Now that I know it's pretty likely that if I ever work for a company that uses tablets, that company will do the providing, I'm leaning heavily towards Android. I'll admit this is mostly a personal preference thing based on my own experience tinkering with the OS, but there is another major reason and that is price. In order to get GPS functionality on and iPad, you have to buy the 4G model, or spend around $100 on an external unit (might be worthwhile to do the latter anyway TBH), something that comes by default on every Android tablet I've evaluated so far. This means that the lowest cost 16GB iPad model I could buy already costs $100 more than the 32GB Samsung I'm looking at buying. Add to the that fact that no iPad has an SD card slot, and that means that I'd probably want to buy at least a 32GB and much more likely a 64GB model, upping the price another $100-$200. Based on these numbers, for the $830 cost of just the 64GB at Best Buy, I could get the 32GB Note 10.1, another 32GB in a SD card, a tablet kneedboard, a case, and a year's subscription to the pilot app of my choice. This all might sound like counting pennies, but I'm still at the early end of my career, so that extra few hundred dollars counts for me at this point.

I am willing to accept that the Android apps aren't as far along as the iPad ones, but I have a gut feeling that this imbalance isn't going to last much longer, plus, if I do end up working for a company that uses iPads, that will still leave me my own tablet rather than the companies property. That all being said, can anyone point me to a better place to research pilot apps than Google? I'm trying to do more research into whats available for both platforms and all of the associated features / limitations. Either that, or are there really just the four (Foreflight, Garmin, Naviator, and Avilutions) already mentioned in this thread?

 

[Stomp16]

@Stomp16: I'm interested to see what that terrible app was so I can be sure to avoid it at all costs, whichever device I choose to go with.

I asked everyone at the office via gchat what it was called and it was so bad that no one could/wanted to remember. I had to go back and look at SMS reports from 2009 and there were a ton of them concerning, FlightPrep's Chartbook Tablet EFB.

If I remember right, these ended up being something like $2300 paperweights. They would crash, freeze and everything else possible that a Windows based system would do...at the worst possible times. "Sorry ATC, I know we're IMC and need to shoot an approach, but we haven't charts NOR approach plates. P.A.R., please???" The layout and feel of the system was very sloppy and left little to be desired in terms of user friendliness. (I see that FlightPrep is now on their 3rd version so hopefully they have improved.) We would call support so often trying to get the things to work properly that their tech support finally just told us there was nothing they could do. They were very helpful at first when we bought 5 or 6 of the damned things, but after the 3rd month of 8 phone calls a day, they became rude and wouldn't help us anymore. We would get put on a permanent hold, "accidentally" hung up on and everything else they could do to not have to help. After a few months, enough was enough and we decided that it was too much of a safety risk to continue trying to use these things. The purchase of all those EFB's was an expensive, "Oops." FlightPrep wouldn't accept returns of their own EFB's, they didn't even want them! If I remember right, we then had to go back to trying to find paper charts everywhere for a few months and then along came this glorious device with an outstanding app. At that moment, Ipad and Foreflight were forever linked.

A few of the tablets ended up being used by our MX guys, and the rest are sitting on a shelf in the dark abiss of the AAK basement. I know nothing of FlightPreps current offerings, but I can say with utmost certainty that their first attempt at an EFB was an utter failure.

October 2009 Article on FlightPrep's EFB
July 2009 "Debut" Article

I'm not one to publicly bash a company and their product unless it's well warranted. Those chartbooks were worthless and very frustrating. I know I wrote a similar review as this one back in 2009 or the beginning of 2010, but really don't care to try to dig to get it. Any more questions, feel free!

 

[Treblesum81]

This is a good example of why I won't by any software or hardware unless it has a good demo or a good return policy. Nothing like sinking that kind of money into a product only to find out that its pretty much a POS that should have never made it to the shelves in the first place. I appreciate the info though as it tells me I should probably avoid proprietary hardware in this search.

 

[deadpixel]

Any reason why you are wanting to get the Galaxy tablet over the Nexus 10? I know the nexus 10 doesn't have the microsd slot..but 32GB is $500 and you'd be running a fully stock experience out of the box. Garmin Pilot works with it as well. I know the Jepp app for android is very limited in it's tablet support if you thought about using that instead of garmin pilot or naviator or any of the other apps.

 

[Treblesum81]

Any reason why you are wanting to get the Galaxy tablet over the Nexus 10? I know the nexus 10 doesn't have the microsd slot..but 32GB is $500 and you'd be running a fully stock experience out of the box. Garmin Pilot works with it as well. I know the Jepp app for android is very limited in it's tablet support if you thought about using that instead of garmin pilot or naviator or any of the other apps.

That SD card slot is important to me since 32GB isn't really that much storage space when you consider that a full set of charts for one of these apps eats about 7GB (not that I will need all that, but always give yourself lots of headroom), add in some movies, music, and apps, and suddenly that 32GB (which is only the actual hardware specs, the true usable space is usually less) is not looking so big. In addition to that, the Note 10.1 runs a quad core processor versus the Nexus 10's dual core. Plus the Note comes with the S-Pen, and its associated digitizer, which I like a lot and seems like it would be a boon in the cockpit for jotting down weather or clearances in a writing app.

As far as the stock experience, whether I get the Galaxy or the Nexus, I wouldn't leave it on the stock operating system for very long anyway. There are much better options that don't have the bloatware, run more efficiently, have better features, and are more stable than what you can get from OEM (even Google). That's a major benefit of the open source operating system: Google releases a version, then whole communities of developers get together to try and make it better and then, once they have figured it out, Google can turn around and incorporate those improvements into the next version and then the cycle repeats itself.

EDIT: The one thing the Nexus 10 definitely has over the Note 10.1 is the screen. From what I've read, its better then the Retina display on the new iPad. Unfortunately, unless that screen means the difference between seeing the display and not seeing the display in direct sunlight (which I've not heard much about as of yet), it isn't enough reason to forego the extra memory and processing power of the Note 10.1, which also comes in a 64GB version as I've recently discovered.

 

[Maurus]

That SD card slot is important to me since 32GB isn't really that much storage space when you consider that a full set of charts for one of these apps eats about 7GB (not that I will need all that, but always give yourself lots of headroom), add in some movies, music, and apps, and suddenly that 32GB (which is only the actual hardware specs, the true usable space is usually less) is not looking so big. In addition to that, the Note 10.1 runs a quad core processor versus the Nexus 10's dual core. Plus the Note comes with the S-Pen, and its associated digitizer, which I like a lot and seems like it would be a boon in the cockpit for jotting down weather or clearances in a writing app.

As far as the stock experience, whether I get the Galaxy or the Nexus, I wouldn't leave it on the stock operating system for very long anyway. There are much better options that don't have the bloatware, run more efficiently, have better features, and are more stable than what you can get from OEM (even Google). That's a major benefit of the open source operating system: Google releases a version, then whole communities of developers get together to try and make it better and then, once they have figured it out, Google can turn around and incorporate those improvements into the next version and then the cycle repeats itself.

You are going to root the device so just get a nexus 10 and use Stickmount. It uses flash storage via USB OTG. I do that with my Nexus 7. Some ROMs come with that feature built in as well.