When first seeing at the Cisco Cius, it is easy to be underwhelmed. I am used to using my Samsung Galaxy Tab, which is big, lightweight, clearly the consumer Android tablet leader. Compared to that, the Cius is small, chunky, and heavy. But after getting all hooked into our back end systems and using it for a week, I am very impressed. What matters most in tablets is the applications, and the Cius business applications are leaders in the market, being unique, rock solid and very usable.
The email, calendar, and touch applications are excellent. I have mine hooked into our change server, and all works flawlessly. Emails are easy to read, and the interface layout is top notch. A de facto nice feature is the spelling word suggestions pop up in a line over the screen, ready for selection.
The Cius calendar application is way best than the de facto confused calendar on my phone. All the meetings show up exactly like they do on my Outlook client, with no extra meetings, no deleted meetings, and no confusing layout. Just the meeting data that I need, layed out in both a week view as well as a scrolling program view. One minor issue is there is no direct link to Google maps for addresses.
Contacts are great. All the contacts you need are right there. There is a good fast crusade function. All my Google contracts are sitting right there alongside my change contacts. After installing the LinkedIn app, it integrates pictures and touch info from LinkedIn into the contacts view as well, so that most of my contacts end up having pictures showing. What is de facto neat is that the touch are integrated into the phone application, which is where the Cisco Cius de facto starts to differentiate itself from other Android devices.
The Cisco Cius is a full Cisco phone. I have mine hooked into a Plantronics bluetooth headset, and have been using it from home. I just authenticated the built-in Cisco AnyConnect client to our Vpn service, and it grabbed the profile from the Cisco Communications owner server. I set up a custom button layout for the Cius because I wanted to have one phone line and five Busy Lamp Field buttons so I could speed dial people. The voice ability is de facto good - Cisco must have set some kind of processing priority on the phone application.
It is of course a full 720p Hd video conferencing endpoint as well. This is integrated into the phone application. External callers, Ex90 users, and Movi client users can reach me by dialing either my internal extension, or my Uri, which is just my phone whole at my domain. How easy is that? I have also tested the video calls over the 4G Verizon mifi connection that I have. When using that, the video codec switches to the lower bandwidth acceptable Definition automatically. Even when the video pixellates slightly, the voice stream on the video call is clear with no distortion. The only issue I am having is switching the video to the back camera to show citizen stuff - that feature could be more intuitive. Voice is good both using the Plantronics headset, and using the built in speakers and microphone, with both sides of the call working well.
The Jabber and Webex clients come acceptable on the Cisco Cius. They logged into my accounts no problem. The Jabber client is good for Instant Messaging and proximity now, and because everyone at my office uses Webex Connect, it is nice to sometimes have this alternate communications path, especially when I am in a meeting. Both clients are pretty basic for now, and I am seeing transmit to the upgrades that are advent that will join voice and video into them, just like their desktop counterparts. If there is one thing I have learned from owning tablets, it is to have patience with applications, since they are constantly getting usability upgrades.
The Vmware View virtual desktop client is surprisingly good. I anticipated that it would be hard to use on a 7" tablet. But it is just about as easy to use at the same client on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. I think the touchscreen is more sensitive or correct on the Cius, or maybe I am just used to figuring out where my fingerpad is going to land on the screen, but I was able to check a few dissimilar applications for data that I needed.
I have not tried any games on this tablet yet. I have no idea if there is a 3D machine or not, nor do I care. This tablet is all about business. The Cisco produce team clearly put some time and attempt into making the business applications work well. I know there is a bunch of protection stuff and app store control stuff as well, but that has no bearing on usability.
The improvements I would like to see are nearby charging and battery life. The battery life is short, but part of that is because the tablet seems to be running all the time! The screen never turns off, even when it is running on battery. If I don't manually push the power button it will happily chug away and drain the battery in a few hours. I would also like to see some minuscule Led light up when the tablet is being charged, because one night I concept I plugged it in but didn't, so I was not able to use it at a meeting the next day. Well, I could have, but I didn't want to plug the power into the wall to show it off. There is no car charger available as far as I can tell - although I am going to go to Fry's and see if there is some universal car charger that has a plug that would work for it.
The Cisco Cius tablet is a de facto nice device. Even though the specs are basic (see Cisco Cius review ), those don't tell the real story about this tablet. This has the best core business applications I have seen on any device, along with the iPad2 and Droid phones. The AnyConnect, Jabber, and Webex collaboration applications are outstanding. But what de facto sets this expedient head and shoulders above any other tablet in the marketplace is the rock solid implementation of the Cisco phone and the Cisco TelePresence video. All those applications combined together have made this my first option for the expedient that I reach for in my bag when I need to get things done.
Cisco Cius company and Communications Apps Are Best in Class