Originally Posted by
dougmc
It's better than a hard drive -- sure. But constant vibration, along with some occasional hard jolts, isn't good for anything electronic. At least a Garmin Edge is designed with that in mind -- a tablet or phone, not so much. (And also, merely being smaller helps with that, and being bigger tends to hurt with that.)
While this could be a problem in theory, it doesn't appear to be a problem in fact (with phones). Lots of people use phones this way. It's not unusual for phones to be dropped (presumably, they are designed to handle that).
Originally Posted by
dougmc
And of course it would be really unfortunate if you set your bike against a wall to rest and it fell over and shattered your tablet. A small bike or handheld GPS is likely to survive that even if the bike falls on it or the mount fails and it hits the concrete. A tablet ... it's much more iffy.
The bigger size of a tablet might make it more risky. In bike falls (not crashes), the tablet is probably going to be protected (somewhat) by the handlebar.
One might be able to get a damage insurance policy for the device (from, for example, squaretrade).