Quad Core Hyundai T7

Hyundai is a Korean brand, like Samsung and LG. In the mobile market, however its brand is relatively obscure. Hyundai T7 is a 7-inch tablet that will enter the market at $166 from Pandawill. The processor core is powered by Samsung quad-core Exynos 4412 processor, which means it is more powerful than Google Nexus 7. The other specs ?

The tablet features a 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage and Mali 400 graphics. It has a microUSB port, microSD card slot, HDMI output, a 2MP rear camera, and a 0.3MP front-facing camera. 

It runs Google Android 4.0 and features WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. I don’t know if the Hyundai T7 is officially certified by Google, but it comes with the Google Play Store preloaded and runs most apps available from Google’s app marketplace. 

Source: Liliputing

While it is great specs wise, Liliputing notes that the tablet is has a lot of deficiencies due to poor quality components being used.

Before I broke the tablet, I also had time to notice a few quirks:

• The tablet would sometimes shut down entirely after it had been left plugged in and charging for a while. If I left it overnight and came back the next day I might have to wait for the tablet to perform a full boot before I could use it.
• While the Hyundai T7 and Google Nexus 7 both have 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel displays, everything looks smaller on the T7 screen, because text, images, and other content aren’t scaled the same way as they are on the Nexus 7.
• The tablet does not come pre-rooted (as some Chinese devices do), but it’s reportedly easy to root using ExynosAbuse.
• My unit had at least one dead pixel, and the screen seems to scratch very easily.

Source: Liliputing

So, when you buy this tablet, make sure you check everything is good before you take it home. My recommendation would be to stay away from this tablet, unless you are a thorough person and can check for physical deficiencies in the tablet before purchase.

Image Credit : Liliputing

Pandigital low $55 7-inch tablet

During the last few days of 2012, prices were slashed. Pandigital cut its price the deeper. By offering a $55 7-inch Android tablet. Here is the offer made on 28th December 2012.

Today, 1 Sale A Day is having a Pandigital Tablet Year End Clearance! Pick up a Google Android Pandigital Planet 7″ Touchscreen Tablet with Android 2.2 OS, 2GB & MicroSD Expansion Slot for $49.99 + $4.99 shipping! 

This deal beats Amazon by $50.00! 

Source: Simplistic Savings

This deal should have expired by now. But, is this a sign that we will $50 as the new price for cheap 7-inc android tablet ?

Why Cheap Tablet Fails

Recently I read a very interesting article on why cheap tablet fails. I will share it with you on this post. There are three take aways that I found:

1. Over reliance on existing retail distribution
2. Sub par hardware
3. Little to no marketing effort

Companies that do not actively court the media or stage events are often the ones that no one recognizes, and as a result fade into obscurity. They don’t need to stage Apple or even Amazon caliber events, but having a product launch in New York or San Francisco would attract local and online media. A very basic invite just needs to be sent out and people will come for a scoop. None of these failed companies ever considered this, even though they are based in or have satellite offices in the USA. If you aren’t sending review units out and getting people (other than yourselves) hyping the product, you will go out of business. If you don’t court the media and build relations with the websites everyone reads, you will go out of business. If you continue to release sub-par Android tablets with single or dual-cores, you will go out of business. If you rely on your established retail chain to do the marketing and dirty work of promotion for you, you will trudge on for the next two years and then go out of business. 

Source: Good E Reader

I do know that sub-par hardware are accountable in most of the cheap tablets, especially Chinese tablets. Considering that many companies are simply putting their own brand on Chinese tablets, it is a given that those cheap tablets will suffer from sub-par hardware.

The points of over reliance on existing retail distribution channel and little to no marketing effort are related, of course. I think these companies are simply riding the wave, so to speak. They are churning new tablet models and put them on the market with no thought of the future. They are not here to stay. A kind of hit and run tactics, considering the tablet trend that is happening right now. The tablet trend, as with any other trend will eventually pass and leave only the strong to survive.

Google saw this coming, and decided to out its own Android tablet version, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. With great features and low enough price to hit those cheap chinese tablets real hard.

However, despite Google's effort, I still see questions on Yahoo Answer that acknowledge that Google Nexus 7 is the minimum passable tablet that is both cheap and good, but still wants to find a cheaper tablet.

I suspect this will remain for quite some time before it goes away. In the end, like all market, the strong will survive and the weak will die. However, the casualties will be high on this one, especially with the end user, receiving a lot of hardware that are simply not worthy of its price tag.

My advice to those just seeking a new tablet, be wise, find the best price performance tablet, do not buy cheap tablet, buy cheap and good tablet PC.

Cheap tablet components analysis

Ever wonder what is compromised when a cheap Android Tablet is manufactured ? I found this article from Mobot that may shed some light into the subject. The article deals with building sub £99 tablet.

Taiwan-based analyst firm TrendForce reasons that with companies the size of Google and Amazon already underwriting today's low-cost Android tablets to some extent, the only other way to reduce costs to the consumer is to opt for cheaper components. 

And the easiest place to start, considering it accounts for 35-40% of the total material costs of a small tablet, is the panel-touch module combination. 

Changing from FFS to TN panels is an established tactic for delivering cheaper displays, while Trendforce also reckons going from a glass-based solution to a glass/film/film module could contribute to a total $25 saving in overall costs from the display-touch panel combo. 

The rest of the saving, we're told, can be centred around three components: memory, flash storage and the CPU. 

Switching from 1GB mobile DRAM ($10) to 1GB commodity DRAM ($3.50) is the start, while 4GB eMMC NAND flash ($4) shaves a third off the price of an 8GB module. Lastly, lesser-known Chinese semiconductor makers will sell you a 40nm-55nm chip for around $12 apiece, which is potentially half what a more frugal CPU from a better-known source. 

All that adds up to around $50 in savings, taking you from the $199 of the base Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire to the magical sub-$150 mark, which strictly speaking converts to as little as £92. 

Source: Mobot

As expected, of course, the touch screen takes the biggest share. Memory and CPU are next. So, now you know what you are sacrificing when you bought a cheap tablet.

Aakash 2 Performance

Remember the Aakash 2 tablet ? The cheap $20 Indian tablet ? Now there is a preview of it from Think Digit. Is it any good ?

Does It Feel Good In The Hand? 

So, what do you get for $40? Not much, but c'mon. 

This isn't an off-the-shelf Chinese Android tablet, although it's indistinguishable from some of the models you'd find in a shopping mall in Shenzhen. According to Tuli, the processor is Chinese, the touch screen is made in India and the tablet is finally assembled and programmed in India. 

The Ubislate 7ci is a dull slate gray, about the size of the original Amazon Kindle Fire . It has a plastic screen and a gray plastic back. Turn it on, and the low-quality 800-by-480 LCD lights up. This thing doesn't have a viewing angle as much as a viewing point, and the touch screen takes some noticeable pressure to activate. 

There's a VGA camera right above the screen on the front, and a microSD card slot (labeled "TF slot" for TransFlash, an old name for MicroSD) adorns the back. The tablet has about 2.6GB of free internal memory divided into two partitions. Wi-Fi 2.4Ghz networking is on board, but no Bluetooth; the cellular model will have GPS. The Ubislate runs stock Android 4.0.4 with the basic apps, adding Google Play, Gmail, and a proprietary media player. The Ubisoft browser didn't come on my unit, but it'll be on the models sold in India. Singh said to consider this a fully open-source tablet, hackable by any Indian who wants to develop software for it. 

I ran our benchmarks on the tablet, and the good news is, the benchmarks run. The bad news is that as expected, they run slowly. The Ubislate 7ci has a 1Ghz AllWinner Cortex-A8 processor, so functions like an entry-level smartphone. Scrolling can be laggy and sometimes screen transitions are slow. The browser was also really slow, even over Wi-Fi. Most notably, though, all the usual apps run: the Web browser, email, games. In other words, if it's this or no Internet, this will get you on the Internet. 

Source: Think Digit

As expected, the Aakash 2 tablet is not for the mainstream market. It is more of a means to connect to the internet for cheap. A PC or laptop is not affordable for most India household, so a tablet make sense. It is also heavily subsidized by the Indian government. What do you think ?

Prestigio MultiPad 7 Prime Duo, a worthy tablet PC ?

Here is a tablet that is thinner than Kindle, also cheapest and lightest tablet in the cheap 7-inch tablet segment. Prestigio Multipad Prime Duo. The price tag is 150 Euro (US$ 195).

It comes with dual core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore Amlogic with Mali 400 MP2 GPU, clocked at 1.5GHz.

Notebook Check has run a review of the Prestigio tablet, for the European market. The verdict ?

In our test the Prestigio MultiPad managed to primarily score points when it came to its dimensions, weight and manufacturing quality, as well as the rating for the display. In this case the  MultiPad 7.0 is able to easily contend with more expensive tablets, such as the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7. Especially the sharp and brilliant 7-inch IPS display is a positive surprise in this price segment. Also the all round performance of the processor, graphics and memory provided by the  Prime Duo is solid.

Source: Notebook Check 

It comes with two year warranty. Definitely worth a look.

Cheap Tablet Options In The UK

With the christmas and new year fast approaching, it is time to go on a shopping spree. If tablets are on your list, then it is wise to take a look at these tablets for your consideration. Note that these tablets are geared towards the UK market.

Capacitive technology means that the displays are more sensitive to the touch, making the experience of using even the cheapest of tablets, such as the budget Kogan Agora (£119), much more satisfying than trying to poke the wobbly, plasticky resistive screens of previous generations of technology. 

However, as nice as the newer, cheaper displays might be to touch, you also want to examine the resolution they offer. A 7-inch screen outputting at just 800 x 480 isn't going to look very clear or sharp, because that screen resolution is already a little out of date, even on the smaller screens of Android smartphones nowadays. 

A decent budget option, however, such as the Archos 70 (available for about £170), offers a 7-inch display running at a more respectable 1,024 x 768, which will make everything from web text to apps appear much clearer than something that's expanding a lower resolution image to fill a 7-inch screen. 

Another legacy Android issue that still affects some of the cheaper tablets these days is access to the Google Play Store. Some models from lesser known brands, such as the ViewSonic ViewPad 10e (available for about £140) don't have the certification to offer access to Google's official app store on board, although most of today's newer budget models now do. 

Source: Tech Radar

Some points to consider on buying cheap tablet but with quality are:

1. Google Play availability on the tablet. This is the major app market to have on your Android.
2. Display technology. Go for capacitive display, and do take note of the resolution. Bigger is better.
3. RAM availability. If the tablet runs Android 4.0, 1GB RAM is the minimum. More is better.
4. Android OS upgrade availability. This is important, since most tablets are not upgradeable, so choosing your Android OS is important, because it is more likely that you will be stuck with the OS. For your consideration, the current OS is version 4.2 Jelly Bean. Most tablets today are available using the OS 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
5. Connectivity options. Most tablets comes with WiFi. If you need 3G, then you have to prepare to pay more for it.

Happy Shopping!

IdolPad 9 Cheap Android Tablet

IdolPad 9 is a 9-inch offering from Idolian company. It is priced at $148 and comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and 8GB storage.

IdolPad 9 tablet pc offers a capacitive touch screen which has a lower response time and is more sensitive than a resistive touch screen. Also, the capacitive touch screen transmits 90 percent of the light emitted from it which provides a better viewing experience. It also offers a Cortex A8 1.2 GHz CPU processor, 512MB RAM and 8GB storage on Android 4.0. The design is very thin and light with fully functional Android Google Play. And with its price tag of $148, the IdolPad 9 is significantly less expensive than competitors, such as the Apple ipad and the Amazon Kindle Fire. 

Source: Equities

Pre-order begins on 16 November and will start shipping 3 December.

What do you get with sub $100 Tablet PC

Here is an interesting question on Yahoo Answers: "Interested in cheap tablet PC....?"

Most tablet under $100 are not very good. The best way to check if they are any good is by reviewing the tablet on Amazon, if they are listed there.

As for Android is an out of date OS is a misunderstanding. Android is a family of OS, so naturally you can use out of date or the latest OS. Just like Windows, you can use the out of date Windows 95 or you can run the latest Windows 8.

Currently the latest version of Android is 4.2 Jelly Bean. When people refers to out of date Android OS, it is normally referred to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. A very old version of Android that was build for smartphone, with their small screen, opposed to tablet, with large screen. To get better experience on tablet, the minimum is Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Of course it is preferable to have Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Android OS are upgradeable, however it is subject to manufacturer willingness to provide the upgrade. For sub $100 tablet, I doubted there is an upgrade option available now or in the future, so it is very likely you will be stuck with out of date OS in the future.

It is also important to note that when you buy a tablet, you are tied to its OS. Whether it is Google Android, Apple iOS or Microsoft Windows. It is very important that you check with the respective App Store that you can browse online to see if any application or games that you want to use or play is available for that tablet. Do a search for Google Play for Android, iTunes for Apple iOS. I can't remember the Windows App Store, hopefully others can point you to it.

Since Apple tablet are not likely to be priced under $100 and Microsoft tablet are still new and thus expensive, I am afraid you are stuck with Android tablet. Most likely the Android OS version will be 2.3 Gingerbread, an outdated OS.

My suggestion will be to increase the budget and see if you can find the lowest price on Google Nexus 7, which is currently the best Android tablet and it is upgradeable to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, currently the latest OS.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!

Source: Yahoo Answers


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