Geeks.com sent us in an Android 2.2 tablet, the MID M80003W. They recently populated their store with a number of cheap tablets, so we thought it was a good idea to see what one could expect from these products that seem to have flooded the market recently.
The MID M80003W tablet has a black front face with a silver back. It has an on/off button, a “back” button a’la iPad, and volume up/down buttons. It sports an 8″ resistive touchscreen with 800×600 resolution (4:3). Also, it uses a VIA 8650 800 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM (~200 MB available to the system, the rest is for graphics), 2 GB internal storage (400 MB available to the user), a microSDHC card slot, 3G wireless (W-CDMA, CDMA2000, TD-CDMA) support, a built-in VGA front web camera (3 MP for stills, possibly interpolated), speaker and microphone, headphones jack, and an orientation sensor. The device also comes with a dongle, that hosts two female USB ports, and one ethernet port. There is no micro-USB port for charging or PC data — the power adapter port is proprietary.
If you do a quick round on various retailers’ pages about any of these no-name (non-Google licensed) Android tablets you will see mostly negative comments about people complaining about bugs, speed, wifi incompatibilities, and what have you. I was hoping that this early stage of affairs was over, and newer no-name tablets, like this one running Froyo, would offer a better, more mature experience. But unfortunately it doesn’t. The device is slow, very slow. It gets slower as much as you use it, usually 30 minutes after a clean boot. Gets better if you manually kill a few processes, like the Browser.
The device also has many bugs, including USB bugs that seem to crash the USB stack every few seconds. A 5 MB copy from a USB drive to the internal storage took about 20 minutes to complete. However, one thing did work well: WiFi compatibility with my WPA2 network (even if acquiring an IP address took a while). The device comes with CDMA 3G support, but since I don’t have such an account I was not able to test it.
The device has no official “Market”, but it has a different market app that only carries a few, completely unknown apps. I had no alternative but to search on various forums for .apk files of popular apps — something that can be dangerous for security. This is one of the few no-name tablets that support the relatively fresh Froyo 2.2, but this didn’t help with compatibility with apps. For example, the new version of Fring crashes the device when trying to use video chat, while the audio-only chat somehow turns off the speaker so you can’t hear anything. Skype wouldn’t login at all. I also downloaded some of the Google apps from a Cyanogen repository, and some worked, some didn’t. For example, GTalk wouldn’t work, but Maps did (albeit super-slowly).
The tablet comes with a number of apps that are written by the OEM, like a music app, a youtube app, video playback and recording, camera app, file manager, email. The UI of these apps feel mostly like a… KDE app rather than a tablet or Android interface. The gallery app for example is a bit more complex than one would expect — finding how to delete a picture is not a straight forward process.
Since the device has only a “back” button and not a menu/home hardware buttons as in most Android devices, these were added in the Android notification bar as soft-buttons. They are best used with a stylus rather than a finger. Originally, I could not click them properly, because the screen calibration was off by 50 pixels or so.
Battery life is not great at around 3 hours of usage. The standby time seems to be pretty low too, although I could not get accurate readings: battery would report either 100%, or 50%, or 10%.
The screen is nothing to brag bout, it feels pixelated, and there’s a lot of wasted space in Home screen. The replacement Home uses a matrix for 4×4 icons, but the size/resolution can easily support 5×4 without making things feel stuffy. When you go to the “Apps” screen, the resolution is used properly, and many more icons fit.
To show you how impossibly little test this device has gone through, consider that it runs the Android Dialer and Bluetooth services, even if there’s no hardware to support these functions. Wasted RAM. The camera app crashes, the browser reports that it’s running Mac OS X. Basically, the whole device feels like “it compiles? ship it“. For the first time possibly, this meme can be taken quite literally.
Moral of the story: only buy complex systems (like a tablet or a smartphone is) from reputable manufacturers. This is classic case of getting what you paid for.
FTC 16 CFR Part 255 Disclaimer
The device was sent to OSNews for free, and to keep, in return for the unbiased review, and a citation to Geeks.com. Geeks.com, MID, or Google, had no influence or involvement in the article’s findings and opinions.
I have a few theories about why these devices even exist:
– they are _not_ jokes, and it is genuinely hoped people will buy them and enjoy them *giggle*
– Apple is manufacturing these tablets using parts that fell on the floor, to make Android look like rubbish
– Microsoft is manufacturing these to make all tablets (iPad included) look like rubbish
lolwhut? It’s dirt cheap. You’ve probably got rich parents.
Haha. For the record, I never had rich parents. I just have a decent full-time job (software developer) and no kids or cigarette addiction to stop me from being able to buy nice things.
True dat. I just quit smoking when I discovered it was costing me £2000 a year (just over $3000 USD).
Some people may enjoy them. If it was less than $100, I would buy a couple, just for the cheap, easily programmable display.
They’re for people with imaginations and patience, those without the ability to pay for a better machine to surf the web, or those who do not do their research.
And so, tablet by tablet, we see that the theory of a whole bunch of cheap Android tablets that will kill the iPad is a bunch of bunk.
The only tablets so far that aren’t crap (such as the Xoom), are more expensive than the iPad, and are selling appropriately. I wouldn’t hold my breath for a tablet that’s cheaper than the iPad but can still keep up.
Edited 2011-04-07 23:21 UTC
I’ll admit, the ipad’s price point is impressive. Doubly impressive because its apple, a name not frequently associated with the cheapest devices.
There are a couple things that may be going on that limit the ability of competitors to beat them on price for equivalent devices.
1) Suppliers love being associated with apple and they know that Apple will make and sell units. Anyone have similar confidence in any other tablet maker? I wouldn’t.
2) Subsidized hardware. Apple may be taking less profit than they normally do for products. Strategically, it makes sense. They’ll cut off the competitors air before they even start. When hardware comes down in price, they won’t have to reduce prices because there won’t be much to compete with. Then they can recoup some dev costs.
As you can tell by my comment history, I’m not often a praiser of Apple for many reasons. But, honestly, the ipad is brilliant software, hardware and business. Still not going to buy one though, its the MID for me!
BTW: Great review Eugenia. Its a good product to review, and I think you did a great job with it.
You mean the only tablet, as in SINGULAR, because the Xoom is the only real Android tablet (meaning, not one running a phone OS) that has been released so far, and even it shipped with no wireless-only SKU, without a working SD slot, no Flash support (which was supposed to be one of those things that really mattered on a tablet and why some folks turned their noses up at the iPad), an LTE feature that you’d have to ship back to the manufacturer to get working properly, and very rough around the edges overall. They have finally enabled Flash support, but from what I’ve heard, it runs like ass, just as it does on every other Android device that supports it.
You know, it’s funny… when the iPad first came out, people talked about how overpriced it was, and how superior and cheaper Android tablets would flood the market and kill the iPad. Now here we are over a year later; Apple is on its second iteration of the iPad, and Android vendors are still sitting around with a thumb up their asses, trying to figure out what to do.
Edited 2011-04-08 01:39 UTC
I’ve seen rumours many companies can’t get the needed screens for a decent price from the screen manufacturers because Apple already made deals with them to produce screens and there is only limitted production capacity.
This is really the best animal out there right now. Amazing screen, etc. I jumped on one with the $199 sale.
I use it for reading (the best app for a tablet this size), puzzle gaming, light web browsing.
This tablet reviewed here is pure junk for using a phone resolution.
Edited 2011-04-07 23:51 UTC
I second that!
There is really no room for cheap, low-quality tablets now that we have a cheap but HIGH-QUALITY tablet like the Nook Color on the market.
I am currently enjoying my Samsung Galaxy Tab. Right size and a decent price (with a contract :/)
I have one and love it as well. I did have a iPad, and found the size to be, well, off-putting.
I find it interesting that everybody is putting down 2.2 and 2.3, and completely forget that the iOS really isn’t optimised for a tablet either.
Now, I am really interested in Honeycomb, but froyo is working pretty good for me right now on the 7″ screen, so I’m ok with the wait.
Have you tested the XDA port of Honeycomb for SGT?
In Australia an iPad 2 with 3g and 32GB ram costs AUD839 (about USD883) delivery time is 2-3 weeks.
Instead I can head over to DHgate.com and buy TWO epads (equivalent to the tablet in this review) for USD150 including shipping.
A Flying Touch 10 inch 1GHz 8GB Android 2.2 tablet is ~$200 including shipping and will be delivered within a week.
Even better is a 10inch atom N450 powered Windows 7 tablet with IGB ram and 160GB hard disk and capacitative screen for ~$350 delivered.
Edited 2011-04-08 05:52 UTC
Tablets and phones which cost the price of a good laptop to do less on a smaller screen are a total rip-off as far as I’m concerned, but it looks like lower-end tablets are far from being ready, unlike lower-end phones.
And that’s normal. The market is young, we do not know yet how to produce those things cheaply enough. Kind of like the first microcomputers. In a few year, one will find excellent hardware at half the price of current tablets, bundled with software that’s much better suited for it, and then tablets will start to become more interesting.
Edited 2011-04-08 06:12 UTC
I have a Chinese Star A3000 Android phone – Quad Band, 600MHz cpu, 512MB ram, 3MP camera, dual SIM, inbuilt GPS, capacitative touchscreen,and TV tuner. All for $140 including shipping. Or just over $100 each as a bulk purchase.
Edited 2011-04-08 09:57 UTC
Or just over $100 each as bulk purchase.
Yeah, I’ve corrected the post, the original wording sounded like good phones too are overly expensive, which is clearly not the case.
Do less?
Where is iPad’s Garage Band for the PC?
For regular users, the iPad is the first computer that does more for them. It doesn’t do everything _we_ want it to, but it opens up functionality they never knew existed on a typical PC (glorified Internet box to most).
…but they can’t use it without first learning how to use a normal computer so they can run iTunes.
Argument fail.
At Apple store the staff members would help activating for the first time, Afterwards, buyers do not really need to use iTunes at all unless they have something of need. So they do not really need to learn how to use normal computers either.
Argument fail.
– updates.
– Apple Stores are really only prevalent in the US. Remember: most of the world does not live in the US. Here, we buy our Apple stuff in normal stores. They won’t do this for you.
– getting files on there requires iTunes. Once again: the iTMS is really only useful in the US, since outside of there, it’s a barren wasteland with no TV shows, no movies, no nothing. In other words, other sources must be used, ergo, desktop iTunes.
The RDF is strong in you.
– I do not live in US. However, the called Apple authorized resellers where only Apple gears are sold would also do the same for buyers. I just said Apple store but no different for those shops. You do not have one at all over there? shame.
– Nothing on iTunes in your country you mean? Here in NZ people can access most of the movies, songs and TV shows if not all. You think all those countries other than your country is all US? I only sometimes run iTunes on my Mac while I am on it to download some things but I do mostly download directly from my iPod touch without a hassle. So you are not the only common denominator. Therefore your point is moot.
Get out of your blinded mind.
I have been renting movies from the US store ever since I bought my first Apple TV (from the Netherlands). I know it’s a bit of a loophole, but also very trivial to use. I also bought iPad apps from the App Store before the iPad was introduced in The Netherlands.
That said, we are also a bit unlucky (small market, probably difficult to arrange licensing deals). E.g. Germany has had iTunes Movie rentals for some time now…
Excuse me? You’re talking to the guy who posted this: http://www.osnews.com/story/24489/What_Apple_Mean_by_Post-PC_
That’s my argument!
Look, geeks are too blinded to admit it, but user-experience trumps power. The future is devices that put user experience first.
Google, and many technologists think this is about mobile OSes. It’s not. It’s about user experience. Apple don’t sell an OS, they sell a tablet. A tablet that is a run away success whence we’ve had tablets since 2003 and they were a flop. The user experience is the difference. iPod. iPhone. iPad. How could any geek be so zealous to be blind to this fact? Apple are successful not because of marketing (they have a smaller budget than others), not because of technology (they have a smaller R&D than others), but because when a consumer users an Apple product it’s so vastly better in their experience that they have to tell their friends about it. Any customer I’ve had that has switched to Mac has told me that they won’t ever go back. Is it because the Mac had more RAM? No. Faster processor? No. You can get bigger and faster for less anywhere. Simple, it’s a better user experience, period.
This is what I mean when an iPad is a better computer and does more for regular users.
The iPad has fatal flaws, put in place by Apple who don’t want to see the full potential of the device at this time—it is tethered to iTunes.
That doesn’t make it less of a better tablet than any other tablet out there, it just makes it less of an iPad. Until something comes along that can equal the user experience of an iPad (software polish, something Android is comprehensively terrible at) then geeks will continue to vent their frustrations at a device that outsells everything but offers less for geeks.
Geeks need to get over themselves and realise that they don’t matter any more. Computers aren’t tools just for engineers, they’re something everybody of all walks of life want and use.
You do realise that everyone was saying the exact same things about Android back in the G1 days, right?
It is inevitable: Android tablets WILL overtake the iPad in sales within 18-24 months, just as it happened with Android on phones. It doesn’t matter what the situation is like NOW, it matters what it’s like in the long run.
Oh right, of course. You see I’m not defending iPad because it’s Apple, I’m defending it because it’s the best user experience right now. That’s what actually matters. Other tablets have the opportunity to provide a better experience if they excel at the things that Apple refuse to do (wireless sync &c.) — my concern is that too many, especially manufacturers, are seeing this as a specs and OS game. It’s not. Whenever I’ve used Android it never fails to impress me how bad it is. Just slapping on an Android build on cheap hardware won’t make a more successful single product than the iPad.
Will Android overtake iPad in sales numbers? Yes. But then Android is not one device, it’s many. Will there be one tablet sold by one manufacturer that will overtake the iPad? I very much doubt it. As far as I see only HP could come close, given how much better WebOS is than Android.
I disagree with that notion, but I quite believe it’s down to matters of taste so I won’t bother to start arguing about that. Besides, I don’t really believe it’s so much about the user experience per ce, it’s more about how good Apple is at pointing people towards things they are likely to like. That is a very powerful thing to have and other manufacturers should pay much more attention to such things.
I do agree that other manufacturers do have a few things to learn from Apple, though I personally hope they won’t take the walled garden approach by heart.
WereCatf,
“I do agree that other manufacturers do have a few things to learn from Apple, though I personally hope they won’t take the walled garden approach by heart.”
That would be a major set back for consumers and developers everywhere. The IBM PC was great because it was so openly accessible and hackable. It would be a shame if we forgot the lessons of openness and revert back to proprietary systems and vendor lock.
It’s not just apple who’s guilty here. Since vista, microsoft killed all open source drivers in windows. DRM is cropping up everywhere. We’re crossing from the golden age of computing into the dark ages of computing. We’re not there yet, but if we’re not vigilant, corporations will be happy to take us there.
I agree with many of your points, but I’m afraid this is a world of ‘good enough’ for the lowest possible price.
People who can afford it might go out of their way to pay more and get a better user experience, but eventually an other platform will be good enough (and hopefully less locked-in) and the iPad might not make it.
I think this has already happend with the iPhone and Android-based phones.
True. But like Android on phones, barely anyone will make money off applications, and the app store will be a junk shop. Sorry, let me correct that junk shop*s*.
Apple gets so much free marketing by brainwashed sycophants in the media it’s not funny. If Apple sold gift-wrapped dog turds for $100 the press would announce that this “innovation” was more important than the Second Coming of the Messiah.
“Apple don’t sell an OS, they sell a tablet.”
Pure semantics, they bundle the two together, and since the OS is not available seperately, it’s not invalid to say that they do sell an OS.
Just because apple want to control everything from the hardware to to the operating system to the monopoly marketplace for software doesn’t actually mean it’s what the users need/want.
Before being sued into the ground, Psystar had demonstrated this quite clearly.
“A tablet that is a run away success whence we’ve had tablets since 2003 and they were a flop.”
Many have tried and failed at tablets over the years (including apple, lets not forget). It seems that pricing and functionality needed to converge into something that consumers would be comfortable with before they would be a hit. And that’s finally happening.
I’m positive I wasn’t the only one eyeing the tablet PCs from a decade ago, the major setback was the enormous price tag compared to laptops.
Apple in particular was able to leverage it’s iphone success into a viable tablet pc market. This gave customers a chance to upgrade their iphone, which was important. Otherwise, many would have seen the apple tablet as a downgrade from their PC. Hypothetically, without the iphone market to precede it, the apple tablet standing on it’s own in a walled garden would probably be a flop.
Are you seriously claiming that there are no equals to garageband on PC?? Did you know that
1. GarageBand is available on mac (which is a PC) too.
2. GarageBand is generally considered among the least sophisticated desktop music application. Even in the “just a toy” section there are better and more institutive tools on PC (e.g. fruity loops, ACID, Reason and many many more).
Yes, Android lacks anything remotely as good as GarageBand. But comparing garageband on ipad to PC software? dude, what planet are you from??
The planet where normal computer users live.
The planet of selective ignorance?
The planet of we-have-never-heard-of-“Ardour · Audacity · Gnome Wave Cleaner · Jokosher · LMMS · MusE · Qtractor · ReZound · Rosegarden · Sweep · Traverso · WaveSurfer Ableton Live · ACID Pro · Adobe Audition · Adobe Soundbooth · AudioDesk · AudioMulch · BIAS Peak · Cakewalk Sonar · Cantabile · Digital Performer · FL Studio · FlexiMusic Wave Editor · Steinberg Cubase · Steinberg Nuendo · GoldWave · KRISTAL Audio Engine · Logic Pro · MAGIX Samplitude · MAGIX Sequoia · Mixcraft · MU.LAB · n-Track Studio · Orion Platinum · Podium · PreSonus Studio One · Pro Tools · REAPER · Reason · Record · ReCycle · Renoise · Sequel · Sony Vegas · Sound Forge · Sound Studio · Sound Tools · SoundDroid · Tracktion · WaveLab · Z-Maestro”??
(list stolen from wikipedia)
Edited 2011-04-08 13:47 UTC
So obvious, so easy to use. </sarcasm>
Are you really telling me that you don’t believe that music production software aimed at kids doesn’t exist on regular computers ?
The argument “regular people (an expression that’s much too often used as a graceful way to say “idiots”) don’t know what they can do with their PCs, so PCs are crap” is invalid here. This post was about “as far as I’m concerned”. I know what a computer can truly do, and a pretty application grid won’t impress me
Edited 2011-04-08 15:22 UTC
I don’t think many of the cheapo manufacturers will have the budget, know-how, manpower or will to make a solid Android build for their devices. Best choice when buying a no-name tablet is to find a model that has an active community developing a custom firmware for it and just use that.
These machines are designed by specialist companies based in Taiwan and built under contract in Shenzen – just like virtually every major brand notebook.
99% of cheap tablets are destined for the Chinese domestic market.
Based on what it says on the box “here comes easy life” I might just get one anyway – like the sound of that. Perhaps I can hit people over the head with it who annoy me.
The browser on Android is a real RAM sucker. Even on an official Android Froyo phone (and on my unofficial Android tablet), the browser will grab as much as a 100MB of RAM for cache. On my phone, this caused the device to run out of internal phone storage. I don’t think even killing the app gets rid of this. I usually just go in to the Application Setting and clear out the cache. So far, I have not found a setting for limiting this cache.
I personally use firefox mobile, it seems to be faster and smoother.
I have a hacked/rooted Color Nook which makes a very nice 7″ Android Tablet. It is missing GPS but I have that on my phone. Much sharper screen than the ipad. The Color Nook is $200 – $250 depending on what specials are running. I use it daily and it works flawlesly.
Back In The Day, if you were selling a computer with a 8088 processor, CGA, floppies and MS-DOS, you had to assert that not only did you run MS-DOS, but that you ran several popular programs. One of those was Flight Simulator.
Essentially, Flight Simulator was the de facto compatibility test. If you could run Flight Simulator, you were “PC” (as in IBM-PC) compatible.
Obviously there were other programs as well (I imagine Lotus was on that list).
We’re still in the nascent stages of the Android compatibility market, and sounds like it could badly use some COTS software that vendors can run and say “See, this works, so we’re ok”.
Then they can start working towards Android compatible tablets that are not Android(tm) compatible.
Angry Birds is widely considered the new Flight Simulator on Android.
jesus upchucking christ
I’ll rephrase that. An Android device that can run Angry Birds smoothly is considered to be sufficiently capable.
Once you put the essential protective flip case on your tablet it is just as thick and heavy as a regular 10″ notebook.