There are a lot of Chinese Tablets available in the market nowadays. These tablets feature different versions of Android OS and their price ranges from Rs. 8,000 to 20,000. There are no specific brand names, rather they are generic. We laid our hands on one such Chinese tablet. Some of its features and specifications are as follows:
- Android – Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)
- 7” Capacitive touch screen
- Resolution of 640×480 pixels
- 1 GHz ARM v7 processor
- 512 MB RAM
- HDMI Port
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- HDMI port
- GPS
- 4 GB internal memory
- MicroSD card slot
- Front (VGA) camera
- Skype video calling support
The tablet feels really heavy but solid when held in hand; you get a knack that it won’t just fall apart if it accidently falls from your hand. On the front is the 7-inches capacitive touch screen which sits over three standard Android touch-buttons viz Option, Home & Back. On the right of these three buttons a tiny front-cam is present which works reasonably well as Skype Calling Camera.
The left and top of the Chinese Tablet contain nothing whatsoever except a small trough at the bottom-back which might serve a purpose of adding logo of any brand if required. The right side of the tab features a rather hard-to-press on/ off button and volume rocker. The bottom of the tab is the place where all the connectivity options can be found. There are two screws on the either end of the bottom between which a tiny hole for mic, 3.5mm slot for audio jack, HDMI port, mini USB port, charging port and a microSD card slot are present.
The tablet uses an unorthodox charger which resembles more to Nokia chargers of yesteryear than the tablets of today, but the miniUSB cable can be used to charge the tab as well hence minimizing the reliance on the chubby charger. We charged our tablet with the miniUSB cable throughout the review period and it took no more time than what is taken by the original charger.
Unboxing the tablet wasn’t a treat as the packing was basic to say the least. Apart from the tablet, a charger and a below par handsfree were all present in a box which could have been used to pack 2 similar tablets instead if the one which was packed in it.
The tablet takes a good minute or so to fire up, the strange version of Android logo displayed at the start along with the splash screen will keep you guessing whether the tab actually features original Android or a Chinese look-a-like of Google’s famous OS.
The accelerometer sensor works well on the lock screen as it is aligned according to the position. The default lock screen features a digital clock with date and a lock icon which can be moved to the left for going straight to the camera app or towards the right side for unlocking the tablet.
There are five screens by default on the tab which can be changed by flicking to either right or left. But there is no helicopter view to view all the tabs at once and screens cannot be added or deleted from the tablet. The default configuration of the screen shows an analog clock and a few icons which can be changed easily as in any other Android device. The bottom of the screen shows three buttons on the left which are the Back, Home and Recent Apps button. Recent apps can be shown, and closed by simple flicking them out of the Recent Apps list. On the right side of the three buttons is another soft button with three dots which shows three options viz Wallpaper Manager apps and System settings. On the right bottom of the screen a digital clock as well as battery and status of SD Card along with an icon of background app is shown. This area can be tapped to reveal a pop-up menu showing time, date, day, connection status and battery status along with the status of SD card and a shortcut to settings. Any other are on the screen or the cross button at the bottom right can be tapped to close this menu.
A new feature in Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is the ability to arrange icons in a folder on the home screen. Icons can be dragged over each other to form a folder. The folders are minimized when not in use and expand to show the icons in them when tapped. These folders can be renamed as well.
The search or Google Search icon is present at top right of the home screen while the icon to access the modified app tray has been moved to top right. The app tray is now moved sideways instead of top-down, a couple of flicks on the right displays widgets available which can be dragged to the last opened screen.
All the apps available from Android market can be downloaded on the tab and run pretty smoothly. Apps like Skype and games like Angry Birds and Chicken Run are treat to play on the big screen but the inferior resolution is sometimes a let-down. Watching movies is as easy as it gets as the built-in video player plays all kinds of Videos without any hitch, we tried avi, mkv, flv, wmv and many other formats but the Super-HD Play never let us down. Super-HD Play is also the default image viewer as well.
The particular Chinese Tablet which we used provides full value of money as it features an ARM v7 processor instead of other non-standard processors which support only a few apps. The tablet is highly recommended for anyone who does not want to invest a huge sum in gadgets and still want to enjoy using a tablet. Some pros and cons are listed below to sum up the review:
Pros
- Cheap
- 1 GHz ARM v7 Processor
- 512 MB RAM
- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
- Movie Player Supporting Multiple Formats
- Skype Video Calling Support
Cons
- Battery Time not enough
- Heavy
- Takes 1 hour to charge
- Sound quality not great
- Hard volume rocker and on/ off button
