Asda prices up Elonex 7in Android tablet If you fancy a cheap - 2GB of storage, resistive touchscreen, poor battery life - Chinese Android-based 7in tablet, Asda has begun selling the Elonex e-Touch. Yours for 97 quid - plus a fiver more if you want it delivered - the gadget has a Micro SD card slot for more storage and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi for network connectivity. It …
Apparently they're selling $80 wholesale and indeed you can buy them from $100 up on ebay. While I'm sure they're pretty awful compared to the iPad, it isn't hard to imagine that it won't be long before we see an extremely functional tablets running Android (or WebOS I suppose) for $200-300.
FFS, the thing has a resistive screen (i.e., not the capacitive one that iphone/ipad etc have!)
Why do these companies insist on using resistive screens? They may be cheaper, but they are such a pain to use, and now that capacitive screens exist, ANY resistive screen will suffer in the comparison! (I'd like a cheap Android tablet to program on, but not with a goddamn resistive screen...)
"They may be cheaper, but they are such a pain to use, and now that capacitive screens exist, ANY resistive screen will suffer in the comparison! "
That depends what you need to do with your tablet. Capacitive is utterly useless for handwriting so if your intent was to take notes (e.g. as you might with an ebook reader, or a tablet used as a study aid) then capacative is a bad choice. On the other hand it does feel nicer to use and makes the screen clearer without the telltale shimmer of a resistive screen.
Never mind the hardware upgradability of these things (storage, ram, battery, 3G, bluetooth etc.). How about software? Will I be able to upgrade these tablets to the latest version of Android (or something else) in few years time and breath new life into an old machine? Make it do new tricks? Talk to new peripherals? Without having to hack around with the boot strapper (or whatever they use) and use an install image customised specifically to this device, and a crippled/modified version of Android to fit the bill?
Well, I thought not. From my geek point of view, ARM might be an open architecture/platform. But it is mainly open to *their* customers - which are the OEM's building the processors. Not to the end users. To the end users - the devices are pretty locked up - or at least different enough from each other to make modifying them less then straight forward. Until ARM devices are based on the same boot process, so that one can just take an installation cd/usb and install it on any number of ARM devices without hacking it up - I'll stick with x86. For good or for worse, with all its fallacies, I can still pick a disc for any number of Linux distributions and upgrade any of my x86 boxes around the house/office - of whatever version or generation they are - all the way to 15 years ago.
As for the rest of the public - well, I'm sure they'll happily use whatever you throw at them. No comments there.
Most of user land Android is BSD so OEMs would not be obliged to reveal the source code. The kernel also has an ABI so you wouldn't be entitled to see driver source either. The best you may get is some of it. I expect these tablets were thrown together from off the shelf parts so it is entirely possible that someone might put together a replacement dist based on CyanogenMod
These things make a very good ebook reader, and if it has the Rockchip CPU+DSP then it's good for video and games too.
However, if it's the one with the physical on/off switch between the two USB ports, be very careful – that little switch is almost touch sensitive and can power the thing down instantly from the lightest touch. :-(
People seem to be forgetting it's only £97. Price it up against a 7" LCD touch screen picture frame with wifi.
How many of those picture frames run a proper OS, can browse the web, run numerous other programs, read ebooks, multimedia etc. etc.
It's only £97. At that price it's excellent value.
I got a 7" Android Tablet from Morgan. 1.6 firmare, 2.1 android. Does what it says. Boots up faster than my dell netbook (just) and is quick to find wifi and connect. I can get my email on it fine. Better than my work Nokia E5 for mobile web and less bulky and easier to use than a netbook on a train with no table. (Or in bed for the idle:-) For £85 I am not at all unhappy.
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