Android tablet - Page 7

pphilipp · 05-07-2010, 07:12 AM

Honestly, for the price, the Eken is the only game in town. The past several days have shown postings that a few people have received the unit (mine should be here today or tomorrow). The verdict at this point, based upon those who have received, is:

1) It really does offer much bang for the buck. The screen is better than several more expensive units. For what it does offer, no other mid can be found anywhere for the price.
2) Quality control is quite low. One person's m001 might work correctly but the next two people have ones with less than stellar buttons or jacks.
3) The Android OS seems to be quite buggy. Hopefully, the reported OS problems will be corrected as time goes by.
4) There's an incredible amount of misinformation circulating about the m001. Every time I read an update on legitimate, well-respected websites, I see conflicting information. Some praise it. Some call it a piece of junk. Some try to report it as both junk and praise-worthy... perhaps it is. Even the Chinese sellers seem to not be able to get their facts right! They give-out conflicting info that seems hard to believe they're describing the same device!

After I've had mine several days I'll post my own biased conclusions. I have a track-record for over-coming niche-device's limitations. I had 2 Newtons, 2 Palms, 5 Wince HPCs, 2 wince pdas, 3 Windows tablet PCs, and several touchscreen phones. All of those devices were touchscreen and all of them had both hardware and software limitations... many of which I found work-a-rounds to. I'll see what I can do to help get this thing working better-than-shipped!

sudermatt · 05-07-2010, 02:37 PM

Phil,

I'm with you...I've had more touch devices than I can count...I have put up with and worked around more crappy design/interfaces than I care to think about.

I have a feeling that, if we can get the bugs worked out, it could end up being a great value.

IF MINE WOULD JUST GET THROUGH CUSTOMS I COULD ACTUALLY PLAY WITH IT!!!!!!!!

:angr y:

Quote:

Originally Posted by pphilipp

Honestly, for the price, the Eken is the only game in town. The past several days have shown postings that a few people have received the unit (mine should be here today or tomorrow). The verdict at this point, based upon those who have received, is:

1) It really does offer much bang for the buck. The screen is better than several more expensive units. For what it does offer, no other mid can be found anywhere for the price.
2) Quality control is quite low. One person's m001 might work correctly but the next two people have ones with less than stellar buttons or jacks.
3) The Android OS seems to be quite buggy. Hopefully, the reported OS problems will be corrected as time goes by.
4) There's an incredible amount of misinformation circulating about the m001. Every time I read an update on legitimate, well-respected websites, I see conflicting information. Some praise it. Some call it a piece of junk. Some try to report it as both junk and praise-worthy... perhaps it is. Even the Chinese sellers seem to not be able to get their facts right! They give-out conflicting info that seems hard to believe they're describing the same device!

After I've had mine several days I'll post my own biased conclusions. I have a track-record for over-coming niche-device's limitations. I had 2 Newtons, 2 Palms, 5 Wince HPCs, 2 wince pdas, 3 Windows tablet PCs, and several touchscreen phones. All of those devices were touchscreen and all of them had both hardware and software limitations... many of which I found work-a-rounds to. I'll see what I can do to help get this thing working better-than-shipped!

pphilipp · 05-07-2010, 02:56 PM

Here's the latest vid which shows some good unbiased info...
http://www.mirrorfox.com/videos/9398...obilescom.html

jalandar · 05-07-2010, 06:49 PM

I dont know, pphilipp. The Mirrorfox video doesn't address things like 3rd party software issues that are widelly reported. And with it going for $125-$175 depending on where you get it and shipping, and with many other sub-$200 devices that are days or weeks from release (such as the Archos 7, which I found out today will ship to me on May 17th), the shortcomings on the Eken M001 really go to the heart of what people expect from a tablet.

Battery life, support for hugely popular 3rd party applications (so popular they should have tested for issues with many of them before they ever thought about shipping), using a buggy release of Android 1.6 that had known issues (the screen orientation issue was known and fixed). I'm not inclined to give it many points.

The best purpose I can see for the Eken myself it for an around the house type device. The battery life alone makes it less than useful for much else.

That said, I did pick one up in a late night ebay auction for under $100 inc shipping, and expect to have it by Monday.

There are enough of them out there that it may develop some hacker interest in seeing what modifications can be made by mod enthusiasts. And hopefully someone will root it and thus enable an updated version of Android to be run on it without having to wait for Eken to do it.

I am curious to see what you come up with it for it. Easily hackable devices can often make for some real interesting applications.

Edit: literally minutes after writing this DHL delivered my EKen. I'll write up more about my initial experiences later.

sudermatt · 05-07-2010, 07:16 PM

IMHO.
@ $200...there are better devices coming soon
@ $130...it's a toss-up
@ $100 or less....why the heck not?

one of our members tore it down...check it out.

pphilipp · 05-07-2010, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sudermatt

IMHO.
@ $200...there are better devices coming soon
@ $130...it's a toss-up
@ $100 or less....why the heck not?

I totally agree with your assessment regarding price/value.

The only thing I might add is with a tablet priced under $100, the market opens to people who have an interest but have been holding back because of prices. Already on ebay, the Android tablets which sell around $100 are far outpacing others in the higher $200 price range.

jalandar · 05-08-2010, 04:09 PM

Well I've spent the morning with my Eken.

First off, despite advertising a microphone port, there doesn't appear to be one. Not that big a deal for me.

Nearly all apps but Aldiko oriented correctly. I'm more app to lay the blame for the orientation issue on Aldiko not implementing the common fix for this issue in their code, like most other app developers have.

Battery life is awful. And the wireless is weak and somewhat problematic at times. I've had to shut the wireless off and turn it back on to get it to reconnect at times. And it has a very very limited range, they must be using a very low power wireless device, or have the device's power set to a very low setting. I took the device to the nearby McD's and had issues getting connected and staying connected to their free wifi, but even at home it had intermittent problems (I have a high gain antenna on my home wifi, giving strong signal coverage all throughout my place).

There were intermittent issues having it plugged into the computer via USD and plugged into power at the same time. The USB would drop and reconnect repeatedly. Removing the power plug and reconnecting the USB would resolve the issue.

Not that I was expecting much in this regard, but video playback is virtually non-existent. I put re-encoded videos set to the proper formats and to low bit rates, and all it would display is the opening screen, while the audio continued. The video frame never updated on any video I attempted to play.

Photo display and browsing worked great, and in fact this is one area it shines in. I could see my mother using this to carrying around her photo collection to show off (and in fact that may end up being what this device gets purposed for).

Despite reports from others, the Archos 5 android marketplace app won't install for me. This was disappointing, I didnt care much for the built in email client and browser and was hoping to get the Google apps installed. I was able to get a handful of 3rd party markets to install, however.

The screen brightness is not consistent and shows greying along the edges when viewing ebooks and under other applications that use a white background.

The touchscreen isn't bad, I've played with worse, and I've played with better.

The built in speaker may as well not exist. Plugged into headphones or to external powered speakers the audio was decent.

When playing music the sound was a bit more "tinny" than the same music played on even my generic coby mp3 player with the same headphones. Not bad, and I imagine a music player with some control over bass/treble output would produce better results. But it played all the music I threw at it. But as I said before, even with the volume turned up to max, the internal speaker barely audible.

Despite the advertised 2GB internal storage, the device is incapable of doing much of anything without adding an SD card. I had a spare 16GB card SDHC card, and it recognized it and worked with it perfectly. No reason to doubt its claims of working with up to 32GB size cards.

After spending a few hours with it, I'm am sticking to my pre-impressions, that it may be a decent device for around the home, but its shortcomings restrict it from being too much more than that. FBReader and Aldiko worked well, so for a home based ereader, where running it plugged in wouldn't be too big an issue, I would give it a passing grade. The built in PDF to Go app did an ok job of loading most of the PDFs I threw at it, some in a more responsive manner than others (as expected the more graphics included, and/or the higher resolution of the graphics, had a huge effect here).

Do I regret buying it? No, the price point made it a decent buy even if in the end it ends up being a glorified digital photo frame. I got mine for under $100 delivered, however. Being a fairly price sensitive consumer of electronic devices, even $25-$50 more would have put me into the regret category, I must say.

I do need to find screen protectors that fit it. I've heard that the screen doesn't hold up to much scratch resistance. Also if anyone has found any decent cases that fit it, I'd appreciate any links.

I must say after playing with this I am looking forward to the May 17th ship date of the Archos 7 Home Tablet, and even more so to the late summer release of the Cruz Tablet with Android 2.1.

pphilipp · 05-08-2010, 04:46 PM

I ordered mine on May 2nd and it looks like it might still take a week or two to arrive. I paid $29.00 for shipping and had hoped a week would be all it would take. Is there anyone else who paid this much for shipping and are still waiting, or did I just get hold of a slow shipper?

jalandar · 05-08-2010, 06:47 PM

I was expecting a longer wait. As I said in my "other devices" post reviewing this a little more indepth, I ordered Sunday (same day as you) and had it in my hand Friday afternoon via DHL.

KindleKid · 05-10-2010, 11:03 AM

I pre-ordered the Archos 7 Home Tablet. It has a low powered CPU but if you want it for ebook reading then it should be a good value. I'll let everyone know my thoughts when it arrives.

jalandar · 05-12-2010, 09:55 PM

In case anyone missed it, I wrote up a bit more detailed a review on the Eken over in the alternative devices forum:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82976

I'll be posting an updated review tomorrow, as I just finished installing a firmware update for the m001 that is supposed to address some of the issues, plus I'll be adding in some info on apps I've found that work well and make the Eken a much more useful device than I had anticipated.

Dulin's Books · 05-22-2010, 12:07 AM

Sorry i have been absent from this thread for so long. I have had a very busy month so far business and personal.

My own impressions of the device mimic those of Katelyn's and jalandar's. It's ok for reading and occasional web surfing around the house but not much else. Im looking forward to hearing about the other apps that jalandar has found.

Actually I cant really surf with it at home. If i get more than a dozen feet from where the router is the tablet just cant find my wifi, unless I'm in the kitchen right by the sink. Everything else- including my Boox and PocketBook 302- finds it no problem, even outside.

It also gets fairly hot after awhile, so Im not comfortable reading on it for too long. It's so very close to being a good device but just isnt. At least not one I could feel comfortable selling through my store.

Really interesting is that a few days ago I actually received a tracking number from Haleron about the iLet Mini Hal. Today it actually arrived!

I haven't actually opened it yet but will after i write this and get it on a charge over night. Then I'll see if its any better than the original one.

-Charlie

Dulin's Books · 05-22-2010, 12:10 AM

One other thing- it's advertised as Android 1.6 but Im a bit confused if it really is. In one place it says 1.6 but in another it says build 1.5.5

My understanding is that if its 1.6 it can be upgraded to 2.1 (and now possibly 2.2). I don't know where i'd get the build to try the update tho.

sultan · 05-22-2010, 11:05 PM

I am fresh new here and just found this thread googling the device in the link here ->
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=5122013945

In this page, it mentioned there existed an "E-BOOK upgrade package" to solve some common BUGs listed below. Unpack the package to SD card and restart, it will upgrade automatically.

1. WIFI incompatability with some brands of routers
2. Issues of "upside down" caused by incompatability of unofficial soft with the OS
3. Issues of "not showing 2G memory" when connected to computer (Some taken by system, actually showing 1.5G or so) - don't know what this means

However there is no direct link to the upgrade. You will have to contact their customer service to get the download.

Bob Russell · 05-23-2010, 02:15 PM

FYI, here's a thread on the Archos 7 Home Tablet as as e-book reader that's getting started over at ArchosFans... http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=33126

I'm intrigued with the $199 price, and am considering it as an interim device until the "good" Android devices come out over the next year or so. Maybe even with some of them starting to appear this summer.

Three concerns, though...
1) Is decent book reader software available for both ePub and PDF?
2) Can one control screen orientation simply (even without an accelerometer)?
3) Is the device fast enough to handle snappy page turns and large PDFs?

05-07-2010, 06:49 PM	#94
jalandar Connoisseur Posts: 85 Karma: 539170 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Fresno, CA Device: Kindle Paperwhite, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Asus TF300T	I dont know, pphilipp. The Mirrorfox video doesn't address things like 3rd party software issues that are widelly reported. And with it going for $125-$175 depending on where you get it and shipping, and with many other sub-$200 devices that are days or weeks from release (such as the Archos 7, which I found out today will ship to me on May 17th), the shortcomings on the Eken M001 really go to the heart of what people expect from a tablet. Battery life, support for hugely popular 3rd party applications (so popular they should have tested for issues with many of them before they ever thought about shipping), using a buggy release of Android 1.6 that had known issues (the screen orientation issue was known and fixed). I'm not inclined to give it many points. The best purpose I can see for the Eken myself it for an around the house type device. The battery life alone makes it less than useful for much else. That said, I did pick one up in a late night ebay auction for under $100 inc shipping, and expect to have it by Monday. There are enough of them out there that it may develop some hacker interest in seeing what modifications can be made by mod enthusiasts. And hopefully someone will root it and thus enable an updated version of Android to be run on it without having to wait for Eken to do it. I am curious to see what you come up with it for it. Easily hackable devices can often make for some real interesting applications. Edit: literally minutes after writing this DHL delivered my EKen. I'll write up more about my initial experiences later. Last edited by jalandar; 05-07-2010 at 07:39 PM.

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05-07-2010, 07:12 AM	#91
pphilipp Addict Posts: 219 Karma: 156088 Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Smokies Device: Apple iPad 3 (I have owned many other tablets)	Honestly, for the price, the Eken is the only game in town. The past several days have shown postings that a few people have received the unit (mine should be here today or tomorrow). The verdict at this point, based upon those who have received, is: 1) It really does offer much bang for the buck. The screen is better than several more expensive units. For what it does offer, no other mid can be found anywhere for the price. 2) Quality control is quite low. One person's m001 might work correctly but the next two people have ones with less than stellar buttons or jacks. 3) The Android OS seems to be quite buggy. Hopefully, the reported OS problems will be corrected as time goes by. 4) There's an incredible amount of misinformation circulating about the m001. Every time I read an update on legitimate, well-respected websites, I see conflicting information. Some praise it. Some call it a piece of junk. Some try to report it as both junk and praise-worthy... perhaps it is. Even the Chinese sellers seem to not be able to get their facts right! They give-out conflicting info that seems hard to believe they're describing the same device! After I've had mine several days I'll post my own biased conclusions. I have a track-record for over-coming niche-device's limitations. I had 2 Newtons, 2 Palms, 5 Wince HPCs, 2 wince pdas, 3 Windows tablet PCs, and several touchscreen phones. All of those devices were touchscreen and all of them had both hardware and software limitations... many of which I found work-a-rounds to. I'll see what I can do to help get this thing working better-than-shipped!

05-07-2010, 02:56 PM	#93
pphilipp Addict Posts: 219 Karma: 156088 Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Smokies Device: Apple iPad 3 (I have owned many other tablets)	Here's the latest vid which shows some good unbiased info... http://www.mirrorfox.com/videos/9398...obilescom.html

05-07-2010, 07:16 PM	#95
sudermatt Member Posts: 10 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: eken m001	IMHO. @ $200...there are better devices coming soon @ $130...it's a toss-up @ $100 or less....why the heck not? one of our members tore it down...check it out.

05-08-2010, 04:09 PM	#97
jalandar Connoisseur Posts: 85 Karma: 539170 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Fresno, CA Device: Kindle Paperwhite, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Asus TF300T	Well I've spent the morning with my Eken. First off, despite advertising a microphone port, there doesn't appear to be one. Not that big a deal for me. Nearly all apps but Aldiko oriented correctly. I'm more app to lay the blame for the orientation issue on Aldiko not implementing the common fix for this issue in their code, like most other app developers have. Battery life is awful. And the wireless is weak and somewhat problematic at times. I've had to shut the wireless off and turn it back on to get it to reconnect at times. And it has a very very limited range, they must be using a very low power wireless device, or have the device's power set to a very low setting. I took the device to the nearby McD's and had issues getting connected and staying connected to their free wifi, but even at home it had intermittent problems (I have a high gain antenna on my home wifi, giving strong signal coverage all throughout my place). There were intermittent issues having it plugged into the computer via USD and plugged into power at the same time. The USB would drop and reconnect repeatedly. Removing the power plug and reconnecting the USB would resolve the issue. Not that I was expecting much in this regard, but video playback is virtually non-existent. I put re-encoded videos set to the proper formats and to low bit rates, and all it would display is the opening screen, while the audio continued. The video frame never updated on any video I attempted to play. Photo display and browsing worked great, and in fact this is one area it shines in. I could see my mother using this to carrying around her photo collection to show off (and in fact that may end up being what this device gets purposed for). Despite reports from others, the Archos 5 android marketplace app won't install for me. This was disappointing, I didnt care much for the built in email client and browser and was hoping to get the Google apps installed. I was able to get a handful of 3rd party markets to install, however. The screen brightness is not consistent and shows greying along the edges when viewing ebooks and under other applications that use a white background. The touchscreen isn't bad, I've played with worse, and I've played with better. The built in speaker may as well not exist. Plugged into headphones or to external powered speakers the audio was decent. When playing music the sound was a bit more "tinny" than the same music played on even my generic coby mp3 player with the same headphones. Not bad, and I imagine a music player with some control over bass/treble output would produce better results. But it played all the music I threw at it. But as I said before, even with the volume turned up to max, the internal speaker barely audible. Despite the advertised 2GB internal storage, the device is incapable of doing much of anything without adding an SD card. I had a spare 16GB card SDHC card, and it recognized it and worked with it perfectly. No reason to doubt its claims of working with up to 32GB size cards. After spending a few hours with it, I'm am sticking to my pre-impressions, that it may be a decent device for around the home, but its shortcomings restrict it from being too much more than that. FBReader and Aldiko worked well, so for a home based ereader, where running it plugged in wouldn't be too big an issue, I would give it a passing grade. The built in PDF to Go app did an ok job of loading most of the PDFs I threw at it, some in a more responsive manner than others (as expected the more graphics included, and/or the higher resolution of the graphics, had a huge effect here). Do I regret buying it? No, the price point made it a decent buy even if in the end it ends up being a glorified digital photo frame. I got mine for under $100 delivered, however. Being a fairly price sensitive consumer of electronic devices, even $25-$50 more would have put me into the regret category, I must say. I do need to find screen protectors that fit it. I've heard that the screen doesn't hold up to much scratch resistance. Also if anyone has found any decent cases that fit it, I'd appreciate any links. I must say after playing with this I am looking forward to the May 17th ship date of the Archos 7 Home Tablet, and even more so to the late summer release of the Cruz Tablet with Android 2.1.

05-08-2010, 04:46 PM	#98
pphilipp Addict Posts: 219 Karma: 156088 Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Smokies Device: Apple iPad 3 (I have owned many other tablets)	I ordered mine on May 2nd and it looks like it might still take a week or two to arrive. I paid $29.00 for shipping and had hoped a week would be all it would take. Is there anyone else who paid this much for shipping and are still waiting, or did I just get hold of a slow shipper?

05-08-2010, 06:47 PM	#99
jalandar Connoisseur Posts: 85 Karma: 539170 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Fresno, CA Device: Kindle Paperwhite, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Asus TF300T	I was expecting a longer wait. As I said in my "other devices" post reviewing this a little more indepth, I ordered Sunday (same day as you) and had it in my hand Friday afternoon via DHL.

05-10-2010, 11:03 AM	#100
KindleKid Zealot Posts: 115 Karma: 24 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: iPad 2	I pre-ordered the Archos 7 Home Tablet. It has a low powered CPU but if you want it for ebook reading then it should be a good value. I'll let everyone know my thoughts when it arrives.

05-12-2010, 09:55 PM	#101
jalandar Connoisseur Posts: 85 Karma: 539170 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Fresno, CA Device: Kindle Paperwhite, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Asus TF300T	In case anyone missed it, I wrote up a bit more detailed a review on the Eken over in the alternative devices forum: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82976 I'll be posting an updated review tomorrow, as I just finished installing a firmware update for the m001 that is supposed to address some of the issues, plus I'll be adding in some info on apps I've found that work well and make the Eken a much more useful device than I had anticipated.

05-22-2010, 12:07 AM	#102
Dulin's Books Wizard Posts: 2,806 Karma: 13500000 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Portland, OR Device: Boox PB360 etc etc etc	Sorry i have been absent from this thread for so long. I have had a very busy month so far business and personal. My own impressions of the device mimic those of Katelyn's and jalandar's. It's ok for reading and occasional web surfing around the house but not much else. Im looking forward to hearing about the other apps that jalandar has found. Actually I cant really surf with it at home. If i get more than a dozen feet from where the router is the tablet just cant find my wifi, unless I'm in the kitchen right by the sink. Everything else- including my Boox and PocketBook 302- finds it no problem, even outside. It also gets fairly hot after awhile, so Im not comfortable reading on it for too long. It's so very close to being a good device but just isnt. At least not one I could feel comfortable selling through my store. Really interesting is that a few days ago I actually received a tracking number from Haleron about the iLet Mini Hal. Today it actually arrived! I haven't actually opened it yet but will after i write this and get it on a charge over night. Then I'll see if its any better than the original one. -Charlie

05-22-2010, 12:10 AM	#103
Dulin's Books Wizard Posts: 2,806 Karma: 13500000 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Portland, OR Device: Boox PB360 etc etc etc	One other thing- it's advertised as Android 1.6 but Im a bit confused if it really is. In one place it says 1.6 but in another it says build 1.5.5 My understanding is that if its 1.6 it can be upgraded to 2.1 (and now possibly 2.2). I don't know where i'd get the build to try the update tho.

Advert

Advert

05-22-2010, 11:05 PM	#104
sultan Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: HTC Universal	I am fresh new here and just found this thread googling the device in the link here -> http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=5122013945 In this page, it mentioned there existed an "E-BOOK upgrade package" to solve some common BUGs listed below. Unpack the package to SD card and restart, it will upgrade automatically. 1. WIFI incompatability with some brands of routers 2. Issues of "upside down" caused by incompatability of unofficial soft with the OS 3. Issues of "not showing 2G memory" when connected to computer (Some taken by system, actually showing 1.5G or so) - don't know what this means However there is no direct link to the upgrade. You will have to contact their customer service to get the download.

05-23-2010, 02:15 PM	#105
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	FYI, here's a thread on the Archos 7 Home Tablet as as e-book reader that's getting started over at ArchosFans... http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=33126 I'm intrigued with the $199 price, and am considering it as an interim device until the "good" Android devices come out over the next year or so. Maybe even with some of them starting to appear this summer. Three concerns, though... 1) Is decent book reader software available for both ePub and PDF? 2) Can one control screen orientation simply (even without an accelerometer)? 3) Is the device fast enough to handle snappy page turns and large PDFs?