Eken m001 Android 7 inch Tablet - First day impressions

[jalandar]

Despite the negative comments from other buyers of the Eken M001 Android 1.6 MID, I impulsively decided to go ahead and purchase one when I was able to get one via a late night auction on Ebay for well under $100 include shipping. I bought it knowing that it would likely have issues, and knowing that the battery life was...less than stellar let's say.

I bought it Sunday Night, from a Hong Kong seller, and had it in my hands by Friday. Not an unpleasant experience, I must say.

It arrived with a full battery charge even, which I assume this seller is making a point of doing. I made sure to give him positive feedback.

That said, let me first delve into the advertised specs.

CPU VIA MW8505 600MHz
Google Android OS 1.6
Accelerometer
Ambient light sensor
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
SD X 1 (support up to 32G SDHC)
USB X 2 (See notes)
Stereo Audio out X 1
Microphone in X 1 (See notes)

First thing to note is that you cannot recharge off the USB connection. I knew this going in, but still it is disappointing. I prefer usb charging for most of my devices these days, and usb charging also opens up the possibility of extended the mobile battery life by using backup power devices that give additional charging over usb (including the

Secondly, you will note that it claims USB x 2, but in fact only has 1 USB connection, and it uses an iPod/iPhone style connection on the tablet side. It also claims a microphone port, but no evidence of one on the device as it is shipping.

You may have read reports about screen orientation issues. At first, it seemed easy to blame Eken for this issue, but in fact I've since come to the conclusion that it is not the case. There is a known issue in Android 1.6, and most all apps (except the two I am about to note) orient just fine. In Aldiko, you have to get into the settings and turn off "Lock Display Orientation" to fix its orientation issue. The only apps that seem to have problems are once which are preconfigured with the orientation locked. Consequently, fixing this issue can be a bit tricky, but thanks to Katelyn it wasn't that difficult for me to figure out how to do it. It essentially involves pushing the touchscreen area where the settings button would be had the screen been properly oriented. Since this is a known issue and Android 1.6 is shipping on a large number of devices, I'm more apt to lay the blame on the App developers for not taking this into account. But so far, only 2 apps I've installed have had the issue. I'm not holding this against the m001, and won't let it affect my review.

An important note for those who are buying this device. The advertised specs imply that it has 2GB internal storage. It does not. Far from it. And thus, the device is practicely useless without adding an SDHC Card. I had a 16GB spare card which I used. I don't recommend buying cards off ebay, too many fraudulent memory cards are being sold on there with falsely reported capacities. You should be able to find 8GB cards very cheap, under $15, 16GB cards from reputable vendors online from around $30-$40, and 32G cards from around $70-75. My 16GB worked flawlessly and was recognized and formatted by the device.

Now that I had storage, it was time to start seriously playing with it.

I had heard conflicting reports that the Android Marketplace app that is being used to add Google Android Marketplace access to Archos 5 devices was working on the m001. I downloaded it and copied it to the sd card over the USB connection. I then tried to install it, and it failed. Hoping it was just an intermittent error, I tried again, but no love. So getting the Google apps on it was out of the question, for now.

I downloaded Aldiko, FBReader, and a handful of third party marketplace apps, and had good success with the installs. Only one of the marketplace apps wouldn't install. I then installed Act1 Video player, and mVideoplayer.

I first decided to test out the video playing capabilities, as I had reencoded some video files to low res low bit rate files in the proper mp4 format. I copied those files over, and had zero success getting them to play on either player. In both apps, the opening frames would display and then stay static while the file audio played normally. I wasn't too surprised, and I wasn't expecting much in the area of Video, but it was disappointing none the less.

I got Aldiko and FBReader configured properly, and copied over some properly format ebooks. Both worked just fine, as expected. If it wasn't for the low battery life, I would say this is a great "eReader plus" type device. The device came with iReader preinstalled, and it worked as expected (not a big fan of the app, but it works for what it does).

I setup one of my gmail accounts with the preinstalled email app, and it worked about as expected. Checking email from the living room while watching tv or what not, it works decently.

I then tested some music files I copied over. The preinstalled player worked good. The internal speaker, however, may as well not exist. I noticed this even more so later when I tested the alarm clock function. I pluged in a few different headsets and external speakers, and the sound was good, not great, but good. Definitely within the acceptable level. My other media players outperform it in sound quality, but again, I didn't come into this with high expectations. I copied over my thunderstorm, rain forest, and nature sound files that I use at night while sleeping, and downloaded an app intended to be used for that. Tested it out, worked great, again with external speakers. Every music file I threw at it, it played without problems.

I next tested the Alarm Clock and Theme Frame apps. The Theme Frame app has the alarm clock built in to it. I got the proper date/time/time zone and city setup. Nice application over all. The built in speaker would never wake up even a baby on the loudest setting, but using an external speaker would work quite well.

In general most apps I tried installed fine and worked as decently as on any other android device. I am a gamer, and copied the Blizzard Mobile Authenticator to it, and had it attached to my blizzard battle.net account, and it is working perfectly, also.

I next tested it as a photo viewer, and it really shined here. Either as a digital photo frame, or as a good photo browser, it does an excellent job. Easy enough that my mother could use it to carry her "grandmother" photos around to show off, or more likely the photos of her custom converted harly trike my stepfather built for her with a wheelchair rack that she likes to show off.

The basic games you can find for android apps seemed to also work decently. Not much into gaming at the handheld level, and the games are fairly basic. And with the low battery life, you probably wont want to waste much of your mobile time draining the battery on games.

As for the touchscreen, it works fairly well. I had little problem navigating around apps and what not. No more or less than on any other touch screen device for the most part.

As I said, I paid around $85 for this, delivered to my door. At that price, I'm not disappointed in what I can now expect to get out of it. Also, at the $100-125 price point most people seem to be getting it for, I would still say it is a decent value, if you can live within its limitations. One advantage to the price point is that a lot of device hackers are likely to get them, and thus we may find some interesting unintended uses for it, or fixes for some of the issues noted. I have an older archos media player, for instance, that device hackers figured out how to do a battery hack on, and extended its battery life quite significantly. Maybe that is an option here. It wouldnt surprise me to see more up to date android installs on this either, as they do not appear to have locked the device down to prevent software mods.

I am a pretty price conscious gadget consumer. At $35-50 more, I definitely would have been in the regret category on this purchase. For what I paid, even if it ends up being a digital photo frame that can also play music and double as a bedside alarm clock (again with external speakers for both), and maybe an around the house ereader where if I have to have it plugged in while reading it wont be too inconvenient, I will feel I have gotten my money's worth out of it.

I can't say at this point I would actually recommend it, but as long as you are aware of its limitations and can live within them, overall it is not a bad option for the price.

[KingDani]

oh you beat me to it. i must have it by tomorrow. but who knows. they seller gave a tracking number and it says it is in my city .anyway , since i ordered ( which is a long time ago ) , i have seen other auctions for the same device, but this time, with 4gb card and a case , which is not the best thing , but they seem to hide the ugliness of the device quite decently. so my question is , did yours come in with them?
also , have you tried timing the battery to see how long will it last?
cheers

[jalandar]

Mine was pretty cheap, around $85 including shipping (love late night auction sniping). And no card or case was included at all.

I have played with it some more, and the battery life is just as bad as advertised.

I was finally able to get some video files to play on it, however, I had to encode them to 3GP (the video players support mp4/h264 but no matter how low the settings wouldn't play them), and had to use very low quality settings. The quality was horrible, and even with these low quality settings the video player would struggle, lots of stutters and dropped frames. The CPU in this thing just cant handle I think.

[Dalkor]

Usually It's not the CPU issue, but a rather bad codec optimisation, there are examples of devices powered by the same CPU have a very noticeable difference in video playback.

P.S. Thank you for review!

[KingDani]

well i think mine is on its way home
i am really disappointed to hear the battery is as bad as they say.
anyway , lets see if it can be modded enough , but first , i think there should be a point of contact for all owners and hackers , so have you come across any forum dedicated to these?

[jalandar]

Member Sudermatt created a google group for it:
http://groups.google.com/group/ekenm001

With wireless completely turned off, the battery power is a bit better, about 3.5 hours of dedicated reading today (it was lightly raining, and I had no work to do today, so I sat out on the porch reading).

[jalandar]

Just wanted to note I will be posting an updated review sometime tomorrow. Thanks to the guys at the Google Group Sudermatt created, we have an updated firmware to address some of the problems, including the screen orientation lag, and wireless network connect issues.

Preparing my M001 for the update now, and will install it and run it through its paces tonight and tomorrow (going to take it out and try the networking at some free hotspots like Starbucks, McD's, etc).

[pphilipp]

There's a ton of hacker activity taking place already, perhaps because the eken is such a low-price device (for what it does offer).

Those who have updated their units are already seeing many benefits and improvements. It looks like in a week or two the eken, with the right updates, will be a pretty good device for the money.

Though anticipation of the Archos Home tablet is getting all the media attention, if Archos is true to form with their closed-system, it will not be the device where all the fan-boy improvements are taking place. It is the Eken (so far) which is offering a low-priced device where we can actually get inside and bring it to it's full potential.

[jalandar]

Don't be so sure, pphilipp. The Archos devices have a huge community built around modifying archos devices already, and they are all just itching to get their hands on the home tablet 7, they have already hacked the Archos 5 to have access to the android marketplace for example ( archosfans.com is their site). In fact one of them just this week got Android 2.1 running on the Archos 5.

And with the battery life issue, this device is going to be hugely popular with the gadget hackers, as so many previous Archos devices have been. Archos has never tried to shut out that community, so they have a pretty strong following among them.

[jalandar]

I know I promised an updated review today, real life has intervened however, and I can't write it up today. I will quickly confirm that Wifi is greatly fixed, and the system seems overall much more responsive. So if you got one of these and are still having wifi issues, the updated firmware is a must have. I will write up my review still, but tomorrow, and will also write up a how to for the firmware update.

Again, sorry for the delay, reality bites sometimes.

[Katelyn]

After weeks of discussing the various issues with my Chinese CSR, yesterday she sent me the firmware update. It took 11 hours to get this 98 MB file via QQ (Chinese version of MSN messenger) but I got it, installed it and FINALLY I can say hallelujah, no more upside down programs. It appears to be much more stable than the original software and I can now live with it as a cheap, read-in-the-dark device.

The USB and charging ports still suck but I think I just got a bad unit. I haven't read of anyone else with the problems this one has.

Here is what I did to update the firmware:
1. Downloaded firmware to desktop
2. Unzipped the file. This created a folder named "script"
3. Copied the script folder to a formatted SD card
4. With the device off, I inserted the SD card into the card port on my device
5. Started the device
6. Firmware update automatically began
7. After update completed, I shut down the device and removed SD card
8. Started the device. Now running version 1.6, build 1.7.1

Remember to remove the script folder from your SD card before res-inserting it into the device.

[liolik]

Originally Posted by Katelyn

..... but I got it, installed it and FINALLY I can say hallelujah, no more upside down programs. It appears to be much more stable than the original software and I can now live with it as a cheap, read-in-the-dark device.

The USB and charging ports still suck but I think I just got a bad unit. I haven't read of anyone else with the problems this one has.
......

Hi!
Also have problem with charging and USB ports
But what about new firmware? Can you share that with us?

Than you!

[Katelyn]

Originally Posted by liolik

Hi!
Also have problem with charging and USB ports
But what about new firmware? Can you share that with us?

Than you!

You can download the firmware from Sudermatt's Google Group page.

[jalandar]

On to my review of the new firmware, and some tricks and tips for the device.

Thanks to Matt and the guys at the google group, and which has now been superseded by a new site http://slatedroid.blitzwerks.co.uk/ , for a lot of useful information.

Maybe it is a coincidence, or maybe the battery needed to be completely drained a couple times to work better, but since the firmware update I am seeing a longer battery life with the wifi off than I did initially. Wifi still drains the battery very quickly, however. So my advice is to only turn it on when necessary.

Speaking of the Wifi the firmware update did a great job fixing the Wifi connection issues. I was able to use the device at Starbucks, McD's, throughout my home, and at my parent's, with no connection issues.

In my initial review I mentioned no microphone port. The specs indicated there would be a microphone port, I now believe that to have been a mistranslation. There is a very small almost unnoticeable built in mic next to the headphone port. Quality is pretty meh, but it IS there, and somewhat usable.

I mentioned picture viewing on the device, and one thing I wanted to note that I've since learned, using a single directory for a large number of images is not a great idea. Better to break them down into smaller groups in subdirectories. Also, the default picture viewer has stability issues. I'm going to look for some better options for that over the weekend.

The device itself is very noticeably more responsive after the update.

Thanks to Matt, I found a few replacements for the home screen, and settled on Home+++. dxtop was another that was quite nice. Both were more responsive than the default also, and made the device easier and nicer to use.

Still having problems with Movie playback, I've resigned myself to this device not being any use in this area. And I'm ok with that.

I highly recommend a stylus. A lot of the frustration from this device is from the touch screen, and the stylus makes it much less frustration.

I recommend a Task Manager of some sort, such as Advanced Task Manager, so you can kill off background apps that are still running and not needed, and thus help conserve battery power when in use.

Also, there are quite a few better battery widgets and apps out there than one in the device. The one in the device doesn't give very accurate information on the battery status. I am using Battery Indicator, and it is working quite well and providing accurate battery status information. Matt recommended another one, but I wasn't able to locate it yet to try it out.

I was able to get the official google Voice app to run, which enabled me to be able to send SMS messages via Google voice over the WiFi. Also got Dropbox mobile to work to access personal files I keep stored on their service.

Still no luck installing the official marketplace using the apk from the Android 5 device. And still very excited about the Archos 7 HT shipping next week.

All said I'm more up on this device than I was a few days ago. I've since completed reading a couple books, and used it around the home and on the road. Even without some of the potential things I see coming from the guys at the slatedroid site, and with its current limitations, I think it is a good value at the price.

I do recommend finding some sorta of carry case or sleeve for it. And a proper screen protector film would be nice. I found a leather dayplanner case at Officemax for under $10 that fit it nicely for holding it, and may fashion some sort of custom velcro straps for it to hold it in place, but for now it serves as a decent carry case for it and for a stylus.

[roxyq662]

I just got the Eken, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the firmware on the Eken or get books to show up in the eReader!! Please help if anyone still looks at this thread! I dowloaded the firmware to my computer that was listed ^ but I can't find out how to get it to work!! I really just want it to do what I bought it to do: Be able to read eBooks in the dark!!