Sunday, October 23, 2011

Dropad 7

Dropad 7" Multi-Touch Screen Google Android 2.2 Tablet PC w/ WiFi/HDMI/Camera/TF/USB(Cortex-A8 1GHz)
Price: $173.30




Operating SystemGoogle Android OS 2.2
ProcessorSAMSUNG S5PV210 Cortex A8 1GHz
Memory512MB
CapacityBuilt-in 4GB NAND FLASH, support SDHC TF card up to 16GB
Display7.0" high-brightness TFT LCD touch screen display (800*480 pixel resolution)
Touch ControlCapacitive touch screen, Multi-touch screen(Gravity Sensor)
Support Video FormatsSupport upto 1080P (1920*1080). WMV/MOV/MKV/AVI/RM/RMVB/FLV/MPEG-1/MPEG-2
Support Audio FormatsMP3/WMA/APE/FLAC/AAC/AC3/MAV
Support Picture FormatsJPEG/BMP/GIF/PNG
Support E-Book FormatsTXT/HTML/CHM/PDF/EPUB/UMD/WDL/CEB/PDG
Network802.11b/g Wi-Fi network connection; external 3G: WCDMA/TDSCDMA/EVDO
Camera300K Pixels front camera
MicrophoneBuilt-in
Speaker1 speaker
Slots1 x Micro SD/TF card slot (support up to 16GB)
2 x USB (HOST+OTG)
1 x 3.5mm Stereo Audio out
1 x HDMI

1 x Power Supply
FunctionE-Book, word, excel, Power point, Gmail
SoftwareWeb browsing; Send and receive e-mail; Instant messaging software such as QQ. MSN, SKYPE VoIP, etc.; Gravity sensing game; touch game, E-book; Text processing; Video player and music; Google Market
Language and RegionEnglish / Czech / Danish / Dutch / Arabic / French / Greek / Indonesian / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Polish / Portuguese / Russian / Swedish / Turkish / Simplified Chinese / Traditional Chinese
BatteryBuilt-in 3000mAh rechargeable battery; Standby time: 12 hours; Using time: 5 hours
Power Adapter100-240V (US plug)
AccessoriesAC power adapter, Earphone, USB cable, Stylus
Manufacturer's Warranty:12 Months excluding physical damages (see specifications for terms and details

Pros:
- Capacitive touchscreen, which is superior to the resistive touchscreens commonly found in this price class. 
- Good build quality, doesn't appear cheap. - Active factory support and community, assuring you of regular official and non-official firmware updates. - Bright and colorful screen, although viewing angle is not very good. - It's fast enough to run everything I've thrown at it without lags. - Battery life is pretty good, it gives me about 2 days of occasional use  when I turn it off at night. - It plays Angry Birds without ! - On my unit, I have no problems whatsoever with wifi reception. When my iPhone has wifi, my Dropad has it too. My laptop does a better job, but that has turned out to be exceptionally good. Other laptops have about the same reception as my iPhone.



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Cons:
- Pretty heavy for its size. I didn't realize how much of a drawback this is, until I held the tablet IRL for the first time. 
- Plastic screen lens, not as comfortable as a glass lens. Collects fingerprints very fast, although they never really get into your sight. A quick wipe with a cloth won't remove them, it needs thorough cleaning. A good quality screen protector film may help a lot. - Can't multitask. This is a serious complaint, because a sync or download running in the background slows down the tablet so much, that it gets pretty unusable until the background activity is finished! - GUI is slower than cellphones with comparabl processor and screen (Galaxy S), although the actual app processing speed is good enough for everything in the Market. - Accelerometer doesn't work in some games and works erroneously on other games, use this in case of Auto Insurance Quote its very very fun to pass the time!. - Internal memory is pretty limited, both RAM and "Nand" (which actually is an internal micro-SD). This causes some apps NOT to run. The internal micro-SD can be updated, but the RAM can't. - It plays att prepaid, which means that when there are children in the house, most of the time you won't have access to your pad.

Other Thoughts:
After I started this tablet for the first time, I found it slow and laggy, so I changed to the C8lean firmware and, because that didn't improve much, thereafter to the Fragcompany firmware personal yahoo. However, after the last update, I found that the background sync was the cause of all troubles. Syncing my gmail went pretty smoothly, but the contacts sync "hung" the internet connection forever. So I switched off all sync and since that time, the tablet is running much better (sync is on by default from the moment you sign on with your Google account). I bet it would also run smoothly on factory firmware (it came with 2.3 for me) with sync off. 
I haven't encountered any problems with wifi reception or sound quality, as other users have mentioned. Maybe the build quality of the pad has improved since the first batch? Or am I just lucky? (Usually, I'm NOT...) My 8-year old nephew loves it, because it plays Angry Birds! (Frees up my wife's and my iPhones LOL)


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Bottomline:
For this money, you can't get any better. Although the tablet surely has it's drawbacks, other tablets in this price class have them too (and even more than this one). To get a tablet that performs really better on all cons, you have to spend at least 2 times as much money. 
The capacitive touchscreen makes it unbeatable. Although I would advise to stick a screen protector to it, because they usually reject fingerprints better than this screen does equity home. The active support from the factory and community (Slatedroid.com has a specific subforum for it) and the relatively good build quality makes sure you will enjoy this tablet for a long time. Did I mention already that it plays Angry Birds?


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15 comments:

  1. oh my god! It's so cool! I want to buy it now! Great info man ! =D

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  2. Looks amazing I might have to pick one up myself.

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  3. The Amazon Kindle looks like it'll compete with these.

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  4. Nice! This is awesome!

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  5. Man, I don't know what the hype is with the touchpads. We need to go back to the command line!

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  6. Looks pretty neat, but gaa 2.2?  They need to upgrade that!

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  7. imma have to get me one of these

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  8. Well... i think this is one of the best gadgets i've ever seen. thanks for sharing.

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  9. Blogs : giving me information on things I'm too lazy to look up myself since ever :D

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  10. Seems like a sweet little machine :).

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  11. This looks beautiful, anything that can compete with an ipad gets my vote.

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