We’ve had the (final version) Viewsonic Viewpad 7 for 2 days now and last night we completed 3hrs of live testing in front of an audience of 480 people. We’re now in a good position to be able to bring you a good round-up review of the device. Live recordings of the stream are embedded below. Unboxing video is here. Thanks to Viewsonic Europe for sending the device over. UK customers can find details of a trade-in offer and retailers here.
Overall quality of the £400 pound tablet is good and we feel that Viewsonic have got the price/quality ratio right. This is a lot more than a £200 open-source Android tablet here and less than a £500 high-end 7 inch Tablet (e.g. Galaxy Tab) and it sits alone as the cheapest 7 inch 3G+Voice Google Android tablet on the market. ‘Google’ means that it really does have everything that you find on a Google Android phone including voice capability, compass, GPS, compass, capacitive touchscreen and the latest Android software. So why is the Viewpad 7 cheaper than the Galaxy Tab then?
Let’s start with the processor that tricked me. I was originally told it was a Snapdragon CPU at 600Mhz but despite some reasonable Web performance, it turned out to be an ARM11-based device. In real-use yesterday I was still quite happy with the browsing speeds and although I would never recommend anyone get an ARM11-based device for serious web work, when laid-back in a passive usage mode, it’s quite acceptable. You’ll see some browser tests in part 3 of the video review below. The GPU, Adreno 200 – the same as that found on the Snapdragon platform, is probably helping a lot here because UI actions seem smooth, if not ‘physical’ like the iPad. Android 2.2 helps too. It’s a far more efficient build than 2.1 and helps to pull everything possible out of the platform. This is probably as good as we’ll ever see on an ARM11-based device and at this point it has to be said that this is the best ARM11-based mobile internet device I’ve ever used.
There are more hints of ‘value’ though that don’t hide themselves so well:
Screen At 800×480 this isn’t the sharpest. Although Android apps are only designed for up to 800×480 screen, there are photos, videos, ebooks and browser pages to consider. A full-screen, page-to-fit web page is not easily readable and will require a pinch or double-click to zoom to readable quality. It’s bright enough but there are differing results from vertical and portrait viewing angles. This is a typical horizontal-optimised LCD. I won’t go into detail here but portrait mode is not perfect. Text seems to stretch vertically too indicating that the pixels aren’t square. It’s a good screen, but not top-of-class. Note: After measuring the screen, pixels are indeed not square. Resolution ratio: 1.666:1 Size Ratio: 1.78:1
CPU Mentioned above. Don’t expect to squeeze much more out of this CPU in the future. There are already applications that aren’t supported on this CPU (Flash for example)
Software This is, to all intents and purposes, a raw Android experience. Some people will prefer this and at least the Market is there to help. In the live review we downloaded and installed about 15 applications suggested by viewers in less than 10 minutes. Try doing that on a Windows 7 laptop!
Camera The 3.0MP camera shouldn’t be regarded as anything more than a snapshot device and the results show high grain and huge traces of plastic lens. It’s easy to smudge fingerprints over the camera lens too so quality can degrade even further. Videos aren’t anything to get excited about either.
Video Playback There are quite a few video formats out there and each has variable bitrate and ‘profile’ levels. Codecs cost money and Viewsonic have chosen not to add them in. You’ll get 3GPP, MPEG4 (not Xvid/Divx support) and H.264 support for low bitrates and resolutions (sub 720p/1Mbps) but that’s it. Software players such as RockPlayer add new codecs in but the CPU isn’t powerful enough to deliver anything above about 1Mbps. Disappointing.
User Interface and touch While not up there with the best ‘physical’ user interfaces, this is a reasonable capacitive touch experience and fine for everyday use. It’s a lot better than a resistive touchscreen for this type of finger usage.
On screen keyboard – Typical of loaded Android systems on ARM11 CPUs, the response on the keyboard slows down if there are other things happening around the device. Coupled with a rather ugly layout (we loaded ‘Better Keyboard’ and found it, better!) and a hit-rate that doesn’t come close to the Galaxy Tab or Apple iOS devices, we can’t recommend it for anything more than micro-mails, tweets, SMS and other short-form messaging.
On the positive side, we saw great 3D performance in synthetic tests and games with Angry Birds and Raging Thunder Lite working perfectly. There are other high-points too.
3G throughput in our tests was good. We haven’t tested reception performance.
Battery life. In our 1-hour test with screen, Wi-Fi, GSM enabled and under testing conditions saw the battery drop 15% indicating a 6-hour heavy-use run-time. It matches the Viewsonic specs and in the rest of our testing over the last few days we were also seeing similar battery performance. We estimate the battery life to be 10-15% less than the Galaxy Tab but still, very good. Charging over USB is a slow process. Expect 8-9hrs for a full charge over a standard USB cable. We can’t get the supplied charger to work through our UK-EU adaptor but we’re told it does enable a ‘fast charge’ mode of around 3hrs.
Speaker quality is good which makes the Viewpad 7 perfect for radio, MP3 and podcast duties around the house. In a 20-minute speakerphone call, quality was very high. We also made a successful Skype call without headphones.
Other points
No heat or noise
Quadrant scores around the 250 mark
Launcher Pro works well (and is recommended) as a home-screen alternative. It enables portrait mode homescreen which the standard build doesn’t.
YouTube (tested with the latest player available in the Market) works flawlessly
Neocore benchmark returned 32 fps
Kindle reader and the pre-installed Aldiko reader work well.
PDF reading with the included, full version of Documents To Go, worked well
Again, note that Flash 10.1 is not available for ARM11 devices such as this
The Viewpad 7 is slightly smaller (about 4mm in width and depth) than the galaxy Tab. Same thickness. Same weight.
Storage on the device is limited to 512MB and after installing 20 applications, we were down to 24MB of storage space. Inserting an SD card is necessary in order to move some applications over (where possible) and to store audio, image and video files.
Wifi reception was average (b/g standards) We haven’t tested Bluetooth
Hotspot mode works. (Wifi sharing of 3G connection We expect 8-10hrs on this mode with screen off)
No stand. (Update below)
Case is plastic
No USB On-The-Go
GPS locked quickly (sub 10 seconds with A-GPS enabled) indoors, 1M from a Window
No video out (digital or analogue)
Skyfire (and included flash video playback) works
Update: Case will change for final retail versions.
Viewsonic notified me that the case has been re-designed for the final version. Its good to see that it now includes ‘standing’ capability.
At £400 we find the Viewpad fairly priced. If you’re in the UK and have a working netbook or laptop you want to trade-in, Viewsonic retail partners will give you 100 pounds cash-back which makes it tempting if that old EeePC 701 is gathering dust for you. Ultimately though, Viewsonic need to capitalise on the fact that this is a well-rounded ‘value’ tablet with a complete feature set, today. In 3 months time when Android devices 2.3 appear, when ARM11 becomes ‘end of line’ for some applications, when high-end applications start demanding more of a CPU and when the market fills with other device options, it may not look so attractive and at that point Viewsonic and their retailers will have to compete in a price war. We say, ‘take the risk’ and drop the price by 50 pounds to capitalise on holiday-season buying and make this an even more attractive package. Throw in a 4GB micro SD card, a cleaning cloth and maybe a free version of ‘launcher pro’ to solve that portrait mode homescreen limitation and you’ve got yourself a great little mobile internet device.
The Viewsonic Viewpad 7 arrived just as I was finishing off the Galaxy Tab review today so it’s perfect timing for a close comparison. I won’t be doing that yet though because first-off we need to do the unboxing and overview (below) and the Live Review (info) Join us tomorrow at 8pm London time (2100 CET other times here) on the Live Page and spread the word! Some new images are going up into the Gallery so keep checking that too. Full specifications and links, gallery and other videos available on our Viewpad 7 tracking page.
Availability information and information about the trade-in program in the UK can be found here. For Germany, keep an eye on MediaMarkt. We hear that France and Netherlands are next in line but there are no confirmed details as yet.
In Part 1 of the Galaxy Tab Review we looked around the hardware. In Part 2 we looked at the software. In Part 3 we want to highlight a few features, give you some idea of performance, give some thoughts on accessories, highlight the ‘bad’ and round up with a summary.
There’s something psychological that makes big-screen devices seem faster than comparable small-screen devices and the Tab benefits from that. Web-pages fill at an impressive rate, applications start up without reaching that ‘has it crashed’ thought and video playback starts and jumps without any delay at all. If there’s one thing negative that we noticed though it was the very typical ‘locking’ of a multi-tasking device. You’ll notice it the first time it happens and it will grate on you every time it happens again. The more apps you load, the more it’s likely to happen. It’s multitasking life! Android has a noticeable touch lag too it and needs to be reduced to match the class-leading touch ‘physics’ of the iPad. Electronic musicians will probably want to stick with the iPad for the time begin. Overall we’re happy that we’ve got a device that performs to its class-leading price although it won’t be long before multi-core platforms make this seem out of date. Our initial tests on Tegra 2 devices show a big step-change in CPU and graphics performance but for the first half of 2011, the Galaxy Tab should remain competitive.
Quadrant
One of the most-used all-round tests for Android devices is the Quadrant application.
The Galaxy Tab scores 1050 in this result (we saw results range from 900 to 1100) and there’s a good CPU score from the stock firmware. 3D performance also seems good although I/O performance is on the low side. We’re hearing that there are some hacks that improve this.
Linpack
Linpack measures floating point performance in Mega-FLOPS (Millions of FLoating point OPerations per Second.) The Galaxy Tab measured 14.1. For comparison, our Toshiba AC100,a dual-core Cortex A9 device (Tegra 2) scored only 11.27 but we suspect it was running only a single thread (one core used.)
Sunspider
The Sunspider test is a browser-based Javascript test. It gives a good indication of CPU performance and browser optimisations and is useful to see how quickly AJAX / Web-based applications will be processed. Remember, this is not an indication of browser speed, just the processing of Javascript within web pages. The score of 8455 here is respectable for an ARM-based device. We have seen 9000ms on an iPad, 2000ms on a netbook and 4800 on a Tegra-2-based AC100
Benchmark Pi
The commonly used Pi test was completed in 1387ms which is a good score for a Cortex A8 implementation at 1Ghz
3D Performance (NeoCore)
The Neocore result of 53.5 FPS is very good and highlights that the PowerVR SGX540 in the platform is one of the most powerful out there at the moment. We tried to run the Neocore test on the AC100, Tegra2 platform, but the test is clearly not supporting the Tegra2 graphics.
3G Performance
We’ve had no issues with 3G connectivity since we got the Tab over 3 weeks ago. Reception is always strong and our data throughput rates always good. In a cellar-based test of three phones, the Galaxy Tab was able to train to the HSDPA (3.5G) standard. A Nokia N82 got UMTS (3G) but our Sony Ericsson X10 could only train to the GSM standard. Our cellar-based studio is a tough test for any 3G radio and we rarely see any devices getting 3G. In a second test we saw the Galaxy Tab drop to the GSM standard while the Nokia N82 retained 3G so clearly the Tab is not class-leading but in general, it gives respectable results.
3G video calling (European UMTS standard) worked well with the front cam providing a fair experience. We haven’t extensively tested GSM voice performance but we certainly haven’t had any problems either with loudspeaker use or headset use. We tested the Tab as a primary phone for a week. Note that the Galaxy Tab can’t be used against the ear because there is no low-volume earpiece. Speaker at low volume can be used with the device rotated through 180 degrees.
Note that the SIM card (GSM/UMTS versions) can be live-swapped but removing a SIM sends the device into a (graceful) reboot. Inserting a SIM does the same.
Storage/SD card performance
We tried a few SD card read/write tests from the market but results varied from a minimum of 2MB/s write speed to 6MB/s write speed on the internal memory. In a large file transfer we measures 4.5MB/s write speed to the internal storage and a 7.4MB/s rate to the SD card (Class 6 Transcend 8GB card.) Buying a fast SD card might be worthwhile for storing applications and data.
Speaker/Mic/Headphones
We don’t have the facilities to properly test the speakers or headphone output quality so we’ll have to give you our ear-test results. We can’t find anything to worry about! The built-in speakers are top quality for a device of this size and beat many laptops and netbooks we’ve tested. Our Viliv S7 is the only device we have that sounds better. As for headphones, again, the quality is good and free of any background noise.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab supports wireless printing but we haven’t been able to test this yet. If/when we do, this section of the review will be updated.
Battery life.
We’ve been testing the Galaxy Tab for over 3 weeks now and we’re confident to say that you’ll have trouble running this device flat in anything under 6 hours. Our most extreme test was in-car using 3G with the screen on running Google Navigation. The projected battery life in this scenario was 6 hours. Maybe turning on the 3G router and playing music could have brought the battery life down further but it would be an unlikely scenario.
Expect 12-18hours of usage if you’re using the device for up to about 6 hours per day with Wifi or 3G connectivity for general activities. With the occasional 10-20 minutes usage for 5/6 times per day, you can expect over 2 days use before charging. With the screen off, the device will run, connected to Wifi, for many days (Samsung quote a 3G standby time of 1500 hours) and if you’re just playing back MP3s with the screen off, we see again, multiple days usage.
Talk time is quoted as 16.5 hours which is a good indication of battery life streaming audio over 3G (screen off.)
Video playback time is estimated at 7 hours (medium brightness)
When the screen is off, the Galaxy Tab is a Galaxy S smartphone with three times the battery capacity. With the screen on you can expect significant drain. We estimated that an idle device with screen on full would drain flat in under 15 hours.
3G Router performance.
In a test of battery life we set the device up as a 3G hotspot, turned the backlight off and used it via our laptop’s wifi connection about 30cm away. After 30 mins, the battery life had dropped 4%. After 2hours with 2 external WiFi devices, radio streaming, web usage and the Tab also using the connection, the battery life dropped by 15%. We’re confident that you’ll get 10hrs out of the device in this ‘hotspot’ mode; Probably a lot more.
A bandwidth test indicated 2.5Mbps down and 1.2mbps up (indoors) which is more than acceptable. There’s no heat build-up.
In-car usage
We found a generic netbook/umpc car mount solution (see here for details) and tested the Galaxy Tab in the car. While you’ll have to be careful of reflections (mount high and angle towards driver usually solves the issue) you won’t have to worry too much about speaker volume, GPS quality and usability. We found the Tab an excellent solution with 3G and Google Navigation and made a demo video which is included below. More images in the gallery. Information about the official Samsung car mount below. We’re hoping that Samsung introduces an in-car application for the docking station but we haven’t seen any evidence of it yet.
Heat and noise.
During all of our tests we haven’t detected any significant heat on the device and as the device is free of any moving parts, it’s silent.
WiFi performance
We know the lay of the land round here in terms of WiFi so it’s always easy to see how good any WiFi antenna is. We’re seeing very good results from the Galaxy Tab in terms of reception. In a walk-away outdoor test from our hotspot we got very cold before the Wifi dropped out. (It’s very good)
Wifi connections were fast to establish.
Throughput speeds over our Wifi-N hotspot have been excellent with a speedtest clocking in at over 10Mbps. Note though that application transfer speeds depend a lot on the processing performed by the client. For example, with an FTP transfer from another continent ran well at 4mbps, the SFTP transfer of the same file from the same server was less than one tenth as fast. Encrypted IP connections (E.g. SCP, HTTPS, VPN, RDP) will be affected.
Bluetooth support.
The Galaxy Tab includes a Bluetooth 3.0 module but as this is the only device we have with BT 3.0, we can’t test the new features that include the negotiation of a Wifi data transfer. We tested A2DP, headset profile, file transfer (to the Galaxy Tab from a Nokia N82), file transfer (from the Galaxy Tab to a laptop) and saw that DUN, Object Push, OBEX File Transfer and a headset gateway service were available on the Tab. We tried DUN from our laptop but couldn’t get it to work. We’re happy using the 3G router function on the Tab to connect via Wifi though so didn’t spend much time trying to get it to work.
Stability.
Over the last three weeks we’ve seen a few lock-ups that have lasted more than 10 seconds. Most of these resulted in an error message and an offer to close the offending application. We saw one lock-up which needed a reboot. This occurred after some testing of the haptics and sound settings for notifications. Reset requires a long, 10-second, press of the power button. In comparison to other phones and computers, we don’t see the Galaxy Tab as having any major stability problems. As we mentioned before, the more applications you load, the more change you will have of bugs, lock-ups and other issues.
Memory and process management.
The Galaxy Tab has 512MB of RAM with 440MB available for use. We’ve never knowingly had any sort of memory problem on the Galaxy Tab and the RAM manager always seems to show 100MB free at any time. Note that Android aims to keep as much in memory as possible so don’t be alarmed at the 340MB usage rate. Samsung’s application manager application permits the user to free up memory in two stages. We tested it but haven’t had an cause to use it yet.
More critical is CPU availability, especially when running multiple applications. Again, the Samsung application manager gives you a good indication of usage with the widget turning red when it detects what could be runaway CPU usage. Viewing and killing foreground applications is a simple process.
Boot-up speeds.
You’ll rarely have to boot-up the device although a SIM swap does require two of them. We powered up to the homescreen on a 3-week old build in 40 seconds.
Firmware upgrade
We’re not quite sure how firmware will be updated on the Galaxy Tab. There doesn’t appear to be an over-the-air configuration so we can only imagine it will be done using PC-based software.
Accessories
At the time of writing, none of the official Samsung accessories are available but pricing and images are.
We suspect that many people will be looking at the docking station which provides HDMI and analogue audio out, charging and a USB connection for connectivity with a PC. We don’t see any USB OTG support but we’ve ordered a docking station just to be sure! Street price: 37 Euro.
The keyboard dock will solve the problem of adding a Bluetooth or USB keyboard but at a price of about 90 Euros, doesn’t come cheap. The dock can charge the Tab, provide 3.5mm audio output and has a USB port for PC connectivity.
For the car, you’ll be looking for a mount and a 12V adaptor. The mount, at a street price of 52 Euros, includes everything you need including a 12v adaptor. There’s also an audio out port. Considering how good our experience was with Google Navigation (above) we’d certainly recommend this for people in countries with Google Navigation coverage and a suitable data connection. (Note: Google Navigation can be used offline, without a data connection, as long as the route is planned and started before leaving a Wifi hotspot connection. No re-routing is possible when offline.)
The leather case, at 35 Euro street price, looks good too.
During the final stages of writing this review a silicon case turned up from Handy Heaven (via Amazon Germany here) at €5.99 including delivery, we think it’s a must-have. It fits well, has cut-outs for ports, protects the vulnerable back-side and provides a huge improvement in grip. Quite how long it will last before it gets dusty, dirty and stretches we don’t know but at this price, order a few of them! There are plenty of other 3rd-party solutions coming into the market though so have a look around.
Before we summarise the Galaxy Tab and draw a line on this three-part review, let’s talk briefly about the things we think that aren’t so good about the Galaxy Tab.
Slippery finish The plastics and finish on the Galaxy Tab are top-class and there’s a useful fingerprint-rejecting layer on the device too. You’ll still need to wipe it down occasionally but thanks to the coating, it’s easy. The downside of this super-smooth surface is that if it’s cold and dry, the Tab is very slippery. The silicon case mentioned above solves the problem.
USB OTG Bluetooth keyboards and mice are good but when the battery runs out on these accessories, it would be nice to be able to plug in a standard keyboard and mouse using USB On-The-Go support. Plugging in USB or powered hard drives for extra storage would have also been nice.
Micro USB charging The 30-pin connector keeps the port count low but considering that mobile phones, in Europe at least, are moving towards the micro-usb standard, we would have liked to have seen it on the Galaxy Tab. Buying a second charging cable is almost a must although we like the idea of using the docking station as a charging point.
USB charging from PCs is slow With a battery that is 3X the size of a smartphone battery you have to expect it to take longer over the restricted current available on a USB port. 8 to 9 hours is to be expected and if you’re using the device heavily, you’ll run the battery down faster than a USB port can charge it. The supplied adaptor provides well over 1000ma of current. We tested charging on a few battery packs with USB but neither of them managed to trigger the fast-loading that the supplied chargers is capable of. The supplied charger completes charing in about 3.5hrs
Camera quality From the screen to the CPU, everything on the Galaxy Tab feels leading-edge, apart from the camera. The 3.2MP auto-focus implementation isn’t bad but it’s behind the quality we’ve seen on Samsung phones over the last year. 5.0MP with 720p recording would have brought it up to standard. We do like the camera software, speed and huge, huge ‘viewfinder’ though.
App styling While the Samsung applications are functional and worth using, they’re not exactly pretty.
AC3 support We’re surprised to see that the Galaxy Tab can’t decode and down-mix an AC3audio track. Maybe the audio appears as raw AC3 on the HDMI port but if you’re using the speakers or headphones, you’ll hear nothing. We hope that Samsung pays attention to this because if you’re looking at the Galaxy Tab as a serious PMP, you’ll get tripped up time and time again with AC3 and AAC multi-channel soundtracks. MP3 and AAC 2-channel stereo works fine.
Incompatible applications Samsung said from day one that they expect 90% of applications to work without a problem. We’ve seen a number of applications that work in a windowed WVGA mode and some that don’t work at all. We expect slightly more than 90% of applications to work but if there’s an application that it critical to you, it would pay to have it checked out. (Our forum members can help)
Android video application support The front facing cam can be used for 3G video calling but it doesn’t seem to register well with Android video applications. We weren’t able to get UStream or QIK broadcasting working which is a shame because it would make a very compact and long-lasting low-end broadcast unit.
Price The 799 Euro recommended retail price is too high and we think there’s universal agreement about that but 2-months after the price was announced, we’re seeing prices closer to 600 Euro than 800 Euro. At the current street price of 649 Euro we think the Galaxy Tab provides enough features to justify the price but it’s up to the end-user to decide how that feature profile fits their requirements. We do, however, expect prices to drop further and expect sub 599 prices in the early part of 2011. If Samsung commit to upgrading the Galaxy Tab to Android 2.3 (we’ve heard that one Samsung representative has confirmed this) then the device will represent even better value.
Alternatives
Our Galaxy Tab product page on Carrypad always shows a list of 10 comparable devices (based on screen size) so check it out for the latest device alternatives.
It’s been 3 weeks since we started testing the Galaxy Tab for this review and in that time we’ve seen no real showstoppers. Quality is high and the extensive feature list still impresses us. It’s one of the best truly converged mobile internet devices we’ve seen and Android allows it to be used in a flexible way. We’ve also heard from Galaxy Tab customers in our forum and there’s a unanimous agreement that it’s a great device. Having said that, no-one really needs it. Like the iPad, it’s a luxury item that brings together existing capabilities from other products and combines them well in a stylish package. Netbooks and smartphones allow you to do more than the Galaxy Tab does but it’s the convenience factor that really makes it special. We’ve long been proponents of the three-device strategy [image from 2008] and we think the Galaxy Tab fits in better than any other device we’ve tested. As for price, well, you’ve got the facts now…it’s up to you.
With a huge thanks to Viewsonic Europe I’ll be taking delivery of the Viewpad 7 in just a few days. Retail packages go out for review later in the week but we’ve been promised a final sample from the product managers personal stash. They’ve seen our in-depth reviews and warts-and-all live reviews so they must be feeling confident !
At 399 Pounds it’s a little above what we thought we’d see but there’s a nice little trade-in program going on where you can send in an netbook or notebook under 4 years old and they will give you 100 pounds back. If you’re one of the thousands of people that have an old Asus EeePC 701 knocking about, this is a great opportunity.
Besides the trade-in though there’s the potential for a really nice little value-for-money tablet here. We’re not talking Galaxy Tab quality or performance but we are talking the ability to do almost everything the Tab can. It really is one of the few complete Android experiences to be seen on a tablet. Everything is there from multitouch capacitive screen, Android 2.2, Market, quad-band 3G and tri-band GSM. Yes, this can be a phone if you want! Full specs and information here on our tracking page.
I read a hands-on from @faaborgs in Denmark today and although the translation is a little iffy, you’ll be able to pick up that the owner is happy. Not bad for someone who likes Porsche! While Galaxy Tab owners might be praising performance and quality, I think the Viewpad 7 owners are going to be praising value-for-money.
So, the Viewpad 7 is expected here on Wednesday and that means one thing – Live Video. Bring along a beer because at about 8pm London time (2100 CET – other times here) we’re going to be spending a couple of hours going over the device for you and with you. A chat session will be open and if you’ve got questions, just ask! In the latter part of the live testing, we’ll highlight some of the differences between the the Viewpad 7 and the Galaxy Tab because we’ve got one of those here too. JKK from JKKMobile is due to join us and if we can get anyone else to chip-in over Skype, we will!
Will there be a showstopper? Will the video performance be up to scratch? (we’re sensing stock Android here which means no 3rd-party codecs) will the YouTube player be able to support HQ videos. What about the lack of Flash (this is an ARM11 device; It doesn’t support Flash despite the Android 2.2 build.) How about the battery life from the slightly smaller battery (compared to the Galaxy Tab) is the 800×480 screen going to be a handicap and critically, for many, is the ARM11 CPU going to return acceptable Web performance. We have questions about USB OTG and box contents too. Does it include the case for example?
With a huge thanks to Viewsonic Europe I’ll be taking delivery of the Viewpad 7 in just a few days. Retail packages go out for review later in the week but we’ve been promised a final sample from the product managers personal stash. They’ve seen our in-depth reviews and warts-and-all live reviews so they must be feeling confident !
At 399 Pounds it’s a little above what we thought we’d see but there’s a nice little trade-in program going on where you can send in an netbook or notebook under 4 years old and they will give you 100 pounds back. If you’re one of the thousands of people that have an old Asus EeePC 701 knocking about, this is a great opportunity.
Besides the trade-in though there’s the potential for a really nice little value-for-money tablet here. We’re not talking Galaxy Tab quality or performance but we are talking the ability to do almost everything the Tab can. It really is one of the few complete Android experiences to be seen on a tablet. Everything is there from multitouch capacitive screen, Android 2.2, Market, quad-band 3G and tri-band GSM. Yes, this can be a phone if you want! Full specs and information here on our tracking page.
I read a hands-on from @faaborgs in Denmark today and although the translation is a little iffy, you’ll be able to pick up that the owner is happy. Not bad for someone who likes Porsche! While Galaxy Tab owners might be praising performance and quality, I think the Viewpad 7 owners are going to be praising value-for-money.
So, the Viewpad 7 is expected here on Wednesday and that means one thing Live Video. Bring along a beer because at about 8pm London time (2100 CET other times here) we’re going to be spending a couple of hours going over the device for you and with you. A chat session will be open and if you’ve got questions, just ask! In the latter part of the live testing, we’ll highlight some of the differences between the the Viewpad 7 and the Galaxy Tab because we’ve got one of those here too. JKK from JKKMobile is due to join us and if we can get anyone else to chip-in over Skype, we will!
Will there be a showstopper? Will the video performance be up to scratch? (we’re sensing stock Android here which means no 3rd-party codecs) will the YouTube player be able to support HQ videos. What about the lack of Flash (this is an ARM11 device; It doesn’t support Flash despite the Android 2.2 build.) How about the battery life from the slightly smaller battery (compared to the Galaxy Tab) is the 800×480 screen going to be a handicap and critically, for many, is the ARM11 CPU going to return acceptable Web performance. We have questions about USB OTG and box contents too. Does it include the case for example?
While I’m in the mood, freshly inspired by the e.quinox project, I want to write about a few more super-efficient ‘PCs’ that I’ve been using recently. Both are based on ARM CPUs and show they way for 2011. Later in this article I’ll talk a bit more about technologies to watch out for.
The price of the Galaxy Tab is gradually coming down but it’s clear that it will never reach the 250 Euro price of the Archos 70. It looks the same, comes with 8GB of storage, a similar processor, similar operating system and plays back video just like the Tab. So what’s the difference?
Balazs of Ndevil unboxes the Archos 70 in the video below and Charbax has a text/video review up. You’ll hear them talk about some of the very important differences between this and the Galaxy Tab but lets list them all here so you can compare.
There may be others differences and in terms of software, some of the issues on the Archos 70 can be fixed through hacks but the summary is that on the Galaxy Tab, you’re paying 450 Euros for voice,3G, hi-res screen, auto-focus cam, 8GB storage, GPS and the Samsung Google software. That’s a lot of money for features that you probably don’t need when you’re lazing around at home and if the Archos 70 is as good as people are saying (I’m getting good feedback from owners so far) and if Archos push that V2.2 firmware out ASAP then the Archos 70 is definitely a better value product for sofa-surfing. When it comes to mobility though, the Tab has the edge although with the Viewpad 7 coming in at 399 Euros in the next few weeks, there’s quite a head-to-head building up on this 7 inch space. (Actually there’s at least 16 devices in our database, more to come soon!)
Converged devices mean more functionality and, unfortunately for me, the need for much longer reviews! I’ve been working hard on the Galaxy Tab over the last few weeks and over at Carrypad I have just posted Part 2 of the full review where I cover things that some of you ‘mo-pros’ out there will be interested in. Browser details, office and PIM applications and the rest of the included Samsung software suite. It’s fair to say that Samsung have added a lot of good stuff to the user experience in terms of usability and functionality and it shows the way forward for Android tablets. Unfortunately, not many developers are taking 1024×600 into consideration so much of the software out there still works with small-screen layouts.
You’re getting a lot for your money though and at this stage I can say that if you’re not dependant on Windows software you should take a close look at the Tab. I’m finding it’s fitting in well between a smartphone (even a basic one) and a netbook in my 3-device strategy.
