Dragon touch 9.7 IPS Allwinner A10 Review

Rabid1 · January 6th, 2013, 11:56 PM

Dragon touch 9.7 IPS Allwinner A10

I wrote this review a few weeks ago and never got around to posting it because I was busy working on the two DT 9.7 I have. I am happy to announce I now have two working Livesuit images for the Dragon Touch 9.7 on a basic stock and another custom. I will create a separate thread for the ROMS.

I have had two of these for a couple months now putting it through it's paces before putting out a review. They retail at the $150-$170 mark. Normally I do a first impressions but one issue with the reseller made me hold back a little which I will go into at the end of the review.

First the Manufacturers Specs:

Operation system: Android 4.0.4 Support HD Flash 11
Main IC: A10 (CPU+ GPU+ VPU) Cortex A8 1.2G
Screen: 9.7 inches IPS 5 Points Capacitive Touch 16:9. 1024 * 768
Storage: 16GB
Memory: 1 GB
Storage Extend: 128MB-32GB SD/TF Support
Wifi: 802.11b/g/n
Camera: Dual-Camera, 5.0Mpx Back, 1.3Mpx Front
G-Sensor: All gravity induction
USB: Dual Min USB (this ias actually incorrect. It is dual Micro USB)
Battery: 7800mAh
Language: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese,Polish ,Russian, Chinese
Online entertainment: Support Online video, online TV, online Movie, Online Music, Online Radio.
Game: 3D Game can be supported by internal 3d accelerate of hardware. There are more than 200 thousands kind of free software in google market
Music Playing: MP3,WMA,APE,FLAC,WAV Format
Video Playing: Formats Support: MKV(H.264 HP),AVI,RM/RMVB, MPEG-1,MPEG-2
Video Output: HDMI 720P to 1080P to 2160P full HD output,and Video OutPut(AV OutPut)

The tablet comes with the standard USB cable, OTG adapter, and charger. Functioning Play Store installed. Unit charges off of USB as well.

Out of the box this is a nice feeling solid tablet. The screen is bright and crisp, touch is very responsive without being over sensitive. It is a very nice looking 9.7 tablet. There are some pics of the tablet and ports below.

This has been a really solid tablet. WiFi is strong, battery life is about 5-6hours with WiFi on. Screen brightness is phenomenal at the low setting.

Benchmarks are pretty decent. Stock CaffeineMark gives it 5700-6020 and Quadrant scores a solid 2290, which for an Allwinner A10 with no tweaks is pretty good. The system actually comes stock at 1.2GHZ as opposed to the normal 1.0GHZ that most 1.2GHZ advertised run at. So far all is stable. SetCPU and OverClockWidget work on it.

Movies and TV shows look awesome. Netflix works. Speaker sound is pretty good. The system seems to not like AC3 audio too much, it plays it but seems to over modulate it. But that is a complaint on a lot of 4.0.4 devices. Definitely better sound than a lot of other mid range tablets I have and have tested. Movies play great through HDMI to both my big screens.

Dual Cameras. What can you say for any front facing web cam quality camera? MEH? Looks good video is fine. Now the 2MP rear facing camera. That is a little different story. This seems to be a step up from a lot of the secondary cameras on tablets. While only 2MP it takes really nice pictures,(when I wrote this I was going off the listed specs. Like a few of the listed specs they were wrong, it is a 5.0MP, if this thing had an LED it would be awesome.) does well in low light, and has an auto focus feature. You can see the reticles finding and adjusting parts of the image when you are taking pictures. Takes very nice 720P video in good light.

E-reading is really strong on this tablet, looks pretty good even in sunlight. 9.7 is, IMHO, the perfect size for comic and graphic novel reading.

Overall this tablet itself is a great little tablet for the price. If saving a few bucks over the latest and greatest dual core is good for you than this is the tablet for you.

But let's get to the issue I mentioned earlier. More and more tablets are being released onto the market with little to no support from the resellers or manufacturers. This used to be almost solely limited to China direct white box tablets. But lately it is becoming more common in US based sellers as well. Zeki is a good example, great tablet, zero support from the manufacturer.

In the case of the DragonTouch by Tablets Express, the first unit I got had dust under the digitizer. Customer service from Tablets Express was quick to respond and I had an exchange in a little over a week, on their dime. Pretty cool. The new unit arrived, it was shipped powered on and in sleep mod. Now technically nothing wrong with that except running electronics are more susceptible to thing like moisture, shock when running. When it woke, the tablet froze. When I powered it back on nothing happened. I connected it to my PC and was able to show that the device would boot into fel mode (the hardware recovery) and the Livesuit drivers would install successfully. I contacted Tablet express to see about getting a link to firmware to flash. They wanted me to ship the tablet back to them for testing. I replied that if they gave me a link that I could test for them and save us all time and money, they again stated I could send back the tablet and if it was defective they would replace it. After several attempts to explain to them I was not just a joe schmoe user and I knew what I was doing, even going as far as to offer a non disclosure agreement, I gave in and sent the tablet back. After some more e-mails about future tablet updates a response came that "had no idea how to flash or the firmware for the tablet." Wow. But as far as replacing the tablets they are fast and courteous.

This all boils down to, this is a really solid tablet. But if you like to play with and customize your Android firmware, there is currently no stock firmware image to fall back on if your should kill an install. There are scripts available that can pull the necessary files needed to build a Livesuit image to flash, but it is a tedious and not 100% guaranteed process.

I would give this a 5 out of 5 stars if it wasn't for the firmware not being available. I would still recommend it, unless you are tinker junkie then it all depends on how you look at no established image for recover.

Destiny64 · May 8th, 2013, 07:42 AM

I have AKRON TabTen T10A16M and i can say the same .. tablet is nice but the same problem show up for ppl who like to play with it

Nice post

mikedt · May 10th, 2013, 07:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rabid1

In the case of the DragonTouch by Tablets Express, the first unit I got had dust under the digitizer. Customer service from Tablets Express was quick to respond and I had an exchange in a little over a week, on their dime. Pretty cool. The new unit arrived, it was shipped powered on and in sleep mod. Now technically nothing wrong with that except running electronics are more susceptible to thing like moisture, shock when running. When it woke, the tablet froze. When I powered it back on nothing happened. I connected it to my PC and was able to show that the device would boot into fel mode (the hardware recovery) and the Livesuit drivers would install successfully. I contacted Tablet express to see about getting a link to firmware to flash. They wanted me to ship the tablet back to them for testing. I replied that if they gave me a link that I could test for them and save us all time and money, they again stated I could send back the tablet and if it was defective they would replace it. After several attempts to explain to them I was not just a joe schmoe user and I knew what I was doing, even going as far as to offer a non disclosure agreement, I gave in and sent the tablet back.

They may not even have the manufacturer's ROM file themselves. Sure DragonTouch is just a brand name that's used by Tablets Express, and the actual manufacturer is more than likely unknown, or is only known to Tablets Express. It could have even just come from another Chinese wholesaler/trading company.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rabid1

After some more e-mails about future tablet updates a response came that "had no idea how to flash or the firmware for the tablet." Wow. But as far as replacing the tablets they are fast and courteous.

That's what they'd do, more than likely they'd quickly test it, prove that it is actually bricked or otherwise defective, and just replace it from stock. The defective ones are sent back to Tablets Express' source in China to deal with. Then they're probably just crushed or other otherwise recycled.