I'm gonna save everyone the trouble to those considering this device (or anything similar from mainland China).
These are really cheap,slow,horrid devices. I bought one out of curiosity,. I had no delusions on what it would be. I didn't believe any of the specs. I figure I needed a slow-low end Android device for app-debugging. Worst case scenario, I would use it as a 7" Picture frame.
1) Slow. These machines are advertised at 600mhz. In reality,the sellers combine the CPU/GPU to get the total figure. Some are advertised at 1.2ghz,etc. OK, at 600mhz divided by 1/2, I thought I could live with a 300mhz cpu. Boy, was I wrong. Running sysinfo (See picture), the thing is running at 174mhz. I don't even remember an old Dell Axim x3, Treo, Palm, or compaq running this slow.
2) Low on memory. 128MB is the advertised spec. Well, with nothing running, I only have around 30megs free. I am constantly killing tasks.
3) Unresponsive. Screen is beyond un-responsive. You really need a stylus. I don't have one extra lying around. Accidental launching, accidental clicks are abound to happen.
4) Horrid screen. I have a bunch of 7" LCD screens - displaylink, the first eeepc, some digital picture frames, a liliput. So I know about poor/avg quality. This thing is beyond horrible. Color dithers so bad. I think it only supports 256 to 16,000 colors. It is like a really badly dithered GIF. The colors are completely washed out. Forget the idea of a picture frame. I've seen 10 year old Nokia cellphones that look better.
5)Slow. I just want to bring this up again and drive the point home. Playing video is only low-bitrate 3GP. Youtube does not work. Music playback is choppy. E-book reading is laggy.
6) Battery life. I don't think I ever got more than 30 minutes out of mine. I've been reading the "fan boards" on this device. The failure rate is abysmally high. I had it fully charged and turned it off so I could show a friend. 6 hours later (with no use/completely turned off), the battery indicated I only had 45% left. Something is seriously wrong. I don't think I have an isolated device. Again, reading online, the failure rate is high.
7)Shoddy build quality. At night, the led lights over-power the machine, you can see it leak light from different crevices and panel gaps. The plastic is so flimsy.
8) No marketplace. I'm still looking for an APK. Hopefully someone cooks a new ROM. Until then, my opinion of this device will not change.
Overall, I don't mind the slowness that much. It is slightly useable for twitter/facebook feeds IF it didn't have the unresponsiveness. They really needed to include a stylus with this.
If they made a d-pad, I could at least navigate among icons and links on a webpage. Well, the d-pad controls the volume regardless of what you do.
I also wish you can just use a regular USB cable. What is with the fake iPod connector which can't even charge the device.
Positives:
1) The Eken doesn't try to be a knock-off iPad like the aPad. It has all the Android keys (home,return,menu)
2) full size SD slot
3) Wifi works with WPA.
Attached are 2 picts.-- Edit: The pictures didn't attached. I guess a session timed out.
These are really cheap,slow,horrid devices. I bought one out of curiosity,. I had no delusions on what it would be. I didn't believe any of the specs. I figure I needed a slow-low end Android device for app-debugging. Worst case scenario, I would use it as a 7" Picture frame.
1) Slow. These machines are advertised at 600mhz. In reality,the sellers combine the CPU/GPU to get the total figure. Some are advertised at 1.2ghz,etc. OK, at 600mhz divided by 1/2, I thought I could live with a 300mhz cpu. Boy, was I wrong. Running sysinfo (See picture), the thing is running at 174mhz. I don't even remember an old Dell Axim x3, Treo, Palm, or compaq running this slow.
2) Low on memory. 128MB is the advertised spec. Well, with nothing running, I only have around 30megs free. I am constantly killing tasks.
3) Unresponsive. Screen is beyond un-responsive. You really need a stylus. I don't have one extra lying around. Accidental launching, accidental clicks are abound to happen.
4) Horrid screen. I have a bunch of 7" LCD screens - displaylink, the first eeepc, some digital picture frames, a liliput. So I know about poor/avg quality. This thing is beyond horrible. Color dithers so bad. I think it only supports 256 to 16,000 colors. It is like a really badly dithered GIF. The colors are completely washed out. Forget the idea of a picture frame. I've seen 10 year old Nokia cellphones that look better.
5)Slow. I just want to bring this up again and drive the point home. Playing video is only low-bitrate 3GP. Youtube does not work. Music playback is choppy. E-book reading is laggy.
6) Battery life. I don't think I ever got more than 30 minutes out of mine. I've been reading the "fan boards" on this device. The failure rate is abysmally high. I had it fully charged and turned it off so I could show a friend. 6 hours later (with no use/completely turned off), the battery indicated I only had 45% left. Something is seriously wrong. I don't think I have an isolated device. Again, reading online, the failure rate is high.
7)Shoddy build quality. At night, the led lights over-power the machine, you can see it leak light from different crevices and panel gaps. The plastic is so flimsy.
8) No marketplace. I'm still looking for an APK. Hopefully someone cooks a new ROM. Until then, my opinion of this device will not change.
Overall, I don't mind the slowness that much. It is slightly useable for twitter/facebook feeds IF it didn't have the unresponsiveness. They really needed to include a stylus with this.
If they made a d-pad, I could at least navigate among icons and links on a webpage. Well, the d-pad controls the volume regardless of what you do.
I also wish you can just use a regular USB cable. What is with the fake iPod connector which can't even charge the device.
Positives:
1) The Eken doesn't try to be a knock-off iPad like the aPad. It has all the Android keys (home,return,menu)
2) full size SD slot
3) Wifi works with WPA.
Attached are 2 picts.-- Edit: The pictures didn't attached. I guess a session timed out.
. They JUST wanted to eat the first scoop of soup in iPad market. So speedy release and low price were their prior weapons.
