On Mon, 3 Dec 2012, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
http://aldi.com.au/au/html/offers/2827_24562.htm
On Wednesday Aldi will sell a 7" tablet running Android 4.0 for $99. It's got 512M of RAM and 16G of storage but only a 800*480 screen (the same resolution as a lot of phones).
I've just bought one. They are selling rapidly and I don't know how long they will last - probably you could get a returned one next week if you can't get one today. But if you like pink then you may be able to get one (the black ones are selling out). The tablet seems like a nice piece of hardware, solid construction and it feels nice to hold. Mine has a minor screen defect, but that's the sort of thing you expect from a cheap device, apart from that the display is good. The Wifi doesn't seem to have as good a range as some other devices (such as my phones and the more expensive 10" tablet I got from Kogan). This isn't a problem for me (the data intensive uses for this device will be in the same room as the AP) but could be a killer for some people. If you use your phone as an AP and it's in your pocket while using the tablet then it should be fine. I found Youtube unusable due to slow downloading even when sitting next to the AP but I can play videos downloaded from iView that are on my local web server (which is more important to me). I haven't tested it yet, but I hope that I can play TED talks on it. I had no initial problems with the Google Play store, but I did have it hang on me after using it for a while, maybe due to a Wifi issue. The people who build Android for modern devices seem remarkably stupid when it comes to partitioning, every device I've seen has only a small fraction of the storage usable for apps. This tablet is the worst I've ever seen, it has 16G of storage of which there is 512M partitioned for apps of which only 400M is free when you first get the device! It comes pre-installed with outdated versions of the Facebook client and Google Maps (which isn't very useful on a Wifi device) and some other useless things. If you upgrade them to the latest versions then you'll probably lose another 100M of the 512M! Also Angry Birds Star Wars doesn't work, that's really annoying. I have yet to find a device that can play that game. In conclusion, it's not the greatest Android tablet. But it can be OK value for $100. I don't think I'll return it. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/