HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises 182
Ars Technica reports that HP is back in the $100 tablet market, and this time with a tablet that's intended to be priced there instead of just a fire sale. The new offering lacks Bluetooth and GPS, among other features you might wish for in a tablet, and the screen is surrounded by a hefty bezel, but manages a pretty good list of features. Ars summarizes: "For $100, you can't expect much of the spec sheet. The HP 7 Plus has a 7-inch 1024x600 IPS display, a 1GHz quad-core Cortex A7 processor (made by a company called "Allwinner"), 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, 802.11 b/g/n, a microSD slot, and a 2800 mAh battery. The biggest downside HP could have fixed at this price point is the software: it's only running Android 4.2.2. Android versions are free, HP." Having an avaialble microSD slot beats some more expensive options, too.
No bluetooth? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm wondering how much it costs to add bluetooth to a device. I mean... them bluetooth headsets have it in, hell even the dinky little $12 'bluetooth speakers' you can park next to your iThing have it in...
What in the world possessed them to release a device that doesn't have bleutooth?
Stop crippling the technology; boycott needed (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with these tablets and other computing devices is all of digital restrictions, proprietary drivers, and similar that they are being shipped with. You can't replace the wifi chip even if you wanted to and if HP uses a particular chipset that there is no driver for the latest version of android your shit out of luck. There is no source code. You can't fix the problem yourself or depend on a community to do so for you.
I'm going to call out the companies we should all be boycotting for these types of practices:
HP, Dell, Lenovo/IBM, Toshiba, Apple, and Sony.
These companies are including digital restrictions on the wifi card slot (laptops), locking boot loaders (tablets), and/or using proprietary technology (such as non-standard wifi cards, etc), etc. These practices are preventing people from switching operating systems, upgrading to the latest release of an otherwise supported OS, and much more.
See fsf.org/ryf for a list of products that aren't crippled. The list is small, but growing and you can find a lot more non-crippled devices from ThinkPenguin as well (not all RYF certified, but not crippled in any way either, and completely free software friendly/RYF'able).
Re:made by a company called "Allwinner" (Score:2, Interesting)
Allwinner is the Intel of ARM chip these days
The difference is that Intel makes the fastest and often (though as we all know, not always) most reliable chips around, and Allwinner... doesn't.
Wow, finally. (Score:5, Interesting)
These sound remarkably like the cheap Chinese tablets you can find on DealExtreme. I was wondering when a big brand was going to start slapping their name on them.
The $100 price-point is actually a bit of a deal, since that's basically what that 'tier' (The quad cores and 1024 displays) costs from DealExtreme, but I presume you're getting HP warranty and support with these. So not bad!
I bought four different 7-inch tablets in their $65-$80 price range during a half-off sale last May. My favorite is the ICOO ICOU7W.
Its specs:
800x600 screen, the 4:3 aspect being one of my favorite features, because I use it primarily for reading.
1.0GHz Allwinner A13 (Single core)
512mb of RAM
Mali-400 GPU @ 350MHz
8gb of internal storage, plus a microSD slot. (They all have microSD slots)
802.11b/g/n
Front-facing camera
Android 4.0.4 (I could probably update it, but haven't felt the need.)
3000mAh battery, 2A DC fast-charge jack*
On sale, I paid a whopping $36.45 for it. ;)
Only bad things I can say about it are no OTG on the USB port, and no bluetooth...but mostly it's the missing OTG that's a letdown. There's also no GPS which is a little bit of a bummer. Only one of the tablets I bought had GPS; the Erani E70. For some absurd reason, the MK808 'Android TV' stick I bought for $25 also had GPS. (I mean, really?!)
*It's funny, because under full load-- playing HD video, screen brightness up all the way, using the wifi, etc. --normal USB can't actually charge faster than you're discharging... So the 2-amp DC jack is handy for when you're using it in bed or something. I have no idea if the USB port is capable of fast-charging from fast-charge capable ports... I haven't tried it, but I just got a 10,400mAh portable USB battery from Jackery... If it can't, I'll have to make a USB to DC jack, so I can fast-charge through the DC jack using the 2-amp output USB port on the Jackery battery.