I saw a Samsung Galaxy Tab this weekend. The Galaxy Tab is the first mainstream tablet based on Android and the first real competition to the iPad (although it is slightly different as it is only 7″). Too bad it is a horrible deal in Canada since it goes for $675! (or you can sell your soul to Rogers for 3 years and get it for $540).

The 7″ form factor looks a lot more portable than an iPad and that got me interested again in Android tablets. I wouldn’t want a ~$700 one, but I wouldn’t mind having (or losing) a $100 one; and you can quite easily get one for $100USD shipped to your door. Coming home, I did some research. The Chinese (of course they’re Chinese) Android tablets are knockoffs of the iPad. They physically look and are packaged in the same manner as an iPad! They can be significant cheaper than the Galaxy Tab because:

1. The processor/chipset only runs at about 400MHz (vs 1GHz on the Tab)
2. There is only 256MB or 128MB of RAM
3. There is no 3G or GPS
4. Inconsistent device support (i.e., for Market access or upgrades)
5. Lower quality hardware (i.e., resistive touchscreen, flakey WiFi, short battery life)

Although these are significant drawbacks, I think a sub-$100 tablet is still worth it. There are a couple of things preventing me from pulling the trigger on one though, the first is that there is limited travel applicability due to the short battery life (<3 hrs) and my unsureness about finding multiple power adapters for it. However, the biggest reason is that these devices are all running on Android OS 1.6. While there is an active hacker community around these tablets, they’ve only been consistently upgraded to Android OS 1.9 (I didn’t even know this version was being used).

Meanwhile app development has mostly moved to Android 2.1. I’d be hesitant to get a device that wasn’t running Android 2.1 or later. So it seems like the currently Chinese tablets are at a hardware evolutionary dead end; I think the problem is that there is no driver development that supports Android 2.x.

While I have an itch to get a cheap tablet (and I still might), it’s probably better if I wait a few months for the Chinese market to move their knockoff production to this year’s model.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: android, apple, chinese