Stab, stab, stab. Stab, stab, stab. No, that's not me trying to stab my own eyes out in frustration, nor me plunging a kitchen implement into whoever chucked together the Huawei Ideos Tablet S7, but me trying to get the touchscreen first to register my taps and second to respond to them.
But wait! It's a resistive screen, not a capacitive one. So what you actually need is the stylus tucked away around the back of the device.
But it's a horrible little stylus, made of brittle plastic that you'll either break or lose within a few days, at which point you'll go back to stabbing the tablet with your fingers. Which sort of works, but will drive you crazy. And surely the whole point of a tablet is that you use your fingers? Styluses are – or should be – implements of history.
Every tech company and its dog is churning out tablets at the moment and the range is baffling. What this means is that some poor unsuspecting tablet-shopper who doesn't have enough money for an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy might think that this tablet, which you can find online for around £250, is a viable alternative.
It's not. Save up for an iPad, the Galaxy or the upcoming Motorola Xoom, which will run Honeycomb, the version of Android properly optimised for tablets. This one is a collection of compromises. The size is OK – it's seven inches, which fits neatly into the hands. But it feels heavy and not particularly portable: at 500 grammes, it's weightier than the Galaxy (380 grammes), and not a lot lighter than the bigger iPad (730 grammes). And it's thicker than the bigger iPad.
The screen is reasonably bright, but is lacking in punch and is low on the pixel count at 800x480.
One of the reasons the price is so low is that there's no onboard storage – you have to add a Micro SD card to take pictures or even to read the user manual, as the app to launch it, Documents to Go, requires that SD card.
It's an Android tab, but it's only running 2.1, so there's no Flash.
I'm not a fan of Android at the best of times, but this device, with its Fisher Price-like icons and clunky interface, will try the patience of even the most devoted Android-lover.
I was constantly distracted by the flashing "i" in the top right-hand corner, worrying that it was warning me about something. Turns out that all it's doing is telling you that it's running several apps at once – which you should really avoid doing, as the 768MHz processor struggles to cope.
Connectivity-wise, it's OK, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and there's space for a sim card too, but it struggled to hold on to my home Wi-Fi network. It comes with a mini-USB cable, but that won't charge it – it requires its own proprietary charger. And you'll need to keep that charger handy – battery life is a problem with this tablet, with many users reporting only about two and a half hours of juice. That is surely the dealbreaker: a tablet should be a device you want to take out and about with you and have it keep going throughout your commute to work, your working day and then your journey home. This one just doesn't cut it, not on that front, nor any other. It's not cheap and cheerful, it's cheap and a bit nasty.
Pros: well, it's cheap.
Cons: battery life, screen, stylus, proprietary charger, old version of Android – need I go on?
Image and review is via guardian
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