21 December 2012

Review: Flytouch (crane) G08S

WARNING!

  1. This is subjective review!
  2. It is not professional review!
  3. It contains very poor English,but I will work hard soon to improve my English 


  €¥£ INTRODUCTION

While i was in China I decided to waste my money for Chinese branded device.Unfortunately  due lack of time I couldn't find awesome 'fake' branded device (not enough time),so after while i decided to buy ... 10" tablet .So i waste too much many and bought a Chinese made and branded Tablet. My choice was  Flytouch  G08S  (crane).
Buying things in China is a funny experience.


  €¥£ EXPECTATION


  1. It will work ... more-less. 


  €¥£ FOR PEOPLE IN RUSH (SPOILERS!)

+ Battery life

 + It works
+ good quality aluminium-like shell
+ USB port that allow you to add 3G, HDD, Ethernet or other feature.

- VERY slow
- Screen resolution
- Camera is useless.
- touch capablities

  €¥£ FIRST IMPRESSION

It looks really good. Usually, shells in this things has cheap plastic feeling,but Flytouch has really good  aluminium-like feeling cover which very pleasant to feel. You will feel weight of the tablet,but it is not too heavy,which is a good .When I turn on i was welcome with ugliest splash screen ever.You just feel you loading a retro game on modern device.


  €¥£ DISPLAY
  • Size: 10"
  • Resolution: Only 1024x768 !
It is a big 10" screen with very low resolution 1024x768. it is too low resolution for this size. Everything looks too pixely ,but it maybe be good thing with people with eye problems. Virtual keyboard is usable (compare to physical usb keyboard which is terrible crap (See, next paragraph)). Touch-abilities of this device is below average but it is usable in acceptable levels.


  €¥£ KEYBOARD

  • DO NOT BUY
  • DO NOT USE
For 1 yuan (10p , 10 euro cents , 20 cents ?) .You will  receive a keyboard! Well ... 'keyboard' as this typical Chinese craphardware . It is complete unusable and will broke sooner rather than later. 
Lady from shop unpack 3 keyboards , before she found ... a working one.

If you buy any keyboard  for tablet make sure that you buy branded keyboard. As weird-branded will ruin your typing experience very quickly.


  €¥£ BATTERY
  • Long  uptime on one charge (>6hours!)
  • Slooow charging time.
  • Do not charge tablet via Laptop's USB 
 It is a very big battery. From full to empty during intense usage including Wi-Fi takes around 6 hours. Sometimes much longer. Charging this battery takes ...ages.D on't know why,but it is slow and long term process.
 Do not charge this tablet via  t via Laptop's USB  . It charge 1% per ages.It takes day to charge :) and will be discharger rather charge ,if you  trun on wifi during charging battery in this tablet. Just use charger only.
Do not use charge via  'Battery pack' as tablet will power off itself.Good uptime with problematic and slow charge time.

  €¥£ CAMERA

  • It has 2 cameras .
  • Both are useless for doing picture
  • Front one is good enough for video chat.
  • main camera has worst 2mpx ever made.
Camera is added,because all tablet MUST have these days,but it is totally unusable.I make few pictures and delete them.

Tablet has even front camera,that has quality similar 2nd generation of mobile cameras (0.3mpx ) and yes.You can recognize yourself and use for Skype chat :).

I have done pictures,but they looks too crap and  I just delete it.

  €¥£ PERFORMANCE (CPU,GPU and ETC)


Slowest Android device which I ever had. Everything works very slow caused many ANR freeze to all aplications (including core android services). .Facebook  ,FB messagner freezing from time to time but they back to normal after while.It takes ages to turn on device and it takes another ages ... or even epoch to be completly booted.After that,it works slow,but quite stable.It is usable for basic task.


  €¥£ MULTIMEDIA  & SOUND

You can play low resolution flv movies,but do not be ambitious.
Speakers in this tablet is exists but  and they making some noises but they are not design to produce any reasonably sounds.

For whatever reason volume up button works smoothly but volume down cause 'whole tablet to think for a second' before it volume down


  €¥£ CONNECTIVITY


Thanks to USB port you can plug many useful things that will extend features of this tablet as out of the box.Tablet has  WiFi only. You can plug 3G modem  , Ethernet , External HDD and many more and most of things will usually work :).


  €¥£ OTHERS
  • If you are developer,then you will be have a tiny problem with install usb drivers for this tablet,but after little hassle .It will works :) (it should be post on my blog about it,somewhere)
  • TF-Card is  just different name for  SD-Card ( micro size).
  • Tablet from time to time don't like to Power  On.It happen rarely  but it happens.
  • Tablet is very slow and it will cause lots of ANR errors pop-in.Ignore them.
  • Tablet has problem with being charged from 'battery bank pack'
  • You need SD-Card to keep your stuff as tablet.


  €¥£ Android OS , SOFTWARE   USER INTERFACE




  • Android 4.0.4
  • plain vanilla  Android Theme
It is vanilla plain android OS interface.
Because tablet is very slow the reaction for you action can be slow.
And apart of that.Nothing excited to write.

According to specification . Flytouch is shipped with Android 4.0.3,but tablet said that it is .. Android 4.0.4.
Even if Tablet itself is a vanilla plain in terms of Android OS and software included.
However. I bought this tablet in China. It  was in Chinese shop ,so while during buy process, they offer me all sort of  paid software in full version ... FOR FREE!.  You get software that is worth more than tablet itself. Great ,is it?


  €¥£ EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE

I used this tablet to write articles ,chat, learn Chinese and web browsing  during travel.
 I enjoying using this tablet for these reason .
 It does what I intended use for and do these things without any problems.
Slow but stable.


  €¥£ SUMMARY


 I bought this tablet for laugh and I don't mind if shit happens.I surprised ,that tablet is better than I expected.
Be honest. It is not worth to buy this tablet, but if you get for almost free,then you will able use this tablet for basic tasks and it will do it,slowly .Good battery is another plus .
It is usable but you can buy better tablets in similar prices.

Off-topic conclusions.
Is it worth to buy any tablet with Android  OS?
Yes. After while i see few cases ,where tablet is better than smartphone or ultra/net -book.
Is it worth to buy cheap tablet?
Yes,but this is story for separate post.

I didn't have any expectation  and I am  surprised that it works. More less.
And despite many disadvantages .I enjoying this tablet and i keep using.
If Chinese brands will improve their products as quickly as they do now,then in near future we will see new brands on worldwide market soon. See how ZTE as example.

Mark -1/4 Usable.

Explanation for my Mark Scheme

4 ==  Perfect (4! it is something which is visionary ,beyond current time and which competitions should copy as part of future standards )
2 == Above average
1 == Average
0 == Below average (0! is a crappy junk . DO NOT USE)


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