$150 Android Tablet from Kmart | Hacker News Reader

$150 Android Tablet from Kmart

electronista.com

33 pointskeltex30 comments

They're shipping the Market on the device, but it doesn't meet the conditions for access to the Market. While the Android device compatibility requirements for 2.1 allow devices without cellular connectivity, they still require a 2.0MP camera, Bluetooth, 3-axis accelerometer, and compass. This device doesn't seem to have any of those. As such Google won't license the use of the Android name for this device. Even once you meet the requirements you aren't automatically allowed to ship the Market; you have to sign a separate business agreement with Google. See http://source.android.com/compatibility/overview.html for the complete requirements to be able to use the Android trademark.

The device identifies itself as being an evaluation board for the Telechips TCC8900 SoC. They stubbed out the cell radio code with the same stub that's used by the platform simulator. As a result, the device shows that it has an active EDGE connection all the time.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sergenthalo/Gentouch78#549871111... http://picasaweb.google.com/sergenthalo/Gentouch78#549871101...

The hardware is a rebranded version of the Dawa D7 tablet:

http://www.androidpads.com/2010/06/01/dawa-d7-android-a-7-in...

Note that it actually has a 600MHz processor, though Augen claims 800MHz. That's probably because they added the on-chip 200MHz DSP to the 600MHz ARM11. Processors work like that, right? http://www.droid-life.com/2010/07/27/augen-gentouch-android-... (Scroll down to the comments.)

The videos I've seen show a Documents To Go Full Version key preloaded on the device. I'd be shocked if that was actually being paid for.

The principals of Augen Electronics (incorporated in 2005) started another business in 2006. The name of that business? Amway World Distributors Corp.

http://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Hollywood/augen-elect... http://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Dania/amway-world-dis...

You can draw your own conclusions from this.

The hardware itself seems to be cheap but serviceable from early reports. If I was an enterprising Android hacker, I'd be tempted to pick one up and put together a better designed Android-derived image that used only the open platform bits. Then I'd contact the company that actually made the tablet about getting some made with that ROM preloaded.

Thanks for the great research, I was waiting for people to start digging into this a bit more.

It looks like there's an official Linux BSP out there somewhere, possibly public, for the TCC8900 (telechips site wouldn't load for me, but cached is: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:viSH5_o...)

It is also the same SoC as the SmartQ V7 and the community there have been working on a custom kernel although I'm not sure what the status is: http://gitorious.org/mer-smartq/

It's a shame Dawa D7s seem to sell for around $220 online. I thought the OEM version might be a good opportunity for those not in the US.

  > At $150, though, it would cost less than a third
  > the price of an iPad while offering many more
  > features than a similarly priced Nook Wi-Fi.

It's cheaper than a Porsche, and has more features than a similarly-priced Ford Focus! Shouldn't you stick to the same comparison here? Otherwise it seems rather much like indirection to say "Cheaper than Product X while having more features than the similarly-priced Product Y?" The "cheaper than Product X" is essentially meaningless.

This is great news, because it might be possible to put pressure (via K-mart) on the manufacturer to live up to their GPL obligations. See http://projectgus.com/2010/07/open-source-in-android-tablets...

I did not post this link -- I posted a different link yesterday. Since then there's been some news:

Augen Gentouch tablet not in stock http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/07/28/augen-gentouch-...

Augen Gentouch tablet gets hands on videos http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/07/28/augen-gentouch-...

It has buttons for Android and for $150 doesn't look that bad.

It has a resistive touchscreen which makes much of the touch functionality frustrating, to say the least.

It also seems to be running a very hacky version of Android. Note the "EDGE roaming" icon in the status bar, despite the device not having any cell radio in it.

It might make a good output-only information HUD, though.

I believe that is the SD card notification, which the tablet has. It shows up whenever you put an SD card in or take it out or hook it up to the computer via usd. Anything regarding cell phone stuff is displayed next to the battery icon.

Nope, it's definitely the EDGE icon: http://picasaweb.google.com/sergenthalo/Gentouch78#549871101...

SD card notifications appear on the left while network information appears on the right.

Not trashing this tablet in general, but the coming glut of cheap tablets is great news for the iPad.

The more commoditized, rushed out Android tablets there are, the more the Android brand suffers, and the more clearly differentiated the iPad becomes.

I totally agree. Someone needs to make a high-quality android tablet that is on par with the iPad. That was the problem with android originally, when the G1 was vastly inferior to the iPhone. It wasn't until high quality phones like the droid came out did android really take off.

The impressive upgrades to the OS helped as well.

Really, I've been waiting for a good Android pad for a long time, and these crappy "$150 iPad rivals" just don't cut it...

Exactly -- this one from KMart was on my list for a long time, and all the reviews agree on how crappy it is... What a disappointment.

But it'll take just one easily hackable $99 Android tablet with just the right mix of "good enough" features to take the world by storm.

I don't know. No (cheap + good enough) mp3 player ever took over the iPod.

But a cheap + good enough + lots of vendors did take over the PC industry and the mobile phone market (the iPhone doesn't own it yet) and the car industry and the video game industry and <insert other industry>.

There are always exceptions to the rule. The success of the iPod in the face of fierce competition will be studied in depth in B-schools for the next 50 years. But in general, people are more willing to pay less for good enough features than to pay more for slightly better. That's why there are a bazillion Honda Accords and Toyota Camerys on the road, and far fewer cars that cost over $35k even if they are "better". Or why most homes have a GE sub-$400 Washing Machine instead of a $1200 LG. These things are "good enough" and cheaper.

But I'll freely admit that the iPad has taken off far more strongly than I think anybody would have expected. It may have hit that critical mass the way the iPod did as well and nothing will be able to break that.

I think the interesting part about the Accord and the Camery vs. the BMW is that by many objective standards (certainly by long-term reliability) the cheaper cars are actually /better/ than the more expensive cars.

would I rather drive a brand new BMW or a brand new toyota? while they are new, sure, I'll take the BMW. But speaking as someone who has owned an out of warranty BMW, well, after the warranty period is over, the Toyota is a better car.

The analogy goes even further. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/11/18/study-revea...

the poor showing of apple and lenovo may be partly due to the higher retained value of their products. I expect IBM/lenovo or a apple macbook are probably the only laptops worth fixing once they are out of warranty. cheap laptops, once they are out of warranty, often have an ebay value less than what you'd pay to get it repaired.

From my reading of the article, it seems like they tracked the number of laptops which failed and needed repairs, not the number which failed and were repaired. So no, higher retained value doesn't explain it.

Even if they were looking at how many were repaired (where lower retained value could tilt repair percentage downward, by making people disinclined to repair them, as you suggest) this would merely make other brands of laptops less reliable (with lower numbers caused by fewer damaged laptops being repaired); correcting for it wouldn't improve Mac/IBM/Lenovo's numbers, though it could damage the others, making them seem better by comparison.

>That's why there are a bazillion Honda Accords and Toyota Camerys on the road, and far fewer cars that cost over $35k even if they are "better".

Bad example since the more expensive cars usually aren't better. They tend to break down more often and be expensive to get fixed.

I would reckon Apple has ceased most of the the cheap and good enough opportunities with the nano, mini and shuffle.

Wouldn't a "good enough" screen and multitouch sensor pretty much force the price above $99 (if the device is sold at a profit)? Or do you think that $99 is cheap enough that people won't mind resistive touch screens backed by TN panels?

Who knows? "Good enough" is a golden target that seems to be fantastically hard to nail.

I personally wouldn't think a resistive touch screen and a TN panel would be "good enough". But I also think that we'll see "close-to" iPad screen quality on an Android tablet in the $99 range within the next 2 years.

At least for future tablets, I suspect resistive + joypad would work well. Most of what you do on a tablet is passive browsing, and scrolling with a joypad is pretty easy.

The prototype for this is the Aldiko ebook reader. It gives me the choice of scrolling with the N1's touchscreen or with the volume control buttons - I always pick the physical buttons.

Any word on the battery life on these? I'm in the market for a 7" color PDF reader (I wish Apple made a mid-size iOS device!), but all the Androids I've seen are in the 2 hour range.

Why do so many tablets have 7 inch screens? Not sure how big that is, but I already have a mobile phone. Somehow I doubt there is much of a need for a 7 inch screen form factor.

More info from the K-Mart page:

http://blogs.mykmart.com/2010/07/augen-7-inch-android-tablet...

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