Lowest cost Android tablet as a component?

I bought one of those dinky CPC things -- Scroll 4" Android tablet -- the urge proved irresistible.  Such is the danger of sub-£30 pricing, random things get bought on a whim even without any projected use nor reason.

As it turns out, you get a lot for your money.  While it's not Gorilla glass nor metal, the unit is surprisingly solid, and even heavy for something this small.  Everything I've tried works fine on it, even the documentation is good (both paper enclosed and online product brief and manual), and I'm hard pressed to think of any real shortcomings at this price --- maybe battery life is on the short side (battery is 1400mAh).  For a little Cortex-A8 (A13), it's doing a great job.

Of course, a 4.3-inch screen is not my idea of "usable" for a tablet (YMMV, and Y<Eyesight>MV), but bearing in mind that this thread is not about Android tablets for normal use but about employing them as an HCI component for projects, the screen size can be entirely satisfactory or even on the large size.

I'll examine it further on rainy days.

This weeks CPC mail shot arrived with another cheap tablet http://cpc.farnell.com/goclever/r70kb/tablet-7-k-b-bundle-tab-r70-kb/dp/SB05246?Ntt=sb05246

it's a bit more than the 4" scroll, but still interesting

selsinork wrote:

 

This weeks CPC mail shot arrived with another cheap tablet http://cpc.farnell.com/goclever/r70kb/tablet-7-k-b-bundle-tab-r70-kb/dp/SB05246?Ntt=sb05246

We seem to be sitting on the outskirts of a product war involving Boxchip A13, Rockchip RK3066 and several others SoCs in this range.  As  people with direct links to the far east electronics manufacturers have been pointing out for some years now, technology works very differently in that part of the globe, with very little emphasis on branding but astronomic emphasis on  churn and pushing new product out the door.

I like their approach.  Among other benefits, fanboism loses its grip in that scene, as products and brands are quite ephemeral whereas the underlying technology progresses at a colossal pace which I like.  Brands have been a major contributor to the sun setting on the ascendency of the West, as they have become synonymous with litigation as a business method instead of the entire focus being on creating better products.  We're so deeply infested with lawyers that becoming technology followers rather than leaders is a richly deserved fate.

While Apple spends millions in court on frivolous issues like the roundedness of corners on tablets that only a tiny percentage of the world can afford, meanwhile the "effectively unbranded" tablets like that GoClever R70K or the Scroll that I bought sell for peanuts to a vastly larger worldwide audience.

If we could read a history of technology from 100-200 years in the future, it won't be pleasant reading if we remain on our current path.

Brands have been a major contributor to the sun setting on the ascendency of the West

There is a flip-side to most things, and the flip-side to branding is that buyers will pay more

for the brand name because they assume that the seller has something to lose if the product

turns out to not work well, and so presumably the seller will not be relying on the paying public

for its beta testing. 

Brands have been a major contributor to the sun setting on the ascendency of the West

There is a flip-side to most things, and the flip-side to branding is that buyers will pay more

for the brand name because they assume that the seller has something to lose if the product

turns out to not work well, and so presumably the seller will not be relying on the paying public

for its beta testing. 

There are some other aspects too -  while I agree that the current fad for Apple like litigation is a truly bad thing for everyone there is a value in trading with a supplier who has been aroound a long time and has delivered good products and good service. I'm currently considering buying  a new oscilloscope and likely to pay >> £10k for it - the track record of the supplier is important because I don't want to end up with something that can't be maintained. It isn't feasible to check every aspect of build quality and performance of the one you actually get so you have to rely on how much you trust the supplier.

I think  this means that there are two kinds of branding - the good kind which tells you that a reliable supplier stands behind the product and the bad kind that uses some kind of reputational myth building to hype up the amount they can get you to pay.

MK

coder27 wrote:

 

There is a flip-side to most things, and the flip-side to branding is that buyers will pay more

for the brand name because they assume that the seller has something to lose if the product

turns out to not work well

The manufacturer always has something to lose even without brand recognition if the product doesn't work well, because when that happens the product gets returned to the merchant.  If that occurs more than a few times, the merchant won't be happy sourcing from that manufacturer again, so the commercial feedback loop is present even without high profile branding.  Plus of course if word gets around that Product X works badly then not many units are going to get sold in the first place.  Today's highly connected world will see to that.

To some extent, the "quality brand" meme is a myth anyway.  Products are generally good when they've been developed with good materials and with good engineering, both of which translate directly to higher cost, so the quality of a product depends on the target cost for which the product was designed.  This fundamental equation applies just as much to engineering in brand-conscious companies as in non-brand ones.  The only real difference is that big brand companies believe they can get away with a larger markup than the non-brands.

Note what the above observation implies --- that for equivalent amounts of money, you get higher quality product from non-brands.

There are markets in which brand matters but for different reasons --- longevity is one.  For example, if you're buying a DSLR camera system then you want to be reasonably confident that past lenses are going to fit future camera bodies over a lifespan of decades.  This kind of reason doesn't apply to most consumer electronics though.

Michael Kellett wrote:

 

I'm currently considering buying  a new oscilloscope and likely to pay >> £10k for it - the track record of the supplier is important because I don't want to end up with something that can't be maintained.

I'd put your 10k 'scope into a similar category to a pro DSLR body + a lens or two adding up to a similar price.  The rules aren't really the same as they are for computer equipment in the low hundreds of pounds, let alone for 50-quid unbranded tablets.

As I mentioned to coder27, company longevity comes into play.

The manufacturer always has something to lose even without brand recognition if the product doesn't work well, because when that happens the product gets returned to the merchant. 

I think when the price is low enough and the hassle of getting an RMA number

and repackaging and shipping the product is great enough, that the return rate is low,

regardless of the failure rate.

Most users don't even take the trouble to create an account on a vendor forum to tell

their stories (good or bad).  For example, less than 2% of E14's RPi customers are members

of E14's RPi forum here, even though membership is highly encouraged for example

by making various documents inaccessible without creating an account.

coder27 wrote:

 

I think when the price is low enough and the hassle of getting an RMA number

and repackaging and shipping the product is great enough, that the return rate is low,

regardless of the failure rate.

 

Most users don't even take the trouble to create an account on a vendor forum to tell

their stories (good or bad).

I agree with that.  At the "below the radar" pricing end of the market (the exact point varies, but I believe there is such a point for everybody), it's too little to matter.  That's why we buy 30-quid  tablets and ARM boards without thinking twice about the brand.

Does this mean that we suffer bad quality product?  Not at all !!  Branding has very little role to play in this sector, and at the bottom end, none at all.  In fact, it may have the reverse effect (see my line in bold italics two posts up).

coder27 wrote:

 

even though membership is highly encouraged for example by making various documents inaccessible without creating an account.

Please add wink smily !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nobody believes that, I sincerely hope.  A far more likely effect is frustration, annoyance, alienation and rejection.

You don't attract customers by giving them pain and promising it'll go away.  Yes I know that's a common M.O. of mafia and drug gangs, but it seems to me that they don't make a very good role model.

Nobody believes that, I sincerely hope.  A far more likely effect is frustration, annoyance, alienation and rejection.

I think they are very serious, and I think they have statistics to support what they're doing.

It does however make for some interesting user names, such as:

http://www.element14.com/community/people/veritax

http://www.element14.com/community/people/explodingdolphins

http://www.element14.com/community/people/giveup

http://www.element14.com/community/people/atix007

coder27 wrote:

 

I think they are very serious, and I think they have statistics to support what they're doing.

Well let me put it this way.

People don't like to be at the mercy of others.  They don't like single suppliers that leave them without options.  They don't like restrictive agreements that limit what they can do.  They don't like closed source software (except when they are the beneficiaries of the restriction) because they or their communities cannot improve it.  They don't like closed hardware (except when they are the  beneficiaries of the restriction) because nobody else will be able to market a cheaper or better version for them.  If they're techies, they don't like closed technology of any kind because in effect it enforces blindness upon them despite their ability to understand it if they wish.  All of these types of restriction on information (and many others) create a bias in favour of the provider and against the interests of the user.

And people certainly don't like being required to do something that is personally annoying.

In this Internet age, everyone talks to everyone else and posts interesting links to friends and acquaintances and colleagues.  Nothing is more annoying than giving someone a link to a great article only to have them tell you "It's hidden."  It dramatically reduces the utility of the site that holds it, and the unholy quartet of "frustration, annoyance, alienation and rejection"  ruin your day.  You cannot be expected to require your friends, acquaintances or colleagues to register with all the places where you have, yet this seems to be the poorly considered requirement of sites that hide their best content.  If it's good material, there is no better way of making your site interesting to others than making it publicly visible.

In today's world, closed content is a liability to users (because they cannot use it freely), not an asset, and if it's a liability to your users then it's a liability to you.  Open source is massive, and its younger sibling open hardware is growing ever stronger.  Academia is beginning to realize the value of openness professionally too, and the closed journals that once had it all their own way are finding that more and more academics hate them.  This tide is very strong, and I think it's dragging absolutely everything else with it today, ever faster.

Restrictions are never good for your users.  If "statistics show that it's good for us", then it's only because the users have been ignored in the measurement.

Please add wink smily !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nobody believes that, I sincerely hope.

You sincerely hope what?  That people like to be at the mercy of others?  That restrictions are good for users?  Or that people want all those things that I mentioned to be closed?

None of those, I assume, which is why there is no wink smily.  They're all quite obvious things, as it boils down to users not liking what is not to their advantage.