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. 

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

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

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.