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Joe Average
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Anyone got one of these devices?
The basic specs are like most run of the mill Android tablets these days:
- 7" 800x480 resolution LCD (not super-duper bright like the Nook Color IPS screen but it's not bad at all, and apparently a matte finish too)
- capacitive touch screen (fairly sensitive)
- 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU (I noticed zero lag when swiping the home screens, unlike a stock Nook Color which has just a bit of lag/stutter but that runs at 800 MHz by default)
- 512MB RAM / 8GB storage onboard / microSD up to 32GB for more
- Android 2.2 Froyo (with potential for custom ROMs it seems, just takes time for development)
- 3250 mAh battery (reviews claim 6 hours of battery life, but I'm sure with SetCPU or JuiceDefender running that could easily be pushed to 10 or more or a custom low voltage kernel too)
Here's Huawei's product demo video at YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDRYNRIPEmM
I didn't even know about this one until yesterday when I stopped by a local Best Buy just to browse (I ain't spending another dime with 'em ever again but, can't hurt to browse since they carry products nobody else does in this area, hence this post). It does have some kind of custom Android 2.2. Froyo on it (with an overlay of some kind, similar to HTC Sense in concept, not quite as bad as that horrid Motorola Blur crap however), so I'm hoping a custom ROM will appear to clean things up and improve performance even more.
Now, since I consider the Nook Color to be a near-perfect form factor, I was pleasantly surprised to pick up this S7 Slim - there's a regular S7 model apparently, it has the 3 capacitive buttons on the front as well as an actual physical "D-pad" style button on the opposite side of the screen. All I'm speaking of is the S7 Slim which is 12.5 mm thick without the physical button. But this S7 Slim is amazingly compact even in spite of the 7" LCD - it actually is a bit smaller than the Nook Color in terms of the "footprint" space required when it's laying flat on a surface.
It has the right weight in my opinion, and the screen looks fine to me albeit it's that older standard 800x480 - I'm kinda spoiled on the 1024x600 on the Nook Color in the same 7" screen size I suppose. But...
The one thing that jumped out at me after I got home and did some research on the S7 Slim is that it's got a 3G modem in it. In fact, it's ready to go - unlocked - for any provider that it's compatible with, as it has a SIM card slot under the battery. According to several reviews at the Best Buy website (not the most reliable, I know, but it's something), some people bought it, found the SIM slot, went out and grabbed a T-Mobile prepaid SIM card and put it in and voila, 3G access in minutes.
All that for $299.99... and as I was standing there looking at the other devices on the shelf around it, they all started to look a wee bit expensive considering. The HTC Flyer was right next to the S7 Slim, and I do love the Flyer, it's gorgeous, has a great form factor, nice weight/balance to it, nice screen that the Stylus works with as well, but $500+ for that one... and the BlackBerry PlayBook, almost the same size as the S7 Slim, and only Wi-Fi, again, $500.
I think when I decide to get a tablet at some point soon (as I'm still holding out hoping "the right one" comes out for me), I'm going to consider this Huawei S7 Slim model, especially given that I discovered it's actually 3G capable and hardly anybody seems to actually realize this could make it, at the bare minimum, a holdout product since I'm satisfied with how it performed at least in the store when I was playing around with it.
And yes, the XDA crowd has a subforum for the IDEOS S7 model, I'm not sure if there's a technical difference in the internal hardware for the Slim variation - there's not a lot of info over at the XDA-Developers forum at the moment but I suspect that's because the S7 came out months ago while the S7 Slim variation was released in late June. I'm going to sit on my thumbs for the moment and see what transpires before I commit to a purchase, but I'm liking this device, I really am.
It's the only one I've found so far that's "in the neighborhood" of the Nook Color for me (form-factor, weight, etc), which I still have at the top of my "must buy" list for 7" tablets, but if some development happens with the S7 Slim - oh, a CM7 for it would be heavenly - then that's what I'm going to get, even in spite of the lower resolution screen.
The basic specs are like most run of the mill Android tablets these days:
- 7" 800x480 resolution LCD (not super-duper bright like the Nook Color IPS screen but it's not bad at all, and apparently a matte finish too)
- capacitive touch screen (fairly sensitive)
- 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU (I noticed zero lag when swiping the home screens, unlike a stock Nook Color which has just a bit of lag/stutter but that runs at 800 MHz by default)
- 512MB RAM / 8GB storage onboard / microSD up to 32GB for more
- Android 2.2 Froyo (with potential for custom ROMs it seems, just takes time for development)
- 3250 mAh battery (reviews claim 6 hours of battery life, but I'm sure with SetCPU or JuiceDefender running that could easily be pushed to 10 or more or a custom low voltage kernel too)
Here's Huawei's product demo video at YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDRYNRIPEmM
I didn't even know about this one until yesterday when I stopped by a local Best Buy just to browse (I ain't spending another dime with 'em ever again but, can't hurt to browse since they carry products nobody else does in this area, hence this post). It does have some kind of custom Android 2.2. Froyo on it (with an overlay of some kind, similar to HTC Sense in concept, not quite as bad as that horrid Motorola Blur crap however), so I'm hoping a custom ROM will appear to clean things up and improve performance even more.
Now, since I consider the Nook Color to be a near-perfect form factor, I was pleasantly surprised to pick up this S7 Slim - there's a regular S7 model apparently, it has the 3 capacitive buttons on the front as well as an actual physical "D-pad" style button on the opposite side of the screen. All I'm speaking of is the S7 Slim which is 12.5 mm thick without the physical button. But this S7 Slim is amazingly compact even in spite of the 7" LCD - it actually is a bit smaller than the Nook Color in terms of the "footprint" space required when it's laying flat on a surface.
It has the right weight in my opinion, and the screen looks fine to me albeit it's that older standard 800x480 - I'm kinda spoiled on the 1024x600 on the Nook Color in the same 7" screen size I suppose. But...
The one thing that jumped out at me after I got home and did some research on the S7 Slim is that it's got a 3G modem in it. In fact, it's ready to go - unlocked - for any provider that it's compatible with, as it has a SIM card slot under the battery. According to several reviews at the Best Buy website (not the most reliable, I know, but it's something), some people bought it, found the SIM slot, went out and grabbed a T-Mobile prepaid SIM card and put it in and voila, 3G access in minutes.
All that for $299.99... and as I was standing there looking at the other devices on the shelf around it, they all started to look a wee bit expensive considering. The HTC Flyer was right next to the S7 Slim, and I do love the Flyer, it's gorgeous, has a great form factor, nice weight/balance to it, nice screen that the Stylus works with as well, but $500+ for that one... and the BlackBerry PlayBook, almost the same size as the S7 Slim, and only Wi-Fi, again, $500.
I think when I decide to get a tablet at some point soon (as I'm still holding out hoping "the right one" comes out for me), I'm going to consider this Huawei S7 Slim model, especially given that I discovered it's actually 3G capable and hardly anybody seems to actually realize this could make it, at the bare minimum, a holdout product since I'm satisfied with how it performed at least in the store when I was playing around with it.
And yes, the XDA crowd has a subforum for the IDEOS S7 model, I'm not sure if there's a technical difference in the internal hardware for the Slim variation - there's not a lot of info over at the XDA-Developers forum at the moment but I suspect that's because the S7 came out months ago while the S7 Slim variation was released in late June. I'm going to sit on my thumbs for the moment and see what transpires before I commit to a purchase, but I'm liking this device, I really am.
It's the only one I've found so far that's "in the neighborhood" of the Nook Color for me (form-factor, weight, etc), which I still have at the top of my "must buy" list for 7" tablets, but if some development happens with the S7 Slim - oh, a CM7 for it would be heavenly - then that's what I'm going to get, even in spite of the lower resolution screen.
