- Aug 22, 2004
- 13,140
- 138
- 106
Warning: Long.
Bought the tablet the other day and one of the first things I did was test the GPS - ever since Samsung bit me, it's a standard test now. I don't take it for granted anymore.
The GPS on the Huawei tablet absolutely embarrasses the Galaxy S. It locks within about 3 seconds flat and if I zoom in close enough on Maps, I can see myself walk around the house. It has about a 5ft accuracy.
I'm running KA7 and done the hardware mod on my Vibrant, and I'm lucky to get a maybe-next-week lock time and around a 25ft accuracy. It loses satellite lock really easy and screws up tracking pretty badly, too.
I'm thinking the S7 is now gonna get schlepped around whenever I need something more accurate for location than "What city am I in?" GPS. Also, the 7" screen makes a great navigation display.
It's not a bad screen either, imo. Most won't like it, but after a bit of practice, I'm easily as good with it as I am with the ultra-accurate capacitive screen of my Vibrant or Droid.
Huawei's launcher and notification bar is surprisingly usable too. Only real problem there is no Portrait mode on the home screens, but there's 10 of them broken down into "Groups": Home, Web, Entertainment, Communications and Favorites. There's no notification bar unless you're in an app, the status icons are just there on the top right corner. You tap an exclamation point icon to drop the notify dropdown which includes a task manager. The S7 includes support for 720p playback of x264 or MPEG4 HD video >2.5Mbps.
It has a SIM slot and can be used for phone calls or mobile data, pulling EDGE on T-Mobile and should do 3G on ATT; there's no data connection status icon, just a signal strength indicator.
The display honestly could be better. It's not a BAD screen, it's just not very good at viewing angles. Brighter images work better than dark images, but it's got a fairly narrow top to bottom angle, if you tilt the top edge of the tablet away from you too far, the screen goes dark very quickly. Color reproduction appears fine to my untrained eye, and it's bright and clear when looked dead on, or off-angle to the side a little bit.
Hardware wise, the tablet has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250, same as the Nexus One, but clocked to 768mhz. There's apparently a way to overclock it to 1ghz but I haven't bothered, I find the tablet snappy in day-to-day usage. It has 512mb ram (OS sees 415mb of that), 175mb of app storage, and 8gb of built-in flash storage. It has 5 buttons on the front that you think are capacitive, but no, they're actual buttons underneath a flexible overlay: Home, Menu, Back on the left side, and Send/End on the right. There's also a trackpad/button but I haven't been able to get it to respond to my fingers other than clicking it. It also has two 2mp cameras (one front, one back) but they're pure junk, not even worth mentioning. The stereo speakers are loud and clear, but they're on each side of the tablet facing outward, rather than facing towards you, and they can get a little distorty at high volumes. It also has Bluetooth, WiFi, Accelerometer, Gravity sensor and ambient light sensor. Some say it has a notification icon, but I haven't seen it light up.
Overall, I think it's definitely a great device for $250 (I paid $228, OTD, after taxes and my holidays gift cards). It's no Galaxy Tab or iPad, but I think not having to lock down to a contract, or having to pay the Apple tax, plus the low price-point more than outweighs the bad of this tablet. It's highly usable, highly affordable, and highly recommended. The only real problem I have with it is the WiFi seems to lose connection when the tablet is asleep for more than an hour or so, to get it back you have to disable, then re-enable the wifi from the status icon, and the first notch of the kick stand is a little weak.
Bought the tablet the other day and one of the first things I did was test the GPS - ever since Samsung bit me, it's a standard test now. I don't take it for granted anymore.
The GPS on the Huawei tablet absolutely embarrasses the Galaxy S. It locks within about 3 seconds flat and if I zoom in close enough on Maps, I can see myself walk around the house. It has about a 5ft accuracy.
I'm running KA7 and done the hardware mod on my Vibrant, and I'm lucky to get a maybe-next-week lock time and around a 25ft accuracy. It loses satellite lock really easy and screws up tracking pretty badly, too.
I'm thinking the S7 is now gonna get schlepped around whenever I need something more accurate for location than "What city am I in?" GPS. Also, the 7" screen makes a great navigation display.
It's not a bad screen either, imo. Most won't like it, but after a bit of practice, I'm easily as good with it as I am with the ultra-accurate capacitive screen of my Vibrant or Droid.
Huawei's launcher and notification bar is surprisingly usable too. Only real problem there is no Portrait mode on the home screens, but there's 10 of them broken down into "Groups": Home, Web, Entertainment, Communications and Favorites. There's no notification bar unless you're in an app, the status icons are just there on the top right corner. You tap an exclamation point icon to drop the notify dropdown which includes a task manager. The S7 includes support for 720p playback of x264 or MPEG4 HD video >2.5Mbps.
It has a SIM slot and can be used for phone calls or mobile data, pulling EDGE on T-Mobile and should do 3G on ATT; there's no data connection status icon, just a signal strength indicator.
The display honestly could be better. It's not a BAD screen, it's just not very good at viewing angles. Brighter images work better than dark images, but it's got a fairly narrow top to bottom angle, if you tilt the top edge of the tablet away from you too far, the screen goes dark very quickly. Color reproduction appears fine to my untrained eye, and it's bright and clear when looked dead on, or off-angle to the side a little bit.
Hardware wise, the tablet has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250, same as the Nexus One, but clocked to 768mhz. There's apparently a way to overclock it to 1ghz but I haven't bothered, I find the tablet snappy in day-to-day usage. It has 512mb ram (OS sees 415mb of that), 175mb of app storage, and 8gb of built-in flash storage. It has 5 buttons on the front that you think are capacitive, but no, they're actual buttons underneath a flexible overlay: Home, Menu, Back on the left side, and Send/End on the right. There's also a trackpad/button but I haven't been able to get it to respond to my fingers other than clicking it. It also has two 2mp cameras (one front, one back) but they're pure junk, not even worth mentioning. The stereo speakers are loud and clear, but they're on each side of the tablet facing outward, rather than facing towards you, and they can get a little distorty at high volumes. It also has Bluetooth, WiFi, Accelerometer, Gravity sensor and ambient light sensor. Some say it has a notification icon, but I haven't seen it light up.
Overall, I think it's definitely a great device for $250 (I paid $228, OTD, after taxes and my holidays gift cards). It's no Galaxy Tab or iPad, but I think not having to lock down to a contract, or having to pay the Apple tax, plus the low price-point more than outweighs the bad of this tablet. It's highly usable, highly affordable, and highly recommended. The only real problem I have with it is the WiFi seems to lose connection when the tablet is asleep for more than an hour or so, to get it back you have to disable, then re-enable the wifi from the status icon, and the first notch of the kick stand is a little weak.
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