In December I bought an RCA tablet. It was the 7 inch Voyager 2 Pro and was purchased in December from Walmart. No fault of Walmart what subsequently transpired.
The tablet came with a keyboard case. The keyboard was a delight to use. The problems with the tablet were minimal. It was fast, had sufficient storage and worked well. The keyboard was at a very strange angle. With the keyboard level, reading the screen was somewhat hard due to its narrow viewing angle. A few apps wouldn't work on it. The screen was low resolution and didn't have a great color gamut.
Then on the 20th of March, the USB charger port worked loose. It had been getting gradually sloppier and sloppier. It stopped charging the tablet totally. As it was under manufacturer warranty, I contacted RCA. They responded - eventually - with a series of very confusing emails. It transpired they wanted me to spend $10 to ship their incompetently constructed hardware back to them. They promised to ship me back - not a new purple tablet but a reconditioned black tablet. Basically they would be shipping me a tablet somebody else had rejected or had failed to keep their payments up on.
So, because RCA is incompetent in their construction, they want me to pay $10 to ship their junk back to them. No - no way. I am not throwing $10 of good money away after $50 wasted on trash.
That set me thinking. I spent $90 on a Nook Color. That let me down, embarrasingly, in public. At a time when they were going on eBay for $75 I listed it and got the princely sum of $26 for it. Way under the going rate. I took it just to get shot of the bloody thing.
Then I bought a $50 RCA 7 inch tablet with 8GB storage. That was so worthless I threw it in the closet and spent $100 on a reconditioned Nexus 7. That worked reasonably well but stopped working about 12 months later. I did the factory reset which was when I discovered the factory image was missing. It had bricked itself!
Looking around I found lots of people that allegedly fixed tablets. None would reflash my Nexus 7. I don't have a good enough internet connection out in the sticks to download the gigabytes of data needed to fix it. It went in the closet.
So, next was the latest RCA disaster area. By now I have spent $290 on tablets and regained $26. Basically I have spent the $269 of an iPad mini and had nothing but frustration.
It is looking increasingly as though Android tablets of whatever price are just throwaway devices. As soon as they go wrong, throw them away. It's not as simple as that though. All data stored on them can be restored after deletion. With villains so easily undeleting data, the only way to ensure data security is to destroy the device.
So, I could spend $10 more on my RCA junk AND run the risk of somebody stealing my data. I don't think I'll bite on that one!
Whre to go from here? Well, there are 3 options:
1. Fix my laptop (it probably needs a new battery) and say "stuff tablets".
2. Buy a new junk tablet and hope it will last longer.
3. Stretch my finances, say "stuff it" and buy an iPad mini.
From my experience, it seems the weak point on the Android junk is the USB charger. All of my tablets and my phone have USB charging ports. All the USB ports have failed. My phone is now charged solely via a cordless charging pad. My Nexus 7 USB was getting very loose. The latest RCA tablet has probably got broken solder connections. This is why Apple uses their Lightning connector.
The reason why we have crappy USB connectors is because the EU wanted a standard power connector to reduce electronic waste. It actually causes more electronic waste because when the flimsy USB connector fails, the device is thrown away. It's just too expensive to repair them.
This leaves me blogging with just my phone and a bluetooth keyboard. It's not a happy state of affairs. I am not happy! Given that my Nexus 4 Android phone is complaining of memory issues, I suspect it is not long for the road either.
Clearly I'm going to have to go forward from here. The solution might be an iPad mini and simply replace my phone when it dies - probably with a flip phone. Each time I buy a smartphone, I swear I will go back to a flip phone. Give that nobod ever calls me, that might well be the way forward. As far as the tablet, I'm not sure that I wouldn't be better just fixing my laptop and not bothering with a tabet. Perhaps just get a cheap Chromebook.
Showing posts with label tablet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tablet. Show all posts
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Why should you buy two POS tablets when one would do?
From initially being very skeptical about tablets, I've since come to like them. In fact, tablets are pretty much all I use now. I've been through a good few too - which is where the alarm bells should start ringing! Thus far I've used the following.
1. Nook Color - this was junk from the start. Originally retailing for $279, mine cost me $90. It had a huge fault in that the screen went bananas in humidity. I was using it to display photos at a function and it started flipping from photo to photo at random. Of course I got all the usual snarky comments such as "should't have wasted your money on that. Should have bought an iPad" but that wasn't that helpful. In the end I sold that thing on eBay for $15 and I was lucky to get that, too!
2. RCA 7 inch $50, 8 gigabyte thing. This kinda-sorta worked but not well. After 6 months suffering it, I simply gave it away and bought a reconditioned Nexus 7.
3. Nexus 7 2012 - reconditioned. This was bought for $100 and it was pretty good. The screen was excellent though it could slow inexplicably at times. After about 12 months it was freezing and locking up pretty well constantly. Thus I did what any normal person would and set it to do a factory reset. That was when I found the factory image was missing. I had a $100 brick on my hands. I kept it just in case I could reflash it to get it working again. The commercial outfits either wouldn't touch it or wanted an outrageous $50 to reflash it.
4. RCA 7 inch Voyager Pro. That was $50 for the model with a keyboard. This worked pretty well until the USB connector broke. I got in touch with RCA since it was only 3 months old when the USB socket broke. Their response was very confusing. At the top of the email it said to send them the tablet using their RMA number. At the bottom it said they had sent a replacement. Of course, two weeks later, no replacement has arrived. I suppose I'm going to have to pony up another $10 to send the bloody thing back to them in order for them to send me a "reconditioned" model that might or might not last a further 3 months.
To date I've spent $290 on tablets. My solution when faced with the same problem with phones was that I simply stopped buying the cheap phones and bought one that cost $250 (in an end of line sale). It wasn't the iPhone that I wanted but a Nexus 4. The thing about it is though it's now 2016 and I bought that phone in 2013. It's still working brilliantly. Previous phones just didn't last and just got dumped in a drawer when they gave out or went out in a more spectacular fashion!
It seems that when you buy a cheapass tablet, you need to buy two cheapass tablets. Don't be an idiot like I did and buy one that comes with a keyboard because as with my RCA, the keyboard will only work with the correct model of RCA tablet. Buy two keyboardless tablets and add a cheap keyboard cover. That way you won't get caught out by a tablet failing unexpectedly. You'll also be able to switch the tablets in and out at will.
At the moment I have two equally dead tablets. One that won't charge because the USB connection is just too flimsy but which has a very nice keyboard and one that doesn't have a keyboard but which had a nicer screen that's dead because somebody removed the factory image.
The problem with sending this tablet off is that I can't erase all my passwords and personal information from it before sending it off! I'm rather concerned about that in these days of identity theft. It's not so much the revealing and intimate photos on the tablet. There just aren't any. Sorry - I'm quite mundane and boring. I don't wear fishnets and miniskirts nor do I have photos of anybody else that does. Having said that, the slightest scrap of information in the wrong hands is a very powerful weapon.
I have a feeling that I might just have to write this tablet off as a bad buy and look online for something cheap from China. That is, unless I can open it, resolder the USB socket and then epoxy it into place more solidly so it can't break loose again.
1. Nook Color - this was junk from the start. Originally retailing for $279, mine cost me $90. It had a huge fault in that the screen went bananas in humidity. I was using it to display photos at a function and it started flipping from photo to photo at random. Of course I got all the usual snarky comments such as "should't have wasted your money on that. Should have bought an iPad" but that wasn't that helpful. In the end I sold that thing on eBay for $15 and I was lucky to get that, too!
2. RCA 7 inch $50, 8 gigabyte thing. This kinda-sorta worked but not well. After 6 months suffering it, I simply gave it away and bought a reconditioned Nexus 7.
3. Nexus 7 2012 - reconditioned. This was bought for $100 and it was pretty good. The screen was excellent though it could slow inexplicably at times. After about 12 months it was freezing and locking up pretty well constantly. Thus I did what any normal person would and set it to do a factory reset. That was when I found the factory image was missing. I had a $100 brick on my hands. I kept it just in case I could reflash it to get it working again. The commercial outfits either wouldn't touch it or wanted an outrageous $50 to reflash it.
4. RCA 7 inch Voyager Pro. That was $50 for the model with a keyboard. This worked pretty well until the USB connector broke. I got in touch with RCA since it was only 3 months old when the USB socket broke. Their response was very confusing. At the top of the email it said to send them the tablet using their RMA number. At the bottom it said they had sent a replacement. Of course, two weeks later, no replacement has arrived. I suppose I'm going to have to pony up another $10 to send the bloody thing back to them in order for them to send me a "reconditioned" model that might or might not last a further 3 months.
To date I've spent $290 on tablets. My solution when faced with the same problem with phones was that I simply stopped buying the cheap phones and bought one that cost $250 (in an end of line sale). It wasn't the iPhone that I wanted but a Nexus 4. The thing about it is though it's now 2016 and I bought that phone in 2013. It's still working brilliantly. Previous phones just didn't last and just got dumped in a drawer when they gave out or went out in a more spectacular fashion!
At the moment I have two equally dead tablets. One that won't charge because the USB connection is just too flimsy but which has a very nice keyboard and one that doesn't have a keyboard but which had a nicer screen that's dead because somebody removed the factory image.
The problem with sending this tablet off is that I can't erase all my passwords and personal information from it before sending it off! I'm rather concerned about that in these days of identity theft. It's not so much the revealing and intimate photos on the tablet. There just aren't any. Sorry - I'm quite mundane and boring. I don't wear fishnets and miniskirts nor do I have photos of anybody else that does. Having said that, the slightest scrap of information in the wrong hands is a very powerful weapon.
I have a feeling that I might just have to write this tablet off as a bad buy and look online for something cheap from China. That is, unless I can open it, resolder the USB socket and then epoxy it into place more solidly so it can't break loose again.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Is camera gear now disposable?
Looking at the current rash of new cameras, computers, tablets, phones and other electronic gizmos, at first the sheer quantity available to the consumer is seemingly overwhelming. Hundreds of manufacturers all competing to relieve the consumer of the contents of their wallets.
Computers used to be one of the main grounds for competition until people discovered that as internet consumers rather than creators, they didn't need phenomenal processing power or incredible storage. They just want to play online games, read websites and possibly post opinions that have zero ultimate effect on news websites. For that, tablets will do. Of course, computers were made to be disposable. Every other year people had to upgrade to the next computer because their old computer would be no match for all the updates Microsoft came out with (commonly called bloat). So, computers were disposable. Now though since computers have largely caught up, Microsoft is making the operating system disposable by coming out with a new one every two years, knowing full well most people don't want to be bothered installing a new operating system and are well used to having to change computers.
Tablets and phones follow the same path as computers starting out with inefficient and underspecified devices with almost reasonable devices being highly priced. Look in any store and there will be a plethora of $40 - $50 tablets with 8GB of memory. With luck in the $50 - $75 range you'll find tablets with 16GB. They tend to be usable as opposed to the 8GB tablets. There is one caveat... How well built the device is. As an example, I used to use a Nexus 7 that I got secondhand for $100 from Walmart. That was fine until it died (which took a year). Basically the reason it died was planned obsalescence. It was designed to fail. My latest tablet (a $50 RCA Voyager Pro) has just died - after 4 months. That's 8 months short of the warranty. Needless to say, the company say they'll fix it if I post it to them (at my expense) and wait 3 - 4 weeks without a tablet (that I use daily). That's just being treated with contempt by RCA. It ensures only one thing - that I will never buy another RCA product as long as I live!
Cameras are very much disposable. Every 18 months, camera companies come out with new cameras. When that happens, the used price of cameras drops dramatically. Back in the days of film cameras, film cameras largely maintained their values. With the disposability of electronics, they don't. As an example, I paid $1,100 for a Canon 30D back in 2006. It was and still is a pretty good camera. In terms of value it has plummeted to next to nothing. That camera is listed in as new condition in secondhand camera stores at $115. Sold to a camera store or via eBay, it would raise only a fraction of that.
Going further, lenses are also disposable. Every couple of years insignificantly modified models of lenses are released. The resale value of the older edition plummets. The same goes for flashes. A hugely expensive flash plumments in resale value due to new variants.
Taking the whole lot as camera gear in its broadest sense, phones, computers, tablets, cameras and lenses, manufacturers seem to treat them with the same contempt as their customers. Devices are just made to be thrown away. It doesn't matter how much they cost - how many hundreds or thousands. The fact consumers cannot afford to buy items that plummet in value to zero (like my 30D) does not seem to have been recognised by manufacturers.
The above has led to a very interesting situation. Phones now have built-in cameras which are of high quality. People are ceasing to buy cameras because they don't see much point in spending hundreds or thousands on equipment they won't get anything for if they try to sell it a couple of years down the line. Currently this is really hurting camera manufacturers. They're experiencing a 35% a year contraction in the market. Long term this means bankruptcy. They have only themselves to blame by making camera gear disposable.
Computers used to be one of the main grounds for competition until people discovered that as internet consumers rather than creators, they didn't need phenomenal processing power or incredible storage. They just want to play online games, read websites and possibly post opinions that have zero ultimate effect on news websites. For that, tablets will do. Of course, computers were made to be disposable. Every other year people had to upgrade to the next computer because their old computer would be no match for all the updates Microsoft came out with (commonly called bloat). So, computers were disposable. Now though since computers have largely caught up, Microsoft is making the operating system disposable by coming out with a new one every two years, knowing full well most people don't want to be bothered installing a new operating system and are well used to having to change computers.
Tablets and phones follow the same path as computers starting out with inefficient and underspecified devices with almost reasonable devices being highly priced. Look in any store and there will be a plethora of $40 - $50 tablets with 8GB of memory. With luck in the $50 - $75 range you'll find tablets with 16GB. They tend to be usable as opposed to the 8GB tablets. There is one caveat... How well built the device is. As an example, I used to use a Nexus 7 that I got secondhand for $100 from Walmart. That was fine until it died (which took a year). Basically the reason it died was planned obsalescence. It was designed to fail. My latest tablet (a $50 RCA Voyager Pro) has just died - after 4 months. That's 8 months short of the warranty. Needless to say, the company say they'll fix it if I post it to them (at my expense) and wait 3 - 4 weeks without a tablet (that I use daily). That's just being treated with contempt by RCA. It ensures only one thing - that I will never buy another RCA product as long as I live!
Cameras are very much disposable. Every 18 months, camera companies come out with new cameras. When that happens, the used price of cameras drops dramatically. Back in the days of film cameras, film cameras largely maintained their values. With the disposability of electronics, they don't. As an example, I paid $1,100 for a Canon 30D back in 2006. It was and still is a pretty good camera. In terms of value it has plummeted to next to nothing. That camera is listed in as new condition in secondhand camera stores at $115. Sold to a camera store or via eBay, it would raise only a fraction of that.
Going further, lenses are also disposable. Every couple of years insignificantly modified models of lenses are released. The resale value of the older edition plummets. The same goes for flashes. A hugely expensive flash plumments in resale value due to new variants.
Taking the whole lot as camera gear in its broadest sense, phones, computers, tablets, cameras and lenses, manufacturers seem to treat them with the same contempt as their customers. Devices are just made to be thrown away. It doesn't matter how much they cost - how many hundreds or thousands. The fact consumers cannot afford to buy items that plummet in value to zero (like my 30D) does not seem to have been recognised by manufacturers.
The above has led to a very interesting situation. Phones now have built-in cameras which are of high quality. People are ceasing to buy cameras because they don't see much point in spending hundreds or thousands on equipment they won't get anything for if they try to sell it a couple of years down the line. Currently this is really hurting camera manufacturers. They're experiencing a 35% a year contraction in the market. Long term this means bankruptcy. They have only themselves to blame by making camera gear disposable.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Jim Bean meets Alcoholics Anonymous
I seem to do this fairly regularly with a lot of Android apps. Today was the day I dumped my Twitter app. Thank heavens that I don't actually have to pay for Android apps. Twitter just got on my tits again because of its continual censorship of my tweets. Certainly I still have Twitter with its auto posts whenever I post a blog entry but I took the app itself off my tablet. I was so tired of writing a carefully considered and witty response to things people said only to have the Twitter app refuse to send it.
Years ago, I refused to pay money for any Windows software because it was just plain awful. I have yet to see any Windows software that is actually worth paying for. Look at Windows itself - so riddled with bugs that Microsoft has to come out with fixes every few days. Windows is a product that never ever gets out of beta testing stage. When Microsoft finds it has such a mess that it cannot possibly fix it any more and have it actually work properly, they release a new version with all new bugs and holes. It's absolutely the same with bought Windows software. After buying Windows software a few times and finding it never actually worked, I quit throwing money away on it and went for the free versions instead. They stood the same chance of not working but at least they were free.
Move on a few years and I went Mac and what a relief that was - none of this constant update and fix bullshit. I had the same Mac for 8 years without an issue - until the battery died. Of course, being electronic, replacing the battery is something you just don't do. Many times I've found electronics just don't last much longer than the battery. My first experience of this was a pocket calculator. The batteries died so I replaced them and a few weeks later the calculator did too. The experience has been true so many times that these days I just refuse to buy batteries for anything electronic because like as not, it'll just die.
So, I'm currently an Android tablet only user. This is, I believe, my 4th Android tablet since 2012. They're not worth throwing a lot of money at because they don't last too long either. My first tablet was a refurbished Nook Color and that was a complete piece of trash. In the end I sold the damned thing on eBay for not very much, about 5 months after I bought it. My next tablet was an RCA 7 inch with 8GB. That was pretty awful and after 6 months I ended up just giving it away. After that I bought a refurbished Nexus 7 which conked out after 14 months. It needed a factory reset so I gave it a factory reset and found the repair partition had been erased (not by me). That led to my current Android tablet (an RCA 7 inch with 16GB). It really is not worth spending money on electronic crap - it just doesn't last much longer than a bottle of Jim Bean at an Alcoholics Anonymous convention.
Perhaps my biggest gripe about tablets is the lack of connectivity to cameras such as my existing Canon XT, to mass storage and to printers. The cloud is all well and good but there are areas where the sun shines. I want to be able to load photos on my tablet from my camera, play with them in a photo processing package and then upload to a mass storage device without having to piddle about with the internet. Let's just face it - I live in an old bus. How much internet do you think I actually get in my old bus? How much do you want to bet that I'm willing to burn through my 5GB a month of data on my phone uploading photos to the cloud? This is why we need a local storage option and local photo processing option on Android tablets.
Years ago, I refused to pay money for any Windows software because it was just plain awful. I have yet to see any Windows software that is actually worth paying for. Look at Windows itself - so riddled with bugs that Microsoft has to come out with fixes every few days. Windows is a product that never ever gets out of beta testing stage. When Microsoft finds it has such a mess that it cannot possibly fix it any more and have it actually work properly, they release a new version with all new bugs and holes. It's absolutely the same with bought Windows software. After buying Windows software a few times and finding it never actually worked, I quit throwing money away on it and went for the free versions instead. They stood the same chance of not working but at least they were free.
Move on a few years and I went Mac and what a relief that was - none of this constant update and fix bullshit. I had the same Mac for 8 years without an issue - until the battery died. Of course, being electronic, replacing the battery is something you just don't do. Many times I've found electronics just don't last much longer than the battery. My first experience of this was a pocket calculator. The batteries died so I replaced them and a few weeks later the calculator did too. The experience has been true so many times that these days I just refuse to buy batteries for anything electronic because like as not, it'll just die.
So, I'm currently an Android tablet only user. This is, I believe, my 4th Android tablet since 2012. They're not worth throwing a lot of money at because they don't last too long either. My first tablet was a refurbished Nook Color and that was a complete piece of trash. In the end I sold the damned thing on eBay for not very much, about 5 months after I bought it. My next tablet was an RCA 7 inch with 8GB. That was pretty awful and after 6 months I ended up just giving it away. After that I bought a refurbished Nexus 7 which conked out after 14 months. It needed a factory reset so I gave it a factory reset and found the repair partition had been erased (not by me). That led to my current Android tablet (an RCA 7 inch with 16GB). It really is not worth spending money on electronic crap - it just doesn't last much longer than a bottle of Jim Bean at an Alcoholics Anonymous convention.
Perhaps my biggest gripe about tablets is the lack of connectivity to cameras such as my existing Canon XT, to mass storage and to printers. The cloud is all well and good but there are areas where the sun shines. I want to be able to load photos on my tablet from my camera, play with them in a photo processing package and then upload to a mass storage device without having to piddle about with the internet. Let's just face it - I live in an old bus. How much internet do you think I actually get in my old bus? How much do you want to bet that I'm willing to burn through my 5GB a month of data on my phone uploading photos to the cloud? This is why we need a local storage option and local photo processing option on Android tablets.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Lithium battery replacements. How to tell good from bad
Over the years I've use a lot of lithium batteries. Quite honestly, I abhor them. I think the world would be a lot better place without lithium batteries and without nickel cadmium batteries too. Nickle Metal Hydride are the otherwise bright spark in an otherwise dismal battery world.
As far as laptop batteries, we don't have a choice any more - everybody has gone over entirely to lithium batteries. In my case, I have a 10 year old Mac laptop. It worked until the battery died. I did what everybody does and went on ebay to buy a cheap lithium battery. Instead of spending $80, I spent $20. Perhaps that shouldn't be spent but more wasted - it worked fine the first few times then started giving the same problems the old original did before it stopped totally. I have yet to save enough to replace that battery with the genuine article. I won't be buying another fake.
With camera batteries, I bought a fake from B&H to power my Canon XT and it worked and is still working, 10 years later. I bought a fake from B&H to power my 30D and it worked once then when I went to charge it again, a year later (I don't take my DSLRs out of storage very often), it was totally dead and wouldn't take a charge.
This pretty much echoes my entire experience of knock-off products. If it's a knock off and costs more than 1% of the price of the real thing, it's way too expensive. I've never had a genuine article fail on me - it's always the cheap knock off that fails. I don't expect a long life for my RCA tablet, for example but equally I expected more than 14 months from my Nexus 7. The reason I went for the cheaper knock-off this time is that since the real thing only lasts barely a year, if I go through two RCA tablets in a year I'm still financially way ahead!
Tablets and batteries are not the same thing, however. The technology of lithium batteries is just plain scary. Lithium combines with water to produce hydrogen. Normally, water is used to extinguish fires. With a lithium battery fire, water doesn't extinguish it, it feeds the fire. And people keep their phones in their pants pocket and their shirt pocket where it's constantly bathed in a very humid atmosphere. It's equally scary to see people drinking while holding cups near their computers. They're a spill and a spark away from a conflagration that canot be extinguished with normal fire-fighting equipment.
So, do you really, truly trust budget and knock-off batteries where god alone knows what corners have been cut. Could the battery have been made by a devious al-Quaida or ISIS operative? My best advice is to toss your fake batteries in your next-door neighbors trash (don't want to set your own trash on fire).
As far as laptop batteries, we don't have a choice any more - everybody has gone over entirely to lithium batteries. In my case, I have a 10 year old Mac laptop. It worked until the battery died. I did what everybody does and went on ebay to buy a cheap lithium battery. Instead of spending $80, I spent $20. Perhaps that shouldn't be spent but more wasted - it worked fine the first few times then started giving the same problems the old original did before it stopped totally. I have yet to save enough to replace that battery with the genuine article. I won't be buying another fake.
With camera batteries, I bought a fake from B&H to power my Canon XT and it worked and is still working, 10 years later. I bought a fake from B&H to power my 30D and it worked once then when I went to charge it again, a year later (I don't take my DSLRs out of storage very often), it was totally dead and wouldn't take a charge.
This pretty much echoes my entire experience of knock-off products. If it's a knock off and costs more than 1% of the price of the real thing, it's way too expensive. I've never had a genuine article fail on me - it's always the cheap knock off that fails. I don't expect a long life for my RCA tablet, for example but equally I expected more than 14 months from my Nexus 7. The reason I went for the cheaper knock-off this time is that since the real thing only lasts barely a year, if I go through two RCA tablets in a year I'm still financially way ahead!
Tablets and batteries are not the same thing, however. The technology of lithium batteries is just plain scary. Lithium combines with water to produce hydrogen. Normally, water is used to extinguish fires. With a lithium battery fire, water doesn't extinguish it, it feeds the fire. And people keep their phones in their pants pocket and their shirt pocket where it's constantly bathed in a very humid atmosphere. It's equally scary to see people drinking while holding cups near their computers. They're a spill and a spark away from a conflagration that canot be extinguished with normal fire-fighting equipment.
So, do you really, truly trust budget and knock-off batteries where god alone knows what corners have been cut. Could the battery have been made by a devious al-Quaida or ISIS operative? My best advice is to toss your fake batteries in your next-door neighbors trash (don't want to set your own trash on fire).
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Review of a cheapass tablet
My Nexus 7 did the dirty on me the other day. It started constantly freezing so I did a factory reset and found the restore partition had been deleted by whoever refurbished it for walmart. I'd bought it in October of last year and it's now December of this year. Just out of warranty lol. Anyway, it died.
In the meantime I ordered the 16GB RCA 7" tablet with a keyboard. The tablet outperforms my Nexus on just about every level save three. Some of the apps I used to use won't work on my RCA but that's fine. The only two I can think of or have discovered so far that don't work are the "what to wear" app (which was good for a laugh) and Blogeroid but I've replaced those two with better apps. I've also not bothered installing the games I had because I'd stopped playing them anyway.
The screen is the biggest difference. It's lower resolution, has a narrower viewing angle and isn't quite as vibrant. Ideally I`d like to replace the Nexus but for $55 you really can't complain. Especially since it comes with a keyboad.
The keyboard is a hard clamshell thing that works really well. Unlike my previous keyboards, this works really well. The sole issue is that it maintains the tablet-keyboard at about 50 degrees. It"s not the ideal angle to view the screen.
Battery life is excellent however the charging port is another one of those lousy micro USB things. The older style pin connectors were far superior in longevity.
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