Techie Talk: Cheap(er) Tech. Is it any Good?

I got plenty of techie toys for these few months and not that much time posting interesting stuff online.  Either enjoying those really good tech or kind of wrestling with those not so well made ones, I'll try to post some of these here.

Today, I'm going to talk about Android again.  Android being an inferior mobile OS is a thing in the past.  With Marshmallow just around the corner and recent iOS annoying stability, Android suddenly appears as a really good choice.  But, yes there's still a but.  Is an Android device worth buying?

When we talk Android devices, we're talking those that we can actually own.  Not some Apple price range Android device (that's Rm 2000 and above).  When someone spends over Rm 2k for an AOS device, they're as good as an Android cult or some anti-Apple-Jobs people.

For this topic, I'm going to take my own AOS tablet as example.  No, not the Samsung tab that I won but the Dell Venue 8 7840 that I also won from wearing red underpants.

The Venue 8 is one of the best AOS device with Intel inside.  Note: You can get even better ARM based tablet though.  Here are some spec to accompany your popcorn.

Screen: 8.4 inch WQXGA (that's 2560 x 1600)
Processor: Intel Atom z2380 (that's quad core Anniedale)
RAM: 2GB LP-DDR3
Storage: 16GB + SD card expansion
Battery: 5900 mAh

Looks tasty right?  Indeed it is.  First of all, the build quality.  This thing has an anodized aluminium body which feels a lot more premium compared to many expensive plastic-ky  (ehem.. Samsung) devices.  The device layout needs some time to get used to like the power button and the volume rocker located at the left side.  The near bezel-less design means the device can only be held in certain very awkward way.

The good thing continues as this tab runs vanilla Android.  You know how much I hate useless f**king sh*t like Touchwiz or HTC sense or whatever name OEM called for bloatware.  But this tab has its fair share of bloats.  But there seems to be no alternative to some nifty features without these bloats, so I have to stick onto some of them.  More later.

It was all good until I realized OEM starts to cut corner on their products to be competitive on cost.

First, the RAM.  It's only 2GB compared to rival tablets which have 3GB.  That 1GB that is missing making multi-tasking experience a lot worse.  Having 3 or 4 apps opened concurrently (I had FB chat head, a browser and 2 games opened), the whole AOS started to stutter.  Switching between apps is a nightmare.

Next, the camera.  OK, I am one of the people that against taking picture with your bulky tablet.  Even that, the camera have to be at least a bit decent.  But no, the camera on this tab is awful.  The spec says 8MP with Intel RealSense.  I don't really care about the megapixel really.  But still...

Here's the picture I capture using the RealSense camera (best effort using single capture).

And the same one using my iphone (no effort needed).

Try to read Swiss Made and T25 on both picture.

The picture taken is always hazy.  I tried every option on the camera app and none seems to be able to improve the picture quality.  And it became even worse when I switch to depth mode.  The glorious RealSense mode.

I never seen RealSense demo in real life other than Intel CEO putting his face on a computer screen to unlock the device.  But the image captured using RealSense on this device is worse than cr@p.

Here's another picture of spray cans around my house.

And then I read real sense able to change the focus of a picture captured.  Makes sense since it uses 3 camera.  But the problem is the image quality is so bad that changing the focus of the picture doesn't appear to be attractive at all.

Then I hear the camera is able to do measurement as well.  I tried, it's not accurate at all.  And it doesn't work most of the time.  Maybe it's useful if I capture something tall faraway.  But right now, it's easier for me to grab a ruler and do it the old fashion way.

<Spray can picture with measurement placeholder>

To compound to the RealSense fail misery, the post processing of trying to get the depth information takes ages.  If you think your camera's HDR is slow, you never played with RealSense depth camera yet.  The post processing of these 2 spray is still going on since I took the picture 30 minutes ago.

Maybe it's the built in apps that is not working, but I tried scouring the Play store for alternatives but RealSense app is close to non existence.

There's a few more hiccups here and there like software updates are rare, and the 5.1 update only slows down the tablet even more without including patches for StageFright.

OK, if I talk any more faults about this tablet, Dell might do a product recall.  But overall it's a solid tablet.  Just too bad, the software (mr Android) is not polished to run with this discounted spec. But why?  Benchmark numbers are fantastic.  Shut up benchmark cause benchmark is just some random number and don't reflect real world scenarios.

So, is medium cost Android any good?  Well, it depends on your usage.  If you're using it for productivity like browsing web, take notes, chit chatting, then it suits your need.  But when you start loading fancy games and do heavy multi-tasking, you'll start to feel the hardware is lagging behind.

Conclusion is, you get what you paid for.  I'm kind of a power user so discounted RAM is definitely hurting me.  And Android loves plenty of RAM.  High end Android devices exist for a reason.  So it's definitely worth it to pay Rm 3000 for a Samsung Galaxy S6 or a HTC One M9, if only you can fork out that much money.

In the end, buy something that you like cause you'll most likely be looking at it everyday.  It won't be perfect, so deal with it.