9.7" Capactive IPS tablet, w Android 4.0 and Android Play Store, Frys B&M $188

[filmking]

CT802 is single core A8, just wanted to throw it out there for anyone reading this thread.

It would be nice to have a dual core cpu, but $188 is not $400. I notice my 32G sdcard only shows 13 G in the apps section of settings. So I guess buying a 16G card is the way to go. Also in rating this CT802 you guys give no credit to the tab being Ipad thin, very light with a great feel and touch to the control buttons. It has the same feel and touch as an Ipad and that's the "gold standard" for tabs. I have handled many cheap tabs on sale and they suffer from looking and handling like a cheap plastic toy.

 

[tifozi]

It would be nice to have a dual core cpu, but $188 is not $400. I notice my 32G sdcard only shows 13 G in the apps section of settings. So I guess buying a 16G card is the way to go. Also in rating this CT802 you guys give no credit to the tab being Ipad thin, very light with a great feel and touch to the control buttons. It had the same feel and touch as an Ipad and that's the "gold standard" for tabs. I have handled many cheap tabs on sale and they suffer from looking and handling like a cheap plastic toy.

13G is the system mounted sd partition (out of the 16G memory). It will show up even when you do not insert the microSD card. Looks like it is not recognizing you sdcard. Could be formatting issue?

Agree with your assessment about the feel of the tablet.

 

[filmking]

13G is the system mounted sd partition (out of the 16G memory). It will show up even when you do not insert the microSD card. Looks like it is not recognizing you sdcard. Could be formatting issue?

Thanks for clearing that up.
Checking settings/device/storage I now see extsd showing the full 32G available. Going to transfer all movable apps to that card later today.

 

[mikeford]

I looked for one of these at Fry's Anaheim, CA store, nothing on the floor, didn't seem like they had any in stock either. Store was kind of busy and I had other stuff to look at, so didn't spend a lot of effort making sure.

 

[The0ne]

how's the performance? After my last pandigital I'm very skeptical of any now. I just want to be able to move around with sluggish-ness; having ICS is a plus.

 

[atlr]

For anyone in Atlanta, the Duluth Fry's has one on the floor. A sales associate, Phil I think, even connected to their Clear internet connection when store traffic was low (~2PM) so I could try out Netflix and Youtube.

 

[tifozi]

There is no noticeable sluggishness or lag. I think $50 less or dual core for the current price would have made this an awesome buy IMO. Although I don't have a CDMA dongle, but this one supports a few dongles natively. Read some heated arguments on a fatwallet thread about the CT802 !!

Also seems like the OP there doesn't have root out of the box. Can anyone else confirm? I think my particular unit may have some dev options too but I am unsure at the moment.

 

[atlr]

For me, reading ebooks is a critical task. I played around with the CT802 at my local Fry's for about an hour. I downloaded and then opened a 22 MB PDF version of Volume 30 of the magazine called Make, http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022398.do, using Adobe Reader. I was disappointed by the page rendering speed. As I moved to each page, half the page was not yet rendered and took some fraction of second to appear. My other tablet experience is with an Ipad 2. With that device, I scroll smoothly from page to page in that same document. Maybe the dual core pre-renders pages faster. Or maybe the iOS version of Adobe Reader is somehow superior to the Android version. At any rate, the reading experience with Adobe Reader on the CT802 was jarring.

Any recommendations for an alternate Android PDF reader to try?

 

[filmking]

Mine is rooted out of the box.

 

[tifozi]

Under Settings -> System do you also have " {} Developer Options" ? I noticed there is an option to disable HDCP checking! Not sure if it is a standard option.

 

[RocSG]

I ran root checker free on market and it confirms it has root

 

[filmking]

Under Settings -> System do you also have " {} Developer Options" ? I noticed there is an option to disable HDCP checking! Not sure if it is a standard option.

yes


On reading pdf files adobe reader is a bit slugish. Both amazon kindle and Pdf on the go are faster and smoother. Aldiko is smoother but there is a delay in the swype. Kindle is #1. I previously wrote that this tab is not going to perform as smoothly as the elegant Ipad and its unfair to compare smoothness in a scroll with the Ipad. Would you compare a corvette with a formula one car on a gran prix track?

BTW adobe reader was just updated...... the tab you had probably didn't have it. But adobe does show a bit of hesitation.

 

[filmking]

Deleted...

 

[atlr]

filmking, thanks for the pdf reader app tips.

Scrolling just like an Ipad 2 is not what I am looking for in this model, it's merely what I have experienced (...sometimes ... in stolen moments. The Ipad 2 is in our house via my wife's job. I was almost mortally wounded last night when I snagged it for comparing the Make magazine reading experience and she wanted it.) However, virtually turning a page to discover half of it blank every time is not the experience I was hoping for so I am looking forward to trying the other pdf reader apps. If that is the best experience this particular combo of hardware and software can provide, then the criteria relevant to me in not met and I must look el$ewhere.

Maybe what I am describing is hoping to find a reader that renders the next page or screen length of pixels while I read the current virtual page so this next virtual page pops up the next time I tap to display that next virtual page. If there is time before the next tap, go ahead and render the pages referenced on the current page. Visible screen painting when choosing random pages would be expected.

 

[etrin]

I was very interested in this but as the post build it just does not seem that good.

It seems that everything that is what I consider a good price in the 7 or 10 in models is either toooooo slowwwww or bad screen quality, not captive
not expandable, not rootable
is there really a good 7 or 10 in that is dual core fast, expandable, good screen with usb and hdmi out at a decent price.
or am I just wishing that the next thing out will be in the deals and will be good?

do you consider this good prices?
7 or 8 = < $200 10" < $300
does one exist now?

 

[kmmatney]

I was very interested in this but as the post build it just does not seem that good.

It seems that everything that is what I consider a good price in the 7 or 10 in models is either toooooo slowwwww or bad screen quality, not captive
not expandable, not rootable
is there really a good 7 or 10 in that is dual core fast, expandable, good screen with usb and hdmi out at a decent price.
or am I just wishing that the next thing out will be in the deals and will be good?

do you consider this good prices?
7 or 8 = < $200 10" < $300
does one exist now?

Cowboom has the iPad 2 on sale for $289 right now (deal of the day)....it will be used, but after a few months of use it really doesn't matter.

 

[filmking]

filmking, thanks for the pdf reader app tips.

Scrolling just like an Ipad 2 is not what I am looking for in this model, it's merely what I have experienced (...sometimes ... in stolen moments. The Ipad 2 is in our house via my wife's job. I was almost mortally wounded last night when I snagged it for comparing the Make magazine reading experience and she wanted it.) However, virtually turning a page to discover half of it blank every time is not the experience I was hoping for so I am looking forward to trying the other pdf reader apps. If that is the best experience this particular combo of hardware and software can provide, then the criteria relevant to me in not met and I must look el$ewhere.

atlr:

I'm not experiencing the bad degree of lag you describe using Adobe Reader. But I must say Adobe does have hesitancy in moving the pages along during a swype or tap. I tried the various readers today and here's the results in the order of best to worst.

1 Amazon Kindle is smooth and fast... no hesitancy whatsoever and it reads pdf files I have downloaded from other sources.

2. Google Books is equal to Kindle and even adds the look of a page turning. I couldn't figure out how to get it to read a file independently downloaded. I was viewing free public domain stuff downloaded from Google... but they do sell all the titles Kindle and Nook sell.

3.Adiko reader ... changes pages fast when tapping, but lags when you swype.

4. PDF to Go has very slight lag displaying the next page.... will read pdfs you have downloaded. Couldn't get it to move pages horizontally only vertically which I find annoying. No tap to change page.. it zooms in or out.

5. Adobe Reader... one second lag on swype or tapping to next page. but many nice features.

In conclusion if you are a big book reader go with Kindle or Google Books.

 

[atlr]

Picked this up.

After turning it on for the first time, I changed a few settings ( display sleep time to 30 minutes, enabled wifi, set up Google account). Next, I logged in to Google Play and installed BusyBox by Stephen ; https://play.google.com/store/apps/...t=W251bGwsMSwxLDMsInN0ZXJpY3Nvbi5idXN5Ym94Il0.
Later, I powered down the CT802 using the power button. Now, on every
power up all systems settings have reverted to the initial settings
and I do not see the BusyBox app. My WiFi and Google account settings are also gone.

As a test, I changed display sleep time from 1 minute to 30 minutes
again. Powered off and on again and still the same behavior; the
display sleep time is has reset to 1 minute.

Subsequent attempts to install apps from Google Play result in
insufficient space errors.

Settings-Storage shows two "Internal Storage" sections.

INTERNAL STORAGE
Total space
0.00B
Apps
54.78MB

INTERNAL STORAGE
Total space
13.14GB
Apps
224KB
Available
13.14GB

Any Ideas?

I have not made it though to a human yet using the Idea USA phone number. Calls to Idea USA phone number 310-410-8888 x8854 resulted one time in reaching voice mail and several times having the auto-attendant announce "operation failed." Trying email too.

I can bear witness that one reason the price is low is perhaps Idea USA has few support staff (optimistically speaking).

 

[filmking]

I would make sure that the unit is fully charged. Then I would go to backup and reset in settings and do a "factory data reset" ---- do it a couple of times... then check the "Back up my data" box. Power down wait 30 sec then boot up. Is the Backup my Data box still selected? I hope so... if so then proceed to make your changes. I hope this helps -- no guarantees.

 

[filmking]

I found this on another forum.... if it all fails stop trying to call Idea and return to fry's for service or an exchange.



"So far as I know the best way to remove glitches like this from the current install is to do a factory restore..
You'll find it in settings somewhere. This should rewrite the OS to factory original from a read only protected section of the SSD. That is unless this tablet has had a new ROM installed on it. That is, the original OS is no longer on it.
Doing this will wipe out all settings changes made to the tablet in favor of the clean install. You will then have to reenter all your personal information. "

 

[atlr]

Problem and Solution to a BusyBox update causing a mount failure of internal storage of the Idea USA tablet model CT802

After updating BusyBox to version 1.20 using BusyBox Installer 7.9.2 by Stephen Stericson and power cycling the Idea USA tablet model CT802, the internal storage partition /data will not mount properly.

Symptoms of the problem are that the first entry of Internal Storage in Settings-Storage will have a Total space value of 0.00 bytes. It should be 1.15GB. All application installs will fail with a message about insufficient storage space. No configuration changes will be saved. Each time the tablet is power cycled, it will behave as if being powered on for the first time and have default settings.

Something in the configuration of the Idea USA CT802 is dependent on busybox having the path /system/bin/busybox. If installing a different busybox package changes that path, internal storage partition /data will not mount properly and will appear to have zero bytes.
Solution

A factory reset or master reset is not necessary. Performing a factory reset or master reset will result in the loss of user data. The following method works due to the CT802 having a root enabled ("rooted") configuration.

On another computer, download and copy term.apk onto a micro SD card. term.apk can be downloaded from https://github.com/jackpal/Android-Terminal-Emulator/downloads
Move the SD Card to the tablet
Enable Settings-Security-Device Administration-Unknown Sources to allow sideloading of term.apk
Run Apps-File Manager and locate term.apk on the external SD card (/mnt/extsd)
Install and open term.apk
Type su at the terminal command prompt to enter superuser mode
Type ln -s /system/xbin/busybox /system/bin/busybox to create a symbolic link to where the BusyBox Installer 7.9.2 by Stephen installed busybox 1.20
Power down the tablet
Power up the tablet and change some settings.
Disable Settings-Security-Device Administration-Unknown Sources
Power down the tablet
Power up the tablet.
Confirm Settings-Storage-Internal Storage has a non-zero value for Total space and that configuration changes made on the prior power up have remained.

 

[filmking]

Glad to see you're up and running.

 

[atlr]

I received the following information in email from a support person at China Mart USA.

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 12:54 PM,
> Our tablets do not have bluetooth capabilities, and I apologize for the
> misinformation, we are correcting this error. However, this tablet does have
> GPS capabilities.
>

 

[filmking]

The Browser is flakey. Just replaced it wit google chrome for android beta. A pleasure since it syncs with the desktop.


I can't find anything in settings suggesting GPS presence. How can I verify that?

 

[mulox]

I can confirm this does in fact have GPS, and you can visit the thread I started here to review those: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1193620/?start=0

What I really need is the USB driver for this tablet. Seems Idea Usa is non-responsive on this matter... anyone have a clue?