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Android The little "tablet" that could

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BenRK

BenRK

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Well, this has been an interesting week. Had a birthday, router died, used birthday money to replace router, and used the left overs to pick up this out of curiosity.

PMID4311-Android-4GB-Internet-Tablet-and-Wireless-e-Reader-with-Capacitive-Multi-Touch-Display-and-Camera-Black.gif


It's called a Polaroid PMID4311, and it (and the other identical but different brand devices that were on the shelf with it) is surprising me since I got it. Picked it up at Big Lots the other day for $50 (it was on sale at the time).

It's specs?

A 4.3" 480x272 multi-touch screen
Single front facing camera about the same quality of a 3DS camera
A 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor
512MBs of RAM
Mali 400 GPU
4GBs of internal storage (though in reality, it's 3GBs flat for some reason)
Mono speaker
Slot for MicroSD card up to 32GBs
And of course Wi-Fi

So yeah, after some fiddling and Google, I managed to get the Android market (Google Play) installed to it. The very first 3D game I tested on it was Minecraft PE, and it ran PERFECTLY! I have a feeling the low res screen helped a lot, but Minecraft isn't a simple 3D game. On my bigger Acer Iconia A500, Minecraft doesn't run at the frame rate this little thing got!

Every game I've run on it works perfectly with some slow down on things like Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders when there is a TON of stuff going on on the screen. I want to test some more intensive 3D games on it, but the lack of storage means I probably wont be able to.

In fact, that's probably my biggest complaint so far, the lack of storage. I don't know if all Android phones and such do this, but the external SD card slot can't be used for Apps for some reason. My tablet did this too, but it has 16GBs, so I had much more leg room. Maybe there's a soft mod out there for this that can fix this issue, but in the meantime, you're stuck to 3GBs split between two partitions.

The battery life is about what expected sadly, and the screen has a poor viewing angle. And worst of all, the thing is ugly! Well... ugly compared to an iPod Touch or something.

In any case, I'm still surprised by how well this little "tablet" performs. Heck, it even runs HTML5 content rather well! Though I've only done a small test with that.

I give it a "If you can't afford anything better, then this $50-60 device will cure your Android hunger more or less."

Anyone else have this? I want to know if there are any working ROMs and such for it, the previously mentioned desire to have an external SD card act as the internal memory, and so on.

Ramble Ramble.
 
App2SD is the name of the mod type done to run apps from external storage. I know that some custom ROMs use a modified kernel with App2SD support, wouldn't know anything specific about getting a custom ROM on that device though (and my prime's got 32GB internal so like you I have lots of room and haven't actually messed with App2SD support, just seen it mentioned now and then when looking up modding for my prime).

If the battery life at least keeps it usable for toilet youtube browsing and such, then it should still be useful, right?
 
I've been using App2SD, but it doesn't recognize that the external SD card is there. And yes, the battery life is good enough for around the house usage.
 
Unsurprisingly, GTA III is almost playable, but not quite. Very laggy, and the buttons are too small. That isn't a big surprise. No on to testing some other games.
 
Hmm, I might get this. I have a tablet which is nice and all but now I just use it for email notifications of stuff. Could sell that and get this, keep the difference in money. >:]

Can you test netflix (if you have a subscription, I mean)?
 
I haven't had any crash issues so far. Heck, when one game got to one frame every couple of seconds, it still ran. Over all, this little device has been very stable.

I currently don't have an active Netflix account, but I was thinking of making a free trial account for testing. I'll let you know how that goes.
 
Netflix countered my free trial attempt. Oh well.

Unrelated note, been leaving it in standby for several hours, still in the 90-100% power range. That's good.
 
Joe88 said:
why are you using this piece of junk when you have a A500?
Click to expand...

Personally, I've always been interested in low end devices, trying to see what I can get away with. Personally, if I had the knowhow and artistic skill, I would have attempted to make something like Oblivion on the original DS years ago.

In any case, I do know how to make games for Android, and on that side of things, having something low end is great. If I can make a game that runs on this well enough, then it can run on just about anything, you know?
 
If you are wanting cool games on it with small files sizes, then you could always grab some GBA, SNES, Sega, or N64 emulators to load up with tons of games.
 
I'm tempted to put a GBA emulator on here, but I ALWAYS like playing on hardware or as close as I can get.
 
Been testing Netflix on it. It indeed works. Video quality is about as good as the 3DS's when you hold it in the right way to avoid the poor viewing angle. If you're just laying in bed or bored at your parents house or something like that, I could see it being nice to have.

The only issue I had was the app it self is a bit laggy, but that's to be expected. It's laggy on my A500.
 
BenRK said:
Been testing Netflix on it. It indeed works. Video quality is about as good as the 3DS's when you hold it in the right way to avoid the poor viewing angle. If you're just laying in bed or bored at your parents house or something like that, I could see it being nice to have.

The only issue I had was the app it self is a bit laggy, but that's to be expected. It's laggy on my A500.
Click to expand...
Yeah it's kind of weird on my HP Touchpad, too. Sometimes I try to move the rows left and right and it goes up/down instead. That's just the app being picky/laggy though.

Pretty sweet, I'll think about picking this up to keep in my pocket. I need something smaller than my tablet but I don't really need a phone right now. Thanks.
 
Cool, just remember that it's not some high end device. Adjust your expectations accordingly or have the curiosity I have and you'll be good.
 
So im getting the feeling its like an... Android ipod touch? Just lower quality? Interesting.
 

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