Wel OT - help in chosing a new tablet

[David]

I started out with a Sony 10" tablet, which was nice. I then bought an Asus Zenpad 8" for use as an in car navigation screen (which I never got working). However the Asus was an all round nice bit of kit so I ended up using that as a daily tablet because it was faster than the Sony, more portable, and also had very good music capabilities.

A while back the Asus suddenly failed, displaying what I assume is the backlight without any content on the screen. Can't be arsed to take it apart and try to fix it. I suspect the chance of success may be fairly low anyway.

So I'm looking at a new 8-10" tablet. Turns out this is not easy.

Requirements:

Full HD (or better) screen. SIM card support (to avoid relying on phone as a hotspot).

Would like SDXC card support.

Budget - lets keep it to 3 figures, eh, lads!

From initial searching there seem to be loads of no name Android tablets around the £100 mark which have SIM cards. Are these now mature enough to be worth a punt?

Some nice Samsung tablets, but pricey.

Some nice Apple tablets, and the lower end seem affordable, but I've never used Apple kit (at least, not this century) so I don't know if what I don't know will come back to bite me.

Any experience and recommendations welcome.

Cheers

Dave R

[Chris Green]

I bought my first 7" tablet something like ten years ago from AliExpress, i.e. direct from China, it had dual SIMs, it still works fine.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I've got some aspirin tablets at 10p each plus £2.00 P & P

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Well people tell me the Apple screens seem less glary than a lot of the others, but as far as I am aware, nearly all the screens are samsung made in any case, so probably more to do with how they are. Would not worry me, personally not needing a screen. Not sure if Apple have now allowed proper file sharing and sd card support though. Brian

[Max Demian]

My Hudl 2 does that sometimes. I shut it down (by holding the power button down for a long time) and then start it up again and it works. (The HDMI output still feeds the TV when it's in that state.)

[Adrian Caspersz]

With mine, I'm considering how much pain it would be to reverse engineer the presumably LVDS screen connector, remove the motherboard, and replace it with a variety of Raspberry-Pi.

The Hudl 2 OS is now not particularly stable, there are things that Tesco have left in there that have broken the google update mechanism and it's hard to root (unless someone knows different?)

-&-

FWIW I've got another project like that. A discarded Apple MacPro G5 tower that looks great, but really needs gutting and a standard PC motherboard installing.

Though for both of what will be "projects", I just ask myself ...

Why?

[Martin Brown]

It is well worth following the procedure for doing a full system reset which if memory serves is something like hold the on/off button (and possibly volume up or down - I can't recall which) for about 2 minutes or until the things indicator lamp or screen flashes and then let go.

Check the exact details for your specific model online or with the makers helpline - they were very helpful when I had this happen. Turned out with the phone that it had bricked itself so I got a new one under warrantee. The same trick has reset other tablet by trial and error.

I recall not doing it for long enough first time and my fingers going numb towards the end of the long wait time for the full reset to occur.

It worked OK on my no name Amazon Chinese special that self destructed and then played dead but after the reset everything was in Chinese!

Your money your choice.

I have a Samsung tablet and it survives a lot of daily hammer.

If you are new to Apple then the OS differences will prove somewhat annoying. They are nice kit but expensive for what you get. My wife prefers the iToys - I'm on Android for phone and tablet.

I also have a semi-tablet an ASUS T1000 which comes apart at the hinge and can be used as a touch screen tablet or with a small keyboard. (sadly it isn't made of liquid metal alloy)

If it were my money I'd go for a Samsung. John Lewis had good enough prices that I bought mine from the Manchester store in person after playing with one a few years back. Been in daily use ever since.

[Chris Green]

Or even under warranty, it's guarantee but warranty.

... mumble, mumble, mutter, mutter.......

[R D S]

I've a Lenovo Yoga and *very* happy with it.

[David]

Tried a full system reset (best that I could tell) but no change.

I assume that if a reset is going to work that when you start the reset process you will see something displayed on the screen during the reset process.

Seems to be dead as a very dead thing.

Cheers

Dave R

[John Nomen]

A doornail.

[Paul]

Does it have an external graphics connector ? For a monitor ?

You can see someone here, reviewing the properly-seated status of some tablet ribbon cables. You don't have to exercise all the connectors, just check if something has worked loose. In some cases, an item might never have been secured properly at the factory (the little lock didn't work right).

In addition to cables working loose. the balls on BGA packages can crack. For an object one foot on edge (a big square), about 8mm of deflection upwards on one corner, is sufficient to crack a solder ball. But usually when you do that to electronics, you will hear "warning sounds", cracking noises, as the item approaches failure. Sitting on your smartphone is an example of a bending stress leading to failure. Sometimes BGA balls crack from thermal stress, but the underfill polymer injected underneath the chip, is supposed to ease the stress there. There have been famous cases where that engineering was done incorrectly, but nothing lately.

While I like your theory, either a BIOS POST failure or an OS failure of some sort, the cabling is pretty attractive as a theory too. If the machine was really working though, and you couldn't see the screen, you might hear some noises from the speaker.

Paul

[David]

I am avoiding taking the thing apart because time=money and I have a large backlog of things I should be doing.

So I'm more or less writing it off for the moment as getting it working (it is old) may not give bangs per buck.

I don't know if it will support a USB to HDMI converter (again, it is old and Android is unsupported) so I am dubious about laying out another £20 or so for a potentially inconclusive test.

I intend to put it to one side for the moment.

Which brings us back to the question of a replacement!

Cheers

Dave R

[Theo]

No experience, but I note that Lenovo has a range of Android tablets sold at the usual places. That might be another option to add to Samsung/Apple/no-brand.

And there's Amazon Fire of course, but that's 'not Android' (although you can sideload the Play Store and turn it into something that looks more like a regular Android device)

Theo