2:11 AM
Lrence
Android tablets has earned their rights as the most wanted gadget of all time, the abundance and flexibility of it ranging from brands, price and specs has made it even more popular. The Cloudpad 700d by Cloudfone is one of the new tabs on the block, catering the entry-level market, sounds good, as more and more users now opted their way to the budget android world but will the Cloudpad proved itself as a worthy competition? Let's find out.
The Cloudpad 700d is another ipad "wanabe" that shares a lot of the ipad's design but doesn't come near the ipad experience, I don't know much about the company's history but I'm guessing it's a company that re-brands Chinese made devices much like Cherry mobile and myphone which by the way is slowly congesting the electronics consumer market in the Philippines, to say the least --- That doesn't sound good as far as the competition is concerned but in general it's the consumers that will benefit from it , more choices and soon more price drops either way we consumers always ends up as winners.
The design is not much to look at and you won't be impressed by its cheap looks and feel yet you can easily hold it with one hand vertically, grip it firmly and you'll start to hear it creak, which makes you worry that it's doom to a short life, the screen is made up of soft plastics, so soft you can see warped areas on the sides, and once you apply a little pressure on your finger you can feel the screen bend almost touching the inner part of the LCD, though it doesn't surprised me at all for this type of materials and built quality is a flat-out standard on Chinese made budget tablets.
The Cloudpad 700d may not be a good-looking tablet but it definitely pack some features which won't be left behind by the competition and most of it works at its favor, at 5,999 pesos it's one of the cheapest 3G wifi tablet around. Furthermore, the Cloudpad does have some serious hardware specs it features a Mediatek 1Ghz dual-core processor (MTK6577), with Power VR GPU (SGX531) and a 512 mb of RAM, swiping through the homescreen is seamless at first, probably so, because the test unit that I have barely have apps on it, so I decided to install as many apps as I can and try to cram the homescreen with as much widgets as possible, then that is where things really starts to change, the once seamlessly gliding homescreen suddenly became laggy at some point, but to some extent it still is snappy when opening apps closing it though, varies from one app to another. Despite of the occasional lags it still is a decent tablet, nonetheless.
The unit that I have runs on android 4.0 ICS but later release will have jellybean on board good news for chrome browser users, speaking of browsers the Cloudpad does excel in this category regardless of your browsing needs the Cloudpad will gladly do the favor for you, though I'd recommend that you switch the browser agent to android for an optimized tablet browsing experience, reverting it to desktop drastically increases the load times, more so, wifi signal is relatively weak on the cloudpad 700d, once I'm inside my room it can no longer connect with my wifi router where as my Archos 70 still has one bar on it but occasionally disconnects.
The cloudpad 700d does come with viber pre-installed, I've used the app and surprising enough it did not disappoint me, viber does seem to work natively well on this tablet, haven't tried skype though, but it's a given fact that both app uses VOIP so I'm guessing it will also do well on the cloudpad, don't ask me about the camera for both the front and rear has grainy resolutions, so there's not much need to talk about it. --- In fairness phone features works surprisingly well, SMS is now in an upscale version, no more glasses for grandpa! phone calls do work fine as well, however that won't exempt you from looking silly while answering calls, using a headset though, will prevent you from looking one.
The screen won't impress you at all at 800x480 resolution and 133 ppi, 2010 surely wants its LCD back, though to be fair it plays HD videos at 720p not bad for an average person but if you're the meticulous type this will probably bother you until sanity leaves your head and did I forgot to mention that it has crummy viewing angles too. Gaming on the other hand works fine, the Power VR GPU and Mediatek processor has once again proved its worth in gaming, Dead Trigger is playable with minimal lags and I'm pretty sure that some graphic intensive games will also be playable on the Cloudpad 700d.
The most significant downside of this device is the poor battery life, in a single charge it lasted roughly 3hrs of continuous use with wifi on, the 3,000 mah battery is pathetic for a 3G tablet, given the fact that 3G itself consumes generous amount of power, and the staff at cloudfone states that it only has 1 day of standby time, pathetic! Bringing a tablet at work is hassle enough, all together with a charger is definitely not worth the bother.
NOTE:
My review is based on my overnight experience with the Cloudpad 700d, thanks to friends at Cloudfone who had given me the chance to review one of their demo units at home, if you got something to say please feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.
SPECIFICATIONS:
GENERAL
2G Network GSM 900/1800
3G Network WCDMA 2100
Single Sim
BODY
Dimensions 198.0 x 122.0 x 9.9 mm
Weight 200g
Single SIM
Hard Buttons Power, Volume
Capacitive Buttons Back, Home, Recent Apps, Menu
DISPLAY
TFT capacitive screen, 16M colors
7.0”, 800 x 480 pixels (~133 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch
SOUND
VGA
Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker
3.5mm jack
MEMORY
Card slot microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal 4 GB ROM, 512 MB RAM
DATA
GPRS
EDGE
Speed HSDPA 7.2
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wireless
Hotspot via Data
Bluetooth 2.1
microUSB v2.0
CAMERA
Primary 2 MP
Features Geo-tagging
Video
Secondary VGA
FEATURES
OS
Android 4.1 (jellybean)
Chipset MTK6577
CPU Dual-core 1 GHz
GPU Power SGX531
Sensors Accelerometer (G-sensor), gyroscope, proximity
Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS,
Email, Push Email
Browser HTML
FM Receiver
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
Colors Charcoal Gray
Google Services Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Gtalk, Latitude, Maps, Navigation, Places, Play Store, Search, Street View, Youtube ,Preloaded Apps,Facebook, Twitter
BATTERY
Li-ion 3000 mAh
Posted in: Tablet Review
5 comments:
My wife previously owns one for over a month but not completely satisfied with its battery performance so we traded it for the Fusion bolt, nice tab though good for texting.
It seems battery performance is the weakest link on this device.
I cannot open my Cloudpad 700D. I cannot see the Lock Screen, although I still can see the time, date, and the Emergency Call button. I still can see the Battery Level and other icons at the bottom but I cannot open it. Anyone has an idea on what happened?
There's definitely something wrong with your tab, try to wait until your battery dies out, connect the charger and try to restart it again and see what happens, if the problem persist use your warranty if it's still covered or if it's still under the 10 day replacement period replace it with a new one.
Social networking can help me better relationships. I also use it to trade in a few items. It seems everything is very good.
catmario4.com
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