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Hands-On Test With the Dirt-Cheap CherryPad Tablet

Posted by timothy on from the stocking-stuffers dept.

MojoKid writes "A small company out of Palo Alto, CA — Cherrypal — made headlines recently with the announcement of their dirt-cheap $188 CherryPad tablet. The CherryPad is a 7-inch slate that comes preloaded with the Android 2.1 operating system and is driven by an 800MHz ARM11-based processor by Samsung, backed by a meager 256MB of DDR2 system memory. The device is also based on a resistive touch display, so it takes a bit of getting used to, if you've been working with devices like the iPhone or similar, where capacitive touch displays are ubiquitous. Just what does $188 buy you in an Android tablet? In short, the CherryPad falls down a bit where Cherrypal decided to cut corners from a cost perspective. The device needs another 256MB of RAM (for 512MB total) and a higher quality touch screen (perhaps a 1GHz CPU?) and that would have likely pushed its price northward a bit to be sure."

11 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Cherrypal scam? by hillbluffer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Try Googling "Cherrypal scam" for some interesting links...

    1. Re:Cherrypal scam? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Cherrypal stole $285 from me. :(

  2. I like the form factor by siddesu · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I have a smartphone, and I think they're way too small to read. I've tried the iPad, and it is way too big and too heavy to lug around. I lug a sub-notebook, but I don't really need that keyboard.

    I really want something about this big, less than 350g, with at least XGA video and ability to actually use a pen to write stuff, so that it can work as a reader and let me annotate.

    Good to see some products that start to feel the market in my direction.

    1. Re:I like the form factor by hitmark · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While it is not substitute to seeing and handling it in a shop, here is a review (or part 1 of it) from a guy that have had it for a while now:
      http://carrypad.com/2010/10/28/samsung-galaxy-tab-full-review-part-1-overview-hardware-screen-keyboard/

      --
      comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
  3. resistive? by bhcompy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Resistive? I'm in. I love resistive. You can use a real stylus and get accurate results. Summary just sold me on a new device for note taking in lectures as my ~3" HTC Kaiser is just too damn small.

  4. slate ? I prefer to buy a tablet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought the difference was

    slate - runs windows
    tablet - runs linux/android
    pad - runs osx

    I think tablet is the generic term and usable without threat of lawsuit

    1. Re:slate ? I prefer to buy a tablet. by bmo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd like to see Apple try to defend its "ownership" of the word "pad" against a company that thinks it's worth its while to wrest it from Apple's clutches.

      Merely descriptive words are not supposed to be trademarks, and Microsoft almost lost theirs for the word "Windows" to Lindows/Linspire when Microsoft said that changing the name to Linspire wasn't good enough. Microsoft pushed too hard. Linspire said in court "hey, just one second here, can you really own a generic descriptive word?" Microsoft wound up paying Linspire to shut the hell up about it.

      And then Linspire proceeded to squander the money, but hey, it was funny to watch Microsoft almost lose "Windows" entirely.

      --
      BMO

    2. Re:slate ? I prefer to buy a tablet. by bmo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Pad describes the form factor, such as a legal pad.

      There are only so many ways to describe the form factor of the ipad. Tablet, slate, pad, and... what else?

      Apple can trademark an "iPad," because when you append letters and mis-spell, you no longer have an English (or other language) word. I (and the vast majority of people) have no problem with this. This is what many marketers get paid lots of bucks to do. For a long time, this was the only way you could get a trademark as purely English words were not allowed to have a trademark. I'm unsure when the use of purely English words was allowed, but it was a bad idea and it's caused no small amount of trouble since then.

      For Apple to stretch the concept and claim the word "pad" for themselves is abuse of trademark and they should be slapped for it if they try to bring it to court.

      Slashdotters get upset here at Monster Cable for suing an indoor golf business (and a lot of other small businesses that can't afford to defend themselves) by Monster Cable claiming the use of the word Monster in the name is exclusively theirs. We should get similarly upset at Apple if they try to claim the word "pad" for only their products.

      --
      BMO

  5. Re:Holy design, Batman. by Nerdfest · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are a series of 7" Android devices already shipping in the $100 range. They're similar to this but run version 1.5 or 1.6. The processor is generally slower as well. They should be able to actually ship for this price.

  6. You can buy this right now for around $100 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Its called a "Pandigital Novel" and it can be bought at Kohls with coupons and the right sale at around a hundred bucks.

    Fifteen minutes to flash it with your choice of a half dozen different Android 2.0 images from Slatedroid, and bobs your uncle.

    Work on 2.1 and 2.2 on the PDN is underway.

    I have one, and its a perfectly workable browsing/email tool. Only problem is that everywhere I take it, people ask me a million questions about what it is and if they can buy one already done up with the firmware mods.

  7. Be carefull buying these el-cheapo tablets by jonwil · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A number of these companies (especially those where the original product comes from China) continue to violate the GPL as applied to the Android Linux kernel.

    Now some people may not care about such things but this is /. so I hope people here care :)