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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."

4 of 168 comments (clear)

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

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

  2. 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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.