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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."

13 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: 4, Informative

      warning goatse

    2. Re:Cherrypal scam? by zombie_striptease · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I ordered their Africa netbook as a gift for someone last spring. The "Linux" version was actually Windows CE with all the windows logos scrubbed. Cute trick :P

      Also it loaded from flash instead of having an actual BIOS, so attempting to install my own OS was non-trivial. They're false-advertising bastards to be sure.

  2. The most important question has not been asked by sakura+the+mc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does it run FreeBSD?

  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.

    1. Re:resistive? by rajeevrk · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hmmm... I've been using the with a81E for a month now, and it's been reasonably good. Decent build quality, for a Chinese device. Andeoid 2.2 works like a charm, pretty responsive on the ARM Cortex-A8 cpu. Stability and battery life is still an issue, they cant seem to figure out how to get even the battery-level meter working. IMHO, it's a firmware version or two away from being ready for primetime. Also, on it's resistive touchscreens, i have to say it's emminently usable, IF you calibrate it properly. I once messed up the calibration so bad, i had to re-flash :)

  4. 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

  5. Re:Holy design, Batman. by bmo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And you think that Apple's design and form factor of the iPad is somehow groundbreaking?

    Go read the paper on the Dynabook concept from the 70s. Right down to the capacitive screen.

    There is no intellectual property here. All the big thinking was done 40 years ago at PARC.

    --
    BMO

  6. Re:Holy design, Batman. by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not saying that this price range is out of the question, just that, as noted in another post in this thread, Cherrypal has a history of not shipping orders.

  7. Re:slate ? I prefer to buy a tablet. by mattack2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, they're PADD on Star Trek.

    http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCARS

  8. 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.

  9. Re:slate ? I prefer to buy a tablet. by robogun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    IBM and Lenovo have been making ThinkPad computers since 1992, but Jobs probably would try for it anyway.

  10. Do not purchase from this company by LurkersA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do not purchase from this company. I ordered one of their $99 netbooks earlier in the year, and it never showed up. I tried to contact the company via email and phone on several occasions and no contact was ever made. My bank eventually reversed the transaction, but it was still a major pain in the ass. Google yields plenty of results for people with similar experiences from this company.