A newbies experience with a Zenithink ZT102
To avoid the main problems
Ensure that any device you buy is listed in the compatibility list for all of the important apps you want to run on it.
Unsolved Problems
1) I could not make any serious or useful, apps visible in Google Play, and I did not succeed in downloading apps by any other means (although see “Solutions not yet investigated” below).
2) The pre-installed apps were not the best available, and being pre-installed, rather than registered to a Google Account, they did not update automatically. In particular, I could not make the pre-installed “Google Navigation” App speak turn by turn directions. This could have been overcome, except that even these apps were not visible in Google Play.
3) The screen was not bright enough to be seen when either reflecting a bright sky, or when the sun was allowed to shine on it. This may not have been such a problem had the audio directions been working.
4) The resistive touch screen did not accept multi-touch gestures, (such as pinch), and I had difficulty finding ways of accomplishing certain actions – such as zooming out of Google Maps. Also, the screen was not very sensitive, so tapping sometimes did not work.
5) The 1GHz mono-processor was a little slow. This might even have contributed to the difficulties I had in typing quickly.
6) The 2*1W speakers were load enough to be heard, but had very poor low frequency response, making music rather unsatisfactory.
Possible Solutions not yet investigated
APK downloader
http://codekiem.com/2012/02/24/apk-downloader/
Sausage Script
http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/29916-scriptmod-for-allwinner-a1x-platforms/
Use of other App Stores
Things tried, but which did not work
Searching for lesser known apps.
I identified 30 “Sat Nav” applications by Google-search. Of these only three, appeared on Google Play. “BeOnRoad” had no UK maps, “Route66” crashed, and I could not find a free trial for “Black Country Navigator”.
Editing build.prop
I edited build.prop to emulate a Samsung Galaxy. This gave me a choice of two devices in the pull down list, but both gave “your device is incompatible with this version of the software” messages.
Other Problems which I was able to solve or avoid
Google Play
Not all tablets run Android, and of those which do, some are not fully Android compatible, or are not Google Certified. Such tablets do not come with “Google Play” pre-loaded. Although there are programs which claim to be able to give access to Google Play, (and other markets which may be easier to access) searching ebay for “Google Play”, and only buying devices which have this pre-installed seems a better solution. The Zenithink ZT102 is OK in that respect because it comes with Google Market pre-installed.aaaaaaa
Speaker Volume
Some (Cheaper) tablets have 2 * 0.5 Watt speakers. There are user reports of the sound on these being very poor. Zenithink is again OK, since it has 2 * 1 Watt speakers.
3G dongle
Like many low cost tablets, the Zenithink advertises 3G facilities via My Huawei E367 Dongle logged itself into the Three network here in the UK, and worked as soon as it was plugged in to the Zenithink USB port. No driver seemed to be required, and it seemed to be controllable from the tablet’s “setup” menu. On the other hand, I never got as far as trying to recharge my Three pay-as-you-go account using the tablet, so I don’t know if this is possible or not.
Accelerometer
The accelerometer in the Zenithink ZT102 I bought failed, causing the screen to stay in portrait mode. Since I could not even find a setting to enable me to control this manually, this was the final straw and caused me to return the unit. (Strangely it started working on leaving the tablet switched-off overnight – but this still meant that I could not trust the unit)
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