[ale] Ultra cheap tablet discussion. Are they useful or can they be made useful?

[Ben Coleman]

When my last Samsung Tab A 7 died on me, Walmart had just come out with
their Onn-branded Android tablets.  I picked up one of the 8" tablets on
sale (they are normally $64, but were on sale for $5-10 off).  For what
i use it for (primarily reading on the Kindle App, Google Play books,
Packt's app, OverDrive for library books, and Olive Tree's Bible Reader.
 Occasionally I'll watch something on Hulu or Netflix), it's fine.
Android 9, 2G RAM, 16GB Flash 2.4Ghz and 5 Ghz Wifi, Bluetooth.  It's
not a speed demon, but it's about the same speed as the Tab A 7 tablets
I had been using previously, maybe a tad bit faster.

With the Tab A's, I had gotten to the point where I had to carefully
prune what apps I had installed on the tablet to keep it running
acceptably.  So far, I haven't had to do that with this tablet.  I've
definitely got more apps running on it than I had on the Tab A's, and it
hasn't really slowed down.

From what I can google, it's hackable/rootable, though I haven't tried yet.

One very odd quirk - though the Android 9 on it is almost stock, it does
include Walmart apps factory-installed.  When an update to the Walmart
app became  available, running the Walmart App would detect this and
insist that it be updated.  However, the update would always fail.  This
lasted until the next system update for the tablet.  Recently, when the
Walmart App and the Walmart Grocery app were combined, it started doing
the same thing if you tried to go into the Grocery app.  I guess I'll
have to wait until the next system update to use that app.  You'd think
that Walmart would at least make sure that their own app would run on
their tablet, or would at least make sure this problem didn't come up
again, but Nooooo.

On 6/27/2020 6:28 PM, Beddingfield, Allen via Ale wrote:
> For a couple of years now, I have been seeing these really cheap ($40 to $50)Android tablets in Wal-Mart, dollar stores, and places that normally don't even sell electronics.  Most of them are some brand no one has heard of, or a shameless re-licensing of old school brands like RCA or Polaroid.  I know they are going to be the cheapest of Chinese made junk, but how bad are they?  Would they be usable at all for basic web browsing?  I notice that most of them are running Android 5.0 or 6 .0.  Have any of you played with any of these, or investigated upgrading the OS on them?


-- 
Ben Coleman oloryn at benshome.net | For the wise man, doing right trumps
http://oloryn.benshome.net/     | looking right.  For the fool, looking
Amateur Radio NJ8J              | right trumps doing right.

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