In this extremely competitive world of tablet computing
Rullingnet Corporation's venture into various tablets for children is a very
bold step indeed. Every Android tablet that is out on the market has its
advantages and disadvantages. This whole technology in tablet computing is an
experiment in progress and it all depends on which manufacturer hits the sweet
spot in terms of price, quality in hardware and features that end-users like.
So, what does end-users like? - Obviously one that works reliably, has the fewest nagging bugs, has the best quality video and touch screen, is thin and light, feels solid and in the end durability and value for money.
Where does this VINCI tablet fit? - Remember, this was intended for the toddlers and kids up-to age 5 years at most as any older kid will obviously refuse to touch it as they can tell the difference between Kindle Fire HD 7" or Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 and VINCI tab-II.
What must have differentiated this product from others would have been the quality in good software and Apps, but I am sorry to say while Rullingnet Corporation did their best effort in bringing creative apps for kids it surely is an expensive solution at this point in time. The price of Apps does weigh in and makes this product look very expensive to afford in the long run.
PROS
[+] Creative concept in learning for kids!
[+] Well protected by rubberized Red Ring from accidental drops
[+] Micro-SD card for expandable memory
CONS
[-] Expensive software apps - Built-in ones are stripped down demo versions!
[-] Very heavy for a 18 month toddler - Trust me it is heavy! Okay for 3-4 years.
[-] Poor video resolution compared to most devices in this price range.
[-] Wi-Fi is 802.11g only (54 Mbps) max and excruciatingly slow
[-] Constant force closes on main screen doing nothing! complaining about Google maps???
[-] Bugs in the demo apps - Hangs and force closes too often and automatically reboots.
[-] No tilt sensor or accelerometer hence cannot auto rotate landscape to portrait
[-] No GPS for precise location data why is Google maps apps factory installed??
[-] Very poor quality audio speakers that sounds crackly and tinny
[-] Frustrating touch screen keyboard which barely registers your touches properly
[-] Very poor quality rear facing camera takes terrible pictures and videos
[-] No Audio jack for private listening
[-] Below average battery life - it starts nagging at you when battery level reaches 10% constantly!
Cannot explain why Little Red riding hood ends up at grandma's house with a 'kitten' when she starts with a puppy in the first place??! Also, Mommy Mommy, my chickens are no longer showing me eggs when the Egg hunt game froze on us after about 5 mins of game-play. Then it started complaining - This game is not designed for VINCI tablet when we attempted to relaunch it. After 1 min the device rebooted and it started to work again. - Go figure!
I thought to myself, okay let's see if this tablet can be used for a Young kid / teenager by adding few new apps that really works via the 'Amazon Android app' store or 'Google Market' or simply side-load them via the MicroSD card. The feat is no simple to side-load apk files for most users but for Android Geek like me noticing that this is basically a Telechips based Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread device was pretty easy. But that also was somewhat disappointing as we could not play the popular Temple Run game to run properly as the device does not have a Tilt sensor!.
Having said, Games that do not need Tilt sensor or accelerometer however worked beautifully. Popular games like Cut the Rope, Cut the Rope: Experiments Where's My Water?, Where's My Perry? and even more games like Machinarium and World of Goo worked perfectly. There is plenty of CPU power to play most games if you were to gift this to a Young kid who is brutal on most tablets. It also plays Mp4, Mp3s just fine. flash based websites and low resolution videos display just fine. Because of poor WiFi online web experience was disappointing. Websites loaded slowly and downloading apps from the cloud took forever!
Bottom-line:
If the price drops below $129.99 and the VINCI kids apps are about 10-15 dollars each then may be an average middle class family would be able to afford and embrace the new technology for their toddlers and young kids. As it currently stands, At the best it could end up being a 'Black Friday' material for a Holiday gift as long as you do not buy the software & Apps. Let the other party pay the price :D
I can understand programming for kids does not come cheap as it involves a lot of original hard work from developers but in this competitive world of tablets wherein 'Google' and 'Amazon' are literally giving away high quality hardware for fraction of the price to get you into their ecosystem - I see no hesitation to grab one of those high quality devices instead and side-load some cool Android apps for kids.
Summary:
The VINCI tab -II Touch screen learning tablet falls short of anyone's expectations for a Tablet exclusively for a toddler! and younger kids alike - IMHO, Nice creative learning concept but is seen to be marred by very glitchy hardware & expensive software solution.
For Advanced users: (Obviously not for toddlers!)
If you want to enable "ADB" debugging you will need to have the "M801_88" device driver for this tablet: The tablet presents itself with Device name M801_88 and most likely your windows PC will not be able to find that device driver. (It however finds the necessary drivers for mounting the SDCARD automatically)
After some digging around, I found the details of the Telechips device:
If you have the Android SDK package from Google you could get the driver from the SDKManager (Which is part of the Android SDK ) and download the google-usb_drivers package from "3rd party tools" section.
Find and open the "google-usb_driver" folder and edit "android_winusb.inf" and add these lines to the [Google.NTx86] section and [Google.NTamd64] section:
Lines you will need to add to the "android_winusb.inf" files are shown below:
[Google.NTx86]
;
;M801_88
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&MI_01
[Google.NTamd64]
;
;M801_88
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&MI_01
For *NOT* so technically inclined use this link to get the already edited "android_winusb.inf" file and necessary supporting Android Device Driver (Composite Adb Interface) files for windows.
So, what does end-users like? - Obviously one that works reliably, has the fewest nagging bugs, has the best quality video and touch screen, is thin and light, feels solid and in the end durability and value for money.
Where does this VINCI tablet fit? - Remember, this was intended for the toddlers and kids up-to age 5 years at most as any older kid will obviously refuse to touch it as they can tell the difference between Kindle Fire HD 7" or Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 and VINCI tab-II.
What must have differentiated this product from others would have been the quality in good software and Apps, but I am sorry to say while Rullingnet Corporation did their best effort in bringing creative apps for kids it surely is an expensive solution at this point in time. The price of Apps does weigh in and makes this product look very expensive to afford in the long run.
PROS
[+] Creative concept in learning for kids!
[+] Well protected by rubberized Red Ring from accidental drops
[+] Micro-SD card for expandable memory
CONS
[-] Expensive software apps - Built-in ones are stripped down demo versions!
[-] Very heavy for a 18 month toddler - Trust me it is heavy! Okay for 3-4 years.
[-] Poor video resolution compared to most devices in this price range.
[-] Wi-Fi is 802.11g only (54 Mbps) max and excruciatingly slow
[-] Constant force closes on main screen doing nothing! complaining about Google maps???
[-] Bugs in the demo apps - Hangs and force closes too often and automatically reboots.
[-] No tilt sensor or accelerometer hence cannot auto rotate landscape to portrait
[-] No GPS for precise location data why is Google maps apps factory installed??
[-] Very poor quality audio speakers that sounds crackly and tinny
[-] Frustrating touch screen keyboard which barely registers your touches properly
[-] Very poor quality rear facing camera takes terrible pictures and videos
[-] No Audio jack for private listening
[-] Below average battery life - it starts nagging at you when battery level reaches 10% constantly!
Cannot explain why Little Red riding hood ends up at grandma's house with a 'kitten' when she starts with a puppy in the first place??! Also, Mommy Mommy, my chickens are no longer showing me eggs when the Egg hunt game froze on us after about 5 mins of game-play. Then it started complaining - This game is not designed for VINCI tablet when we attempted to relaunch it. After 1 min the device rebooted and it started to work again. - Go figure!
I thought to myself, okay let's see if this tablet can be used for a Young kid / teenager by adding few new apps that really works via the 'Amazon Android app' store or 'Google Market' or simply side-load them via the MicroSD card. The feat is no simple to side-load apk files for most users but for Android Geek like me noticing that this is basically a Telechips based Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread device was pretty easy. But that also was somewhat disappointing as we could not play the popular Temple Run game to run properly as the device does not have a Tilt sensor!.
Having said, Games that do not need Tilt sensor or accelerometer however worked beautifully. Popular games like Cut the Rope, Cut the Rope: Experiments Where's My Water?, Where's My Perry? and even more games like Machinarium and World of Goo worked perfectly. There is plenty of CPU power to play most games if you were to gift this to a Young kid who is brutal on most tablets. It also plays Mp4, Mp3s just fine. flash based websites and low resolution videos display just fine. Because of poor WiFi online web experience was disappointing. Websites loaded slowly and downloading apps from the cloud took forever!
Bottom-line:
If the price drops below $129.99 and the VINCI kids apps are about 10-15 dollars each then may be an average middle class family would be able to afford and embrace the new technology for their toddlers and young kids. As it currently stands, At the best it could end up being a 'Black Friday' material for a Holiday gift as long as you do not buy the software & Apps. Let the other party pay the price :D
I can understand programming for kids does not come cheap as it involves a lot of original hard work from developers but in this competitive world of tablets wherein 'Google' and 'Amazon' are literally giving away high quality hardware for fraction of the price to get you into their ecosystem - I see no hesitation to grab one of those high quality devices instead and side-load some cool Android apps for kids.
Summary:
The VINCI tab -II Touch screen learning tablet falls short of anyone's expectations for a Tablet exclusively for a toddler! and younger kids alike - IMHO, Nice creative learning concept but is seen to be marred by very glitchy hardware & expensive software solution.
For Advanced users: (Obviously not for toddlers!)
If you want to enable "ADB" debugging you will need to have the "M801_88" device driver for this tablet: The tablet presents itself with Device name M801_88 and most likely your windows PC will not be able to find that device driver. (It however finds the necessary drivers for mounting the SDCARD automatically)
After some digging around, I found the details of the Telechips device:
Device Name:
| M801_88 |
Hardware ID
| USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&REV_0226&MI_01 USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&MI_01 |
If you have the Android SDK package from Google you could get the driver from the SDKManager (Which is part of the Android SDK ) and download the google-usb_drivers package from "3rd party tools" section.
Find and open the "google-usb_driver" folder and edit "android_winusb.inf" and add these lines to the [Google.NTx86] section and [Google.NTamd64] section:
Lines you will need to add to the "android_winusb.inf" files are shown below:
[Google.NTx86]
;
;M801_88
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&MI_01
[Google.NTamd64]
;
;M801_88
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&MI_01
For *NOT* so technically inclined use this link to get the already edited "android_winusb.inf" file and necessary supporting Android Device Driver (Composite Adb Interface) files for windows.
No comments:
Post a Comment