OlivePad VT 100 review and price

  

OlivePad VT100  review and price

Android tablets are fastinfiltrating the market, and are poised to become the next big thing aftersuper smartphones. In the middle of the Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tablands a model from the manufacturer of low-end phones - Olive. The OlivePad VT100 comes in at an astonishingly low price, but does it have enough to make amark against its premium competitors? Read on to find out.

 Hardware

The OlivePad comes with a bright7" display capable of multi-touch input thanks to the capacitive layer, howeverthe low WVGA resolution does disappoint. The capacitive input on the display isfairly sensitive but is not up to the levels of its competitors. A level ofpressure has to be applied on the display to register input. The rest of thebuild quality is fairly good. The front visage of the tablet has mainly thescreen and four capacitive touch buttons, which conveniently light up at atouch. A 'chromified' plastic border surrounds the tablet and gives it aslightly cheap look. The back of the device is mirror finish plastic, and isvery fingerprint prone.

Powered by a 600Mhz processor ,Android 2.2 with its optimised power demands runs fairly smoothly, though it isnot uncommon to chance upon a few frame drops along the way. Olive has donewell in making this a Google Experience device by licensing the Android Market.This gives the VT100 access to a wide range of applications ranging fromdocument viewers to games. As the resolution (480x800) is very similar to mostsmartphones there should not be any scaling issues. Stretched out to the7" display, a few applications do start to look ugly. The in-built RAM isgenerous at 512 MB, and we never faced any 'Out Of Memory' issues with theOlive Pad.

A very interesting observation isthat the VT100 is in-fact a full blown cellphone as well. Just pop in your SIMcard and you can not only make phone calls but enjoy 3.5 G surfing as well.There is a GPS receiver in there, to enable navigation using Google Maps. Afront facing camera allows for video calling while a 3MP unit on the backallows you to take a quick snap or two.

The quality of the camera isnothing to write home about and is definitely not going to replace your pointand shoot but is convenient enough to take a random snap on the go. The camerainterface is easy to get by and is surprisingly feature rich, allowing forbrightness and exposure adjustment among other settings. Geotagging of imagesis also supported.

The 3240mAh battery accounts forthe heavy weight of the device, but is essential to the requirements of atablet. While charging over USB from a computer, it took us about 3-4 hours tocompletely charge the tablet, it lasted us about 2 days of intermittent usage.This included a few hours of surfing, reading an entire novel back to back and playingback a bit of music. I had TweetDeck, Gtalk running in the background and spentabout half an hour downloading applications as well. Very decent battery life.

Software

Olive has been wise and has keptthe VT100 more or less stock Android. Other than the shortcut bar placed on thehomescreen, it is stock Android 2.2. Gmail , YouTube and all other applicationswork as they would on any other Android smartphone. Using Aldiko, the ebookreader, we actually enjoyed reading a book as the tablet is a perfect formfactor for it. It might not replace your eBook reader but is a nice alternativeto have alongside.

Coming to the primary use of atablet computer, web browsing. The OlivePad makes for a very nice way to surfthe internet while sitting on a couch. The large 7" screen is a treat andmakes it very easy to browse the internet without unnecessary scrolling orsquinting. Yes, it did experience slowdowns when loading heavy pages, but oncethe loading completes, the entire experience is very smooth. We were able toload the Technoholik homepage in under 5 seconds on a 1Mbps Wi-Fi connection.

The onscreen keyboard is a bittough to get used to due to the large screen size. We were more comfortableusing the integrated T9 variant as it involved far fewer key presses.

The screen transitions - be itfor orientation changes or application changes are quick and jerk free. Sufficeit to say that the VT100 will never feel sluggish under normal use.

Conclusion

Retailing for about Rs 23,000,the OlivePad VT100 is in a very interesting position. It is cheaper than mostcompeting smartphones, let alone tablets. Has a decent feature set, and comeswith a leather case and a 16GB memory card. What really makes us recommend thisis the fact that the OlivePad actually offers a lot of tablet for a lot lessmoney. Being stock Froyo, you are allowed to customise it to your heartscontent. Yes, it makes sacrifices by not having the fastest processor or thebest touchscreen experience, but when you look at the price point, it offerstremendous value for money. If you are in the market for a general purposetablet and one which would allow you to surf the web or watch a bit of YouTubewhile in bed, the VT100 is a very good option.

OlivePad VT100 FullSpecifications

GSM      850/900/1800/2100

WCDMA              900/1900/2100

Chipset                 Qualcomm MSM7227

GPRS     Class 12

Dimensions        179.4(H) * 110(W) * 11.5(T)

Screen   7 inch TFT Capactitive Touchscreen

Display                 800×480 WVGA Display

Internal Memory             512 MB+ 512 MB

Memory Card support   upto 32 GB

Phonebook memory       2000

SMS memory     500

3.5 mm audio jack           yes

Charging             mini USB

Battery                 Li-Po

Capacity              3240mAh

Standby time     GSM:400h WCDMA : 550h

Talktime              GSM :1200mins WCDMA : 480 mins

Camera                3 MP Autofocus 4X zoom

Audio formats supported            MIDI, MP3, AMR, AAC AAC+

Speaker                Dual

Video Streaming              yes

Video Formats 3GP

Bluetooth            v2, AD2P

WiFi      802.11 b/g

                Compass

                G-sensor

                AmientLight sensor

Email    Pull email

                MMS,WAP

                GPS

                PC-sync

                Speaker

                Vibration

                Stopwatch

                calendar

                calculator

                worldclock