Retail Plus F931A 9.7" Android 4.0 ICS Capacitive Tablet Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,939 words · ~9 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing of the ITAB
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F931A. This is an 8.9 in Android 4.0 ice
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cream sandwich tablet. Okay, it uses a
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4x3 aspect ratio, so it's 1024 x 768 in
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terms of the screen resolution. Let's have a look at what's included. Oh yeah.
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Okay, it's got a fairly complete overall accessory package. This is handy. So, a
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mini USB to full-size USB adapter allows
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you to easily plug a USB device. Even hey, if you even wanted to use like a 3G
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modem USB adapter, you can even plug that in. So, while the unit is not 3G
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capable out of the box, you can use that
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as a solution as well. This is just for data transfer and syncing and whatnot.
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You've got a power cable for charging. Takes about 5 hours to charge the device
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from a standstill according to the manufacturer spec. We have another USB
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cable. So, this one's USB A to mini B. So, for whatever that's for. Okay. Lots
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of USB cables. We've got, for whatever reason, what appear to be Apple OEM
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headphones. Really? They must be clones.
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Mhm. Yeah, they must be clones. Okay. Well, white headphones that are
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included. Okay. We've got a little guide to Android 4.0. Let's have a look at the
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tablet itself. So you can see the screen has what is called a bubble screen. So
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this is a capacitive fivepoint multi-touch screen. And the technology
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behind it is because the but no I'm just kidding. Uh it does have a fivepoint
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capacitive multi-touch screen but it is not a bubble screen. That is just a
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screen protector that came in the box. So you can see the aesthetic is an awful
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lot like the iPad. It does have a front- mounted camera as well as a rear-mounted
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camera. So you can use it for chat applications. Um, that card that I threw
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over there covered up my notes, but let's go ahead and uh take the back off
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of here. Oh, that's quite nice actually. Has a metal back. So, kind of a anodized
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uh metal finish on the back that seems like it should be reasonably durable.
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Not much flex to the unit. Great. Okay. Volume controls are
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here. These look familiar. Um, and then
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that's You know what? Give me a sec here, guys. So, I don't remember where
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we left off anymore. It's actually been a while. While I connected to Wi-Fi, I
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installed Angry Birds because everyone loves Angry Birds. Look at those birds.
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They're so angry. Actually, that's the only one that's angry. He's more confused and so is he. He's sad and he's
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really confused. And uh hopefully it'll
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go ahead and sort of let me play the game. Overall, the tablet is very
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smooth. It's actually using an A8 processor, so it's while it's not
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necessarily the Yeah, we get it. Uh while it's not necessarily the newest
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possible thing, it does run pretty uh
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pretty cleanly, pretty smoothly. You can see scrolling around here, scrolling
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around inside the ice cream sandwich various home screens. Um internet is not
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tested yet, but hopefully it's pretty good because we're about to try it. No
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idea. I guess the Oh, okay. Give it a
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sec. All right, so let's open a new tab.
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Let's uh go ahead and go somewhere. So, let's go to
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ncixx.com because there's a bunch of flash and stuff going on. And again, one
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of the advantages of Android tablets versus an iOS device is the ability to
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run Flash. So, you can see all of the helpful advertisements on NCIX.com such
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as this one. Actually, it's possible we don't have Flash installed on it yet.
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So, oh no, there it is. Okay. So, web browsing could be smoother, although
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that's a complaint about Android in general.
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So, probably helps if I Oh, wait, wait.
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Give it a sec. There we go. Okay, so not too bad. Let's go to the uh
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form. Wow, accuracy is really good. I was able to click on that tiny little
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form button without any difficulty whatsoever.
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Um, huh, look at that.
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So web browsing could be faster, but don't hold that against the tablet because part of the problem is almost
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well is definitely the fact that we have so many interfering Wi-Fi connections
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around here. There's got to be about 25 wireless networks within range of the
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tech tips room, which is one of the reasons it's so difficult for us to demo
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anything wireless in here. So basically there's your wh there's your zooming
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looks a little something like that. There's your scrolling whenever it's not
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waiting for the page to load. So, actually not not bad at all, especially
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given the price point. So, let's just see if there's anything else. Right. Right. We haven't even looked at the
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unit physically yet. So, this is a 16 gig model. There's a sticker somewhere
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that says 16 GB. It's a 2 megapixel
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camera on the back. Um Oh, right. Whatever these buttons did. So, these
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buttons evidently are not volume control. I assume they were, but that's
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apps and options. And then this is the back button. So, you actually have a
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physical back button, which is kind of cool.
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Oh, that's a camera apparently. Oh, let's look at another tablet through a
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tablet. It's like a tablet seion. So, there's your dedicated back
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button. On the side, we find a bunch of stuff. So, there is your uh grill for
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your speakers. There's your headphone jack. There's your mini USB. There's
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your micro SD. So, you can put up to a 32 gig micro SD in here for expanded
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storage. There is your uh right that's where you can plug
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in the 3G dongle using that included cable. Then there is your ah mini HDMI.
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Excellent. Power and finally well power in and then the power button. So battery
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life is in the neighborhood of depending on who you ask anywhere from about 5 to
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10 hours. And it can go up to 20 days in standby which is nice. Um I have an
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Android tablet that doesn't last that long in standby by and it's kind of a
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pain in the butt. Not this one. It's a different one. Um 1024x 768 screen. I
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think we covered that. Supports HD playback. Doesn't have Bluetooth
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unfortunately, but obviously it does have Wi-Fi. Front back camera, can connect to
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Yep. Yep. Yep. Can expand mini HDMI. And
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I think that pretty much covers it. So, basically, in a nutshell, nice overall
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my nice overall build with the metal back that is very fingerprint resistant.
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like no matter what I try to do, it's not getting all grubbed up, which is a
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complaint that I have even about the iPad and, you know, in spite of its
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otherwise awesomeness because Apple made it and it is therefore amazing. Um,
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screen actually feels pretty good. The screen is is actually pretty impressive.
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I hate personally seeing the touchscreen interface of a tablet. I find that very
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very bothersome. Um, and you really can't see it. It's a very flat screen,
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no ripple to it, and you can just barely make out some vertical lines. I thought
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you couldn't see it at all actually until I just saw those now. So, it
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doesn't bother me at all. Even compared to something like Transformer Gen One
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where it's got those dots all over the screen. That just drove me
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crazy. Yes. Crazy enough to like say it
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like that, like crazy. Uh, so we're going to install Fruit Ninja free just
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to check out the uh accept and download.
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Check out the fivepoint multi-touch. Guess we can also see the
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download speed here, which is pretty good considering we're in the tech tips
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room. I just re reset the router, so maybe that's uh maybe that's helping a
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little bit. Or maybe it jumped the gun there. Hard to say. So you guys Yeah. I
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mean, this is some this is some usability time with the
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tablet. There's your responsiveness. I'm actually I'm overall
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I'm pretty impressed, especially given the price point. It's not bad at all. We
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can like go on the YouTubes and
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uh can see if we can find a video of like some guy talking about tablets or
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something. If you guys want to see a video of like a Oops. Okay, there we go.
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If you guys want to see a video of a really unresponsive tablet, I'll show you a really good one.
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Um it's like lols.
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Um yeah, that one. This one. It was like eight minutes
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in between trying to do things and them actually happening. Lus tech tips video.
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How do I adjust the volume if those aren't volume buttons? There must be some way.
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I don't know. Slick's pointing at something, but I don't know what to do.
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H sound. This probably isn't the fastest
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way to do it, but it's done now. There we go. Okay, back. I'm not
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actually an Android expert by any stretch of the imagination. So, here.
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Not bad. It actually looks really good. What do you think? This looks naughty.
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There's a limited warranty. Okay. Something about one year. Okay. So, it
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has a one-year warranty. Viewing angle is not bad either, actually. Wow. Why
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don't we have a look at that after we turn it on? And then we have a little Yeah, I'd say it's very usable from
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about here to about here. So, that's pretty nice, actually. Here. Well, why
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don't you look at it stand? That's awesome. Okay, so moving
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along. Fruit Ninja free. We get to see my Fruit Ninja skills and then I think
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we're pretty much done. How long is this video? That's a long video. Sorry guys.
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Tablets are one of those things where if we don't do a little bit of usability though, then the video is sort of a
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waste. Anyway, nobody cares about Open Faint
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and my stats on Fruit Ninja
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free. Come on, you can do
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it. Zoom to fill screen. Stretch to fill
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screen. Zoom. Stretch. Zoom stretch.
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Zoom stretch. Zoom
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stretch. Okay, give me a sec,
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guys. All right, so here's our Fruit Ninja demo. It did finally manage to
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load. Ah, and then for sure it'll be a bomb next. I've played this game
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before. So, there's our
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five. This is the hackore way to play. Ha.
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Whoa, so deep. Oh, damn. Okay, well,
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it's got a gig of RAM, which I didn't mention before. And I think that pretty much covers it. Thank you for checking
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out my unboxing and first look at this pretty valueoriented, and I'd say pretty
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good value little tablet. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for unboxings, reviews, and other computer