Here is the Telstra T-Touch Tab, the relatively new tablet from Telstra under their own brand. And our first impressions? WOW Is this… well, what is it?
It features Android 2.1, a 7-inch resistive touch screen, SD card memory, WiFi, 3G, GPS, a 2 megapixel camera and a front facing camera.
Check out the full review after the break.
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Score:
5.0 / 10
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The Good:
Android 2.1, fast processor, cheap
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The Bad:
Bad battery life, resistive touch screen
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Bottom Line:
Not something I would buy.
Design
I must admit, the tablet doesn’t look very good. It looks clunky and something a child would buy. It has 3 buttons to the left side, Home, List and Return. To the right, it has 3 buttons, Answer Call, Enter (it didn’t really do anything) and End Call. On the back there is a 2 megapixel camera and a piece of very thin stainless steel covering the battery and sim card. It also had a very handy kick stand which allowed the tablet to stand up. On the edges, you will find volume buttons, loud speakers, proprietary charger and a micro-usb port for data transfer. On the bottom, is a dock connector for accessories and a micro-sd card slot.
It’s 7-inch, WVGA resolution screen is horrible. It looks washed out, colourless and dull. Even turning up the brightness didn’t help. The resistive touch screen also doesn’t help. It requires a stylus (who want’s one of those) or if you choose to use the stylus, you need to push really hard with your finger, which would most likely result in getting burns on your finger.
Features
The T-Touch Tab is a well features device, with Android 2.1, you have most applications available to your disposal. It has all the normal features of WiFi, 3G, GPS and it has bluetooth to enable you to connect a wireless headset to use the tablet as a phone (or you can use the built in loud speaker).
The interface looks… alright. The home screen is broken up into 5 sections, Home, Web, Entertainment, Communication and Favourites. The home screen contains news, clock, web search and a few icons (contacts, messaging etc). You can also access all the installed applications by the normal Android application drawer. There is the normal Telstra/BigPond applications bundled with the device which all worked just great, including Foxtel, TV etc.
Everything else is pretty much Android standard. The tablet comes with a 2GB micro-sd card which may be sufficient for some, however, people who wish to listen to music or watch movies on their tablet will need to purchase another micro-sd card for that.
Performance
At least Telstra got something right with this, it has a 768Mhz Snapdragon processor with 256MB of RAM. Which means the tablet is quite fast and responsive when being used. Applications we tested where, Skype, Angry Birds and AudioBoo which preformed great and had no troubles there.
Battery life is quite horrible. Telstra have said on their website that the tablet should achieve “up to 140 hours” of battery life which we certainly didn’t see. Using the tablet for browsing the internet, taking photos and making calls, it lasted for 40 minutes. It does stay in standby mode for a long time though. So if your going to be using this on the go, it’s a good idea to bring a backup battery, the charger or just don’t bring it at all.
Finishing Up
This would be a fantastic tablet if Telstra put a better battery in it and added a capacitive touch screen. Android 2.1 does a fantastic job as well as the snapdragon processor. It retails at $299 on prepaid, but is it really worth you spending the money? No, it’s not. I would save up the extra few hundred dollars and get a Galaxy Tab or an iPad.
Sorry Telstra, but it just doesn’t do it for me.