I spent the evening tweaking a second android tablet. Yes. A second. Why? Because I have a problem.
Impressed with Chris's tablet, I ordered a Coby Kyros 7015 myself and it arrived last night. The first thing I did was root, backup, and put the marketplace on it. That was an easy enough.
Next was the debate between loading Froyo via CyaynogenMod (the tablet ships with Eclair, 2.1) or a custom rom. After reading the discussions back and forth on the forums, I opted to load the custom rom instead of Froyo. I'd like Froyo, but since the headphone jack doesn't work that's kind of a problem (since I want to stream anime on this device).
I initially loaded Watery Rom 1.2b, but I ran into the problems several people seemed to be having with the device locking up randomly (despite clearing cache, etc with ClockworkMod). Finally I threw in the towel and loaded Watery 1.2a. A few things aren't supposed to work properly (gallery, music), but I have an ipod touch for music and I don't know that I care too much about a gallery on the tablet either. Plus I honestly haven't verified that these have issues, so who knows...
Once I loaded Watery Rom 1.2a onto the device all my problems seemed to go away. No more freezing. The only minor issue I have is the stock browser needs to be reinstalled on reboot. Since I'm using Skyfire instead of stock browser, it's not a big deal.
I did load FlashLite 9 on the device as well, but didn't have a chance to really test it out. Chris navigated to a few sites and was disappointed that it didn't default to flash. It sounds like you have to do some surfing and what not before flash seems to work properly. "whatismyflash" does correctly identify version 9 in the stock browser (I haven't had a chance to test skyfire yet, but I did confirm Opera doesn't appear to be running it).
So I still have a few things on my plate I'd like to get taken care of before stopping tinkering for a bit.
- permanently kill voice search - I dont use this or want it but it loads when applications launch by default
- overclock the device - it sounds like overclocking might address some speed issues and make this even snappier (mostly just waking issues)
- Crunchyroll - youtube streams beautifully but the crunchyroll application is horrendeous. I'll have to see if its the app or a setting elsewhere on the tablet.
- snappier than 1.6 (cupcake) tablet. Not as fast as the iPod touch, but pretty good.
- access to Android marketplace
- Android has a good hacking/modifying community
- 7" form factor makes it more portable (I prefer this over 10")
- came with plenty of accessories (built in stylus, hard-cover case, two USB cords)
- Eclair is a phone OS, so some things are optimized for a phone (default orientation is landscape, not portrait, there is a phone app) like Honeycomb would be
- Resistive screen; it doesn't always register my finger so sometimes I need to use the sylus around the corners.
- thicker/heavier than more recent tablets. The size isn't off-putting to me, but I think it would be to a lot of people.
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