The CherryPad America Android Tablet: First Impressions
An Android-powered tablet with a 7-inch screen and $188 price tag? That's the elevator pitch for Cherrypal's CherryPad America, which arrived on my doorstep late yesterday. Is it an iPad killer -- or more like a souped-up iPod Touch?
I haven't had time to put together a full review yet, but I wanted to share some first impressions of the device.
The good:
- The CherryPad looks and feels very solid -- like a shrunken iPad, really. It's very comfortable to hold in one hand, and light enough (1.15 pounds) to make for a worthwhile e-book reader.
- It runs Android 2.1 now, with a 2.2 update due by the end of the year. That's a big improvement over some first-gen Android tablets, which are stuck running 1.5 or 1.6.
- It comes with a microSD slot that can accommodate memory cards of up to 16GB. That's key, as the tablet has just 2GB of onboard storage.
The bad:
- It's slow at times, especially while downloading or installing apps. That leads to delays -- sometimes several seconds long -- when tapping icons or functions. This is arguably the CherryPad's biggest problem.
- For anyone accustomed to an iPad or iPhone, the CherryPad's resistive touchscreen (which requires a firmer touch than Apple's capacitive screens) takes some getting used to. What's more, it doesn't support multitouch, so you have to zoom Web pages and the like using onscreen buttons. I also thought it looked a bit grainy, despite a reasonable 800-by-480 resolution.
- I found one fairly significant bug in the Android Market app: it doesn't let you scroll past a page's worth of app listings. For example, search for "e-books" and you'll get some 1,100-plus results -- but only the first dozen or so are visible. There's no "more" button, or any way to get to the next page.
- Angry Birds doesn't render properly. (Same problem on the Samsung Intercept phone, though, so I tend to blame the game more than the hardware.)
Update: Cherrypal CTO Max Seybold tells me the company "will address many of the raised issues with the 2.2 upgrade." He also said 2.2 will come in the second half of November -- possibly sooner.
Ultimately, what you think of the CherryPad will depend on what you want from a tablet. I can't say it's a particularly business-savvy device, but it may indeed appeal to business travelers (who can stock it with videos, reading material, documents, and the like). And at $188, it's practically an impulse buy.
My question to you: would you buy one?