Hannspree Hannspad 10.1in Android tablet

Hannspree is primarily known for its somewhat gimmicky range of TVs and monitors – if you ever need a TV embedded in the stomach of a cuddly toy then Hannspree has just the thing for you. Its move into the tablet PC market was therefore rather unexpected. However the new Hannspad actually turns out to be quite a pleasant …

[Neil Barnes]

It's getting there.

Chop another fifty quid or so off the price and I'm starting to become interested... I assume as it's an ARM machine that you can rip out the OS and put linux on it?

[Code Monkey]

Price

£250 for a decent performer is about the point where I am interested.

[bolccg]

Re Code Monkey

Agreed - I want to get my wife a tablet (since she currently sits on the sofa with a laptop, endlessly playing facebook games) and the arrival of decent equipment at this price level gives me hope. Once the second generation is out (6 months? A year?) I'm in.

[vic 4]

It already has linux

presumably, you mean a linux of your choosing.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: It already has linux

It's not Linux unless you can change it.

Read the comments further down, where everyone is fretting over which app store it comes with and whether it is obsolete before it even reaches the market. If Hannspree had put a 'Buntu on the device, do you think anyone would be *worried* about which version? Of course not, because it would be a matter of an hour or so to put the right version on instead, or even change the distro.

Android is not Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, at least...

...3G connection is not a "frill" but, along with good portability and battery life, part of the raison d'être of a tablet.

At least where I live, connecting to public WIFI is pretty well as expensive as 3G and with patchy coverage. So, tethered to the house or workplace a WIFI-only tablet doesn't do anything that isn't better done by a laptop or netbook.

Otherwise, it looks promising.

[Thomas 18]

Tether it to your mobile phone

That way it won't cost you double subscription fee.

Just select Mobile AP on your Android phone, or on iphone select www.ebay.co.uk and navigate to an Android phone

[hyartep]

joikuspot on nokia

... or you can use Nokia smartphone with Joikuspot.

[DrXym]

3G is a frill

I bet most tablet owners, especially those who favour an android tablet have a perfectly simple way to obtain internet access on a tablet - tethering. Share the internet through the phone over wifi. It would actually be cheaper to buy an android phone, or a mifi device than the piss taking £100 that vendors like Apple slap on for the privilege.

[JDX]

looks cool

3G nice I guess, but I don't want a contract so not _too_ bothered. If it was Android 3 I'd be tempted

[Bomberb]

Save £50 !!

The Advent Vega in Pcworld etc is £199.99, virtually same spec less 'n' and the 16Gb internal memory. Same processor, capacitive screen etc. but does have a free 4Gb card.

Custom ROMs freely available too.

[Steve Evans]

Hmmm...

It has bluetooth and wireless, so you could just tether it to your Android phone if you need a data connection.

The big questions I found hanging are:

- It has their own app market, does this mean it *doesn't* have the Android one?

- 2.2 is for phones, so when will it get 3.n?

[M Gale]

Exactly this:

"- It has their own app market, does this mean it *doesn't* have the Android one?"

The review really needs to state whether the device comes with Android Market, or whether the app store it does come with is any good. Otherwise you might as well buy a cheapo resistive-screen iRobot from China for all the use it'll be.

Though I could really do without 3.x. Seriously, the 2.x UI is absolutely fine and people need to get over this Jobsian hatred of physical buttons. I still don't see how the 3.x UI is so much better for tablets. Or even better at all.

[Tony Barnes]

How good is the screen?

Any better than that of the Vega?

Does it have Google Market or not? If not, how come it wasn't shouted at for not having it, like the Vega was?

Looks nice enough, though is £50 more than the Vega is currently priced at.

Don't forget the Vega scored a measly 65% - 80% would suggest that there are BIG improvements in this tab...

[Danny 14]

plus

the vega has more support for firmware updating. Not sure on the hannspree without looking at the community.

[Phil A.]

"With Google" or not?

Presumably, as it has its own market, this means it's not a "with google" device, i.e. no Market or other google apps (including gmail, maps, etc, etc).

Also, stuck on 2.2 which isn't exactly ideal for a tablet. Seems to me like a case of "you get what you pay for"

[Marvin the Martian]

"Spreken zie deutsch"?

What a car crash. If that's supposed to be German, it's a hat-trick -- three words, each wrong -- and as a bonus one has two errors in one. If it's supposed to be something else (Dutch?) it's even worse.

[Hnk0]

Really?

I fought Cherman vaz like Enklish vif a few letters changed fur Komik effect.

[Danny 14]

dont bother

Apparantly the germans have no grasp of humour.

[Paul Renault]

Came here to say this, but while I'm at it:

Grammar Nazi!

[Anonymous Coward]

dutch and deutsch.... what's in a name ?

well, quite a bit of differences, actually.....

"spreken ze deutsch" is two words of dutch, followed by one word of german.

please choose :

sprechen sie deutsch ?

(do you speak german ?)

or

spreken ze duits ?

(are they speaking german ?)

and next time, please try google translate ;-)

ac

[Efros]

Hannspree :-)

I have a few Hannspree monitors and picture frames and recently have bought a 42" Hannspree LCD TV, all are working as they should with the oldest being 3 years. Reliability or build quality don't seem to be issues with this manufacturer and I will definitely be in the market for one of these little babies once the price drops a little.

[Neil Greatorex]

Agree

I'm on my second HannsG, an excellent 24" widescreen (the first got my elbow through it after tripping over the moggie) no dead pixels, sharp, well built. When this one goes I will definitely buy another, though I suspect not for a goodly while..

PS Hannspree are Taiwanese not German.

[Cosmo]

Almost.... almost.....

We're getting close now! I'm happy to pay £200 - £250 for an Android tablet, but it must have at least 3.0, a good quality screen and be Android market compatible.

Of course, there are hacks out there for the Vega etc. But if - in maybe 12 months time - I can get something like the above right out of the box, then my credit card will get a workout.

[Peter Kay]

*Yawn*. No 3.0, no app store.

Do you want a device that's obsolete on day one and designed for phones rather than tablets? Then go knock yourself out with this..

It doesn't include, and will not be upgradeable to Android 3.0. It doesn't feature the google marketplace..

I can see why other people are suggesting the Vega - why bother with this, when you can get that, or a netbook?

[completely_hatstand]

It certainly seems a bit crap...

Not forgetting that the Vega also has a camera for obligatory videoskyping goodness, in fact the only reason I don't have a Vega is because I now have my dearly beloved'd cast off iPad v1, unfortunately this still leaves me without a camera for skyping but then again I could always just use my N900 if it skype didn't crap out all the time ;-)

I'm a bit confused also by the score that this gets when The Vega was slapped for a couple of areas that the hanspree is also deficient in...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know

Skype on android doesn't support video, right?

[N13L5]

I remember that vega review too

maybe two different reviewers? idk

But I'm mainly responding cause of your Skype comments:

For some reason, no matter what portable device I've tried to use, Skype never works quite right.

The biggest problem I had was Skype's failure to keep the client updated as to who's online. If people who are online don't show up as online, you can't call them in the first place.

I've tested this with 3 devices and 3 accounts in the same house. Phone A logs in first and stays logged in.... then phone B and Tablet C start Skype and log in. Neither of them lights up on Phone A for being online, even if Phone A closes and restarts Skype. Everone kept showing as offline. I think after several hours when we had moved on in disgust to watching TV, the account from Phone B finally became visible as online on phone A...

The other problem is, that on at least a number of phones, a Skype call fails to actually RING! You get an onscreen message and no sound, (with the ringer turned to max) examples: Motorola Defy, iPhone 3GS, Samsung i8910. Basically, I've never been able to use Skype on mobile phones, even over wifi, it just fails, and from what I've read elsewhere about it, its the Telcos sabotaging Skype as much as they can.

Since a few weeks, Skype doesn't even work on my Desktop properly... after the last update, there's frequent crashes, and the online status updating seems sketchy too now.

[Neil Hoskins]

Skype

Skype was never going to be very good on mobile devices, being dependent upon always-connected 'supernodes' whose owners don't mind their resources being gobbled up. It's not even very good with networked modern desktop devices. If you want to make free/cheap VoIP calls, use SIP, if you want to make video calls to the grandchildren in Australia, use Google Talk or similar. (And no, I have no idea if google talk video works on android; it doesn't work too well on my N900 but no worse than Skype.)

[oopsie]

microphone?

Any idea if it has a microphone?

[hokum]

No camera or 3G?

Sounds good. 3G is handy for some, but make it optional. Cameras on tablets are stupid.

[Apocalypse Later]

Android

Yes. major annoyance (having bought an Advent Vega) is that the Android app for Skype currently won't do video. However, when the app is (eventually surely, soon hopefully) upgraded, the Vega has the camera. I like Hannspree, using one of their TVs as a monitor right now (28"), but they missed a bet here.