A few weeks ago, I came across a story on the web that trumpeted the release of a $150 Android tablet.  Now, anybody who knows me is aware that right along with being a sarcastic pain in the butt, I am a huge gadget freak.  So, needless to say, the idea of of owning an Android device at that price point was more than appealing to me.  In fact, I was downright excited.  I’ve played with the Droid phones, and while I can’t justify the cost of owning one for my day-to-day needs, I must admit that I am absolutely in love with Android OS.  I jumped on this thing like Hasselhoff on a cheeseburger.

The Gentouch78, manufactured by a little-known Hollywood, Florida-based  company named Augen, (Nobody knows how to pronounce it, don’t feel bad) stirred up a little bit of a buzz on the web when they said that their 7” touchscreen offering running Android 2.1 would be available at K-Mart for around $150.  The chorus of “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” rang from TWiT’s Tom Merritt, to Engadget and beyond.

No Soup for You!

Living in Chicago, I can tell you that K-Mart’s are not plentiful up here.  There are a few, but none of them are near me.  So, I call my parents who live in Peoria, because as we all know, small towns have more than their fair share of various “marts”.  That being said, moms is eager to please. She diligently called about a billion K-Marts on her own time and eventually told me that she had found one, and was racing off to get it.

Apparently, when my mommy arrived at said K-Mart, something strange was afoot, because nobody really knew what she was talking about.  They did try to sell her some sort of touchscreen item, but after many befuddled minutes on the phone with both her and the befuddled sales clerk, all they had was some kind of Augen e-reader.  No thanks. If I wanted to read, I’d go to school. As a consolation, the folks at K-(an’t)Mart gave her a raincheck to pick one up at a later date.  This was the last it was spoken of for quite some time.

As time passed, much like a disillusioned Obama voter, I gave up hope. K-Mart never called, Good ‘ol Moms forgot about it, and I even saw a report online that K-Mart had pulled the plug on it’s distribution deal with Augen. (Bless you! Here, have a tissue.)  Or maybe it was the other way around?  Bah. Who cares?

Never Send a Clerk to Do a Mom’s Job

Some time later, I was home visiting my parents, and one particular day they had just disappeared.  Actually, it’s kind of strange how they tend to make themselves scarce when I come to visit.  I wonder why that is?  Oh well. I suppose that’s a topic for another day.

Anyway, much to my surprise, she went to a K-Mart, and what did she find?  That’s right! An Augen Gentouch78 Android tablet.  Apparently, either Randal or Dante (I’m not sure which) found two of them in the back room.  One display model and one for sale.  Hooray for a motivated sales force!  Naturally, Moms snapped up “the precious” and brought it home to me, her sweet little Gollum.

My Precious

After several moments of gleeful cackling, I popped open the box to reveal the Augen Gentouch78 tablet. It’s a sleek looking little doodad.  It’s all black with a 7” touchscreen, Telechip TCC8902 720Mhz CPU 2GB of onboard RAM, support for up to a 16GB Micro SD card, (which I purchased separately) a stylus for those who don’t want to get it all “printy”, and the USB cable and AC adapter are of course included.  So I turn it on, and watch it boot up.

Needless to say, there is always a “honeymoon” period when you buy a new device.  It can do no wrong.  It is your baby.  Junior isn’t retarded, he’s just “whimsical”.  He’s a “free spirit”.  Now, in some cases, this is true. But sadly, with this device, after the new car smell wears off in about an hour, you realize that you have indeed bought a “special needs” Android tablet.

One Tablet… to Wipe Myself With

This thing has a myriad of problems,  the first of which being it’s “resistive” screen. In fact, I don’t even think “resistive” is the right word.  In fact, I’d call it downright fickle.  Sometimes you barely touch it and it jumps, and other times you need to really scrub on it.  Actually, this tablet may be indeed be female.  It doesn’t know what it wants, and it has a mystical “G-Spot” which is up to you to find.  Also it should be noted  that the Augen Gentouch78 does not ship with screen calibration software installed.  An update has since been released, but we’ll get to software issues in a moment. We’re talking about hardware right now.

Next, if you would like to plug in a set of earbuds, (which were not included for some reason), you’re probably crap out of luck, because the Gentouch78’s  headphone jack is a non-standard 2.5 millimeter socket as opposed to the standard 3.5 millimeter.  So chances are, you don’t have a set of ‘buds that will fit this  thing.  As of the time of this writing, you have two choices: 1. Buy a cumbersome adapter. (Remember that adapter for iPhones?  Think that.) Or, 2. You can now send in a copy of your receipt to Augen and they will send you a set of earbuds, on their dime.  Augen has also since stated that it will include a compatible set of earbuds with each unit.   Thanks for that, fellas!

As if that isn’t enough, the SD card slot is also a problem.  It is poorly designed.  There isn’t a lot of room to get your finger in there to push the card in, so I recommend using the stylus to press the card into place.  However, that is not the worst part.  There is a gap under the slot itself.  This is not readily apparent to the user, and because of that, the slot can be easily missed. Take a guess as to what happens when you do that.  That’s right!  Your micro SD card falls inside the tablet, and then you have to take the tablet apart to retrieve it.  (Yes, I’ve had to do this already, and it is not fun.)

This is not the (An)Droid You are Looking for

I would imagine at this price point, that this device would be an entry point for a lot of people into the Android ecosystem.  It certainly was far me.  As I’ve said before, I’ve navigated the phones a bit, but that doesn’t mean much. I don’t know all of the intricacies of Android, and there was no documentation included relating to the software to help me along.  Granted, I am tech-savvy, and with time I can figure things out.  But again, at this price, you’re going to lure in a lot of “unschooled fish”, and all this thing will end up doing is pissing them off.

The first notable thing is that the onboard memory miss-reports.  It shows up onscreen as 256MB instead of 2048MB. However, upon examination, it does appear that you do indeed have the larger amount of storage available.  Also, (and perhaps this is standard for Android, and as this is my first device, I just don’t know) you have to “prepare” your micro SD for it’s first use.  I suppose that makes sense, but would would be better if the OS would just gently remind you of that instead of telling you the card is defective.  You can imagine how unnerving that is.  Fixes for this are supposed to be released, but I have not seen them yet.

Secondly, The native USB driver is broken and unintuitive, as there is no power through the USB port.  If you want to transfer data to the device, you have to plug in the AC adapter as well.  We all love doing that don’t we?  It should also be noted that the hard reset button doesn’t actually work.

Next, A few of the native apps are broken.  Such as “DroidLive”, which is supposedly a Shoutcast streaming radio app. However, there’s just one problem.  It won’t connect to a stream.  Any stream. At all.  It just going into an endless loop of connect-and drop.  The tablet also includes a version of Skype, but how are you supposed you use that if you don’t have a compatible headset?  I’ve actually heard the software doesn’t work anyway, but I’d still like to be able to test it out.  Also, most of the native productivity and media apps *require* you to have an SD card installed in order to even function.  The system won’t allow you to use the internal memory. This is also a major drawback for those who may have not thought ahead and purchased an SD card.  These aforementioned programs also go into a malfunctioning loop which is hard to back out of.

Finally, the out and out worst offense is that you do not have access to the Android Marketplace.  Augen, in all its infinite wisdom, decided to “pirate” the Marketplace, and access it somehow without Google’s permission.  Google eventually caught wind of this and shut them down.  So, then end result is that you are left with an Android Marketplace app on your device that does allow you to connect and browse, but you can’t download anything.  What good is that?  Augen has since responded with a “market update” which grants you access to some kind of third party repository.  However, trust me when I tell you that it is the “dirt mall” of app stores.  Nothing good can come of it.

To their credit, Augen is slowly but surely releasing updates to fix these problems, and they are even trying to negotiate with Google for access to the Marketplace.  However, the updates are tedious to install, and hijacking a company store just looks bad to begin with.  Granted, you can find some of the free apps offered through Google in other places, but it’s more pain than pleasure.

Post-Carnage

This thing is slowly becoming a hacker’s delight, so maybe something good will come out of it.  In fact, if you are into that, this may be the toy for you.  The web browsing capabilities seem to be adequate, despite the absence of flash.  Who knows what will happen.  But if you are a normal everyday user, stay away from this thing, as it is a crime against man and God. 

As a hardware designer and enthusiast,  I applaud new ideas, and I don’t even mind beta products from time to time.  However, Augen Electronics should be ashamed of themselves, because the Gentouch78 barely qualifies as an *alpha* product.  Who knows? Maybe I can shoehorn Windows Phone 7 on this piece of junk.