Mobicell echo 10.1 Inch tablet

[wizardofid]

Hi guys thought I post a quick review.

Received a new Mobicell echo 10.1 Inch tablet, as part of a new contract, got this device for my mom, who has a 7 inch tablet but it is starting to show it's age, so decided why not get her some thing new with a bigger screen, only going to use it to mostly watch a movie or series maybe the odd game or so, some facebook and a little gmail, so it is the perfect device for her.

Well prepare for some puzzling disappointments, it is not a tablet I would wish on my worse enemy and that about says it all.

It sports a mediatek MT8382 quad core @1.3ghz and mali MP400, which is pretty much what most budget tablets have these days or at least what we can get locally, what is surprising is that it still uses android kitkat, the hardware is more then able to handle android 5 or 6. 8gb rom and 1gig ram, SD slot can be expanded with 32gig.What is puzzling is the 1024 x 600 IPS screen.

7 inch tablet can just about get away with a 1024 x 600 screen, why on earth would let people suffer with a resolution that small, puzzling is that it sports a 8mp camera at the back and a 2mp in front.Screen resolution can't do any sort of justice to an 8mp picture.Did take a few with and without out HDR, nothing spectacular to write home about, but by far the best pictures I have seen on a budget tablet.

It's definitely a bit of the heavy side weighing in just over 600grams, but I think it has to do with the build quality which compared to my dixon tablet is 5 times as sturdy.

Weirdly my dixon costs just about the same sports, android 6 a mediatek MT8321 and mali400MP GPU and a resolution of 1280 x 800 which is about the bare min for a 10 inch screen still not perfect but by far better then 1024 x 600, but it only has a 2MP camera oddly and doesn't support screen casting by default, 3rd party casting does work.A small battery only has a 4600mah battery, so expect about 4-5 hours

The echo supports it by default as well as mirror casting, tested mirror and normal casting and works flawlessly.Wifi and 3G, bluetooth, hotspot creation, pretty much work as it should rarely encounter issues here.

Bar the small res and old android version, it is surprisingly snappy and responsive and pretty stable os.Interesting little addition is it has an antenna on the side which allows for the radio to be used without having earphones plugged in, handy considering it sports 2 pretty loud but pretty humdrum speakers.

It also in my opinion suffer from the same design flaw my dixon has placement of buttons and ports on top of the tablet instead of the side, considering you will be using it in landscape mode the most, you don't want the usb port on top if you want to charge and use it at the same time.

It also has the large removable panel that hides the sim and SD card slot, it's quite a bit more sturdy then the dixon, but quite the hassle if you want to change sims or SD cards.

It's not a terrible tablet by any means, by just upgrading the res to 1280 x 600 and changing to android 6, will it be better then the Dixon tablet I have, but definitely not recommended.My choice for 10 inch budget tablet is still the Dixon.

After messing about with it some more, took 40 minutes to go from a 90% charge to 46% just with the wifi active downloading some updates, tested out some play store games, bejeweled 3 classic that my mom enjoys doesn't display correctly and cuts off menu's graphics and such, making nearly impossible to play.Considering the dismal battery performance I wonder how they even managed to get this out to the market.

I know wifi and 3G chows battery, but damn even the dixon only manages to shed 15% an hour with an active 3G connection, and wifi about the same, unless you have powerbank handy to carry around at all times like condoms, as you never know when there will be a hole available.....

 

[wizardofid]

So need some help

I let the tablet charge for 14 hours, and gave it another shot.Good lord, from 100% to 67% battery use in less then 30minutes, was just using the wifi and using chrome.This is a contract device, which means I am pretty much screwed I think.As I don't think it's a hardware issue but rather just a really really crappy tablet, no point in attempting to exchange it, might actually just snap it in half, considering how sturdy it has been build will be a feat.

It's suppose to give at least 4 hours non stop use I don't see it even reaching one and half hours of continuous use going to charge again load up some video's and see how it lasts just playing video's.

What do I tell MTN, how do I proceed.

 

[sajunky]

As for the battery. There is a difference in battery consumption with both WiFi and 3G enabled, all depends which Internet connection is active. If WiFi, then enabling 3G increases batery consumption only a little. If active Internet connection is 3G, consumption increases dramatically.

How long takes charging a battery? A control chip may need to reset counters. It takes two full charging and discharging cycles (till tablet switches off) and keep on a charger two hours longer after it stopped charging @100%. If doesn't help, then it is indication that a battery is made from substandard cells. It is why I am asking how fast is charging.

 

[wizardofid]

As for the battery. There is a difference in battery consumption with both WiFi and 3G enabled, all depends which Internet connection is active. If WiFi, then enabling 3G increases batery consumption only a little. If active Internet connection is 3G, consumption increases dramatically.

How long takes charging a battery? A control chip may need to reset counters. It takes two full charging and discharging cycles (till tablet switches off) and keep on a charger two hours longer after it stopped charging @100%. If doesn't help, then it is indication that a battery is made from substandard cells. It is why I am asking how fast is charging.

It's a 4600mah battery which takes about 3+- to fully charge from 21%. As a test I didn't use 3G and wifi at the same time, but separately they more or less chow battery at the same rate.I am going to give her the tablet this morning, in airplane mode and see how long the battery lasts watching series and playing games and such.

 

[Fox1]

Had the same issues with 2x7" Mobicel tablets. The screen res is so low and the quality of the screen material is so thin that it starts cracking on the edges.

 

[wizardofid]

Had the same issues with 2x7" Mobicel tablets. The screen res is so low and the quality of the screen material is so thin that it starts cracking on the edges.

This one is build really well actually, just the battery is useless.

Charged it to a 100% left airplane mode on, and then loaded 4 hours worth of videos with MX player, at full screen brightness, lasted a full 3hours and 35 odd minutes up to 4 % percent battery, sure I would have gotten another 15 minutes out of it. Not entirely bad just low average. It started out at 1% a minutes and slowed down a bit after reaching half the battery capacity, so definitely poor battery in general.

I am planning on getting a flat power pack to use with, already have a universal cover on the way, so will make a plan on mounting it to the universal cover and that should do the trick, while I wait the warranty out, and then order a matching higher capacity battery, I see you can get any thing from 4000mah to 1000mah.The tablet is quite thick so space shouldn't be a problem to mount a 1000mah battery, and it will still cost less then the battery.

But stay far far far away from mobicell.Their support is even worse, sent off a mail, reply came back, that you need to take it back to the store so they can send it for assessment, no apologies that you are experiencing problems or any thing, send it back and well will have a look, neither worth the time or effort.

So meh 3 dud tablets from different brands in the last 13 odd months. Not bad !!

 

[wizardofid]

Stupid tablet.After running several diagnostics and installing a battery saver, getting root and removing some apps that was actively trying to chew the battery in half I managed to stabilize the battery usage. On full screen brightness with mx player I managed to extend the battery another hour to 4 hours and 30 minutes so should be able to get another 1 hour out of it by turning the screen brightness down down to 35% or less with MX player pending what is being played.

Android Kitkat isn't very battery friendly on this device,while it still chowed battery with 3G active it did so significantly slower about 5% for 25minutes of active use.

It actually makes the device usable, but I ordered two 10000mah flat power banks any ways one for mom and one for me, the 2000mah power bank I have isn't doing as good as before and only manages to charge a 1800mah battery phone from 21% up to 95% which isn't all that bad.

None the less I am not sure why mobicell is still peddling kitkat on devices, when both android 5 and 6 have battery saving abilities and are miles better then kitkat.

I still love the device, the build quality is so much better then other devices in it's range and price, android version, battery and screen res is the let down that almost makes the devices useless, still it doesn't even remotely compare to my precious dixon.