Coby Kyros MID7015 7-Inch Android Internet Touchscreen Tablet - Blackby Coby
Product Description Coby Kyros MID7015 7-Inch Android Internet Touchscreen Tablet Black.
Android 2.1 connects to the world though the touch of a fingertip. The Kyros Tablet is a powerful and flexible Internet and Entertainment solution that features a generous 7" screen with intuitive touchscreen controls powered by the Android 2.1 operating system. Browse the web wirelessly or enjoy media on a sleek and stylish media device. Enjoy 1080P HD videos, photos, music, and more in the comfort of your living room when connected to your TV via HDMI. The Kyros has 4GB of built-in internal memory and features a microSD card slot for upgrading the capacity to up to 16GB. It also allows you to wirelessly access the Internet through a hi-speed networking support and includes more than a dozen built-in applications, each one identified by an icon. Among the included apps are an alarm clock, browser for surfing the web, calculator, email, gallery for viewing and playing videos, music and video player for launching the mobile YouTube browser page to watch Internet videos and more! In addition, the Kyros offers two unique apps, the Aldiko E-Book, for downloading and reading thousands of e-books (which supports the ePub standard) and AppsLib, to browse, download and install apps from the AppsLib marketplace for a complete mobile Internet solution. Features Large 7 inch Resistive Touchscreen Connect to the Internet wirelessly Browse the web and check e-mail Watch videos on YouTube Integrated flash memory Built-in 4GB internal memory microSD card slot(upgrade up to 16GB) Connect and enjoy Full 1080p on your HDTV via a HDMI cable Discover and download apps to play games, check the weather, listen to the radio, and more with AppsLib Download and read thousands of books with the included Aldiko E-book reader application View pages in portrait or landscape with automatic orientation detection Full-size USB connection enables keyboard of your tablet USB 2.0 Hi-speed for fast file transfers Rechargeable lithium-polymer battery
Technical Details Coby Kyros MID7015 7-Inch Android Internet Touchscreen Tablet Black.
- Large 7-inch Android 2.1 Resistive Touchscreen
- microSD card slot(upgrade up to 16GB)
- Built-in 4GB internal memory
- Connect and enjoy Full 1080p on your HDTV via a HDMI cable
- Full-size USB connection enables keyboard of your tablet
This review is from: Coby Kyros MID7015 7-Inch Android Internet Touchscreen Tablet - Black (Personal Computers) by Chris R. Field "christoph281" (colorado).
Review of Coby 7015 Tablet.
I got one of these as a 10 year anniversary gift from my company. I probably would have never bought one otherwise. All in all, i think this is an awesome little device for what it is.
I see a lot of things repeatedly addressed, other things are not, im going to try to go over every feature on this.
Please forgive my terrible spelling. ;)
When rating this i am comparing this to my samsung galazxy S droid phone, Ipads, Iphones, and Ipod touches all of which i have used many times.
==========OVERALL BUILD QUALITY=========
Good! This does not feel like a tiny junky piece of crap like i half expected. While it does not have the build quality of an Ipad, it does not feel like a little childs toy either. the buttons are solid and have a nice snappy responce to them. The Mini USB, HDMI, and DC input all seem like well built sockets, and i have no doubt they will stand the test of time. The back is a hard shell with a small speaker and reset button. It has a decent heft to it that implies stoutness, but it is light enough to carry around all day. All in all, much better than the sub $150 price tag lead you to expect. I dont like the MicroSD, there is no reason for that, they could have easily used standard SDHC cards, plus i have about a dozen SDHC cards lying around, but only one microsd. Keep the micro SD cards in the phones folks.
=============SCREEN==============
- This is the biggest point of interest to many, and probably glossed over with the least amount of information. As has been mentioned this is a resistive screen. This is NOT the same type of screen as your Ipod, Iphone, Ipad, or Droid phones or Tablets. Those devices use capacitive screens which flat out rock. The resistive screen is not as good, but it is important to know that this screen is NOT Frustrating either! It really works well! If this is NOT your experience, i suspect a faulty unit.
A) Touch and Feel - The wonderful capacitive screens feel like glass. This one feels like plastic, and like plastic it has more drag on your fingertips. The resistive screens seem to have several layers sandwiched together so they are not that flat hard surface, but slightly mushy. It does not feel as nice as the capacitive screens, it feels like older technology. The slight mushyness actually does give you somewhat of a fingertip-fatigue over time, where the capacitive (droid/iphone/ipad) screens are always a pleasure and do not tire your fingertips. I know that last part sounded rediculous, if you buy this device you will know what i mean.
B) Responsiveness - Very good for a resistive screen, in fact, this is the most impressive resistive screen i have ever used. I used to have an old LG Incite phone a few years back, it had a resistive screen and it was an absolute horrible experience to use. I was very pessimistic about this device because of the screen but once i started using it it worked just fine. It DOES come with a stylus, sometimes you will find that more comfortable, however it does seem to respond just fine to finger swipes and the stylus is absolutly not required. If on a scale of 1-10 with the LG Incite touchscreen being a 1, and the Ipad screen being a 10, this sits at a solid 8. It just isnt quite there, but like i said, this is the best resistive screen i have ever seen.
C) Resolution and Color. Not bad. The color has a slight bluish tint, almost like an uncalibrated Dell laptop screen. You photos will seem to be lacking some of the poppy reds, yellows, and oranges. So if you are a photographer like i am, forget using this as a device to showcase your images, stick with your Ipad,Iphone,Droid. I have looked for a color correction App, so far, no dice. Resolution is 480p, this is DVD quality, for a 7 inch screen this is plenty, however if it is a foot from your face you do see all the little pixels.
========= AUDIO ==============
its a cheap tiny speaker like the kind found in blackberries, droids, ipods, etc. Nothing special, the sound is weak and tinny like any other speaker of that size, but the quality is not overly objectionable if there are no other options. It is great for podcasts, youtube, etc, but it falls far short of a KRELL HEAT system... as expected. ;)
========BATTERY LIFE==========
Maybe it is just mine? The battery indicator on my Kyros is all over the map, 98% one second, 32 the next, then 75%, then 63% then 80%. use it as a guide. it apparently has no idea exactly how much juice is left. I suspect it is trying to give you an idea of how much battery life is left depending on the amount of applications running? Even the battery managers on this thing are all over the board. In the end, i can score 5-6 hours of internet surfing. The screen and tablet stay nice and cool. Maybe this is a benefit of the resistive screen, less power consumption? this is just a guess.
==========APPSLIB APPS MARKET===========
THIS IS THE WORST THING ABOUT THIS DEVICE The apps in thier apps lib market are generally crap, i diddnt find much of anything i was interested in. some of the bigger games like angry birds are there, but there are many others im interested in that dont exist. There are 165,000+ applications for the android platform, so why the hell should you be limited to about 3,000 in the apps lib? plus they are 3,000 of the crap apps nobody wants. basic stuff like some facebook apps, email apps, are there, but other than that it is mostly junk.
But guess what? there is a light at the end of the tunnel! This device can easily be rooted, once it is rooted you can install some nice software to back it up, and once that is there you can side-load applications. Such as... THE GOOGLE APP MARKET! Yes! This is awesome! All 165,000 apps i want are now available!
The problem is you have to root the device (gets superuser permissions) install the backup software (which also enables application installation outside of the apps application itself and to keep a digital backup image of your device, very nice). And to do this you literally have to add a few lines of code(not nearly as scary as it sounds i promise! once of the easiest parts), you have to download several different files all of which seem to require you to sign up to various forum boards and stuff to get.
i did this. I am not a hacker by any means, in fact, im an idiot ask anybody, i dont understand most of what i was doing, other than the basic overall idea of what i wanted to accomplish. It took me several hours, mainly because of my ignorance on this kind of stuff. The key is to go one step at a time, if something is not working, search for an answer. There is a website that gives you step by step instructions, there are many posts on there of problems they ran into and solutions around them. Just google up the ULTIMATE KYROS 7015 and look for a website that is like XDA developers or something. it is a online forumboard where people figured out how to do this junk. It is on a forum thread, read through several pages, you will see what i mean, if you run into a problem, somebody else already has, and the answer will be in that thread somewhere.
Once this is done, and you have google apps, it absolutly transforms your entire experience with this marvelous dirt cheap tablet because they stuff you WANT is all there for you. I highly highly reccommend doing this (at your own risk) and trust me, if I can do it, anybody can, just take your time, when you get stuck read ahead, somebody else probably had the same problem and figured out how to correct it and explains how.. It does require an MicroSD card though. There IS a Possility you will turn your tablet into a brick. however, from what i have seen, this almost never happens, you almost have to have a flawed device from the get-go, or be overly careless.
=========OPERATING SYSTEM FUNCTIONALITY=========
Not bad at all! Mine keeps waking itself up which is annoying, but it responds to my commands, has only frozen twice, which is more than i can say for most other devices.
Keyboard - Not bad at all, works well, you get used to using two thumbs on it, you have to pace yourself and not get ahead of it, you can not type as fast as on a keyboard, but overall it seems pretty reliable. There is no vibration, so no haptic feedback which i enjoy on my samsung galaxy S phone.
Pic viewer - As i said, slight bluish cast, it is slow loading up images too. I loaded a bunch of reduced sized images to my droid phone to display my photography to possible clients, i loaded them on the Kyros and it takes about 3-4 seconds for the pictures to really lock in onto full resolution. I was a bit disappointed by this because this thing has a great little processor in it. The Slideshow is about retarded because you can choose between 2-4 seconds on the intervals and the images never really crisp up, they stay the 1/2 resolution blurry versions because they change before the processor locks them in. stupid stupid stupid.
ALDIKO e-reader.... if you want an e-reader go get a kindle or nook. that is my opinion. I briefly looked at it, it uses a backit screen, which stinks for extended reading. But the size of the text and font is pretty nice, you wont be squinting to read, and it would probably suffice for an e-reader, but it is nowhere as comfortable to look at as a kindle or nook.
The Youtube video app - I dunno, i had a hard time getting this to work properly, then i rooted my Kyros and got the google marketplace installed and it came with a much better youtube app.
Email - I am sorry, i did not even try this untill after i rooted my tablet, once the google marketplace was installed as part of the process it synched with my email. it works just fine.
Widgets seem to work just fine. I have a Facebook widget, Weather channel widget, Google widget, and a battery widget, it does not seem to slow down with the use of any of them. You ccan use live wallpaper, it seems to run just fine with live wallpaper, i dont notice any lag.
Video playback is smooth and crisp, the 480P quality is very much there.
Wi-fi performance. The wi-fi on this runs as fast as my Dell Laptop, my Samsung Galaxy S Droid phone, or any other wireless device for that matter. It is not pant-leg-flapping insane fast, but certainly nothing to complain about. If this is NOT your experience, i suspect you have a faulty unit.
===============Random things i noticed==============
Twice now in 5 days it has crashed while i was typing. Not sure why.
it keeps waking itself up. Not sure why. i have heared other reports, this may get fixed in a firmware update later.
No volume control on the side, once again, what the hell? You have to set the volume BEFORE starting any videos.
Charges VIA power cord..... will NOT charge through USB. I was actually suprised by this, maybe because it looks like a massive cellphone. That would have been nice. Go on google and look up Kyros 7015 tablet charger, and prepare to realize you will only have one. lol
more than once i had to reset the wif-fi in the device if it has been asleep for a while... annoying, but not a huge inconvenience. maybe a firmware upgrade will address this.
===========Good Bad Ugly=======================
Good -
Very responsive resistive touchscreen.
Excellent built
Solid performance
Expandable memory
Fast capable Wi-Fi
Under [...]
Bad
Resistive screen. (i just preffer capacitive)
Slight bluish cast
No volume controls on side
MicroSD card.. really? Micro? Cant just use SD cards which we all have laying around?
Ugly
Applib. This just stinks. it requires rooting and such to get google market apps, and trust me google market apps is absolutly worth the effort, and it is not that difficult, and appslib just flat out sucks.
============Conclusion==============
I cant believe how much bang for your buck you get. This can be had for well under [...]!!!! a handheld lightweight internet browser that potentioally has access (if rooted) to 165,000+ applications, games, etc. Anybody who complains that this device does NOT do enough for [...] seriously needs to get thier heads examined. Im suprised this is not sold for closer to [...].
A few thoughts...
To address a few points, one person wrote a review and said the batterys dont last long enough, they popped it open, saw the batteries, then decided to return it. No mention if they actually USED it though. 5-6 hours of internet browsing is not enough? Really? Show me a droid phone that has that kind of battery life on wi-fi, it is right up there with the Ipad. To say that 5-6 hours of battery life is not enough is flat out stupid, because nothing really has much more battery life than this! its reviews like those that i just dont understand. jump to conclusions rather than try it out yourself.
Another person mention that it sucks because you have to root the device to get google apps and such. Well. True. Either do it or dont, Coby restricted the potential on this great tablet for some stupid reason that i could care less about, the fact is the option is there, take it or leave it. Those who are willing to do so will have a DRASTICALLY better experience than those who dont. If you dont want to root it and install google apps, then go spend [...] on the Galaxy S tablet (which looks awesome) or the iPad. To be perfectly honest, i would only give this device a 3 star rating if the option to root was not there... READ MORE
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