While @Sieg6 was paying his Sprint bill one, of the Sprint customer care’s mouth slipped and told him that it’s coming on Sunday June 5th.

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The long wait is over, today, the Official Netflix blog announced that An Android App was dropped into the Android Marketplace.
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Hey Huawei Support, You need to read this!!
Last weekend I purchased a Huawei Ideos S7 Slim Android Tablet. This device is amazing. Fresh out of the box all of the hardware works like it should. GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, all of it. I am very pleased with my device.

Although within a couple of hours I had discovered what I consider to be a bug, along with a couple of smaller issues.

The tablet simply won’t let you run a launcher other than the stock launcher that came with the tablet. While this launcher is functional and works, I, like many others like to install my preference of launchers on an Android device. The 3rd party launchers work great until the tablet is rebooted. Upon a reboot, the tablet interface completely locks up. You have to use adb to remove the 3rd party launcher and reboot the tablet so that it will become functional again.

I contacted Huawei support regarding this. Their response was ” we don’t support 3rd party software”.
Well, I’m not asking you to support the other party’s launcher, I am asking you to fix your software so that I can run the launcher of my choice.

In fact, the other party’s launcher runs great on many devices there are currently being used and also just happens to be one of the most popular launchers in the market. And it is not just this one launcher that didn’t work, I got the exact same results with multiple launchers.

What happens if a non-technical person purchases one of these tablets and installs a 3rd party launcher. They most likely will not be able to resolve this issue on their own. How are you going to fix this for the end user?

Will you make them ship it back to you so that can flash the tablet back to stock?

Will you issue an RMA number and then replace the tablet for them?

Support like this is going to cost. Once people find out that your software prevents the usage of a 3rd party launcher, your reputation will suffer. People will simply not purchase your tablet.

So tell your support people to get off of their high horse and take at look at the issue I presented them with and then fix it.

This brings me to my next topic, when I found out that Swype was installed on the tablet, I was very happy.

When I tried to use it, I found out that the version on the tablet had already expired.

Again I contacted support to find out why…. Their response was, ” the software has nothing to do with actual device, re-download it from the market.”

Wow, why didn’t I think of that? Oh wait, I did. Due to the limitations of tablets trying to access the market, Swype is not available in the market. Go ahead, fire up your S7 Slim tablet and search for Swype in the market. You won’t find it. Does your support team even check on these things before they reply to a customer. Was your software properly QA’d?

Seriously Huawei, support like this won’t get you very far.

You may need to just step back and re-evaluate what is important? Your reputation, your customer base, or your profits. If you don’t make the 1st 2 answers your top priority, then your profits will dwindle….

A couple of weeks ago woot.com was selling a Viewsonic GTab 10″ tablet for $280.

This has a Dual Core Tegra proc, with all the bells and whistles. Right out of the box, the hacked up version of Android that is installed leaves quite a bit to be desired.

With a little help from XDA you can install then VEGAnTab Gingerbread ROM. This makes the tablet much more usable. It also adds quite a bit of eye candy to what is dull straight out of the box.

While this tablet is fast, and works very well, it has 2 flaws that I consider to be a big deal.

1. The tablet is heavy. It is just uncomfortable to hold for any length of time.

2. There is a major glare issue. You have to be holding the tablet at just the right angle to be able to use it. Any other angle and you can use the tablet as a mirror to pick your teeth or see what is going on behind you.

Was this the right tablet for me, nah… Will other people find this to be suitable, I am quite sure of it. This tablet seems to have quite a following on XDA. You can check it out here:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=841

On a plus side, I found this tablet to be very easy to root and install a custom ROM. On the downside, if you flash back to stock, Viewsonic had an update floating around for a couple of days that will turn your tablet into a brick. I was one of those unlucky individuals. Viewsonic did ask that I send them the tablet so they could fix it once they found out that I applied the OTA update. This appears to be a common issue after talking to the tech who assisted me. So, I sent mine in to Viewsonic and I should be getting it back very soon.
As an FYI, It will be going up for sale once I get it back.

Walking through Best Buy last week I ran across a 7″ tablet that I couldn’t remember reading anything about. The Huawei Ideos S7 Slim. I played with it in the store for a bit and found it to be very impressive. So I went home a did some looking around on line and all I could find where some small posts saying that it was coming soon.

I went back and tested it some more. This little tablet is impressive.

This cool little tablet packs a 1Ghz proc, 512M of RAM, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, Capacitive Touchscreen and will accept up to a 32G Micro SD Card. (Some sites are reporting that it will only work with an 8G)

I picked one up, curiosity got the best of me. All I can say is Awesome. Everything works right out of the box. I spent most of today playing with the tablet and not getting any actual work done.

This little thing will set you back an even $300. But, I think it is well worth it.

I have run across a few small issues with it, and am waiting on support to get back to me. I discovered that if you install a 3rd party launcher such as VTL or LP, they will work great until you reboot the tablet. If you have any other launcher installed, upon reboot, the tablet will not respond to any input. The touchscreen just doesn’t work.

To get around this, I used adb and removed the launchers that I had installed and then rebooted the tablet. After this reboot everything worked fine.

The other issue I found is that right out of the box, Swype reports that it is expired.

I emailed support to find out why each issue is happening.

Don’t get me wrong the default launcher isn’t all that bad and is very functional, but I still prefer LP.

Now don’t get all confused and buy the original version that only had a 768Mhz proc and a resistive touchscreen. The new model isn’t even on display yet in all of the Best Buy stores that I wandered into. The Best Buy where I picked up this one, still had the old model on display.

All things considered, this is a very good deal if you find that a 10″ tablet just isn’t for you. I am very happy with this and will more than likely be keeping it around for a while.