Accord has launched its @Pad Android Tablet a few months back and we have been playing with the device for the last 2 months.
Lets first get to the specifications of the Android Tablet.
@PAD is a mobile Internet device (MID), multimedia-capable mobile device providing Wireless Internet Access and offers following features
- 128 MB RAM
- 2 GB HDD (supports upto 16GB)
- 7inch TFT (Sorry Steve Jobs).
- Resistive Touch Screen
- Android 1.7
- Supports Wifi , 3G and Ethernet
- One can connect external keyboard, mouse and HDD (what a relief!)
Review: Accord @Pad
Form Factor
Much better than Infibeam Phi. And that’s because the controls are on the left hand side. Unless you are a left-hander, you will find it much easier to hold the tablet on your left hand, use thumb to control the menu and right hand for typing.
Rating: 4/5
Touch
Accord @Pad has resistive touch screen and it works as-expected. If you are hooked to iPad, you won’t find this very cool (goes for all the resistive touch screen devices).
There is no magic here, but the important part is that you don’t really need to spend a lot of time calibrating. And in general, there isn’t much of a lag
Rating: 3.5/5.
Battery Life
My typical tablet usage mostly revolves around checking email, play a few games and IM (i.e am mostly online) and the tablet lasts peacefully for 2 days.
Battery life isn’t as great as iPad, but its similar to any Nokia smartphone – i.e. if you use it like a PC, you charge it like a PC.
Rating: 3/5.
What’s Really Cool?
The fact that you can connect external mouse, keyboard, HDD to the device. This takes away any issue you will ever have with the touch screen. Personally speaking, this is a huge savior.
What’s Not So Cool?
The device runs on Android 1.7 and so far there hasn’t been any update from the company on the upgrade (to 2.1 atleast?). It’s the same case with Infibeam Phi, which runs on Android 1.5 [Olivepad runs on 2.2].
Concluding Thoughts
For Rs. 9,999/ this is probably the best bet if you are looking to buy a tablet as a secondary device. Strongly recommended for enterprise/sales team, as the tablet offers good feature-to-price parity.
We look forward to Android version upgrade and will update this review accordingly.
