[Android General] Jupit3r:
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In spite of all the scorn poured out on tablets with voice-calling support, they are the rage in China, with all tablet manufacturers trying to grab a slice of the market. The domestic voice-calling tablet segment is growing with a number of launches from both Chinese and international manufacturers such as Samsung, Lenovo, ASUS.

On the lower end of this market segment, one of the latest voice-calling tablets is the Acube Talk 7X (Quad Core). The Talk 7X (Quad Core) is the refreshed version of the original Talk 7 and Talk 7X, which were respectively released in October and December, 2013. Much like the original Fonepad, the new Talk 7X (Quad Core) comes with a MediaTek processor, supports voice-calling and in addition, it comes with upgraded specifications. But, can it do enough to unseat some very high profile competition? We take a look.

Key Features:

◇7 inch PLS display at WSVGA resolution (1024X600 pixels)

◇Weighs 320g, 191.2*106.5*9.9mm in size.

◇MediaTek MT8382 SoC., 1.2GHZ Qual-core Cortex-A7 processor, Mali-400MP2 GPU, 1GB RAM

◇Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean

◇8GB of built-in-storage, expandable by TF card

◇VGA front-facing camera; 2.0MP rear-facing camera

◇Stereo speaker

◇GPS

◇Bluetooth V4.0

◇GSM/WCDMA, full phone functionalities.

◇FM Radio

◇USB on the go

◇MicroSD card slot

◇Standard 3.5mm audio jack

◇1080p video playback

◇3000mAh Li-Po rechargeable battery, 5-6 hours battery life

Design and Build​

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The Talk 7X’s front houses a 7-inch display surrounded by a black bezel. The front panel does not include any branding, which I would consider a good tradition by the Chinese maker. Thanks to the Jelly Bean's onscreen navigation keys, which mean the front of the device is devoid of physical buttons, leaving simply the black bezel with an earpiece, a VGA camera, a light sensor and a proximity sensor.

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On the right side of the device are the rather excellent buttons, with the one piece volume rocker sited just below the power button. They have a very responsive feel and are easy to find with your fingertips. The buttons are colored white to match the finish of the rear side, blending in nicely.

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Unusually, the Talk 7X has its micro-USB port located on the top of the device next to the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. While it's uncommon to find the USB port on the top of a tablet of this size, it is ergonomically sound as the Talk 7X is simple to use while charging.

The positioning of this port also helps reduce the costs of manufacturing the tablet, as the circuit board has the connection for the port at the top. Acube has avoided running a cable to the bottom of the tablet as it had to on the original Talk 7.

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The 2MP rear camera is housed in the upper left corner of the white glossy plastic back, which gives the tablet a somewhat cheap feeling.

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Actually, this upper part of the back is removable, underneath are the dual SIM slot and Micro SD card slot.

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You could also find an aperture in the lower middle, along with some of the information Acube wants you to see.

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Measuring at 191.2*106.5*9.9mm, it is smaller than most of the 7-inch voice calling tablet. The only smaller 7-incher with phone functionalities I can think of is the Huawei MediaPad X1, which, of course, is many times more expensive than the 7X.

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Holding the Talk 7X with one hand between thumb and forefingers is a comfortable grip that can be maintained for some time, no doubt due to its relative lightness and weight balance.

Display and Sound

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Unlike many other budget tablets, The Talk 7X hasn't skimped on the screen. It has the same PLS display used on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0, comfortably beating the TN displays featured by the Lenovo A1000 and Ainol AX2, which it is in direct competition against.

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The 7-inch PLS display the Acube Talk 7X (Quad Core) sports has a resolution of 1024*600 (PPI=169), obviously not quite as good as the best in the business, but it's a step up on the previous Talk 7, which only has a TN display.

Being a PLS LCD screen, it has fantastic viewing angles, even better than most of the IPS panels widely used on Chinese tablets. It does suffer from a little more glare than I would like and the color balance seems a little favored towards a yellowish tint, but these are minor complaints.

Some users will probably find it uncomfortable to be able to discern individual pixels on the display at a typical viewing distance, as most of smartphone displays we look at every day have already gone beyond the so-called retina standard. However, this 7-inch screen still has a much higher pixel density than most of the laptops and PC monitors, thus it should not be much of a problem for tight-budgeted users.

Interface and Software

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The Talk 7X runs the Android 4.2.2 OS, along with a healthy amount of customizations on top of it, but nothing to break the head-to-toe Android feel.

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The Google Play store works brilliantly on the Talk 7X, with easy access to all the popular apps and games you could want. However there remains a dearth of tablet apps, a space where Google has struggled to engage developers, especially when you compare it to the wealth of high-quality apps made for the iPad.

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Seven-inch tablets suffer much less though, as many phone apps still work brilliantly at this smaller tablet screen size.

Benchmarks​

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The Talk 7X is powered by a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6582 processor (Quad-core cortex-A7, Mali-400MP2) with 1GB RAM, which is a huge leap forward compared to its dual core predecessors.

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General system performance is reliable and relatively speedy, the Antutu Benchmark test returned a decent 16010, matching the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 and besting the ASUS Transformer Prime.

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The 5636 Quadrant test result was also surprisingly solid.

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The notching in Geekbench2 test was sound, but not very promising.

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In the more graphic-focused Nenamark2 and 3D Mark tests, the 7X also did very well.

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The browser performance was also proven to be super-solid, the Vellamo test returned an astonishing 1903, putting this $80 device in the same league as the mighty Galaxy S4. And this promise is further proven by the notch in the CF-bench test.

Performance

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The way the Acube Talk 7X performs in real world also transcends its budget offering and low price. It's obviously nowhere near the top of the league and sometimes does feel like a machine from the past, but it handily beats many of the pricier cellular tablets such as the Lenovo A3000 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0. The 1.3GHz quad-core processor churns through tasks at a fair pace and it's certainly not unpleasant to use.

The animations when swiping between home screens and loading apps show some jitter at times, but there are no real delays. Apps load fast enough, but the difference in performance between the Talk 7X and my LG Optimus G Pro (Snapdragon 600) is noticeable.

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Most games play well once loaded as the graphics processing capability of the 7X is actually very good, and with the screen resolution a notch down from that full 1080P, there are no issues.

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Playing 1080P videos on the desktop YouTube page is smooth, and the touchscreen remained responsive to any sort of operations.

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Multi-tasking works as well as you would expect given the 1GB of RAM on board. Switching apps is fast and painless, but there is a low limit on the number of big apps that can remain in memory. This isn't a reason to run a task killer, since Android manages its memory very efficiently.

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The only time this lack of RAM can be an issue is if you have many tabs open in a web browser. Switching to a browser tab that's not in memory will cause the page to reload. Ultimately though, the memory is sufficient for pleasant enough operation.

Connectivity​

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The Chinese manufacturer has been promoting the Talk 7X tablet as a complete device, which has both phone and tablet qualities. Thankfully, the voice-calling feature on the 7X lives up to the expectation. The call quality on the 7X was impressive and the tablet was able to latch on to cellular networks even in weak signal areas which came in handy at times. There's also Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, FM Radio and GPS on board. The Talk 7X comes in a single 8GB model, but the storage is expandable with Micro SD card of up to 32GB.

Camera

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I am not a big fan of the idea of taking pictures with a tablet, to put it mildly, but if a manufacturer is going to include a camera it had better be decent. The Acube Talk 7X’s camera…. is not.

What we're talking about here is a 2MP camera with no flash assistance. Don't even think about grabbing those Instagram-friendly macro shots here. You'll be sorely disappointed, as the backgrounds tend to come out clear leaving the foreground a blurry mess.

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That extends to general shots. Images end up washed out, noisy and lacking in vibrancy and color accuracy.

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The front-facing camera can get the online video chatting done, but you would never use it for selfie.

Battery​

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Despite having a fairly small 3000mAh battery capacity, Acube has managed to endow the Talk 7X with decent endurance by using a fairly efficient chipset. In constant use, the tablet is easily capable of 5-6 hours' screen time, which is considered pretty good at the budget end of the market.

The system did very well in standby, idle drain is negligible even with wireless connected.

Thanks to its standard micro USB port, charging the tablet is easy: it accepts any standard cable and is fast to charge for a tablet (With its standard 5V-2A plug it only took about 2 hours to finish a full charge).

Verdict

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There's obviously nothing outstandingly good about the Talk 7X, but neither is there anything outstandingly bad. This is a budget tablet that actually exceeds my expectations in many ways. It's keenly priced and very capable.

The good:

For a device in this market segment, the Talk 7X has a PLS LCD screen, with nice color saturation, contrast, brightness and viewing angle, although the 1024 x 600 resolution seems like it's from a bygone era before 720p became the entry-level resolution for phones.

Audio through the built-in speakers is loud and reasonably clear, making this a great tablet for watching videos and listening to music.

Dual-SIM support is pretty useful for people who need two different mobile phone numbers.

At RMB499 ($80), it is affordable both as a phone and a tablet, and its performance is much better than the price would suggest.

The bad:

The rear-facing camera is a pretty poor effort from Acube and there's no real value in including it at this price at all.

The glossy plastic shell gives the tablet a cheap kind of feel, and has low resistance to scratches.

A 7-inch budget tablet that also wants to be a phone sounds like a silly idea. But the Acube Talk 7X is, in use, entirely sensible. It is stonkingly good value if a low-cost portable tablet is what you’re after.