Cheap Chinese tablet for Ground station?

Hello folks,

I bought my Iris a month ago, and so far, I am having blast! I have a macbook which I carry around as a ground station, and now that I am more familiar with it, I would like to move to a more portable ground station with a telephone chip and so on.

I've been an iOS-only guy and never owned any Android stuff. Went from Blackberry to iPhone and never looked back. With the iOS ground station SW costing $99, and the availability of cheap Android tablets for as low as $39, I would be tempted to dedicate a tablet to the Iris.

My question is: have you tried any of the cheap Chinese tablets? I went on Aliexpress and they have all kinds of Android tablets, from the high end Xiamomi mi pad that compete head to head with the iPad air, all the way to these $49-79 tablets that have OTG (power on the USB bus), accept a 3G or 4G phone SIM card, have an internal GPS, and range in size from a smallish 7" to a massive 10.7".

Anyone has any experience? Or any comments to share?

Or would you just spend the $99 and buy the iOS control station?

Thanks

Hermann

I've never tried setting up your scenario that you're describing, but as an Android firmware developer who has tested many different devices I can tell you this... Those $30 tablets are complete garbage. I once bought a $40 tablet just for testing as I figured at worst it couldn't be all that bad to spend $40 for a new working tablet. I was mistaken. It was the worst $40 I've ever spent. Spending $40 on Facebook's FarmVille would have been a better investment. Nothing works the way it should, it takes 15mins to boot up, the touchscreen digitizer is lagged out, its pretty much frustrating and terrible. I would strongly suggest that you get a Nexus 7 tablet (even the wifi-only version if you want, you can tether to your cell phone for mobile data). If cost is important you can find the older version from 2012 (Nexus 7 - grouper) you can probably get it on eBay for ~$100. You'll be so much better off.

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Kellen R. June 26, 2015 at 7:56am

I've never tried setting up your scenario that you're describing, but as an Android firmware developer who has tested many different devices I can tell you this... Those $30 tablets are complete garbage. I once bought a $40 tablet just for testing as I figured at worst it couldn't be all that bad to spend $40 for a new working tablet. I was mistaken. It was the worst $40 I've ever spent. Spending $40 on Facebook's FarmVille would have been a better investment. Nothing works the way it should, it takes 15mins to boot up, the touchscreen digitizer is lagged out, its pretty much frustrating and terrible. I would strongly suggest that you get a Nexus 7 tablet (even the wifi-only version if you want, you can tether to your cell phone for mobile data). If cost is important you can find the older version from 2012 (Nexus 7 - grouper) you can probably get it on eBay for ~$100. You'll be so much better off.
- Hermann Fernandes Pais > Kellen R. July 1, 2015 at 4:09pm
  
  Thanks for the opinion Kellen.
  
  I will follow your advice.
  
  Hermann

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Cheap Chinese tablet for Ground station?

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