fonepad

Asus Fonepad 7 FE170CG (2014) review

by with No Comment ASUSReviewstablet

Tablets are still preferred by the people who love to watch movies and play games. They have perfect screen size to enjoy movies and carry them around. Choosing a lost cost tablet with a nice brand name can be difficult. The Asus Fonepad 7 FE170CG which was launched in 2014 as a upgrade to the previous model, is a perfect fit for low cost tablets. Lets see what it has to offer and find out if its worth your money.

asus-fonepad-7-FE170CG

Body and Design

The new Asus Fonepad 7 has a texture on the back with plastic case which looks very firm in the hands. The build is quite good and it will do good with rough and tough use. The front looks better with a slightly thin bezel and sturdy finish. The tablet doesn’t looks cheap in terms of build and design. Though the power button and volume rockers are a bit difficult to reach as they are not exactly on the side.

Screen

The Fonepad 7 has a 7 inch display with a resolution of 600 x 1024 (~170 dpi). The screen is average and not too much attractive due to the resolution. The touch is smooth and it supports 10 point touch.

Hardware and software

Fonepad 7 is a dual sim tablet which supports 3G, so you can enjoy high speed internet connection. It runs on Intel Atom Z2520 dual-core processor clocked at 1.2Ghz. Though its a dual core processor, Intel’s hyper threading makes it perform like a quad-core. It has 1 GB of RAM which is enough if you don’t go for high end games. Multitasking works great with Fonepad 7 and there is no lag experienced while usage. From my review, I can assure you that performance is quite good and you will have no complaints while playing games, watching videos, or multitasking. You get different storage capacity according to the money you spend, we have 4 GB and 8  GB internal with an expansion capacity upto 64 GB.

On the software side, we have Android 4.3 Jelly bean pre-installed, which can be upgraded to 4.4 Kitkat. There is no news of lollipop update. We have the Asus ZenUI running on this tablet, which have some very nice mods installed. I prefer ZenUI over the stock UI of android.

Camera and Sound

On the back we have a 2MP camera which can click a photo of 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution. Now this is one of the negative points of this tablet, as its a below average camera. The front camera is of 0.3 MP again not of much use. Though you can turn on HDR and click photos in daylight to get some good results. Asus has some nice camera modes to enhance your photography performance. It can record 720p videos, again with a average quality.

Audio quality is quite good on this device. We have the speakers in front-top of the screen. They are not too loud, but gives clear sound.

Along with 3G we have Wifi, bluetooth connectivity. and GPS. Fonepad 7 also has a support for USB OTG, so you can directly attach pen drive to read write files.

Battery

We have a non-removable li-po battery of 15 Wh (Watt-hr) which gives a very nice battery backup. The charging of the battery takes time, but once fully charge the battery can last a day with heavy usage too. So one important factor i.e. the battery backup is one of the strong points of Fonepad 7.

The Fonepad 7 8GB model is available in Rs.7999 on Flipkart. There are many offers going on Flipkart, so you can probably get a nice discount on this amazing tablet.

My verdict

At this price range, this tablet is just perfect and I recommend it to you. Apart from camera, all other features are good. You will face no problem in multitasking and playing normal games. Games like Asphalt 8 and dead trigger were running smoothly at low graphics.

If you have any doubts regarding this product, do mention it in the comment section below. Need help in buying new electronic gadget, contact me anytime.

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Asus Fonepad 7 Review

by with No Comment AndroidASUSReviewstabletTechnewz

Asus Fonepad 7 is a 7 inch tablet which supports voice calling and is a successor of the previous Fonepad. It is much better in specifications from the original Fonepad. It comes with 4G LTE facility, and is a worthy tablet in its price range. We got hands-on Asus Fonepad 7, used it for some days and below is the review.

Asus fonepad 7

Asus fonepad 7

Design

Asus fonepad 7 rear

Back panel

Fonepad 7 has a glossy plastic body, with a fingerprint like texture on the back. It comes in two color variants white and black. At the front we have two speakers on the top and bottom of the screen. The 7 inch screen may look little small in size due to the thick bezel. The overall build quality of the tablet is quite good. One disadvantage is that, the front and the back both are fingerprint magnets though it can be easily cleaned. One advantage of using the plastic cover is that, it makes the tablet light-weight and easy to hold with one hand.

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At the left we have micro SIM tray followed by the volume rockers, power button and microSD slot on the right. At the top we have headphone jack, with micro-usb port and microphone at the bottom. At the back we have a rear camera with Asus Logo embedded. So the tablet was easy to hold and use for a prolonged period due to its light weight. The tablet has a thickness of 10.5mm and weighs 328 g.

Display

Asus Fonepad 7 has a 7 inch IPS display with a screen resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels. The display is vibrant and looks attractive with a pixel density of 216ppi. In the front we have 2 speakers on the top and bottom of the screen which can be used while watching movies and playing games. We also have proximity sensor and light sensor at the front above the screen. The tablet can be set for auto-brightness which works pretty good, and is effective in different light conditions. Other than that the display is highly reflective. The touchscreen was very responsive and there was no issues using it. It supports 10 point multi-touch, which will enhance the gaming and typing experience. Fonepad 7 has a much better display and color reproduction,than its competitors like Samsung Galaxy tab 3. Also the viewing angles were quite good while watching videos.

Asus fonepad 7

Screen

Performance

Asus fonepad 7

Gaming

Asus Fonepad 7 has an Intel Atom Z2560 Dual core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz. Along with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU it provides amazing graphics while playing high-end games. It comes with 1 GB ram and has 8/16/32 GB internal storage variants. The processing power of tablet is excellent, and there was no lag in multi-tasking or while playing games. The storage can be extended upto 32 GB through microSD card. Though it has only a Dual core processor, the device performs surprisingly well and consumes less amount of battery too. The gaming performance was pretty good with some high end games like Dead Trigger, Asphalt 8 etc. There were no issues in performance point of view, and the benchmark test turned out to be good.

asus fonepad 7 benchmarks

AnTuTu benchmark

Camera

Asus fonepad 7 rear camera

5Mp rear camera

Asus Fonepad 7 has a 5 Mp rear camera with a picture resolution of 2592 х 1944 pixels. The camera has autofocus with absence of LED flash which is quite common in most tablets. Interface of the camera is simple and easy to use. You can take upto 100 shots at once, and it has various modes like HDR, Beautification, Panorama, night, Smart Remove, all smiles and gif animation. So you can do various editing part in the default camera settings.

Asus fonepad 7 camera modes

Camera modes

The front camera is of 1.2Mp and is quite impressive. You can use it to do video calling and take selfies as the camera quality is good. Fonepad 7 has a mirror app which shows your image by using front camera. You may experience some noise in the image when camera is used in low light conditions. So overall the picture quality of Asus Fonepad 7 is pretty nice in daylight.

Asus fonepad 7 camera interface

camera interface

Asus Fonepad 7 records full HD video(1080p) at 30fps which is quite impressive. But the autofocusing while recording video was bit slow, so you may have to manually do it. In good light conditions the video quality was good.

Software Specs

Asus Fonepad 7 comes with Android 4.2.2 Jellybean, while you can upgrade to 4.3 Jellybean. The User Interface of the fonepad is customized by Asus, and given a nice touch and feel. We have 4 on-screen buttons which includes back, home, app switching, and a newly introduced floating app button. Floating apps are similar to Samsung’s multi-window as we can simultaneously run multiple apps on the screen. Floating apps include calculator, audio wizard, Dictionary, video player, countdown, converter etc. The tablet supports voice calling with no problem except the sound is soft.

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The notification bar is also customized with some toggle buttons like reading mode, smart saving, instant dictionary along with the regular wifi, bluetooth, mobile data, wifi hotspot etc. Reading mode optimizes screen brightness, so that one can read for a prolonged period of time without any strain on the eyes. On the main screen we have the option of setting 5 homescreen containing apps and widgets. The keyboard is not stock android keyboard, but is made to reduce errors while typing and has a clean layout of buttons. Fonepad 7 comes with some default apps like amazon kindle, aolink, flipboard, mirror, mybitcast, supernote, zinio etc. Some of the apps were quite useful, but all these default apps will take up the space as they cannot be removed.

Battery

Asus Fonepad 7 has a battery capacity of 3950mAh which may seem low, but the tablet can easily last for more than 1 day with a medium usage. We also have a smart saving option to save battery life. So the tablet is made to last long in terms of battery backup.

Pricing

The 16Gb version was priced at Rs. 17,499 and the current price may be somewhat less.

The only thing that bugged me was the sound, it was not loud enough, and also the sound breaks when used at full volume. In voice call too the sound was soft. Though the speakers were useful while watching movies and playing games, still it can be improved. Performance wise the tablet showed some amazing features. In this price range you can definitely go for Asus Fonepad 7 over other competitors.

We would like to know your views about the tablet whether you would go for it? Also if you have any doubts regarding the tablet, do mention it in the comment section below.

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