Scroll Excel 3D very disappointed!

[ajamsandwich]

Right i've now had a couple of day to play on this device and I must say my inital thoughs were very good, however since playing I am to say the least very disappointed! I was drawn into with a fairly quick processor, captive screen and a thumbs up from the gadget show!

What I bought it for

Sype calling ok for IM
IPlayer
Reading the net
YouTube
Angry Birds

The device in descriptions from where I bought it says plays IPlayer, so I tried that and the lip sync is not very good at all, around 500ms out. If I wanted an experence like that I would watch a kong fu movie!!! this make the experience painful and gives me a head ache. Seems the same with any flash catch up service content except YouTube. Latest IPlayer application and flash installed.

YouTube player I am impressed with so there at least is a possitive. Playback is smooth from both HD and SD footage.

Skype, oh the pain continues. Want to make a audio call? forget it! There's more background noise in a empty room with no distractions than standing on the M25 in rush hour traffic. Video call? hahahahahaha, not a chance the cameras there and as of yet I havent found a single reason why it should be. The whole point of a forward facing camera is for video calls. Since I can't, the question of why its there I remains unanswered. I also though about giving Yahoo messengar a try but that just tells me the device is not compaitble when trying to install the plugin for voice and video.

Angry Birds, this is a plus. Game play is smooth and sounds are fine. But hey thats just to burn up the odd 5mins.

Net browing is also a good expereience and the screen is not too bad for the price, responsive and reasonably bright.

But since I bougth it to catch up TV and communicate with my family more than anything else I have to say it quite an expensive paper weight! Don't know if there are any fixs to my issues, only hope that there is.

Thanks

Andy

[moaxial]

I bought this partly for the same reasons as you and mostly agree with what you say. I also bought it to stop the kids borrowing my Samsung Galaxy S every 5 minutes to play games.

For the latter, it is superb and the kids love it, AND I get my phone back to use as a PHONE!

However, the kids and I also like to use IPlayer and play xvids etc off SD card...The audio sync is a serious flaw in something advertised as a video player. I thought you might like to know there's another thread on this and added to that one too...

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=1758

Apparently some other Android devices inc Galaxy SII experience sync problems on SOME videos...Personally, my Galaxy S1 is faultless, and that doesn't explain how ALL the videos are out by the roughly the same amount on the Scroll Excel regardless of player/format, so I reckon that HAS to be a proper fault.

I too had no luck with the Skype camera, but the Excel is not alone in having no video support in Skype, so I am not too surprised. Infact Skype only recently started working with video on my Samsung Galaxy S, a few months back. I thought audio was OK, compared to say a cheap web cam with built in mic, but not as good as my Samsung

I wouldn't say "very disappointed", on the whole I am happy with it but its a new device with the typical new device niggles, I reckon we're paying the price for being the pioneers! For me, random wifi related crashes and the audio sync are top of the bug list.

Lets hope they sort it out with the next firmware release.

[ajamsandwich]

I concur rye device is good, same the reasons so buy it are the flaws, for my mom you see and catch up tv and Skype is what she uses it for. Maybe I've been spoiled having a desire hd for the last 12 months. Mic is terrible though gonna try in an a quite ambient room with nothing but quite.

Maybe if ice cream sandwich gets put on it these woes get fixed. Have you got any app to see the camera yet? Just looking for a Skype like app that works with the camera.

Thanks
Andy

[moaxial]

I think you're right, we've been spoiled with premium smartphones, and this is what half, if not 1/3 of the price of a premium tablet?

There are TONS of these cheap chinese tablets about on Amazon and Ebay and although the Excel may not perform better, it also hardly costs anymore and its a British firm with proper support and LOOK, a forum

I still have faith

Maybe they'll be a few more USB devices i.e. headset/mic that work on this in the near future, to compensate for the audio. I've had a 50% hit rate with USB keyboards and mice, although you really can plug it into a monitor and use it like a laptop!

As for the camera, I see you have tried Skype, and Yahoo messenger, tried google talk? The only one I've tried that works is the camera app they provide, its a rubbish camera but would be fine for video chat.

I am a developer, but Windows/PC and I've only dabbled in Android, so I just don't know enough to say. As I said before Skype didn't support that many cameras until recently so I reckon it could be something the App developers have to change...If so, we're probably screwed, lets hope it might be a device driver thing that Storage Options can sort out...

[ajamsandwich]

Same here im also a developer for the ,net platform and java so may have a go at writting stuff for andriod. Ill give google talk a try, thanks for the heads up!

Andy

[ajamsandwich]

What is the full name of the Google Talk, seach for google talk but didn't know which one to DL with video.

Many thanks

Andy

[moaxial]

Hi Andy,

Looks like its been subsumed into Google+ "Mobile Hangouts", might try it myself, also saw Tango voice/video calls which has been around for a while too, might be worth a try...I have a feeling the underlying support for the camera won't be there but its worth a try.

Cheers,

Matt.

UPDATE: Just tried Google+, no surprise it cannot find the front facing camera which makes me thing that it must need to be exposed as a certain type of device in the API somewhere or something, and isn't. Tango shows up on my phone market but not on the Scroll, which usually means its filtered out due to compatiblity issues. Tesco shopping app is filtered out for the same reason, might just be it doesn't work on tablets generally.

[ajamsandwich]

Cheers for looking,

hopefully they make it work in the next firmware as of the moment I dont see the point of it!

Andy

[forrrge]

Hi,

I've not tried this with my own Excel as I've just got it and its currently plugged into a wall socket getting charged (any idea how long the first charge will take ? )

Anyway I normally convert videos when transferring to my DivX DVD player as it pretty old and will sometimes freeze if if a file is too large. So I use a program called Free Video Converter http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/
which is very quick and allows you to re-encode videos pick size e.g. 800 x 480 and other things, it might be worth giving that a go.