By Marvell has a pretty extensive booth at CES and for the most part I really liked what they had going on. It’s clear that the company has a good thing going and on display they had a bunch of Android-based products they’ve worked on including the Dell Mini 3i, Entourage Edge, Alex eReader and Marvell Multimedia Tablet. It’s that last one I want to discuss a little bit more.
The Marvell representative made it very clear that Marvell wouldn’t sell this device to consumers and instead, would look for a distribution partner to slap their brand name on tablet. But after giving the device a quick test run I can’t see any company buying in (at least yet):
When you press the BACK button it activates a SEARCH and when you press the SEARCH button it sends you BACK. I asked the representative about this and he said it was intended to operate however it operates and whether it was intuitive to me or not is a different question. Mmmkay thanks.
I also had an issue with touch responsiveness as you can see several times I clearly press one icon and it highlights/selects something inches away (I press Alarm Clock and it enters API demos). When it WAS working I rather liked Marvell’s product which – in Android’s “About Phone” section – seems to be called avlight:
The annoying laughing guy? The Marvell booth had a “passport” contest/game where you stopped by to inquire about different products and could get your passport stamped. Enough stamps and you win a prize. Childishly embarrassing… I felt bad for the guy.
But I also felt bad for Marvell who put together packaging for their Marvell AVLight Multimedia Tablet that looked ready for the shelves yet they hadn’t even engineered the back and search buttons to function properly and the touchscreen sensitivity was way off. I’m guessing a firmware update could fix the button configuration oversight (how did this get THROUGH) but the touchscreen is a bigger issue.
Here is the front of the packaging:
And the back of the box (click picture for larger image):
As you can see/read… just a reference design but… makes you wonder doesn’t it? Another thing I did happen to like is the picture frame stand that made it easy to work on the device sitting at a desk with one hand or on other flat surfaces. It doesn’t look half bad either:
It seems like a lot of the Android-based tablets and netbooks suffer from these types of problems but with a decent number floating around out there I’m left wondering why? Are these manufacturers only half trying because the segment hasn’t made itself obvious as a profitable product category? Unless Marvell does some pretty heavy lifting I’m doubting this will see the light of day.
So the search and back buttons were swapped. Hardly an earth shattering problem. The marketing person’s opinion that it was supposed to work that way should be taken with a grain of salt. Marketing guys rarely have a clue. The touchscreen issue is almost certainly also a bug. I suspect the OS build was done at the last minute with more eye candy to show off at CES and didn’t get any testing.
In my opinion having presented stuff at CES before (triple play video solution based on windows) its better to not present at all than to present something that is clearly half baked. Yes, the swapping of buttons isn’t a big deal when you’re testing, but not having a working demo, no good interface and obvious bugs like that just look … well, stupid. What makes them think someone is going to give them a second shot after this representation of a product?
“When you press the BACK button it activates a SEARCH and when you press the SEARCH button it sends you BACK. I asked the representative about this and he said it was intended to operate however it operates and whether it was intuitive to me or not is a different question. Mmmkay thanks.”
I cannot believe that, A, that this could be displayed w/ such an obvious flaw, and, B, that he would have the gall to give that answer. Shows me this is a minor player and not ready for the big leagues. Can’t get your product right, and can’t get the personnel to advertise your product right.
Yeah that htc looking tablet will probley be cool. Other then that I think Google needs to make one because if they do I am sure it will do well like I have been saying. …
I Saw this information regarding Multimedia Tablet products, in The DSP Group web site on this page:
http://www.dspg.com/english/Product.aspx?ProductId=82&Category=4
I was wondering if there is more information on the Google Android based multimedia tablet they offer?
thx