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Flytouch 3 quick review

L

lordsnooty

Lurker
Got this yesterday - this is my first tablet, although I have previously used an HTC Hero and Desire HD, so I'm familiar with Android.

First impressions are good. Build quality appears sturdy, nothing feels cheap or delicate.

The screen is pretty good. Unfortunately it is, of course, resistive. This is very noticable when you're used to something like a Desire HD, but once you get used to applying a bit more pressure, then it stops being much of an issue.

One flaw with the screen is that it looks great in landscape mode, but is much harder to look at in portrait mode. As such, I would not recommend using this in portrait mode for anything.

The speakers, as others have noted, are fairly dreadful. I haven't had problems with volume per se, but the overall sound quality is very bad indeed.

The unit is very nippy - everything zips along quite quickly. I have installed several games (both 2D and 3D, several recommended only for high end units) and everything has run beautifully. I have also run GBA, NES and Genesis emulators on it, and all games have run at full speed with sound.

I can only see free apps in the market - not sure why that is, and if anyone has any tips, please let me know.

Wireless reception is 'okay' but not too amazing.

Too early to tell about battery life. I use this mostly for reading comics using Perfect Viewer (which works really well).

So, 24 hours after buying this tablet, I have no problems with it at all - I think it was a great purchase, and should tide me over until we start to get fast, affordable capacitive tablets start to come on the market.
 
Thanks for the review. I'm thinking of buying one primarily for reading comics, but your comment about portrait viewing has me worried. Could you elaborate on that?

Also, do you mind if I ask where you bought it and how long it took to ship?

Thanks again.
 
I bought it from this guy: Flytouch 3 Tablet PC Android 2.2 GPS WIFI 4G HDMI on eBay (end time 28-Mar-11 03:29:02 BST)

It arrived around ten days later, which was pretty good.

The screen - like many LCDs - doesn't view particularly well in portrait mode. It's noticably harder to look at than when in landscape mode. I don't fully understand this, but I checked Wikipedia (Page orientation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), which says: "...due to the light polarization technology [of] an LCD monitor, the angle of image viewability will degrade when rotated." I assume it's related to this.

It's perfectly readable in portrait mode, it just doesn't look quite as good. It's hard to explain, but I suspect prolonged reading in portrait mode would result in a headache! I have found that rotating the tablet a few degrees clockwise (so that you're not looking at it dead-on) does make it more readable in portrait mode. Comics are more easily read in landscape anyway, because in portrait it's not quite wide enough to comfortably read small text.

Hope that helps a bit.
 
Depends what you want to use it for.
If you want to use it for multimedia like Music/MP3 the flytouch is the best.
And you can easily download MP3 or MP4 files directly trough a downloader app.
It supports memory USB and Micro SD. And with the HDMI you can connect it to Any HDTV.

If you want to use it for Apps i still think a "jailbroken" iPad is better. Especially because you have to pay for most games which are free in Android. (and iOS just has some better game titles and they are better supported) FT3 still doesn't run all games.

Email and browsing is quite similar on both the devices. But if you like "freedom" android is currently the better choice. unless you would like to use iTunes to get everything on your device. So you still need a PC with it. My FT3 replaces my PC now. as video player, and for my email accounts.
 
Hi,

Does anyone know what the wifi range is like on the Flytouch 3? I don't want to have to be within a few feet of the router....want to use this in other rooms of the house.

Thanks!
Andy
 
There appear to be a lot of complaints about the wifi range, drain, but apparently some of these issues can be remedied by tweaking your router's settings.

(I did indeed pick up a jailbroken iPad for $350 after reading too many (and depressingly varied) complaints about the FT3. I figure the extra $100 is worth the lack of headaches.)
 
Received my FT3 today and started to tinker with it right away. First of all, my shopping experience was pretty dismal with the seller "cnok" at dhgate.com. Not only did he ship the tablet a full 11 days after I ordered, he got my name and address wrong too :mad:. DHL couldn't deliver and I had to call and set things straight.

Now for the pros and cons. The unit is well built and the screen, though resistive, is much better than other resistive screens I have seen. The tablet is zippy and I was able to root it very quickly following the instructions in these forums. The iPad like button seems to work as the back button and the included hardware keyboard worked without any hassles. Video playback of the animated feature, Alpha and Omega, from my 8GB Class 4 Kingston microSD card was smooth.

As for cons, there are many:
1. The speakers are absolutely garbage. Can't believe they couldn't put something decent in this thing. I had to resort to using an earphone to hear much of any audio.

2. Market was hosed out of the box, but using the tweaks learnt here (unmounting sd card) I was able to get it working.

3. YouTube shuts down right away so I got the vimeo version to see the videos. It's not that great, but satisfactory.

4. Battery, even though rated at almost 7000 mAh, drained very quickly while idle with the screen turned off. Maybe because the keyboard was hooked up could have something to do with it.

5. Flash in the stock browser works, but it's very laggy and stutters quite a bit almost rendering it useless. I haven't downloaded Dolhin HD yet, but will let you know how that goes.

6. WiFi range is poorer than my EVO, but FT3 maintained the connection.

Conclusion: You get what you pay for. For around $200, you get a decent tablet, but the cons might be too much for many people to try this Apad.
 
fleet75 said:
Thanks. Now I need to decide between the FT3 or trying to pick up a used ipad for $350.
Click to expand...
The Flytouch 3 is an excellent Tablet PC and superior to the ipad in certain respects. Flytouch 3 can display High Defiition for one thing. And one can log in at market.android.com/applications and download any of 70,000 applications available there. .
 
I bought one of these units for 145GBP. Very dissappointed. The screen response, wi-fi performance, internet speed and general speed of operation are all poor. Flash does not work properly and the Android 2.2 Op System appears to be unable to work effectively on this type of device. If I had bought this in a shop rather than off e-bay I would have taken it back and bought Apple or MS based products instead.
Caveat Emptor I suppose. Can't think of anything good to say about the FT3- Angry birds is free if that counts.
 
I have tried to upgrade FT 3 firmware but it did not work (perhaps the wrong version). Where can I get this firmware from please (Tims 3 a-c rom)?
 
Yeah...I think the Flytouch 3 is disappointing overall....but at least Tim's firmware helped.(once I got the version with the 576 Screen resolution). I had the horrid Chinese version with the Cube 3D effect...Nothing worked. Now at least I got most types of browser. Dolphin actually played msnbc video's perfect and smooth with synced sound(when I bent over to the speaker to hear it :D ) The stock browser plays video with everyone having Blue heads...very nice. Still can't get angry birds to install. Did the remove the SD Card thing...didn't help. Can't get Quick office to download.

I think my 8" APad was a way better Tablet...great video quality and speed out of the box. Hate the 1 30 pin plug and no seperate USB or HDMI.

Anyone get Swype to work on the flytouch 3 ?

Joel
 
Does anyone know why Ram is not reporting memory correctly? It is a Ibex Flytouch 3 with 512mb RAM 1GHz, bought from Chinagrabber, but RAM is only 256
MB (checked form application Control .apk software).

Where is the 512mb RAM????????
 
Hi, can anyone comment the gps? The signal strength, the programs - IGO, Garmin? How is it working? I red some were that IGO skin 800x480 is working, but don't cower the whole screen? Thanks in advance
 
p0peye said:
Hi, can anyone comment the gps? The signal strength, the programs - IGO, Garmin? How is it working? I red some were that IGO skin 800x480 is working, but don't cower the whole screen? Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

The GPS isn't the best, it uses a HopeRF XN203 gps chipset and an active external antenna. Some people have problems getting the gps to lock on and are stuck in Shanghai. The external antenna can be a pain but then again it means it can be placed on a car roof to improve reception..
igo8.4 will run on this device but, as you say, the highest resolution available at the moment is 800x480.
I don't think Garmin XT runs on Android, but NDrive,CoPilot, Sygic Aura and Google Maps all work full screen.

My favorite of those is CoPilot Live....available for download with, I believe, global map coverage
 
My GPS was stuck in Shanghai for the first day. It seemed like nothing I did helped. I didn't shut off my FT3 and the batteries drained completely. After charging, it seemed to go to my location just fine. I don't know if it was the batteries or I did something different. I didn't use it for actual navigation so I just used google maps.
 
kenewto said:
My GPS was stuck in Shanghai for the first day. It seemed like nothing I did helped. I didn't shut off my FT3 and the batteries drained completely. After charging, it seemed to go to my location just fine. I don't know if it was the batteries or I did something different. I didn't use it for actual navigation so I just used google maps.
Click to expand...

Thing is.....leaving the tablet on until it switches itself off wont 'flatten the batteries'. these tablets are fitted with Lipo batteries, they require careful charging and discharging regimes, the internal charging software will shut the tablet down well before the cells are dead flat, this is why when you try to switch the tablet back on without re-charging the cells it just vibrates but wont switch on....the cells are not 'dead flat'. I wonder....did you leave the gps antenna connected during the cell discharge? maybe it just needed the extra time to get its fix?

Anyway.....glad your GPS is working now.

I noticed on mine the other day when I fired up google maps it thought I was back in Shanghai!!!... still trying to work that one out!!
 
shos260288 said:
Does anyone know why Ram is not reporting memory correctly? It is a Ibex Flytouch 3 with 512mb RAM 1GHz, bought from Chinagrabber, but RAM is only 256
MB (checked form application Control .apk software).

Where is the 512mb RAM????????
Click to expand...

I purchased the same from myefox.com and 512MB ram shows up as 372.85Mbytes, 106.78 Mbytes free, 266.07Mbytes used after running Z-Device Test

Have you found the problem?
 
shos260288 said:
Does anyone know why Ram is not reporting memory correctly? It is a Ibex Flytouch 3 with 512mb RAM 1GHz, bought from Chinagrabber, but RAM is only 256
MB (checked form application Control .apk software).

Where is the 512mb RAM????????
Click to expand...

I downloaded the application control.apk and couldn't see where it displayed the RAM in my system..?...however, I think you will find that most utilities will show the ram as 372MB, with around 200MB free..or less if you have apps running. This kinda means hat you have more than 256MB installed!.. my guess would be 128MB of the 512MB installed RAM is reserved for the video hardware leaving 384MB for the operating system
 
I would like to know if anyone has a go pro video camera and if they do how quickly can you view lets say 150 pics when connected to the flytouch 3. i need it for the simplest function of quickly showing pics to a customer over a 3-5 min window of time. is this possoble or not? thanks :confused:
 
eralast said:
I purchased the same from myefox.com and 512MB ram shows up as 372.85Mbytes, 106.78 Mbytes free, 266.07Mbytes used after running Z-Device Test

Have you found the problem?
Click to expand...

how long did it take to arrive from myefox? ive ordered one and just wondering... and where abouts do you live?

thanks
 
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