Scroll Excel - Review & Mini Blog

[Charlie]

Hi all,

This 'Scroll Excel - Review & Mini Blog' thread will be updated as and when I discover more about the Excel and I will be partly comparing it against their first ever tablet to see how far things have moved on.

My Excel arrived today - Friday the Jan 13th 2012 at 15:50


Excel Review

The Scroll Excel is the 7th generation of tablets from Storage Options, their first one was just called the 7" Scroll Tablet (or something like that, I forget. But I will refer to it as the 1st gen Scroll) - Which I bought back in December 2010, when they first came out. I was impressed with that one back then for what you got for such a great price (shame it had a resistive screen and no flash.) I went WOW when I opened the box and saw it for the first time - Can the same be said for the Excel?


Inside The Box

No! - On the first look of the Excel, it's miles better than the 1st gen Scroll. It's WOW WOW WOW! on looks for the Excel. It's smaller, neat, sleek, stylish and very sexy. It is the better looking sister of the 1st gen Scroll, which was a great looker, but the Excel is a stunner!

I was worried about the Excel not having an aluminium back case, but the white plastic one looks and feels great, fits in well and I like it. Maybe this has helped with it dropping some weight, the 1st gen was 415 grams and the Excel weighs in at 394 grams. As for the dimensions:-

1st gen Scroll: 203mm x 132mm x 12mm
Scroll Excel : 195mm x 120mm x 12mm

Other differences, there is one less USB socket, but now has what looks like a reset hole and some things have moved position, like the headphone jack, speaker, camera, power & volume buttons. Also the three buttons on the main screen seem a bit smaller, which is nice to see.


Contents:

1x Scroll Excel
1x Mains Charger
1x Earphones
1x OTG Cable
1x USB Cable
1x Manual
1x Golden Ticket*

Ok, lets go over some of the more boring bits of what was inside the box.

The mains charger is smaller than the 1st gen one, but does not have a green LED indicator on it but does have a anti-interference thingy (sorry don't know what they are called) and uses the same charging tip style, which is ok, I would have preferred this to be the standard micro USB tip instead. The cable length seems to be the same. I know some would have liked a longer one with the 1st gen, but that was never an issue for me, so I don't think it will be in this case either.

Earphones seem to be the same and look ok - it's a nice touch again to have these included, but I probably won't use them like the last pair, as I have some Samsung ones that I prefer to use. However the ones you get with the Excel get the job done.

The OTG cable is a slightly smaller in length and looks improved, not much else I can say apart from it's great to have this included again.

The USB cable seems to be the same and is also a nice inclusion.

The manual is smaller in size this time but with more content. Not going into detail here as I am probably not going to read it (never read the 1st one) but from a quick glance it seems to contain some useful and helpful information.

What would have been nice to see in the box with both devices was a mini HDMI to HDMI lead.

The Scroll Excel is very impressive so far for the price tag of £129.99


Switching On For The 1st Time

Time to charge it first (with the device off)! Nice to see that the device does not automatically boot up when juice to the mains charger is applied, (that was a bit annoying at times with the 1st gen Scroll). Well I got a battery charging icon appear on the screen for a second, and then disappeared, so I guess it's charging as there are no other indications, a little LED would be handy here, but my phone does the same too. As long as it charges ok, that's all that really matters and I am happy with that.

Now I need want to patiently wait for it to fully charge

Four hours later and still charging it (I just want to play with it now, but I will be patient - Honest), the device is cool to the touch, which is good as this means components are (hopefully) not under stress. However forum member (excel) has informed me that there is no visual or audio indication to when the device is fully charged (TBH I don't remember if the 1st gen Scroll was or was not like this). I would have preferred there to be but no biggy, I will just leave it for 8-12 hrs.


After nearly 6 hours of charging for the 1st time, temptation has gotten the better of me. Just booted Foxy II up (the Excel that is, the 1st gen one was named Foxy - So I have given the Excel the nickname of Foxy II for now) Right where was I? - Another wow coming up? I timed the boot to the lock screen from when I saw the hot-air balloon image it was done in less than 25 seconds, a WOW x4 here - the 1st gen was well over a minute.

First impression of the screen responsiveness, fantastic! (I really can not go back the the resistive type - capacitative all the way now!)


Setting The Excel Up

What to test first? - Well getting a WiFi connection is a good start I thought. That went fine and was on the internet in no time. I tell a lie there, I spent 5-10 min's watching it connect then disconnect to my router, then I realised that my password was typed in wrong - Doh. Once I corrected that error, I had the WWW at my fingertips. As for the loading times of the pages I visited, they loaded at least 5x faster than the 1st gen Scroll.

Right, what to test next? - I will leave this open to you guys, please post away and I will test it in the morning.

Night all.


Notes

This review & mini blog continues on the next post.

*There was no golden ticket inside the box.

Continued on next post.

[Charlie]

Cont... from the post above.


Saturday 14th Jan 2012

Morning, thanks for the posts guys, I will be testing those soon. Just enabled market (old version) which was easy to do, I will be updating the the latest one soon. However I did notice that the paid apps are in US$ - Just got them in UK£ now - I changed the input language to British in the main setting of the OS.

The included apps on the Excel seem very well thought out and will come in handy. Apart from the 'Advanced Task Killer', why that is there and set to run from boot up! There is no need for such an app to be there and running. IMHO tasks killers will generally do more harm than good. The Android OS has moved on and once there was a need, that need is no longer there. (This will be one of the 1st apps to go)

Time to root, but having read many posts about it already being rooted, it will be most likely just a case of installing some of my favourite root apps.

Got side tracked with sorting the drivers for ADB - With the 1st gen I had to hack the android_winusb.inf file to add the correct usb id's in. I need to do the same this time for the Excel, but ran into issues with the Composite Adb Interface not installing the driver on the PC <head scratching time and a large coffee needed>

Sorted (thanks Mitre) the changes that needed to be made were correct. (see below)

Code: Select all

;Scroll Excel
%SingleAdbInterface%       = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0002 
%CompositeAdbInterface%    = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0002&MI_01

The above was added to the android_winusb.inf in the SDK Tools, which can be now be downloaded from here.

Mitre helped me realise that other files that should have been in the SDK, were missing (I must have deleted them awhile back - oops). Once those were back, the driver installed on the 2nd attempt.

Right back to rooting, there was no need to root this device as it is already rooted. I needed to use z4root on the 1st gen Scroll.
So far downloading and installing apps have been fine, never had an issue with either device - Unless I was trying to install an app which was not compatible with the OS. That's my fault (for not realising it in the first place) and not the devices.


Sunday 14th Jan 2012

Well I have been busy playing and having a lot of fun with the Excel. Surfing is very quick with the stock browser and the two others I have tried (Firefox beta & Dolphin mini). Pages load quickly, easy to zoom in and out, typing is quicker and easier as the Excel has a capacitative screen where the 1st gen was resistive. Great to see that we now have Flash support, thanks to the upgraded processor (Cortex A8), and using an OS of 2.2 or higher and the Excels comes with 2.3.4. Compared to the 1st gen that had ans ARM11 v6 and OS 2.1, which don't support flash.

My test sites for flash streaming where blinkbox.com BBC iPlayer website & iPlayer app. The Excel handled this flash content very well, the pages loaded quickly and viewing was a pleasure as the picture was clear and sharp. However I did experience some lip-sync issues, which is a shame as so far I have been very impressed with this tablet. (Hopefully this issue can be fixed by some changes in the Firmware)


Time to test some games, I decided to test Angry Birds, why? - Well because this was the game we all tried to get to run smoothly and without the white blocks in the graphics on the 1st gen tablet. Sadly we only ever got the Angry Birds Rio version to run.

I will report back when I have launched lots of not very happy birds into the sky

It has taken me 20 mins' to get a WiFi connection and to sort screen orientation which was locked in portrait, all was fine this morning when I downloaded 'Quicker' then switched off - So I think it was this app that caused the issues - as they went after I uninstalled the app and did a few reboots. (I will look into this more, another time).

Right back to downloading some birds of the angry kind...

...Fantastic! Weeeeeeeeee Splat. The Excel had no issues with Angry Birds, quick loading and smooth game play. From seeing the ever growing list of other games this tablet can handle (see here), I really had no doubts that Angry Birds would work.


So I have been using the tablet for a while now, so what has the battery life been like? Well i used the Excel for at least 12hrs yesterday after it had a full charge overnight. Ok, this was not 12hrs of constant use and it did get a 30 mins to 1 hour mini charge via USB, whilst I was sorting the drivers for the SDK Tools. It still had 23% battery left by late evening when I turned it off.

The 1st gen's battery life was good & got better after some tweaking. I would say that the Excel's battery life seems a lot better, even though it's has the same rate of 3400mAh. It's still a bit to early to know for sure, but I am very happy with its battery performance so far.


Had a slight hiccup getting the SD card into the Excel - I could not get it to click in, my nails are too short so I used the tip of the stylus pen (that came with the 1st gen Scroll) to push it in that extra 1mm so it would click into position. The SD card on my Excel when in the correct position is just 1mm below the side bezel whereas with the 1st gen Scroll it sat flush.


Saturday 21st Jan 2012

Quick update, I have been rather busy this week but still found some time for the Excel. I am still enjoying it very much and I have been working on some fixes for it. One of which is the lip-sync issue, which unfortunately I have not found a solution to yet. However I have been able to mod the Excel to get the market to show more apps that should be compatible with the Excel, that were shown as not compatible. Also there are new mods in the pipeline, to be revealed soon.

Monday 23rd Jan 2012

My hard work has paid off and I am enjoying playing Asphalt 6 on the Excel, it shows that this tablet has some very good hardware in it, even though the price for this device is low. There is no way the 1st gen tablet could of handled a game like this.

Continued on next post.

[Charlie]

Cont... from the post above.

Conclusion

Wednesday 25th Jan 2012

Well I've had my Excel for nearly two weeks, I am really please with it but...

...the last week has been like déjà vu. When I got the 1st gen Scroll, I really wanted to be able to run flash on it. I knew at then time that it did not come with it, but I thought that I might be able to get it on there. That time around flash would have been a bonus. Well I never did get flash on there as it needed a 2.2+ OS and it did not have that, there where some hacked flash versions available for 2.1, but they did not work as the CPU it had was an ARM 11 v6. Now with the Excel and its more powerful A8 Cortex CPU (which will run flash) and having Flash 10.3 installed, I did not think that there would be any issues a part from what to watch. This time around flash was a must, as I wanted to use it to watch films from websites on the Excel and also via the HDMI out on a TV.

Sadly there was an issue, a big one in my view. I could stream direct using the stock browser from blinkbox.com, the image quality was excellent and the sound was good too. However the big issue was neither are in sync!

I have been trying to fix the flash issue again, but this time we have flash but have a lip-sync issue, unlike before there was no sync issue as there was no flash to start with so there was nothing to sync. - So maybe now you can see why its been like déjà vu.

The Excel is a great improvement over the 1st gen Scroll so two thumbs up there. I do feel that the Excel has let its self down and if it had a school report it would say "Should try harder, has great potential" - I am very happy with the Excel but I am not jumping over the moon about it, while this issue is hanging a dark cloud over it.

This tablet should not have any issues with flash as it has more than capable hardware. There really needs to be a fix for this issue, then I could say it is the best budget tablet currently on the market, but until then I can not. So as for marks out of ten, I would say 7.5, if this issue is resolved then it would be a big 9.5 - So until then the score for the Excel stands at:


Original Score: 7.5 out of 10


Monday 6th Feb 2012

I am now using an earlier version of the firmware that some of the Excel's shipped with, and I now have an improvement on the a/v sync issue. Still not fixed, but a good improvement. So the overall score needs updating.


New Score: 8 out of 10

[Astro]

Welcome to the world of the Excel... it's a hoot!

Excel

[Mitre]

nice one Charlie welcome to the Excel club
i know its going to help you to help others on this forum

[Charlie]

Thanks guys and yes it will help me to help others with their Excel - Once I have familiarised myself with this new bit of kit

[Fonefixer]

im still in the dark, but playing with my viewpad7 in a similar vain at the moment to see what it will and wont do.

one thing i have noticed is using a sim card and 3G data on it slows it down considerably and makes it pretty unresponsive. Maybe the scroll not having a sim slot is a blessing.

[admin]

EXCELLENT Review and Blog here Charlie, loved the way you layed it out, will be following along with great interest, I already love all that Mitre has posted so getting your views too will be a bonus.

-Stu

[Astro]

Right, what to test next? - I will leave this open to you guys, please post away and I will test it in the morning.

Ha Ha, couldn't wait to play with the new toy then? I'm glad you're impressed with the Excel, it is impressive isn't it?

It's going to be invaluable to us all that you've got so much experience of the earlier Scrolls so that you can compare with the performance / operation of the Excel.

I'm not yet up to speed with the Android technical side of things, so will leave it for others to suggest what to try. From a 'consumer' point of view how does the Excel stack up to it's predecessors with games, say Angry Birds, and with video via HDMI? Is the lip sync 'issue' more or less pronounced than with its forbears?

Most of all, enjoy 'playing' with it.

Excel

[forrrge]

I'm enjoying reading your thoughts on this Charlie. What to test? I'm always keen on things that are not just about playing games (though I've put on a fair few of those already), I like the idea of turninf it into some more useful, how about some mapping applications, fitness tracking, reference type material, etc.

As a note mine isn't as quick at starting up any more, guess its because there are so much loaded now, I've even got apps to stop apps from loading However once up and running speed is as fast as ever.