Huawei Ideos S7 Phone Tablet On Sale - $50 Off for $249 at Best Buy this Week! (US)

[xaueious]

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In this week's flyer for Best Buy for January 23-29, the Huawei Ideos S7 is on sale this week, for $249 (regular $299). This is the best price for the tablet ever seen, and certainly the lowest for an unlocked phone tablet without a contract. This is a great deal for a very capable device.

The S7 is an unlocked 7" Android 2.1 phone/data tablet (full AT&T 3G compatibility with SIM card, 2G with T-Mobile). It is a Cortex A8 tablet with an expected Android 2.2 update coming within Q1 this year. Check the previous writeup for the device here. The configuration of the S7 sold at Best Buy shares many of the internal components as the Nexus One in the Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250, but has a 7" display and a single-point resistive touchscreen. While the S7's performance, battery life and screen quality may not be as good as its current and upcoming competitors, but this price point is hard to beat.

Thanks to darksoul in our Huawei S7 forums for sharing this with us.

 

[gadgetrants]

Hmm, I hear there is the device out for $250...2-point touch, beautiful IPS display, no battery issues, easy to root, 2.2 coming soon, Cortex A8, 512MB RAM...

I think it's called...THE NOOK COLOR!!!!!!

-Matt

 

[Entropy]

Nook Color - No 3G, no GPS, etc.

Apples and oranges.

What battery issues? I admit it isn't that hot if I have a 3G SIM in and coverage is bad or I use the GPS, but it is fine when they are turned off, so it's nice to be able to sacrifice some battery life to get those features.

 

[gadgetrants]

Nook Color - No 3G, no GPS, etc.

Apples and oranges.

What battery issues? I admit it isn't that hot if I have a 3G SIM in and coverage is bad or I use the GPS, but it is fine when they are turned off, so it's nice to be able to sacrifice some battery life to get those features.

I'm not an owner, so "don't shoot the messenger for the message":

Huawei S7 Android Tablet – Hands on & Review « Clove Technology’s Blog

Battery – I am not going to lie, battery life is a bit of a shocker. At best with WiFi on, 3G connected and screen at full brightness I got an hour and a half max before needing to charge up. This is with a 2200mAh battery.

Huawei S7 Android Tablet Review (part two) | PDA-247

Battery (6/10)
I am not convinced on the battery performance. It is better than others perceive it to be, but heavy use will mean more than one charge a day. The upside is that you can buy a spare and chuck that one in if you need to so at least options are available. I would still prefer to see a longer default battery life built in.

Huawei S7 gets previewed: multimedia good, battery bad? [Video] - SlashGear

Meanwhile battery life is tipped at around 12hrs standby (with wireless connected) or approximately 100 minutes of active use; that’s certainly on the low side.

I don't mean these quotes in a snarky way...not having owned an S7 (which is a sexy little beast, btw), it's one of the ways that I've learned how it performs.

At the very least, I should admit that battery life on the Nook is fabulous, as long as you don't use it. Otherwise it's 8-10 hours for reading (haven't tried video test yet).

-Matt

 

[pvella]

This article....Hands-on first impressions of the Nook Color actually says the Nook Colour battery life is the worst for an eBook reader and they rate it at 8 hours reading.

With wifi turned on and surfing the net only 2.5 hours....Color Nook Color Battery Life - MobileRead Forums

I think that actually compares with the S7.

Matt, I am sure the Nook is a great device, but you do come across as just a little biased

 

[Aja]

This was great. I was able to walk into BB with just my receipt (from 3 days ago) and walk out with CASH. THANK YOU!!!

Sent from my sdk using Android Tablet Forum App

 

[gadgetrants]

This article....Hands-on first impressions of the Nook Color actually says the Nook Colour battery life is the worst for an eBook reader and they rate it at 8 hours reading.

With wifi turned on and surfing the net only 2.5 hours....Color Nook Color Battery Life - MobileRead Forums

I think that actually compares with the S7.

Matt, I am sure the Nook is a great device, but you do come across as just a little biased

For the record, EVERYTHING I say regarding the Nook and S7 is meant in fun.

But here's a serious comment: I'm assuming you don't own a Nook, right? For some reason the screen brightness goes up to ELEVEN (Spinal Tap joke)! I can't speak for most owners, but keeping it 30-40% is plenty bright. So remember the data you're quoting are anecdotal from a single user...plus we don't know how exhaustive his testing was...rooted system?...background apps running?... My wild guess is with screen around 35%, wifi+net will probably give you 4ish hours, maybe more.

No contest on the eReader comparisons, btw. E-Ink and LCD is not even an apples-oranges comparison.

-Matt

 

[gadgetrants]

This article....Hands-on first impressions of the Nook Color actually says the Nook Colour battery life is the worst for an eBook reader and they rate it at 8 hours reading.

With wifi turned on and surfing the net only 2.5 hours....Color Nook Color Battery Life - MobileRead Forums

I think that actually compares with the S7.

Matt, I am sure the Nook is a great device, but you do come across as just a little biased

For the record, EVERYTHING I say regarding the Nook and S7 is meant in fun.

But here's a serious comment: I'm assuming you don't own a Nook, right? For some reason the screen brightness goes up to ELEVEN (Spinal Tap joke)! I can't speak for most owners, but keeping it 30-40% is plenty bright. So remember the data you're quoting are anecdotal from a single user...plus we don't know how exhaustive his testing was...rooted system?...background apps running?... My wild guess is with screen around 35%, wifi+net will probably give you 4ish hours, maybe more.

EDIT: Oh gee, I just reread the comments from Rebo, which are before the Nook release date (November 2010). I think he really meant it literally when he called his numbers "My worse case estimation of the battery life for Nook Color." Looks like he pulled them out of...thin air. (Sorry, I'm a researcher and technical writer, so I get paid to be argumentative and nit-picky.)

No contest on the eReader comparisons, btw. E-Ink and LCD is not even an apples-oranges comparison.

-Matt

 

[gadgetrants]

Woops, double post??? What happened to the wonderful "edit" button???

Sorry for that...

-Matt

 

[pvella]

No problems Matt. Just want to try and make a fair comparison. I have never tried the S7 without wifi and gsm on. It will get about 2 hours of surfing via wifi or 3G, no idea how long it gets just reading. Standby is about 12 hours, with 3G turned on. Not sure if the Nook has 3G. The screen sounds great. Does the Nook have full apps market access?

 

[gadgetrants]

Nope, just wifi on the Nook. Looks like there's also bluetooth, but not activated by the stock ROM. Once rooted, it pretty much has full Market access...at least, what's visible while running 2.1.

-Matt

 

[DCLocal]

Inthis week's flyer for Best Buy for January 23-29, the Huawei Ideos S7 is on sale this week, for $249 (regular $299). This is the best price for the tablet ever seen, and certainly the lowest for an unlocked phone tablet without a contract. This is a great deal for a very capable device.

Thank you for this post!

This was great. I was able to walk into BB with just my receipt (from 3 days ago) and walk out with CASH. THANK YOU!!!

I did the same thing; I purchased mine just before Christmas (present to myself) and just went into Best Buy customer service yesterday. I handed them the receipt asked about the sales price and had $50+ back on my CC in a couple of minutes. Too bad they still don't have accessories as I would have immediately picked up a dock... This price break was icing on the cake making a great device an even better value.

 

[wingrider44]

I don't use my S7 for reading regularly. I do have Kindle app on it and will read some incidentally. I have a Kindle which is perfect for reading. I don't really complain about the battery life. I've found that when I use my laptop for surfing the net, etc., I only get about 2.5 hours or so which is about the same as the S7. I'm sure that will get worse as the number of recharges add up. I'm hoping that Huawei will get the 2.2 upgrade out before too long. March they said, but March is about gone.
Overall, I think the S7 is one sweet device. The resistive screen on mine is very responsive with no complaint from me. To much sensitivity is a pain the rear, IMHO.