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     The sad thing is, it's not so bad it's amusingly bad, it's just bad

JC, a fellow cow-orker, casually said he was going to throw out an Android
tablet [1] as it was garbage. It worked, but apparently was so bad that it
wasn't worth keeping. I was curious. So I asked him if I could have it
instead.

Wow.

I think I should ask for my money back.

How much of the badness is due to Android and how much of it is due to this
being the Mi Traveler^10Q8B I don't know. I think I'm willing to give Android
the benefit of a doubt, seeing how it can be modified by the OEM (Original
Equipment Manufacturer) to fit their needs, so I'm attributing all the
badness to the Mi Traveler^10Q8B.

And it's **baaaaaaaaaaad!**

Weight-wise, it's about the same as my iPad, but boy does it feel cheap. The
screen is cheap plastic. The case is cheap plastic. It feels like I can pry
it apart, although it's a sealed case and extensive probing doesn't reveal
any obvious seams. It just feels … cheap!

It took me a bit to figure out how to turn the unit on. There are two
switches on one edge (top? Bottom? Hard to say), both identical. One turns
the unit on and off. the other one is the “Home” button.

Using it, It seems slugish as I'm using it. I've never been fond of Android
(having been spoiled by the iPhone) but this thing is just painful to use.
The interface is confusing (and again, I'm not sure how much of this is
Android and how much of this is the Mi Traveler changing things up to “add
value”) and the tentacles of Google are very much evident here—no I do not
want to use the Google [DELETED-Butt-DELETED] Cloud thank you very much. Then
there's the YouTube app. Why does it need my contacts, location, use of the
camera and microphone and the ability to send an SMS (Short Message Service)
[2]? Bad Google! No cookie [3] for you!

And now we get to the camera.

It's bad (I look like a bad cartoon character!) [4]. It's really bad [5].

My iPhone takes better pictures (Yorick is looking a bit jaundiced) [6]. So
does the iPad [7].

In fact, to get a picture as bad as the Mi Traveler [8], I had to crank the
quality of the image [9] down to 10%, and even then, I still think the
picture is better than the one from the Mi Traveler.

It might be fun to hack on though.

Now … where did I put my pick-axe?

[1] https://www.android.com/tablets/
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2018/08/23/permissions.jpg
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2018/08/23/bad-self.jpg
[5] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2018/08/23/bad-desk.jpg
[6] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2018/08/23/good-self.jpg
[7] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2018/08/23/good-desk.jpg
[8] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2018/08/23/gdgb.jpg
[9] https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/30243/what-quality-to-choose-when-converting-to-jpg

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