Difference Between ViewSonic ViewPad e70 and Amazon Kindle Fire

ViewSonic ViewPad e70 vs Amazon Kindle Fire | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

CES has not only revealed high end mobile devices, but it has also accommodated mobile devices that can reach a larger audience by price reductions. This may be a self-induced idea at certain instances and a peer motivated idea in other instances. For example, ViewSonicViewPad e70 can be seen as a self-motivated product while likes of Pantech Burst are peer motivated by AT&T. In any case, it is somewhat a comfort to see more and more mobile devices coming at affordable price ranges, which encourages the information freedom and accessibility. Leaving it at that, we also can rejoice the transition of ViewSonic to the mobile arena, and we will keep a tab on their devices.

Since the ViewPad e70 comes as a budget device, we thought of comparing it to another budget device, one that has set up a trademark on its own and can be used as a benchmarking device. It’s none other than Amazon Kindle Fire, rather popular as a reading tablet, but serves equally well for any regular purpose as Amazon promises. We know for a fact that these tablets were integral in spreading the word about a novel mobile platform. They are built just to serve the very needs of a tablet PC, nothing less, and nothing more. They have proved that sometimes all you need to penetrate the market is to give exactly what the consumer wants for a minimal cost as possible. Now that we have established that for Amazon Kindle Fire, let us look at ViewSonic ViewPad e70 and find out, whether it’s the same case with ViewPad e70 too.

ViewSonic ViewPad e70

We haven’t received full specs on ViewPad e70 yet, so we are weaving the net with the meager amount of information we have and will keep the comparison updated as we receive more news. VeiwPad e70 comes with 7 inch what seems to be a TFT capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. ViewSonic has mentioned that e70 would come with 1GHz single core processor and 4GB of internal storage with the option to expand the storage using a microSD card. Since there’s no mention about the RAM, we are guessing it to be at the scale of 512MB. It will run on Android OS v4.0 IceCreamSandwich, and we have some doubts about the performance with the given hardware specs, specially, the single core processor and RAM. Nonetheless, the Vice President of ViewSonic sounded pretty convinced that this tablet performs well. We can only verify after we get our hands on it and run some tests, until then, stay tuned.

ViewPad e70 is to have a rear facing camera, as well as, a front facing camera for video conferencing. If there’s one thing ViewPad e70 promises, its continuous connectivity and we believe that to be the case. ViewSonic boasts e70 to be extremely portable and super lightweight. We are hoping that it will have GSM connectivity as an addition to default Wi-Fi connectivity. As much as these claims bore us, what keeps our interest tightened is the promise ViewSonic gives on releasing this ViewPad e70 for $170. It sure counts to be a budget device with the price it’s offered, and we need to be less skeptical and demanding due to that. But we certainly would be observing whether the cost reduction was fully worth it or could they have done something more for a small price increase.

Amazon Kindle Fire

Amazon Kindle Fire is a device that promotes the economical tablet range with moderate performance that serves the purpose. It actually is boosted by the reputation Amazon has. Unfortunately, Kindle Fire resembles Blackberry PlayBook in a subtle way. Kindle fire comes with a minimalistic design which comes in Black without much styling. It is measured to be 190 x 120 x 11.4 mm which feels comfortable in your hands. It is slightly on the hefty side since it weighs 413g. It has a 7 inch multi touch display with IPS and anti-reflective treatment. This makes sure that you can use the tablet in direct day light without much problem. Kindle Fire comes with a generic resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels and a pixel density of 169ppi. While this is not the state of the art specs, it’s more than acceptable for a tablet in this price range. We can’t complain because Kindle will produce quality images and text in a competitive manner. The screen is also chemically strengthened to be stiffer and harder than plastic which is just great.

It comes with a 1GHz Cortex A9 dual core processor on top of TI OMAP4 Chipset. The operating system is Android v2.3 Gingerbread. It also has 512MB RAM and internal storage of 8GB which is not expandable. While the processing power is good, the internal capacity may cause a problem since 8GB of storage space just isn’t enough to fulfill your media needs. It’s a shame that Amazon doesn’t feature higher capacity editions of Kindle Fire. We got to say, if you are a user with the need to keep a lot of multimedia content at hand, Kindle Fire may well disappoint in you in that context. What Amazon has done to compensate this is enabling the use of their cloud storage at any time. That is, you can download the content that you bought over and over again whenever you want. While this is highly advantageous, you still have to download the content to use it which can be a hassle.

Kindle Fire is basically a reader and a browser with extended capabilities to fulfill the needs of the user. It features a heavily modified version of Android OS v 2.3 and sometimes you wonder whether that’s Android at all. But rest assured, it is. The difference is that Amazon has made sure to tweak the OS to fit into the hardware for a smooth operation. Fire can still run all of Android Apps, but it can only access the content from Amazon App store for Android. If you want an app from Android Market, you have to side load it and install it. The primary difference you’ll see in the UI is the home screen that looks like a book shelf. This is where everything is and your only way of accessing application launcher. It has the Amazon Silk browser which is fast and promises good user experience but there are some ambiguities involved in that as well. For instance, it’s observed that the Amazon’s accelerated page loading in Silk Browser indeed yield in worse results than normal. Thus we need to keep a close tab on it and optimize it ourselves. It also supports adobe Flash content. The only blowback is that Kindle only supports Wi-Fi via 802.11 b/g/n and no GSM connectivity. On the context of reading, Kindle has added a lot of value. It has Amazon Whispersync included which can automatically sync your library, last page read, bookmarks, notes and highlights across your devices. On Kindle Fire, Whispersync also syncs video which is quite awesome.

Kindle Fire does not come with a camera which is justifiable for the price, but the Bluetooth connectivity would have been very much appreciated. Amazon claims that Kindle enables you a continuous read of 8 hours and 7.5 hours of video playback.

Conclusion

A device with a budget restriction is actually the hardest to make. You have to fine-tune and remove just the right feature to accommodate the cost cut. If you by any chance tamper with anything else, the whole setup will be in jeopardy. That’s why it’s always the most difficult to come up with a budget device whereas high end devices doesn’t have this restriction. In our context, we have a feeling that ViewSonic has messed up somewhere in the designing stage. We cannot guarantee that ViewPad e70 would perform good nor bad, but what we can definitely say is that 1GHz single core processor with presumably 512MB of RAM might not be the best option for an Android OS v4.0 ICS edition. We can only verify it after running the benchmarks and till then we’ll be in the dark about specifics on performance. To be on the safe side, we would have preferred if ViewSonic stripped out the cameras and used the resources to mount a dual core processor and a better RAM. Even compared to $200 price of Amazon Kindle Fire, its only $30 less and I for one certainly won’t be pleased to downgrade my processor for $30, instead I’d tag along with Amazon Kindle Fire. This is something ViewSonic should have thought, but hopefully we can get the ViewPad e70 for testing soon and will give a comprehensive review.