Reliance 3G Tab

Full Review

With the launch of the Aakash tablet by the Indian Home Ministry recently and a slew of other low-cost Android tablets in the Indian market, the general outlook of the Indian telecom companies seems to be veering towards creating budget tablets. We received the Reliance 3G tab which is not ultra-cheap like the Aakash tablet but is definitely affordable for those who are looking at buying a device that can fit within their budget. The Reliance 3G Tab is cheap and that is its main USP.

Features

The Reliance 3G Tab is cheap and that is its main USP.

One look under the hood and you realise that the Reliance 3G Tab has pretty low hardware specifications. The 7-in display has a resolution of 800x400 pixels. And running this tablet is an ARM11 800MHz processor with 512MB RAM. It supports microSD cards up to 32GB and comes with a 4GB microSD card free.

For your connectivity needs, the Tab has Wi-Fi and also 3G (HSDPA-7.2Mbps; HSUPA- 5.76Mbps). You can opt for Reliance 3G Tab special SIM and offers for GSM connectivity. Sadly, I couldn’t test the 3G speeds because Reliance doesn’t have 3G connectivity in Bangalore. The tablet also includes a microUSB port to connect to the PC. The tab also has a primary 2MP camera and a VGA front-facing camera. It has a huge 3400mAh battery.

The specs of the device are pretty basic for a tablet and will not give any higher-end tablet a run for its money. Though, it is not all that bad.

Design and User Interface

The moment I opened the box, the Reliance 3G Tab reminded me of the Samsung Galaxy Ace. Yes! The tablet is an overblown Android smartphone. The tablet, however, looks very good with the all black front and the beautiful silver back which has the Android logo and the Reliance logo. The one major plus point for the tablet is the weight. At 389 grams the tablet is indeed light.

The smartphone resemblance doesn’t end with the looks. The back can be opened to reveal the battery compartment and the microSD card slot and SIM card slot. The huge battery takes most of the space. The tablet does not have too many hardware buttons. It has the volume rocker and the power button housed on the right. The dual speakers are on the top and bottom of the tablet.

I was pleasantly surprised that the screen wasn’t much of a fingerprint magnet. However, the visibility under sunlight is poor. The screen is also not very sharp and the slow refresh rate means that skipping and framing while watching videos is bound to be an issue. Though the touchscreen experience isn’t out of the world, it is pretty decent. I prefer the capacitive touchscreen anyway over the resistive one.

Android Gingerbread runs without any hassles on the tablet and is actually quite smooth.

Browsing, Camera & Multimedia

I couldn’t test the browsing capabilities of the device on the 3G connection because of the reason I mentioned earlier. However, over Wi-Fi, the default Android browser managed to load pages pretty fast. But it couldn’t play flash files. I found the browser sluggish while pinching in and out of a page. The Android market with its new update was also slightly slow in loading.

I tried Angry Birds Rio on the Tab. I could play the game but at certain times the game would get so sluggish that I ended up restarting it so that it played smooth.

The tablet could not handle .avi files on the default video player so playing 720p or 1080p videos was out of question. But it did play .mp4 and .wmv files without hassles. No framerate issues at all. You can download any external video player from the Android market to play other formats. I prefer Nemo player.

The Reliance 3G Tab comes with Dolby settings for the music player. It brings in a load of equaliser options which is great. The external speakers are loud enough and the music quality over dedicated 3.5mm earphones is really good. The tablet excels even in the radio playback but it cannot play your favourite songs over the external speaker of the tablet.

The camera takes very grainy shots in any condition. It is not worth rating.

Bottom Line

At Rs 12,999 the Reliance 3G tab definitely raises the bar for entry-level tablets in the market. After using this tab for a week, I can assure you that Reliance has hit the sweet spot between performance and price with this tablet. It is definitely an average device comapred to the other higher-end tablets in the market. But at this price range, the Reliance 3G Tab is the king.