Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I received my ICAN! 10" Android Tablet from Amazon on December 23rd. Like two of the other reviewers here mine came without any paperwork, and so I thought I couldn't register it, and therefor couldn't get to the Android Market. (Making it a very expensive paperweight)
I called Amazon Customer Service for 45 minutes and they were completely useless unfortunately. Claimed they couldn't find any contact for the distributor and didn't really want to deal with me, if I didn't want to just return it.
I did some research online, and let me save you the couple of hours I spent.
The manufacturer's website is: ican dot US dot com
I called the distributor on the phone (number at: gitcorp dot com) and got a call back within 2hrs from "Ray Pelosi" - Not bad for the day before Xmas Eve. I have to say that Ray was incredibly helpful and patient. He spent 20 minutes on the phone with me, apologizing for the fact that 100 units got shipped without the paperwork, and explaining that you don't even need the paperwork to register the unit.
If you go to the Ican website an click on the red Register Now button (bottom right) then it will send you a password, which you can use online to generate a license key. You punch that in to the Tablet, and it opens the whole thing up, including the serial number, and access to the (new improved) Android Market.
Ray also explained, that they have scheduled a free upgrade to Froyo 2.2 for registered customers on Jan 15th. Looking forward to that...
OK, so about the tablet itself:
First the good:
- PORTS! it has loads of ports:
2 MiniSD cards (comes with a 16GB)
1 HDMI port
1 ethernet port
2 full USB ports - I use mine to use my cordless keyboard, making the tablet suddenly *very* useable for email!
- Android Market - a lot of the non-carrier tablets include some 'other' market and you have to root it to get the main Android Market. I did have to go into settings and select "undo upgrade" to get rid of the initial persistent server error, but now it works fine, and is the nice upgraded version of the market.
NOTE! it is missing some apps, but MOST of what I wanted is in there and working. (eg: K-9, Last.fm, Kayak, Kindle, etc) However, somethings (like Firefox) are missing.
- Screen - It is not a 'beautiful' screen, but it is big. The 10" Tablet format is so much more appealing to me than the Galaxy 7" that I was thinking about.
OK, now for the BAD...
1 - The built in "wowHOME" launcher is awful. I mean, really awful. and slow. I put LauncherPro on it, and it made a huge difference, smooth, fast, and nice widgets. However, even with the Home Switcher app, I can't get the Tablet to default to Launcher Pro when I press the Home button, and it keeps going back to the crappy Wow junk. Please remove this, or tell me how!
2 - Quiet - With headphones the sound is just fine, not Band & Olufsen fine, but perfectly passable for a Tablet. However, trying to watch a simple YouTube without headphones is pretty hard. Even at Max Volume, the speakers are pretty quiet.
3 - Lack of cases, etc. Since this is from a small manufacturer (or a rebrand of an obscure Chinese one) - there is no ecosystem of nice portfolio cases, Screen protectors, etc. That means that I'm carrying mine around trying to be extra careful.
In the end though, I have to say I'm pretty delighted with my ICAN because:
a)I actually got it before Xmas. (wanted to buy an Archos 101, but they never made it to the shelves)
b) It cost $300 less than a Samsung Tab (I have a Captivate, so I like Samsung) and no carrier contracts.
c) It's Android, so I can change it almost however I want to make it work for what I'm looking for.
d) My one interaction with their customer service was pretty spectacular and I respect that in a small startup.
Solid 4 stars from me.
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**** UPDATE - FEB 1, 2011 *****
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Quick update, all is not well in ICAN land. The promised Android 2.2 "Froyo" update on January 15th never came. Instead, we were provided with a downloadable update to another version of 2.1 that accidentally wiped out all the apps and data on the tablet. Not good at all.
What's worse is that for some people, this download completely crippled their tablet, leaving them with a $500 paper weight. Most of us are past the return date by this point.
The good news is, that the company's forum is fairly active and their is an increasingly tight-knit community of unintentional beta testers for this device who are struggling through the challenges with ICAN's technical support rep's who (although changing frequently) have been responding to comments in the forum.
We have been promised that the 2.2 update is still coming "someday", although there are also threats that the new update will remove the Google market and all Google Apps (Gmail, calendar, maps, etc) - This is very concerning and makes me wonder who in google they pissed off that they've been banned from these apps.
Lastly, if you want to find out more about this device, surf the forum, but also check out the "FlyTouch 2" tablet which appears to be the exact same Chinese device sold by another brand. There is substantially more info on the FlyTouch than there is on the ICAN, so it might be a good source for you.
I still stand by my original review, this Tablet has the potential to be fantastic, it has the ports, the screen, and (hopefully) Froyo. The company needs to sort out the 'business' end of their business or this will wind up being a neat piece of tech that dies on the vine.
Jay.
PS - Notice that all of the recent batch of reviews bashing this tablet talk about how great the iPad is compared to it, rather than comparing against other Android Tablets. Can anyone say corporate-sponsored PR campaign? Not very subtle guys!
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ICan! comes with 1GHz Processor, WI-FI, 16GB internal hard drives,and headphone ports. But the ICan! doesn’t stop there,offering users a choice between a 7” and 10” screen includes a DCwall plug power adapter at no additional cost!
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