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Fronix Technology Ltd. is a new brand in tablet computer segment which is based on Kolkata and Pune. Their main objective is to give best feature rich tablet at best possible price. For providing the best possible support they had currently 42 service center in 19 States and 37 Cities. About product lineup concern they have three product i.e. Star, Aurora and Nova. Nova has inbuilt 3G SIM support. They're also planning to launch Aurora II which is based on "Rockchip RK3066" dual-core, Quad-core Mali 400 GPU, 1GB DDRIII RAM and it comes with newly launched Google's Jellybean OS. Pretty awesome specs with new operating system I must say. Today I am going to review the "Star" tablet which is based on newly launched SoC "Allwinner A13". Will cover the details about Allwinner A10 and A13 later in the review, before that lets have a look at its specification.
Specification:
Allwinner A13 1.0 Ghz SoC
Dual-Mali 400 GPU
512 MB DDR3 RAM
Android Ice-cream Sandwich 4.0 OS
8GB Internal-Memory
7'' inch multi-touch capacitive screen with wide viewing angle
800x480 Pixel Resolution
3.7V/4000mAh battery
1.3 Megapixal Front camera
Micro 5 Pin USB 2.0 with OTG support
Built-in MIC
Supports 3G Dongle
Build in WIFI (802.11b/g/n )
Length: 190.5 mm Height: 115 mm Thickness: 10.5 mm
Weight: 330 g
Pros:
# Low power consuming SoC
# Good viewing angle screen
# 8GB onboard storage
# Bright vivid screen
# Good build quality
# Great battery backup
# Attractive price tag
# Plays multi-format media files
#1.3 MP camera
Cons:
#Low volume loudspeaker.
#No Bluetooth
#No GPS
Before going further lets find out a difference between Allwinner A10 and A13 chip.
Allwinner A1X, known under Linux as sunxi, is a family of SoC devices designed by Allwinner Technology Co. Ltd from Zhunai, China. Currently the family consists of the A13 and the A10. The SoCs incorporates the ARM Cortex-A8 as its main processor and the Mali400 as the GPU. The Allwinner A1X is referred to as a "Many core" processor due to its use of multiple processor to perform different function.
A10(sun5i) is the current full-featured SoC with all features and the A13(sun5i) is a lower power consumption and lower cost version of the A10 which is designed primarily for low cost tablet. The A13 does not have HDMI and SATA connections other than all feature are same. See the block diagram of A10 and A13 SoC below.
The Package
The box is simple square shape like other product's package. Product photo is printed around every corner of the package and specification is there on back side of the box with highlighting the main feature with large icon. They have also mention their office address in the box. About the package it contains a Tablet, OTG cable, data cable, earphone and manual. Packaging is decent enough to secure your tablet from any shipping mishandling.
Build and Design
Fronix Star is very unique looking tablet with white color borders around its edges and rear side. From rear its white in color and front panel has black color like most of the other tablets.
About build quality its made of hard plastic which gives great strength to the tablet. Its very well made tablet which feels great to hold in hands. The pockmarked back recalls the same vibe as slipping on a pair of premium driving gloves, and this look and feel makes it quite nice to hold . The dimension of this tablet is Length: 190.5 mm Height: 115 mm Thickness: 10.5 mm
Connectivity ports
Connectivity ports
About ports it has power button, 3.5 mm earphone jack, mini-USB, power-point and volume rocker button. They are placed on right side of the tablet. There is no HDMI ports in this as Allwinner A13 doesn't comes with this feature the cut the costs.
Camera and speaker are there on extreme right corner and rear left side respectively.
Back panel
Below volume rocker button micro-SD slot is situated. About display screen it comes with double glass(G+G) panel to give extra strength and smooth usability. Another plus point is that it doesn't comes with any physical navigation button unlike Micromax Funbook which keeps the design clean and clutter free.
Visual Design comparison with Micromax Funbook
Back panel of Star and Funbook
Side thickness
Display
Screen is the most important part of any touch screen device as for navigation we have to depends upon its touch screen. For best usability screen has to be quick and responsive and should be of higher resolution to use it properly. Quick responsive helps it for fast gaming like Temple Run which needs high input of touch responses.
Talking about this tablet's screen, it equipped with 7'' inch 5 point capacitive touch with Dual glass screen, they called it (G+G). Resolution is 800x480 pixels which is decent for budget tablet. Keep aside the specs, about actual quality of this screen is really rocking in practical world. The viewing angle is best till date among all non-IPS tablet tested by me in recent times. At one moment, I was really confused whether its a IPS panel or normal LCD because the viewing angle is so good.
Good viewing angle really helps us to view ebook, photo gallery and movies at any angle. It really helps when we share the screen with friends. Screen quality is vivid, sharp and bright. When compairing with Funbook, I found out Fonix Star has better screen quality..
Star vs Funbook
Internet browsing
Browsing is fast and responsive and page loads fast and scrolling is fluid without any lag at all. The main problem we generally faced in budget is because of its limited memory the webpage really hangs but in this tab most of the time Free RAM is above 250MB. Its may be because of its stable OS( Virtually no lags found. To test memory, browsing is the best way to do it because the browser takes the maximum memory than any apps.
I have installed few browser to find out which one works best with this tab. Installed browser like Dolphin HD, opera mobile and Google chrome. Later I found opera mobile works best. And its takes lesser memory possible. For forum browsing Tapatalk 2 is good enough, and its working fine enough that it should be. About flash is concern it comes up with Adobe Flash 11.1 which helps it to view animation ad and online video within browser.. Mali400 GPU helps to render the youtube/online video butter smooth.
Video and audio playback
This tablet comes with Mali 400 gpu chip like other budget tablet. It can decode format like DIVX, AVI, MKV and other format. I have tested few 1080P and 720P format and it playing without any glitch . Playing is smooth and crisp, lag free thanks to mali400 gpu chip. Watching a movie in Star tab is really a entertaining. Tested all this video with award winning player MX player.. MX player can use hardware acceleration as well as software acceleration like we see in VLC player. The only limitation in A13 tablet is that you can't connect it to HDTV as it doesn't comes up with HDMI port but at 5.4k INR what can you expecting? Ipad like huh!. Please note: HDMI is not there in Allwinner A13 architecture So, you can easily buy tablet with A10 chip if you need HDMI so badly. So, in video playing department it doesn't disappoints.
Fonix Star Full-HD video test - YouTube
About music playback sound quality is crisp and loud like most of the Allwinner tablet. For testing it downloaded Double Twist app from play market. Its best music player in my opinion as its interface is very good looking. It has also broadcast online radio So, you can listen your favorite radio channel easily but for that you need to connect to the internet.. The main interface contain as Artist, Albums, songs, play lists, pod casts, and you can add paid feature also like Air sync (Wirelessly sync itunes music & play lists, photos and videos with your Mac/PC over your WiFi network. Plus stream music and videos also). The sound quality is clear, crisp and balance. It ca play any popular format out there like .mp3, FLAC, .wmv , and others. But to hear the best possible sound quality, I strongly recommend to buy a good pair of earphone.
Games:
Playing games in tablet is always fun. Its best time killer for any gamers And you can find plenty variety of free games in play store. I tried some games like Racing Moto, Raging Thunder 2, Angry Bird Space, Temple Run, BMX Boy, Fruit Slice, and Killer Bean Unleashed. It also came preloaded with some games like Trial Xtreme 2, angry birds and others. It can play HD games from Gameloft also it A13 SoC equipped with fast gpu chip (mali400).
Benchmarks:
Neocore Benchmark
In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a set of program or other operation, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it. There are many types of benchmark that stresses CPU, GPU and memory to find out actual performance capability of the respected device.. I have used few popular benchmark software to test the tablet. To get the best result I've compared the Star tab with other popular tab in the market.
