At the crest of a wave of highly anticipated 7-inch tablets, you may have missed Huawei?s T-Mobile Springboard 4G. It lacks the hype of the Amazon Kindle Fire?($199, 4 stars) or the Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet?($249, 4 stars), but the Springboard is worth considering if you're looking for a tablet with 3G connectivity?something those other tablets are missing. Unlike the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet?s heavily modified Android 2.3 software, the Springboard runs Android Honeycomb 3.2, joining the Acer Iconia Tab A100 ($329.99, 4 stars) in a growing lineup of smaller-screen Honeycomb tablets. The Springboard outclasses the Iconia Tab A100, with its slick aluminum chassis, beautiful IPS display, and above-average battery life. But with a new version of Android coming and competition stepping up, it's just harder to get a four-star rating than it was when we reviewed the A100 this summer.
Pricing and Design
The Springboard comes in a 16GB model that T-Mobile offers for $179.99 with a two-year contract, or $429.99 sans contract. The contract price requires you to pay at least $50 per month for your first 20 months, which gets you 2GB of data with no overages, but reduced speeds if you go beyond 2GB. For many users, a simple Wi-Fi connection will be enough, and any additional data can be bought on a pay-as-you-go basis. T-Mobile offers no-contract prepaid plans in MonthPass and WeekPass options, ranging from $10 for 7 days with 100MB, to $50 for 30 days with 3GB. The $429.99 off-contract price is higher than the Springboard's main competitors, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus ($399), the Acer Iconia Tab A100, the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, and Kindle Fire. However none of those offer a cellular data option, and all but the Galaxy Tab have less onboard storage.
Fitting comfortably in a single hand, the Springboard feels solidly built and substantial. Its aluminum body is reminiscent of the iPad 2 ($499, 4.5 stars), using a smooth nearly-unibody construction with two plastic pieces attached to the back. At 7.5 by 5.1 by 0.4 inches and 14.1 ounces, the tablet is heavier than the 13.9-ounce Iconia Tab A100 and on par with the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet.? When held in portrait mode, the top edge of the tablet houses two small speakers and a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack.? The speakers are fair and produced decent audio output in my tests, but like with most tablets, to get the best results, you'll need headphones or an external speaker.
The Power button and volume rocker sit towards the top of the right edge. A power jack, micro HDMI port, and micro USB port for connecting to computers can be found on the bottom edge. The Springboard comes with 16GB of onboard storage, expandable up to 48GB with up to a 32GB microSD card. The microSD slot and SIM card slot can both be found under the bottom plastic panel on the back. ?
?Though T-Mobile touts it as a 4G tablet, we class the Springboard's HSPA+ 14.4 connection as 3G. But that's OK. It's still fast. (More on speed and performance in a minute.) The tablet also supports Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and I was able to connect to protected networks easily. The Springboard also supports Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, which made it easy to connect to wireless headphones or speakers. The Springboard can double as a mobile hotspot and I had no trouble browsing the Web, streaming Netflix, and downloading files on multiple devices.
The 7-inch 1280-by-800-pixel IPS touch-screen display is a pleasure to look at. Colors are vivid, with deep blacks and very sharp text. The viewing angles were considerably wider than on the Iconia Tab A100. I found the screen to be brighter than the Kindle Fire with both at max brightness. The Kindle Fire?s 1024-by-600 display is good, but the Springboard?s higher pixel density made reading on the screen easier. The screen is responsive and I rarely had to press more than once to register touches. One minor problem I found was that the bottom bezel, in portrait mode, is touch sensitive, causing a good amount of accidental clicks, inadvertently exiting apps or going back in the browser.
OS and Performance
The Springboard runs stock Android Honeycomb 3.2, with a few preloaded, removable apps and widgets from T-Mobile. This includes apps such as T-Mobile TV, Lets Golf 2, and Blockbuster, none of which were very useful. Other than that, if you've seen Honeycomb, there's nothing new here to note. The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has a smoother interface and apps run more fluidly on Samsung?s 7-inch tablet.
As far as third-party apps go, the Android-tablet-specific app selection still pales in comparison with Apple?s iPad app collection, and those tablet-specific apps are tougher to find in the Android Market. Given the smaller screen size, phone apps scale well on the Springboard, but until Google overhauls its app store to cater to tablet users, Android is at a distinct disadvantage. Tablet-specific apps such as StumbleUpon look great and took advantage of the screen real estate. Phone-specific apps like Facebook worked well enough, but there was a lot of room for improvement.
Under the hood, Huawei went with a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8260 S3 Snapdragon processor.? Overall the Springboard felt very snappy and responsive, though I did notice some occasional choppy scrolling during my testing.? Apps loaded quickly and I was able to seamlessly switch between multiple running apps with ease. In our benchmarks the Springboard bested the Iconia Tab A100 on all but the Browsermark test. The HSPA+ 14.4 wasn?t what we consider 4G, but it turned in respectable speeds averaging 6.6Mbps down and 1.3Mbps up in Ookla?s Speedtest.net app. ?
The Springboard has a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. The front-facing camera is on the top right corner when you hold the tablet in portrait mode, and its placement makes for odd video-chatting angles. Both still photo and video quality were disappointing. Even in good lighting conditions, there was noticeable noise in images. Test shots were grainy, with color speckles obscuring fine details when zoomed in. Outdoor shots were also problematic, with overexposed bright backgrounds and underexposed shadows. The rear-facing camera shot 720p video, but at jerky frame rates ranging from 15-25 frames per second. Video recorded with the front-facing camera had an out-of-sync audio track, rendering it video almost completely useless. Using Google?s Talk app to video chat produced choppy and out-of-sync video, ruling it out as a viable means for communication.
T-Mobile rates the Springboard's 4100mAh battery at up to 7 hours of continuous use and 12 hours on standby.? In our battery test, a continuous looping video with Wi-Fi on and screen brightness at 100 percent, the Springboard lasted 5 hours, 16 minutes. That's better than the Iconia Tab A100?s 3 hours, 53 minutes and more than the Kindle Fire?s 4 hours, 55 minutes, but shorter than most 10-inch tablets with bigger batteries, such as the iPad 2, which lasted 7 hours, 30 minutes.
Conclusions
The T-Mobile Springboard 4G offers a great 7-inch tablet experience in a high-quality design, as long as you're willing to write off the camera. The aluminum construction and excellent display outclass the Acer Iconia Tab A100. But at $430 without a contract, the Springboard is pricier than most other 7-inchers, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus at $400. The Galaxy Tab 7.0 is lighter, but it also has a lower-resolution 1,024-by-600-pixel display. Whether that's enough to justify the higher price tag will depend on consumers, but with the price of the Springboard approaching iPad levels, T-Mobile may have a hard time moving its newest tablet.
We gave the Acer Iconia Tab A100 four stars this summer, but competition has stepped up since then, especially in the form of the low-cost Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet. Those two tablets are considerably less-expensive options, with solid features, tighter ecosystems, and more-user-friendly interfaces. If media consumption and light Web browsing are all you are looking for, our Editors' Choice for small tablets, the Amazon Kindle Fire is a better choice. The Springboard isn't a bad tablet especially if you need one with 3G, but at its $430 off-contract price, it falls in a gray area between the high-end iPad 2 and the budget-friendly Kindle Fire. It is well made and feature-rich, but ultimately it doesn't provide enough to draw consumers away from either end of the spectrum.?
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