Just found out about Skritter and was looking for a better experience but something cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy/Ipad tablets.
I found there is just a new Chinese tablet on the market, and it's working great!

蓝魔W10 (Ramos W10)
www.ramos.com.cn

Price: 1000rmb ($155, €110)

Go to www.taobao.com, the Chinese shopping site, and search for 'W10'.

- It's an Android 2.2 system, and has been working really well.
- Download the browser Skyfire 4.0, works perfect with Skritter. Dolphin Browser v4.6 also works well but Skyfire 4.0 has turned out to be the smoothest and quickest with Skritter.
- The quality of the tablet is surprisingly good, and although I haven't been playing big games on it, I've been really impressed with the speed and ability of the tablet.
- Haven't had problems with any application.
- It has WIFI but not 3G, they might still release a software update this month that includes 3G.
- The wireless signal isn't as strong as most laptops, but it's still very acceptable.
- includes English and Japanese language system, among like 30 others.

Be aware: the system doesn't have the English Android Market but the Chinese Android Market (安卓市场）, so some applications translated to Chinese will be harder to find for people who are not so familiar with simplified characters. But overall it's the same system and you just need to use translation (mdbg.net).

I had to wait 30 days for delivery because it was on high demand in China and they had to implement a software update, now it should be delivered much quicker.

If you want to know anything more please ask me!

I bought a random tablet on taobao for about 600rmb that had a lot of feedback. Thus far it's been running great. But I hadn't used the Skyfire browser and it definitely runs much better using that. Thanks for the tip.

- you must also buy the SM Card (memory card) or buy one separately, to be able to download adobe flashplayer. Be careful not to buy a cheap SM Card in a local store in China, they could be fake and the system won't recognize it.
- Battery life is at least 6-8 hours, also when using Skritter.

What kind of touch screen is it - capacitive or pressure? Can you use a stylus?

Glad to hear that there's a cheaper option that works well! I love our Nexus One and Galaxy Tablet but they were very expensive.

James

Wow this seems to be a really great tablet actually. Only the resolution is a bit low, but aside that it seems great. I am sure with the right kernel you can even overclock the CPU to at least 1ghz. It's got the same GPU as the Samsung Galaxy S-II (a GPU even better than Tegra II) so you should be able to play all sorts of games on top of being able to use Skritter. What's the battery life like? It says 5-7 hours on the taobao site, can you confirm this? Might get one for my girlfriend then...

I am just reading on http://www.gadgetsbing.com/2011/05/ramos-w10-7-inch-cortex-a9-android-2-2-tablet/ that it has a resistive touch screen so it should be ideal for stylus use then.

This page http://1pad.cn/2011/0322/926.html said that the battery life is 4 hours.

That's not my experience, 4 hours. It's always been at least 7 hours, a few days ago it went empty after 9 hours I think, maybe I wasn't clicking constantly though. I can imagine that if you play high-resolution games, it will empty much faster, but when I use the internet wireless, Skritter, e-book reading and play Angry Birds or something, the battery life is like 6-8 hours. When you only do e-book reading, maybe 10 hours.

I've been very pleased with the resolution, although I'm not an expert. Some Chinese reviews said it's not as good as Ipad (duh!), some others said they were positively surprised.

Do put a protection cover on the screen, especially if you're gonna Skritter with a thin pen!

Then this page @ http://1pad.cn/2011/0314/887.html said that the screen is single-touch only and so the experience is not good for playing Angry Birds. Also, with a resolution of 800X480, pixelation is inevitable.

Stylus is some sort of a pen? I'm using a plastic pen that they sent with it, I always take it along with my keys, the tablet doesn't have a place to put the pen inside. Anything works, also Skrittering with your fingers if you don't mind sweat on the screen ;-)

@pts I don't know if you can trust that site, because under your first link some reviewers said the battery life was longer than that. My gf likes playing Angry Birds and it looked really fine, I've been playing a little and don't know how it can get better. It's true that if you put one finger somewhere, it won't recognize the other finger touching the screen, is that single-touch? For Angry Birds it doesn't seem needed as far as I know, 2-touch at the same time, ugh

@Elwink Why are you so enthusiastic in selling the Ramos W10? Do you have any connection with it?

Battery life of 6-7 hours I mean like full use at maximum capacity. At moderate use my Nook Color can last for more than a day, But I can imagine the Ramos W10 to be just like that. Though some tablets like the Dell Streak 7 have really poor battery life just like 3-4 hours at full use.

I wonder how responsive the screen is to touches then? Single touch won't be an issue for something like Angry Birds or games that use the gyroscope, but other games that have like a joystick and action buttons would be impossible to play then I guess. Makes me wonder why it actually has such a powerful GPU.

@pts haha I already sensed that you felt that, maybe it's just my personality, can be taken as positive and negative. Because when I just subscribed to Skritter 2 months ago, I thought I had to get an expensive tablet after reading the forum, turned out there are other possibilities. So I'm surprised the guy of the 600rmb tablet doesn't tell us which one it is then.

I'm Dutch by the way, and Ramos would be pretty crazy if they let me try to sell a few more on here, I don't think they're that desperate. Maybe I've been too positive, let me say then that the place where the memory card needs to be put in seems quite vulnerable, and the reset button is so thin it's hard to reset it with anything else than a 1mm paperclip.

@followtheflow I don't know, maybe some ppl have higher standards than I do, and do many things at the same time on tablets. The screen responses well, when I touch it, it reacts, lol.

Coming back to my posts yesterday, the reason I posted with all the information was because I got excited by how helpful Skritter is, that I wanted to let people know that this thing is great for Skrittering and if you're gonna buy a Wacom, maybe it's better to spend a little bit more on this. I've not been following the forum so I don't know if 'giving tips and information to others' gives a sense of having my own purposes.

I think if you live in China and don't wanna spend a lot on a product for Skritter, that this is the nr.1 choice along with Wacom, that's what I want to let you guys know! If there are other cheap tablets that work perfect please report them too.

Elwin, I appreciate all the info on the tablet. It's definitely helpful to have the information. You can see how it might appear strange to post a product recommendation as your first post, but we can see that you're legit now. Welcome!

Thanks Nick, I agree, miscalculation from my side. If someone else is gonna use the W10, hopefully he/she will report on the experience too.

I don't want to point to a specific Taobao seller as I really just searched 平板电脑 android 2.2 and selected one of the dealers with the most positive feedback that was in the 600rmb range. I did write some general information and have a picture of the tablet I purchased here:

http://www.joshmcfarland.net/2011/04/android-tablet/

The screen isn't as responsive to touch as I'd like it to be (if I had paid a lot of money), but with a protective screen cover and stylus it works without a hitch. I only use it with Skritter, Anki, Gmail, Google Voice, Google Translate and occasionally the Nciku mobile site.

Just wanted to say I found this quite interesting.

I look forward to buying a functional under-100-euro Skritter-plus-Web tablet some day. Many parks in Paris have free Wifi.

yeah I had a look on Taobao and there's tons of them, they start from like 40 Euro. Though some lack CPU and RAM power.

i purchased the Ramos W10 one month ago, using skritter is possible, but it lacks too much, and you can't get into any kind of flow with it.
Tried with the Dolphin Browser and also skyfire, but neither of them give me a nearly acceptable performance.
I also changed my wifi spot several times, but the performance is still the same. The audio is lagging so much that you'd rather turn it off, and apart from that, it takes about 10 seconds just to switch to the next character. Writing is also quite slow..

Did you have any special settings for your browser Elwin ? Or how did you get it working smoothly ?
Is there anyone else who bought the W10 ?

oh because of your message I just checked the update page of Ramos, they have an update but seems they say it's only for the W10 V2, while I just have a W10.

http://www.ramos.com.cn/download.php

this update if you have a W10 V2:
[固件] 音悦汇W10V2.0_V0.50固件下载

but if you just have a W10, you should have this system update already, it's worth a check:
[固件] 音悦汇W10_V0.42固件下载

Skritter on my W10 works well, writing is fast enough, so is switching to the next character... don't need to wait more than a second... 10 seconds really makes it impossible to Skritter.

I use Skyfire 4.0.2.23586 atm, put settings > browser settings > Load pages as: Android.
And 'initial zoom' as medium.

Also, do you maybe have many downloaded applications open at the same time? If so, you can 'force stop' on some in 'application settings > manage applications > Running' and see if that helps.

I'm not an expert but I would be surprised if our tablets don't have the same performance.

By the way, sorry, the title of this thread must be a little bit odd for you. I learned from my mistake ;-)

I just entered Skritter and thought this was like a hidden treasure or something, turned out there were already other cheap tablets available which could be used for Skritter. Still, this one is supposed to have the most powerful system for this price, as far as I have read.

Now I just use the round end of a pencil to touch the screen, works better for me than a thin, sharper edge. Like the end of this pencil: http://digitalcatharsis.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/pencils_hb.jpg

Also it has a screen protection cover.

thanks for the quick support elwin, actually the writing is running quite smoothly now, but the audio is still lagging a great deal.
It is starting on time, but the voice is interrupted and sounds like: ji-i-i-i-i-ng

Does anyone have any idea how to help it ?

Oh I totally forgot about the audio, since I tried to make it work in the beginning and then just put the audio off. Also I'm not using Skritter on the laptop yet, so forgot about this feature.

I remember trying it in like 5 different browser and changing the settings as well, but the sound never changed; ji-i-i-i-i-ng.

(deleted)

yeah about that, i just found a solution. seems to be a problem on a lot of android 2.2 devices.

just flash this officially by google released patch and it the sound should be doing fine.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/bgill55/68700-stagefright-patch-google-fix.html

this might also help others who experience this problem on their android device...
byebye: ji-i-i-i-i-ng , hello: jing

That's great, but what to do next after having downloaded the stagefright.zip file on the laptop? How to get it to work on the android? Ugh

transfer it to your sd card. make sure to place the file in your root folder which is the main folder of your sdcard.
put the sd card in your ramos, then turn it off and reboot it into recovery mode by pressing power and menu when turning on.
swipe your machine and make a nandroid backup, then flash the stagefright.zip and restart the tablet.
if that is not enough information, try to google it, there are a lot of information how to flash an update or a rom on any android device.

Hi guys, I'm leaving for China in a few days and want to pick up a cheap tablet while I'm there. Skritter is basically my only reason for wanting a tablet, so I want to make sure I get one that works well with it. Elwin and luksus, are you still happy with the W10, or does anyone know of anything better that's come out recently?

I'll only be in China for 3 weeks, so it has to be something I can find in a store in Nanjing or have shipped pretty quickly, cash on delivery (I don't have a Chinese credit card). Thanks for your help!

@junglegirl
I'm still really satisfied with the performance on W10, using Skritter on Android got even better now since Nick has been focusing on improving that.

I don't know much about other Chinese tablets.

Seems W10 got like 300 yuan cheaper.
http://s.taobao.com/search?q=w10&bcoffset=1#J_Filter
you can filter it to only shops in Nanjing at '所在地'.

You can also ask the seller questions by first clicking on one of these products and then to look for '和我联系' on the left side. Maybe there's a seller in Nanjing who can tell you where to buy it with cash.

Who knows you can find it in real shops but your appearance might be a problem! I doubt you can get it for a low price as a foreigner unless you bamboozle them with your Chinese ;-) Or just walk away of course (standard procedure) and they come running and screaming after you.

Cool, thanks! I guess I'll go for it then.

Hi guys,

I'm back to ask for help again. I ended up buying the Ramos W12, and I need someone to explain to me in layman's terms how to get it to download flash?? If I use the link to the adobe page from skritter it says that it cannot be downloaded due to restrictions Apple has put in place, but it's not an Apple product. Do I have to download it through the Android market? Because actually, I haven't been able to get into that either. I set a username and password, but when I try to log in with them it says that one of them is wrong. Please help!

@junglegirl

hey I saw your post only just now, all I know is that for the W10 you need to buy a SD-card and put the adobe flash file on there. Then just install it.

I didn't know they already had a W12, that's fast! Also look to download the best browser, on mine the standard browser didn't work.

Thanks. I do have an SD-card, but from where exactly did you download adobe flash?

http://www.filehippo.com/download_flashplayer_ie/ or http://www.filehippo.com/download_flashplayer_firefox/
or google 'download adobe flash player'

The easiest way might be through 安卓市场，it's the Chinese android market application (they don't allow the international android market) and should already be in your W12, there you can search for flash player as well, then save it on the SD-card.

I tried to open 安卓市场 but didn't make it past the registration process; it kept saying the username and password I had just created was incorrect. I'll try again the next time I have wifi.

Oh after registration it has never again asked me to fill in my username and password. OK good luck, let me know what Skritter is like on the W12 once it works ;-). Put a screen protection on it btw!! -.-