[KevIW]

I have read a few posts on here that have me worried.

Roman2025, on 21 February 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:
Having used the Elf for sometime now and the Aurora for a couple of days I wanted to share a quick thought/gripe.

The Aurora has a better screen and is a smidge thinner... It ends there.

The Elf has far superior build quality. I purchased 3 Aurora's for myself and 2 customers. One of them has a sizable gap between the edge and the front face. You can look down into it and see ports. The other two don't have this issue but cmon'

The Buttons feel ridiculous cheap, they rattle around like mad. the Button my my Elf look really good (engraved instead of printed on) and are "tight". NO RATTLE.

I still like the Aurora better but it is ALL the IPS screen. If the Elf had the same screen I would ditch the Aurora in a heartbeat.

Just my gripe about Ainol having piss-poor build quality on their "top end" product

-Roman

I have yet to receive my Aurora (on route as we speak) but have seen some people have received the infamous ill fitted screen (the reason we are told they have shipped so slowly and late). Does yours exhibit this flaw or another? Is yours perfect in your eyes?

[MrTasselhof]

I have been very happy with mine.
Seems are all tight and no "rattling" buttons for me.

I had even taken mine apart and it is still fine.

Yes it is a plastic back, but I like it and the way things tablet feels to hold.
It is super comfortable and light.

Tasselhof

[KMA]

Supposedly one of the main reasons for the delayed shipments was a problem with plastic face fitting to the screen. It sounds like some people received some of the problem units. Hopefully it is fixed on future tablets since many of us have been waiting extra long to receive our Auroras due to this issue.

[Roman2025]

KMA, on 21 February 2012 - 06:13 PM, said:

Supposedly one of the main reasons for the delayed shipments was a problem with plastic face fitting to the screen. It sounds like some people received some of the problem units. Hopefully it is fixed on future tablets since many of us have been waiting extra long to receive our Auroras due to this issue.

Hopefully it is fixed. One of the 3 devices I received also had darkspots/dark edge along the bottom of the LCD. NOT GOOD. This was not present on the other two devices so it was definitely a defect and not a characteristic of the panel. I suggest anyone that gets a device test it on a pure white and a pure black background to check for dark and light spots.

[io5150]

Kinda bummed out. Just got my Aurora in today (ordered the 9th, shipped the 16th from spemall - very quick on email response and answering questions).

I powered it up. Changed two settings (Language to English - US and Time Zone to Central US) and inserted my 8GB sd card and all seemed to run fine. It is 4.0.3, but needs to have the market installed (which I planned on doing tomorrow - it came in just before I had to head off to work). There were a few apps that were listed in Chinese, so I thought I would do a reboot to see if the the app titles would change (there were already some in English). Now it will just boot to the the splash screen. (I tried it both with and without the sd card, and get the same result - just sets there with the pretty color balls blinking behind the ainol).

Really!?! Is ICS that unstable? Could it be the build they put on it? Or did I get one of the "bad ones"? I have opened a ticket with spemall (as well as another ticket for not including the case that I ordered) and hope to hear from them soon (they have so far been quite helpful and responsive ... hopefully they will continue to be so).

Tasselhoff's YT video's look great and with aurora having the IPS screen were the deciding factors between the Aurora and the Elf.

It does feel better than the eGlide 2 that I had before. It is very comfortable in my hands. I can see a very slight separation on the port side between the screen and case as others have noted, but not too bad (might not have really noticed it, if it hadn't been pointed out). Since I can't boot I can't tell if there are screen imperfections/issues as others have been talking about as well. The buttons all depress some when you push any of the buttons, not sure how that will hold out over time.

So here I sit without a neat little tablet to get to know. Anyone feel my pain?

io

[Dansplans]

Fit and finish on my Aurora are perfect, and I got one that shipped before CNY.

Wasn't happy with ICS 4.01 at all. Flashed clean 4.03 and added market. Played with a lot of launchers and apps and now I have an almost fully functional ICS tablet. (Flash is still a problem, though it is supposed to work with certain browsers)

[Ratty]

Roman2025, on 21 February 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

Hopefully it is fixed. One of the 3 devices I received also had darkspots/dark edge along the bottom of the LCD. NOT GOOD. This was not present on the other two devices so it was definitely a defect and not a characteristic of the panel. I suggest anyone that gets a device test it on a pure white and a pure black background to check for dark and light spots.

Hey Roman2025,

Did you get them all from SPEMall?

Seems very suspicious to me that SPEMall has stock when no one else does... Could they be selling the faulty units?

[Roman2025]

Dansplans, on 21 February 2012 - 10:05 PM, said:

Fit and finish on my Aurora are perfect, and I got one that shipped before CNY.

Wasn't happy with ICS 4.01 at all. Flashed clean 4.03 and added market. Played with a lot of launchers and apps and now I have an almost fully functional ICS tablet. (Flash is still a problem, though it is supposed to work with certain browsers)

Glad to hear there are some good devices out there . Gives me hope for the next batch. As a retailer, bad quality control on the factory/supplier side is a nightmare.

[Roman2025]

io5150, on 21 February 2012 - 07:38 PM, said:

Kinda bummed out. Just got my Aurora in today (ordered the 9th, shipped the 16th from spemall - very quick on email response and answering questions).

I powered it up. Changed two settings (Language to English - US and Time Zone to Central US) and inserted my 8GB sd card and all seemed to run fine. It is 4.0.3, but needs to have the market installed (which I planned on doing tomorrow - it came in just before I had to head off to work). There were a few apps that were listed in Chinese, so I thought I would do a reboot to see if the the app titles would change (there were already some in English). Now it will just boot to the the splash screen. (I tried it both with and without the sd card, and get the same result - just sets there with the pretty color balls blinking behind the ainol).

Really!?! Is ICS that unstable? Could it be the build they put on it? Or did I get one of the "bad ones"? I have opened a ticket with spemall (as well as another ticket for not including the case that I ordered) and hope to hear from them soon (they have so far been quite helpful and responsive ... hopefully they will continue to be so).

Tasselhoff's YT video's look great and with aurora having the IPS screen were the deciding factors between the Aurora and the Elf.

It does feel better than the eGlide 2 that I had before. It is very comfortable in my hands. I can see a very slight separation on the port side between the screen and case as others have noted, but not too bad (might not have really noticed it, if it hadn't been pointed out). Since I can't boot I can't tell if there are screen imperfections/issues as others have been talking about as well. The buttons all depress some when you push any of the buttons, not sure how that will hold out over time.

So here I sit without a neat little tablet to get to know. Anyone feel my pain?

io

Have you tried power-cycling? Power Button for 30 seconds, release for 15, power button for 30 seconds, release for 15, power button for 30 seconds, - let boot (I think that is the right number of times, it depends if your device is on to begin with). Wait 10 minutes until you declare it frozen on boot. Sometimes first boot can take a while.

If that doesn't fix it...

Have you tried flashing it with something else? I just released really good Android 2.3.4 firmware. It runs very well ... Read the thread first:
http://www.slatedroi...-fast-firmware/

The instructions on my site are fairly idiot-proof , but if you run into trouble flashing feel free to email me via the support page. I have had my fair bit of fun following "easy instructions" in the past so there is no judgement here

Firmware flashing, especially after 1:00am usually goes better with copious amounts of Alcohol (that was for free and is not in the instructions)


Seriously though, I hope you get back up and running and don't have to try to go through a return process with a Chinese retailer. I suggest you try to fix it on your own first. Just don't open up the casing or anything that could be "physically" damaging...

Cheers,

Roman

[Darkn]

Overall, the build quality of the Aurora I received is fairly decent. The only thing I noticed was that the tablet didn't vibrate, so I'm assuming the Aurora doesn't come with a vibration motor or it's defective. The vibration thing is not really a deal breaker for me.

The battery life has been acceptable (through various tweaking found on this forum I get around 1% battery drain every half hour on stand by), though I did expect slightly higher battery life. I'm assuming from my extensive readings on this forum that this is a software problem, not a hardware one.

Either I'm blind or deaf, but I haven't had any problems with rattling buttons or visible gaps. Left side of tablet gets noticeably hot when running media, especially on software decoding over Wifi.

I guess now I'm just hoping that either Ainol or someone utterly brilliant is going to come up with a nice stable firmware. I mean, it's the internet. We can solve any problem.

If I had to rate it... hmmm 7/10? I'll probably bump it up to 8/10 if someone comes up with an utterly brilliant firmware, though again that's software related, not hardware.

[BENJIRY]

Darkn, on 22 February 2012 - 12:39 AM, said:

The only thing I noticed was that the tablet didn't vibrate, so I'm assuming the Aurora doesn't come with a vibration motor or it's defective. The vibration thing is not really a deal breaker for me.

The Aurora HAS vibration. Just try to enable or make it more frequent (stronger) under "settings" menu.

[althulus]

Screen : 10 (IPS, great resolution for the size)
Back panel : 9 (plastic, but comfortable. feels ok. not cheap)
Buttons : 5 (a bit loose, button quality not up to the standard of the rest of the unit)
Ports: 8 (all ports I've tried are firm and doesn't move when a cable plugs into it )

overall, 7/10 for build quality IMO.
The buttons really need to be improved.

[Darkn]

BENJIRY, on 22 February 2012 - 01:20 AM, said:

The Aurora HAS vibration. Just try to enable or make it more frequent (stronger) under "settings" menu.

Nope, no vibration. I'm assuming I have a defective tablet. But like I said, not really a deal breaker.

[KevIW]

Thanks for all the replys.

I should have added a question as to when you received your Aurora as (my theory)
I believe the early units were a very controlled first off production run to send out as samples and first purchases. (quality confirmed Tasselhof etc)
Then the first production run after CNY throws up screen/case issues (did some of these exit the factory and end up with Roman2025 etc?)
Then the wait for the next production run and people start to receive units. (Are these still going to have the fault or is it cured?)

[Darkn]

Ordered it from Pandawill on the 17th of January? I think? Received it on the 31st of January.

[rc3675]

Overall I'm very happy with the quality. No screen problems, but the buttons do rattle. I like the style and feel. For the price I'm not complaining, plus I've had expensive brand stuff in the past which has had foibles.

[CarsonUK]

it might be helpful if people state part of their serial numbers? The part which tells you what date it was made

[Deku Deku]

I got my Aurora yesterday and I'm pretty pleased with the build quality. The buttons do feels cheap but I don't mind. Other than that it all seems pretty well put together which pleased me as I wasn't sure what to expect from such a cheap tablet from China.

[KevIW]

CarsonUK, on 22 February 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

it might be helpful if people state part of their serial numbers? The part which tells you what date it was made

Good idea! To prove or not the early unit v later unit quality idea/issues.

This post has been edited by KevIW: 22 February 2012 - 07:32 AM

[io5150]

Roman2025, on 22 February 2012 - 12:26 AM, said:

Have you tried power-cycling? Power Button for 30 seconds, release for 15, power button for 30 seconds, release for 15, power button for 30 seconds, - let boot (I think that is the right number of times, it depends if your device is on to begin with). Wait 10 minutes until you declare it frozen on boot. Sometimes first boot can take a while.

If that doesn't fix it...

It didn't ... at least that sequence. Tried twice.

Quote

Have you tried flashing it with something else? I just released really good Android 2.3.4 firmware. It runs very well ... Read the thread first:
http://www.slatedroi...-fast-firmware/

Haven't tried flashing yet. I opened a ticket with spemall ... was waiting on their response to see where to go from here. I did successfully flash a nook color for my daughter to the CM7 2.3 that is here on sld. I really wanted to play around with the ICS. But if it really isn't ready for prime time, the 2.3's stability might be the way to go. I just want one that runs well. I like to tweak and get it the way I like it and then leave it alone and let it do its thing with minimal fuss.

Quote

The instructions on my site are fairly idiot-proof , but if you run into trouble flashing feel free to email me via the support page. I have had my fair bit of fun following "easy instructions" in the past so there is no judgement here

Firmware flashing, especially after 1:00am usually goes better with copious amounts of Alcohol (that was for free and is not in the instructions)

"idiot-proof" has never really deterred me from making a lie of the instructions author. Seriously, I've had my share of that as well over the last 20-25 years of working with PCs, etc. I always appreciate the directions that start "Never ... wait, was the always? Yes, always ..." Gives me a whole lot of confidence that I am going to successfully complete the task at hand. Maybe you should include the alcohol consumption as one of the necessary prerequisites.

Quote

Seriously though, I hope you get back up and running and don't have to try to go through a return process with a Chinese retailer. I suggest you try to fix it on your own first. Just don't open up the casing or anything that could be "physically" damaging...

Don't plan on opening it up any form or fashion. I tend to play on the safe side having watched my brother tweak his machines to the point of nearly breaking them for 2 more fps in quake (or whatever game he's playing at the moment). Really? Can he actually detect a difference that minimal? Other than some utility telling him he has +2 more fps? sheesh.

Thanks ... I am sure I will have some questions to ask once I find out what my plan of action is after I hear back from spemall. They are ready to send me the missing case, but I told them to hold off until the greater issue is resolved.

io