Author Topic: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown  (Read 68444 times)

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Offline rs20

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #100 on: November 27, 2015, 08:12:52 am »
You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what has happened.

I think it's more likely that Watson would agree with you, until Holmes spoke up.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #101 on: November 27, 2015, 09:04:50 am »

What I find amazing is that someone has come across this from essentially a collection of off-cast bits and pieces at an auction.
Dave makes a video of how bad it is, by inference that this was a delivered product to a customer.
No evidence of its background, I'll go so far as to say no proof that it was even this Esinomed company, except a sticker on the back (although it probably was). No verification of the devices history or context where it came from.
Now it might go as viral as you can get for this sort of subject/audience (being linked to by other groups and hackaday), what damage to a company could this do?
If Esinomed was a trading company, this might be causing some lawyers to be taking an interest right now?
Is this akin to someone dumpster diving out the back of Dave's lab, then finding Dave's breadboard mock up of the micro-current and portraying it as the finished goods and how bad the engineering is on such a product. Although I doubt it was anything like this tablet, but still....
I don't know, it's just interesting/concerning where this may lead. I know Dave does his vids in his way and that's the way it is, maybe a more thoughtful less assertive look at the device might have been better?

We only have the letter included in the mailbag to attest to the providence of this tablet. Even the sender of the mailbag has so far failed to provide more details. We have only the one post from a newly registered forum member which has made any claims. Do new forum members send mailbag items? I know it is possible, but is it likely?

Furthermore, the Rigol teardown video being taken down at the same time virtually. That is some coincidence.

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what has happened.
Have you thought about doing a hurdle race at the next Summer Olympics? You're really good at quickly jumping to conclusions.
If you can't see the value in what he is saying, then you're not a very good conspiracy theorist.
 

Offline f4eru

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #102 on: November 27, 2015, 10:14:25 am »
If it was a single prototype device I would still be suspicious but by number 11 I would expect something a little less handbuilt and components secured inside. Presumably for a user to trial.

Number 11 does not mean that 10 others have been built.

Offline GNU_Ninja

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #103 on: November 27, 2015, 11:38:00 am »
Maybe the serial number is in base 2  ;D
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #104 on: November 27, 2015, 12:10:31 pm »
Nothing on its own is conclusive proof. I just formed a feeling that something was rotten based on a number of things. Not least of all is the general Zeitgeist of payback that prevails.

If your evil plan was to give a company a bad name you'd build something with Windows 8 on it.

Unless someone in the industry (which I am not) thrusts a device under my nose which convinces me otherwise, I will refuse to believe a German company ever put its name to that thing.
You've never worked in Germany then?

I'm going with Occam's razor: This was a prototype that was built over a sleepless weekend for a trade show on Monday morning.

And the number "11" means nothing. I can't believe there's any arguments over the significance of the number 11.

eg. I start all my invoices at "11" every year just to make people think I've got more customers than I really have. Nobody wants to see invoice number 00000001 in February.
 

Offline GNU_Ninja

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #105 on: November 27, 2015, 12:18:40 pm »
Unless someone in the industry (which I am not) thrusts a device under my nose which convinces me otherwise, I will refuse to believe a German company ever put its name to that thing.

I actually work for a German company (who shall remain nameless) and you'd be shocked at some of the jury rigged stuff I've slapped together at short notice to demo for customers  :-X

Though nothing quite as bad as that PSU board  ;D
« Last Edit: November 27, 2015, 12:24:12 pm by GNU_Ninja »
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #106 on: November 27, 2015, 12:33:49 pm »
Though nothing quite as bad as that PSU board  ;D

The PSU board is hard to comprehend.  :-//

If you're going to do something as horrible as that then just use stripboard. Don't make a special PCB.
 

Offline bktemp

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #107 on: November 27, 2015, 12:59:47 pm »
Maybe this was a project done by a student. Quite often students work for some companies to gain practical experience.
This computer would have been a perfect project a student could have done: Most of the components used are not so expensive off the shelf stuff. He only had to put them together and add the battery management.
Most students only have hobby level experience, so this could explain the PSU board.
 

Offline vodka

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #108 on: November 27, 2015, 03:50:00 pm »
But there aren't excuse for the fudge of the batteries , if he would have used  several holders batteries, he would have remained as profesional despite the lack of experience in the power supply.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #109 on: November 27, 2015, 11:11:03 pm »
Got the stats on where the extra views came from:
 

Offline AlexBY

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #110 on: November 28, 2015, 08:49:08 am »
We only have the letter included in the mailbag to attest to the providence of this tablet. Even the sender of the mailbag has so far failed to provide more details. We have only the one post from a newly registered forum member which has made any claims. Do new forum members send mailbag items? I know it is possible, but is it likely?

Furthermore, the Rigol teardown video being taken down at the same time virtually. That is some coincidence.

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what has happened.
Yeah, i'm not active in this forum, but that is in fact because i understand english very well, but writing posts is horrible. I'm more active in the German Forum "Fingers Welt"
Watching daves videos for years. And that has surely nothing to do with rigol, etc.

What I find amazing is that someone has come across this from essentially a collection of off-cast bits and pieces at an auction.
Dave makes a video of how bad it is, by inference that this was a delivered product to a customer.
No evidence of its background, I'll go so far as to say no proof that it was even this Esinomed company, except a sticker on the back (although it probably was). No verification of the devices history or context where it came from.
Now it might go as viral as you can get for this sort of subject/audience (being linked to by other groups and hackaday), what damage to a company could this do?
If Esinomed was a trading company, this might be causing some lawyers to be taking an interest right now?
Is this akin to someone dumpster diving out the back of Dave's lab, then finding Dave's breadboard mock up of the micro-current and portraying it as the finished goods and how bad the engineering is on such a product. Although I doubt it was anything like this tablet, but still....
I don't know, it's just interesting/concerning where this may lead. I know Dave does his vids in his way and that's the way it is, maybe a more thoughtful less assertive look at the device might have been better?

As this Company doesn't exist anymore (exept their website), this doesn't do any damage to them. It's not, that they come back in a year, we have took All Stuff out of their Production Rooms, at this Adress you find another Company yet. You can try to Email them, to Contact them via Postmail, etc... You won't get any response, trust me.
Please stop hating around, it isn't a Fake, it is not payed by any other Company to do damage to Esinomed, etc. I'll found this in the CEOs Office cabinet and opened it at home, my feetnails started to cringe, and since there are tons of fantastic stuff in the Mailbag every week, i thought, bevore dave gets boring, i'll send it to him. And the Teardown was a great video, wasn't it?
I'll have a look in my Storage now, evtl. i will find another georgeus Product from them.  >:D :-DD
Maybe some kind of Christmas Present for dave  :-+

Greets from Bavaria, Alex
« Last Edit: November 28, 2015, 08:50:39 am by AlexBY »
 

Offline gildasd

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #111 on: November 28, 2015, 10:07:00 am »
Unless someone in the industry (which I am not) thrusts a device under my nose which convinces me otherwise, I will refuse to believe a German company ever put its name to that thing.

I actually work for a German company (who shall remain nameless) and you'd be shocked at some of the jury rigged stuff I've slapped together at short notice to demo for customers  :-X

Though nothing quite as bad as that PSU board  ;D
Having had German suppliers in another industry, I can attest that they either do the best in the world or stuff a down on his luck back alley Shenzhen counterfeiter would not lower his standards to.
German firms tend to go all the way at either being great or crap, none of that lazy middle ground.
I'm electronically illiterate
 

Offline 0xdeadbeef

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #112 on: November 28, 2015, 10:32:30 am »
But there aren't excuse for the fudge of the batteries , if he would have used  several holders batteries, he would have remained as profesional despite the lack of experience in the power supply.
Well, honestly I would assume that the battery holder simply didn't fit. At least not for all of the batteries. Look like they were stuffed into the case.

Anyway, I agree this looks like some student's job. Where I work, we also have a "cabinet of failed hopes" where we put all the crap that our students, bachelors etc. left behind.
It's always the same: everybody starts with high hopes that we will have that cool program or device in a few months and in the end we either get nothing or a piece of crap - or parts of a piece of crap.

Then again, to be fair:
When I studied, we had to do six months of internship where three of them had to be somewhat related to electronics. As you needed to do this internship, you usually didn't get paid or only a (very) few hundred DM (yes, I'm that old) per month. So what would you expect an unpaid and unexperienced student to do in three months? First aim is to get the thing working, 2nd aim is to make it look better on the outside than on the inside in case you need to demonstrate it.

And come on, this thing was working and it was looking OK on the outside. Of course it was not a real product. The serial number means nothing. Maybe the reused parts from another device. Maybe someone faked a serial number to make it look more professional.
Trying is the first step towards failure - Homer J. Simpson
 

Offline Jeroen3

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #113 on: November 28, 2015, 01:26:50 pm »
 

Offline Muttley Snickers

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #114 on: November 29, 2015, 08:45:02 am »
Three hundred and six thousand views    that's big

306086 precisely
4696  :-+   328  :--
 

Offline CrashO

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #115 on: November 29, 2015, 07:11:29 pm »
Three hundred and six thousand views    that's big

306086 precisely
4696  :-+   328  :--
And another 57304 views at dumpert (Largest Dutch video re-posting site that doesnt bother embedding and just copies content).  :)
 

Offline Chris74656

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #116 on: November 29, 2015, 07:43:18 pm »
I found the design engineer of that power board. 
 

Offline Arlen Moulton2

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #117 on: November 30, 2015, 08:23:58 am »
Wow! It looks so bad, Ps, Dave is sending me the motherboard!
 

Offline Chipguy

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #118 on: December 01, 2015, 09:06:49 pm »
I am wondering about one thing:
That computer does not have any interface at all. Just 2 contacts on the top to put DC or AC in and it works.
I didn't see any WiFi or bluetooh, nor did I see any USB slots. Nothing on the back.
So the only content would have come from that 4GB Compactflash card.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

The question is:
What the heck was it's purpose?
This looks to me like a one off thing that pretends to be a commercial product. Something for trade fair visitors to play around with on a booth.
Where is that smoke coming from?
 

Offline Simon

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #119 on: December 01, 2015, 09:11:18 pm »
It does look and smell of something thrown together for a trade show. It obviously came long before today's tablets when the best you could get was a mini PC and a processor that just managed to use a bit less power than a regular PC processor.

Once the processors were just slightly more energy efficient version of a PC processor, now we have specific processor families for portable devices and i bet android was not around when that thing was "aligned"
 

Offline AlexBY

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #120 on: December 01, 2015, 10:39:35 pm »
I am wondering about one thing:
That computer does not have any interface at all. Just 2 contacts on the top to put DC or AC in and it works.
I didn't see any WiFi or bluetooh, nor did I see any USB slots. Nothing on the back.
So the only content would have come from that 4GB Compactflash card.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

The question is:
What the heck was it's purpose?
This looks to me like a one off thing that pretends to be a commercial product. Something for trade fair visitors to play around with on a booth.

There was in fact a Wifi Stick in the USB Port, i forgot to put it back in as i removed it to connect a wireless mouse/keyboard combination. but:  :-+ you are the first who noticed it.
 

Offline janoc

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #121 on: December 01, 2015, 11:04:48 pm »
The question is:
What the heck was it's purpose?
This looks to me like a one off thing that pretends to be a commercial product. Something for trade fair visitors to play around with on a booth.

My guess is that it is some sort of display (or a demo unit of) for an operating theater. Having a very sensitive touchscreen that  you don't actually have to touch to make it work would be beneficial, as is the "sealed" look that can be washed with a disinfectant. 

Similar things have been at least tried for displaying medical documentation to surgeons during surgery. I have seen it done even with stereo cameras and later on with Kinect, so that the surgeon can just wave hands at the screen and doesn't have to touch it (sterility issue).

According to their website, Esinomed has been making things like xray/MRI viewers, so this would be right up their alley.

 

Offline Godzil

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #122 on: December 01, 2015, 11:45:48 pm »
I don't know if anyone put a comment on that, but :

First:
If you reverse the name of the company Esinomed what do you have?????

Demonise! :D

Second:
For the case, it's in fact something really cheap to be made and is not molded at all, and at first glance on the video I was thinking the same as Dave, but not after a few seconds. It's something hand made, and I suspect that all the device made are sensibly different on the case, and the quality could be much much more better than that, they didn't even put any pride on the case, tbh. I don't speak about the inside which Dave show how it's awful :D
« Last Edit: December 01, 2015, 11:50:16 pm by Godzil »
When you make hardware without taking into account the needs of the eventual software developers, you end up with bloated hardware full of pointless excess. From the outset one must consider design from both a hardware and software perspective.
-- Yokoi Gunpei
 

Online CatalinaWOW

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #123 on: December 02, 2015, 05:53:20 pm »
This is a schlock piece of work, but have those demonizing the battery pack ever soldered batteries?  The end caps are some variant of steel, often stainless.  Too much heat ruins the battery.  With the right flux and equipment it is barely possible.  That is why professionals almost always weld either wires or solderable tabs.

Over the weekend before the trade show, the junior engineer or intern didn't have and couldn't get tabbed batteries, and didn't have access to a welder.  Many, many shops don't have one, including mine.  The bodged batteries barely fit (Dave had to pry them out) so a battery holder was out of the question.  So they spent several hours getting this battery pack sort of soldered together.  Corrosion and battery effluent indicates that they did overheat the seals and damage them on several of the joints.  But they beat the Monday deadline.

The power supply board is also typical of a first effort by a junior person.  In school they had a few theory courses.  They draw a schematic (maybe leaning on an app note, maybe being overconfident and doing it on their own).  Build it.  Of course they don't know about commercial prototyping shops, and besides, it's Friday afternoon and the project is due Monday morning.  Find out they didn't really understand the spec sheet.  Start cutting and bodging until something works.  Learn a lot about soldering during their first build, but still have much to learn.

Fortunately the marketing department has a label printer, so that part looks professional - even the implication that this concoction has worked ten times before.  Marketing never lies, do they?

The final touch -after that lost weekend the product ended up in the dead ends bin in the CEOs office.  Either it didn't work after all when powered on at the trade show, or the software was so dodgy that no one was interested, or there really wasn't a market or (drum roll) after all this rush they were late to market and someone else got whatever business there was.
 

Offline technix

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Re: EEVblog #822 - World's Worst Tablet Computer Teardown
« Reply #124 on: December 02, 2015, 06:05:17 pm »
If you are willing to I am thinking undoing the hack and restore the machine into some appropriate things. The screen screams Raspberry Pi attachment and the SBC can be reused as a HTPC if it decodes 1080p.
 


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