Latte Ice Smart Review.

Latte Ice Smart

LatteZone has released an Android-based media player with a 5" screen.  It has been impossible to find Samsung's 5" Android player in the U.S. and the specs on the Latte ICE Smart look impressive on the surface. I decided to give one a look.

The basics include a 5" LCD TFT dual-touch resistive screen showing 800x480 pixels, an 800mHz CPU with 3D accelerator, speaker and microphone, and 8gb of internal memory.  There is a microSD slot for up to 32gb more of add-on storage. There is no camera or GPS or Bluetooth or FM radio. The Smart weighs 0.8lbs, and is 5.2x3.4 inches and roughly 1/2" thick. Pretty hefty and a (big) handful. The battery is rated at 5.0 hours of use on a charge. Not very impressive for a media player, but should get you through a movie or two. The HDMI-output will mirror anything on the Smart's screen to your HDTV.  It comes with a (proprietary) 5v AC charger.  It also appears to recharge when plugged into a powered USB port despite the official LatteZone claim that it won't.

Apps: This tank of a player comes with both the Google Android Market and the Amazon AppStore. You also have both the Gmail email app and the standard Android email app.  Nothing unusual among the included applications.  Of the android apps I've tried only the Google Music beta app and a Mahjong game (for tablets) didn't play perfectly.  The Music Beta app wouldn't stream my own music over wifi from the web, although I was able to associate it with the account and see my music.  All I got was a spinning circle.  The Mahjong game wouldn't display text properly, showing only blank white boxes where text prompts should have been. Angry Birds in all versions plays, but I couldn't get the advertised two-finger zoom to work in those games.

Media capabilities are a mixed bag.  One disappointing flaw was in the gallery app, where some of my photos would show up poorly on the screen. It was almost as if the app wasn't fully decoding the JPG files.   JPG, BMP, PNG, and TIFF files are all supported.  Although the two-finger zoom worked, it worked slowly and was not as efficient as a double-tap or tapping on the (-) or (+) icons.  Music playback was on par with any other android device. No gapless playback, but that can be remedied with a download of the rockbox app for android.  Several music codecs/formats are supported including WAV, WMA, ASF, FLAC, and MP3.   Audio quality from the single speaker is weak, but depending on the headphones you use Music playback should be satisfactory to most. Only 4 preset EQ profiles in settings and user EQ options. No sort by Genre in the stock music app either. Video playback is a strong feature.  I had no trouble playing AVI, MP4, WMV, MKV, RMVB, and FLV video files.  No MPG support out-of-the-box though.  Video playback stands out as a good excuse for owning this player. With HDMI-out you can play the videos on the Smart through your HDTV.

Cons: The firmware appears as if was taken right from a phone.  There are mobile data connection options (Data enabled, Data roaming, Use only 2G networks, etc.) in settings, and one of the largest drains on the battery is Cell Standby. There is also the possibility it is missing some standard android fonts, which may explain why text didn't show up in my favorite Mahjong game.  One of the advertised capabilities is the use of wireless keyboard and mouse, but with no Bluetooth and only mini and micro USB ports on board that would only be possible with at least one USB OnTheGo adapter ($5+ shipping) and the wireless USB dongle from a keyboard/mouse combo.   Lastly, the Back/Menu/Home/Search buttons are afixed to one right-biased spot on the bezel.  They don't rotate with you when you rotate the device.

Conclusion?   At $190 (8gb) this is a bit pricy for the included capabilities.  It works as advertised though.  If you can live without the few android apps that don't work well, and don't mind paying for it, then it'll satisfy your media, PDA, and game needs fine. I'm personally hoping they'll upgrade it to remove the android phone features, but not confident LatteZone will ever get around to that.  There is no firmware update option in the settings.

4D