Monday, August 15, 2011

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

17 comments:

  1. Is there some option to turn of the external speaker and have the music only playing through the headphones? Because I can't figure it out...

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Anonymous: My speaker goes mute when the headphones are plugged in. Be sure the headphone plug is all the way in. If that doesn't work, then your Smart may have a defective jack.

    4D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the review--I'm looking to upgrade my mp3 player, and this is one of the options. Most of my videos come from Amazon Instant Video/Unbox--do you know if the Latte Ice Smart is compatible? And would the internal speaker be loud enough to be heard in a vehicle?

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Marian,

    I don't have an Amazon account or instant/unbox videos to try, so can't help you there. Don't see why they wouldn't play on the device so long as it was connected with WiFi.


    The internal speaker shouldn't be relied on for audio in a noisy environment. Use headphones unless you're riding in a modern luxury car. It's a cheap speaker, and although fine for spoken audio I don't recommend it for music.

    4D

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for replying! For the price, it looks like a great wi-fi tablet, but I'm thinking now, it may not be the best for an mp3/media player.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Just purchased and ice smart. It has poor contrast as for reading text, the letters are not sharp. The built in speaker is a joke. It does work good when you plug in to a TV. It just not a great peace of technology. I also own a archos 43.
    The archos sharpness and contrast is twice as good.

    ReplyDelete
  7. why would you consider this device to be inferior to the archos 43? because this device does have multi touch android 2.3 and it seems to look nicer but no one has put up a utube video on it so i was wondering why you personally feel the archos is better because i think it is down to the archos 43 and this.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Archos has a longer history making media players. Their Music and Video apps are thorough and far better than the standard android music and video apps.

    4D

    ReplyDelete
  9. thank you 4d thinker i posted a lot if comments on ur blog and u ansswered all of them i ended up ordering a archos 45 16g last night

    ReplyDelete
  10. Can anyone get the Netflix app to run on the ICE Smart? Also, it doesn't seem to support Flash anyone got some answers?

    ReplyDelete
  11. @Anonymous: I'm not a netflix subscriber, so I'll have to pass on testing that app. As for Flash, look for Adobe's Flash app in the Google Market. Up to version 11 now.

    4D

    ReplyDelete
  12. Games in Latte Ice Smart run well, doesn´t lag, especially Angry Birds, i have seen a lot of chinese Android mp3/mp4 and this games has a lot of Lag, please answer i really want badly this mp4

    ReplyDelete
  13. Sorry, Sebastian but I'm not sure what you are talking about: "this games has a lot of lag"? What game?

    4D

    ReplyDelete
  14. Angry birds is an example in chinese mp3/mp4 with android the game angry birds run slowly and with lag, and i want to know if this game (angry birds) or any game run well on Latte Ice Smart

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sebastian:
    Angry Birds plays fine, although in graphic intensive scenes it gets a little sluggish. You probably wouldn't notice unless you compared it side-by-side with a faster device like the Samsung Galaxy 4.0 or 5.0.

    4D

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thanks 4D Thinker, thanks for yor help. You help me a lot about my desition about if a buy or not the Latte Ice Smart, the answer now is YES!!! THANKS A LOT!!

    ReplyDelete
  17. I received one for my birthday. My wife has an Android phone and I have a very nice Nokia and she thought I needed to experience the Android for myself.
    1. Too......................Slow.
    2. I can use WiFi for twenty minutes and then the battery dies
    3. The default music player stores playlists in MEMORY. When the battery runs down the playlists vanish.
    4. All non-default apps require more RAM and speed and so are useless.
    5. Built in speaker is very weak.

    So, in order to use this device I need to plug it into the wall for power, turn on WiFi and connect to Pandora, then connect the device to external speakers. Hmm, I already have a laptop that I can do that with.

    Thanks for the $150 paperweight, dear.

    ReplyDelete