With Amazon’s giant killing Android slab the Kindle Fire on the way to the UK, Android tablet makers have every right to be nervous. Could a new budget tablet from Disgo have what it takes to see it off and take on the iPad too?
Amazon’s Kindle Fire has succeeded in the US due to a magic combination of form factor (smaller than an iPad, bigger than a phablet) software (Amazon’s remix of Android) and low price – plus access to Amazon’s not inconsiderable library of media. With the Fire looking likely to get a UK launch this year, are there any other contenders who could take it on?
One possibility is the Disgo 9104. This may lose out of the cool name front (seriously, could it be any more generic?) but it can more match the Fire on specs and comes close in price.
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The 9104 (guys, you really REALLY need to think of a better name) has a 9.7” capacitive display that runs at 1024 x 768. The CPU is a single-core 1.2 GHz A8 ARM processor that uses 1GB of DDR3 memory. 16GB of flash storage comes as standard, expandable to up to 48GB via microSD.
A 2 megapixel rear and 0.3 megapixel front camera won’t win any awards, but they are better than the Kindle Fire’s ‘no camera at all’. The tablet runs stock Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3, without any rubbish ‘improvements’. The only major fly in the ointment we can see is that there is no mention of the official Play store (there is a ‘Disgo Apps’ store instead). This may be a problem. Oh, and at £179 it is £50 more expensive than an imported Kindle Fire. But then, we don’t know if any UK Fire would be as cheap as it is in the US anyway.
You can grab a Disgo 9104 from mid June from all the usual high street stockists.
