[REVIEW] Cube Talk79 (U55GT-C8) - OctaCore/Retina/16GB/2GB/Aluminio/8mpx/KitKat - ~150€

[Espmodro]

Hi,

I'm a new user in this forum, mainly because I'm spanish and usually spend more time at different forums such as HTCManía. Howwever, I usually enter Freaktab since I got my Cube Talk 9X this summer.

Now that I have received and made a "quick" review to the Cube Talk79 I would like to share it with you in case it's useful:



Written Review:

http://davidmodrono.es/2015/01/08/time4review-cube-talk79-pequeno-por-fuera-pero-igual-de-grande-por-dentro/

Video Review:

I'm sorry that my review is in spanish, and also the videoreview, but I hope you can make use of it as much as possible.

Thank you very much for your daily information.

Regards,

Espmodro

[sepa]

Good review, and I'm with you all the way. This is a great tablet - fast, great screen, no lag, stable, lightweight (332gm on my scales, too) and great for travel. I've had no problems running Chrome or any apps, and I find the Talk79 u55gt-c8 hard to fault. Everything works well - 3G, wifi, GPS, headphones, OTG, Bluetooth, FM radio. The camera is decent, but really needs a flash for low light, and battery life is good if not great, though 3G seems to drain it (but I don't use it as a phone so haven't tested it extensively).

Everyone has gone out and bought its big brother the Talk9X, thanks mostly to a glowing review on xda, but this little devil has snuck under the radar. For the specs, this has got to be the best 7.9 inch tablet for the money, but while the Talk9X has got custom roms and lots of updates thanks to its popularity, this one has none.

The benchmarks have me a little puzzled though. This has almost identical hardware to the Talk9X, so why does this get 30K on Antutu while the 9X clocks 40K? That is a 30% difference, doesn't make sense when it has the same cpu, gpu, ram, etc. I know benchmarks don't mean all that much anyway, and manufacturers do fake them, but I note that the u55gt-c8 will not connect to antutu.com to verify results (can't access the Antutu site at all in a browser either, suggesting the software blocks it). Interestingly, I've seen video benchmark tests of the Talk9X that come in near 30K instead 40K, when it also fails to connect to Antutu. Is Cube rigging the results, and the 40K benchmark is a con? On Geekbench 3, my u55gt-c8 actually outperforms the 9X.

One thing I do note from Antutu is poor read/writes on the storage I/0 results (around 600, same on your video). SD Tools confirms low read/writes, about one-fifth what my Galaxy S4 records. Looks like they put in sub-standard internal storage, or maybe there is a firmware issue that can fix it?

[giouncino]

40.000 points on antutu for talk 9x was a fake.
all MT8392 can do around 30.000 points, that is good.

I love my talk 9x and I think that talk 79 is a fantastic device too.

[Espmodro]

Thank you for your opinion.

Yeah I also bought the Cube Talk 9X for personal use, but this little device is the same monster on a more reduced space, and there is not much info about it.

Regarding Antutu giouncino explains it very well.

[sepa]

Ah, thanks guys. I was wondering how a tablet running an MT8392 @ 1.66ghz could match my phone's Snapdragon 800 @ 2.3ghz. But, yeah, 30,000 is a good score by any measure and this thing is plenty fast. The only thing I found slow was pdf rendering, but I fixed that with a new app (SmartQ Reader rocks). My biggest problem with this tablet was agonising over whether to buy the Talk 79 or the 9X. Ended up going smaller and lighter because I travel a lot, and the 7.9 inch 4:3 size is ideal for an e-reader, imo.

[Edius]

Ah, thanks guys. I was wondering how a tablet running an MT8392 @ 1.66ghz could match my phone's Snapdragon 800 @ 2.3ghz. But, yeah, 30,000 is a good score by any measure and this thing is plenty fast. The only thing I found slow was pdf rendering, but I fixed that with a new app (SmartQ Reader rocks). My biggest problem with this tablet was agonising over whether to buy the Talk 79 or the 9X. Ended up going smaller and lighter because I travel a lot, and the 7.9 inch 4:3 size is ideal for an e-reader, imo.

I read that review few weeks ago on Hispatablets.
Intended to buy this great little thing to my daughter few months ago but I have read about some battery issue (battery percentage will remain stuck_not displayed correctly) like in Talk9X.
On 4 PDA forum all those guys are trying to find solutions for this issue but nothing solved for now.
You have something to say about that?
What's your battery life with display ON using WiFi and doing some regular stuff like browsing, playing videos offline, YouTube streaming?
These two questions are available for Espmodro too....Thank's!

[sepa]

Wow, a lot of Cube stuff on those 4PDA forums. Wish I had seen them before buying a Cube … or maybe not. Seem to be reporting a lot of problems, though Google-translated Russian is hard to follow. Looks like a lot of problems from the custom roms – think I’ll steer clear.
I’ve only had the tablet a couple of weeks and haven’t systematically tested the battery. No problems to report, no sticking battery percentage. I can tell you a 1.5 hour 720p movie chews up about 25% of the battery, so maybe get six hours of continuous use per charge. I have wifi always on, and brightness at 70%. I’ve been playing with this thing a lot – and it lasts at least a couple of days with maybe 3-4 hours a day of generally use. It uses next to no power overnight, even with wifi on. I ran antutu battery tester on full brightness and it scored 4898 but I don’t really know what the means. It took about two hours to complete and went from 86% to 25%.

[Edius]

I'm sure is a great tablet and maybe will see Cube T8 in next period with the same size and a newer SoC.

[robb]

I recently bought a talk79 and now have been testing and playing with it for a few weeks. What I'm dearly missing is some good custom roms, without the Chinese apps, with multi user support enabled and being able to add more startpages.
Also an update to Lollipop would be great, but that will be wishful thinking I am afraid.
What confuses me is why the Talk 9x has that many discussions here and the Talk79 almost nothing. Both have similar hardware and the 79 is so much easier to handle because of half the weight and smaller size.

I just read that 3G is draining the battery a lot. I have used 3G full time. I will try without sim and see if batterylife will be better.

I hope more reviews and comments will follow on these forums about the Cube talk79 U55GT-C8

[sepa]

Had this thing four months now so thought I'd do a follow up. Still going strong and a great little tablet but I have identified a couple of issues.

Edius is right, the battery percentage does stick on the U55GT-C8 when it is idle. It is mostly a problem if you don't touch it for a few days. For example, it will show 74% charged but when I pick it up a couple of days later, it is still showing 74%. Use the tablet for an hour or so, and the battery meter will drop to say 52%, then bang, it dies. Scary when it first happened. I thought it was dead forever. Even after you plug it back in, the battery charge graphic takes a couple of minutes to come on. If you use the tablet regularly every day this is not an issue, though it might still die with 5-10% still showing. Looks very much like a battery calibration problem that could be fixed with a firmware upgrade, but that's the problem with cheap Chinese hardware - not much backup. I won't say it's a deal breaker, but it is annoying. You could always switch the tablet off if you are not using it, but that is hardly ideal. Maybe the Russians have found a fix, or an app will do the trick. It doesn't affect me much, so I haven't bothered looking for a fix, but will let you know if I do.

The other problem is that the screen rotation locks. I finally narrowed it down to a language learning app and my ereader.apps. Put it into landscape in these apps, and the tablet stayed locked in landscape mode. You can fix it manually by recalibrating the screen under Settings>Accessability>G_Sensor calibration, or turn it off, wait a minute or so, then turn it back on. If these don't work, try wiping the dalvik cache, then repeat calibration. Given I use this as an ereader a lot, it was driving me nuts so I downloaded Set Orientation from Google Play. This app allows you to manually change orientation, but I set the app to Automatic (full) and voila, it fixed the problem, no more locking.

[TrOLL-i]

My Cube TALK79 U55GT-C8 MTK8392 Octa Core finally died after 7 months. It had serveral unpredictable issues with Sleep of Death (SoD) while charging and it was always a game of luck to bring it back to life (although all OTA updates installed). Tried different charger, USB cables, connection to pc and laptop with all kinds of flash tools - no device showing up.
Sending it back to china to get it repaired is no option because of the shipping costs for both ways after 6 months.

Good source for help:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2F4pda.ru%2Fforum%2Findex.php%3Fshowtopic%3D606688&edit-text=

[sepa]

A few more points:

1. This tablet is very easy to root with Kingoroot. For multiuser support, after rooting, install the Xposed Installer then download the Multiple User module. I haven't tried that module, but Xposed has lots of neat module tweaks.

2. Like many Chinese tablets, the internal drive is partitioned into Internal Storage and USB Storage. Apps install onto Internal Storage, which only has 2gb, so it fills up quickly. The 4pda.ru forum has a custom rom to change the allocation size, but I haven't been game to try it and it is easy just to move downloaded apps to USB storage (under Settings>Apps). However, after you move apps, the icons disappear from the home screens, though they remain in the apps drawer. This is a fault of the lousy in-built launcher (Launcher3). Get a new launcher like Nova Launcher (the Prime version especially is great). Nova also fixes the problem of screen rotation locking, which I mentioned above, and you can add more home pages.

3. I've been monitoring the battery meter issue more closely and while I don't have a fix, I have a workaround. As stated, when the Cube goes into idle, the battery meter also goes into idle and does not update. When you reopen the tablet, the meter percentage is higher than the actual battery left. Not a problem overnight, because the meter will slowly catch up to the correct percentage as you use it, but if you don't use it for many days, the battery will have lost a lot of charge and the meter won't catch up before the battery dies suddenly. A workaround is to get another battery app, which will give you a more accurate read when the u55gt-c8 comes out of idle. I tested Battery Monitor Widget Pro and CaliBattery, and both work well. I prefer the simplicity of CaliBattery, and have my battery set at 3300 mv minimum and 4360 high. It doesn't control the battery, just reads the charge, but that's all you need - just recharge well before it hits rock bottom, which is best for Li-ion battery life.

[sepa]

OK, another fix, for point 2 above (if anyone is listening). Manually moving apps was getting annoying, and some downloaded non-system apps just wouldn't move, so Internal Storage was always full. To force (most) new apps to install on USB Storage, and allow others to be moved, do this:

enable USB debugging from Settings > Developer options > USB debugging

Install the adb Android SDK package on your computer (Google it)

Connect your Talk79 to the computer by USB cable, open a CMD command prompt and enter:

adb devices (should return your tablet serial no. if connected properly)
adb shell pm set-install-location 2 (this will set the default app install location to USB Storage, if you want to change it back: adb shell pm set-install-location 0)
adb shell pm get-install-location (checks if successfully changed. should show: 2 [external])