Deal on LG Gpad III 8.0 LTE tablet

[fox]

This just came out at Bestbuy. You can buy this hi-res 8" tablet (1920 x 1200) for free with a two-year $15/month signup for 3 GB data/month from Fido. The tablet itself costs $240 to buy outright. With the activation fee ($15 I think), the total cost would be $375 plus tax. In effect, you're getting 3 GB monthly of LTE data for two years for about $5/month. This is so cheap for the data that I have actually read accounts of people buying the deal, running the data on their Rogers/Fido enabled devices, and selling the tablet for a discount. (You can see some of these tablets for sale on Kijiji GTA. It runs this weekend only; read about it here.

[fox]

I just called Bestbuy about this, and apparently you already have to have a phone plan with Fido to qualify. 

[ssfc72]

Boy, that sucks! :-)

[fox]

Sucks 2x. The deal also comes with a $50 Bestbuy gift card, but that only applies if you sign up with Fido. I can now see why this looks so sweet; Fido wants phone signups and they're subsidizing the data to get them. At any rate, I did buy the tablet last night for the regular price, just to try it out. The LG software is supposed to actually connect with your phone and allow you to get phone texts on the tablet that way, but I have no idea whether it works with an iPhone until I try it.

[ssfc72]

Looking forward to your further report on whether you can text from the pad going through the cellular of your phone.
I believe the lg pad does not have a front camera. That would have been useful for doing a video Skype chat.

[fox]

Actually, Bill, it does have a front and rear camera. Unfortunately, I cannot text or make calls by connecting from my phone because the feature only works on Android and I have an iPhone. The app that does this is called QPair, and it works through bluetooth. I can connect my iPhone to the tablet with bluetooth, but the good features require QPair to be installed on the phone. I can bring the tablet to PLUG MUG on Monday, and we could try it there with someone's Android phone.

As far as Skype chat goes, I'm sure that works. I just tried to invite you to accept me for Skype, but I couldn't because I don't have cellular for messaging and the only other choice in Skype is Google Hangouts, which I haven't enabled.

Other than not being able to pair this pad with my iPhone for texts (at least not through QPair), my experience with the GPad III has been mostly positive. Image quality is pretty good, and the black and white feature looks like it might be useful for night reading. The tablet seems smoother than my admittedly dated iPad mini 2; at least I'm not noticing lags on anything I've tried. The bluetooth on it works with my Zagg keyboard, and the slot in the keyboard even holds the GPad, despite being made for an iPad mini. (The closing hinge doesn't work with the GPad; no surprise there.) Android takes some getting used to, but I have a head start as a result of Remix OS and an earlier trial with a 10" Lenovo pad. One of the advantages of iOS is that the native apps it comes with are pretty good. A good example is iBooks, which is great for magazine reading. In Android, one has to try a few different ones to see what works best for you. I think I've settled on UB Reader, but I'm open to PLUGer's suggestions. For mail, I like BlueMail better than the mail app that comes with the GPad, but neither of them seem to access messages on certain folders I created on my Trent (MS Exchange) account. For that I needed Outlook, but it is available and it does work. Battery life appears to be acceptable but not as long as that of an iPad, but I need more time to evaluate that.

When I first tried the GPad last night, I wasn't impressed with it at all and was thinking I would take it back to BB today. I'm glad I didn't, and that I played with it some more when I was fresher. It's a much better device than the 10" Lenovo I previously tried, and right now I'd say it has a fighting chance to be a replacement for my iPad mini 2.

[ssfc72]

Thanks for the info, Mike!  Good to hear the G pad has a front camera!  That would be a need for me, if I was looking for a tablet.

Yes, bring the G pad to the Mug and we can try the texting through an Android phone.

[fox]

Great; I'm keen to test this out. One more detail on the GPad that I just discovered. It is running Android Nougat, not Marshmallow, as advertised on the BB site. One of the features of Nougat is that you can run two apps simultaneously on a shared window screen.

[fox]

Skype works well on it. Jason and I tried it this morning.

[ssfc72]

Hmmm. I went looking on Kijiji and the LG pad seems to be about $190, from those people that have probably just used the Fido data package and are selling off, the gpad.
That's $50 off the Best Buy price, plus no tax.
Might be worth a trip to TO. :-)

[fox]

Yep, I noticed that too. These would technically be used, although some might have only been used long enough to register the SIM. They would probably be recent purchases, so they would have close to a year of warranty. So the question is whether it would be worth four hours of your time plus gas and wear and tear on the car to save $50. As part of a "geek trip", absolutely. But in my case, I still wouldn't do it because I don't think it's right to buy the tablet from BB, use it awhile and then return it for a cheaper used one. You can't ask them to match the price of a private sale.

[ssfc72]

I did a Google search for an Android app that would allow you to SMS text with your tablet, using your Android phone cellular.

There are a number of Android apps available.

MightyText looks pretty good.

[ssfc72]

I believe I have been successful in sending a SMS text message from my old HTC cell phone to the Android RemixOS running on my notebook, using the cellular SMS text of my Android MotoG cell phone.

I also was able to reply to the SMStext message on the RemixOS and using the MotoG cellular service, have it show up as a SMS text message on the HTC phone.

I was using the Android app,  MySMS.

Neat!

[fox]

Pleasantly surprised. Remix isn't exactly the same as an Android tablet. Good for Remix! Unfortunately, their lead developer left and I don't know if it's still being developed. It's still on Android Marshmallow and it hasn't been updated since last November.

[fox]

Bill and I experimented with the GPad at PLUG MUG last night. It has connecting software already on it, and Bill downloaded the app from the Google Play Store. The connection was very easy, and it is done over bluetooth. I could then text Bill from my iPhone, and the text would appear on the tablet. I could then text back to my iPhone from the tablet, and the text would appear on Bill's phone. Very nice. But it has its limitations, the main one being that the devices have to be close enough to be connected by bluetooth. And if you sever the bluetooth connection by turning off bluetooth, the messages aren't retained on the tablet. (Interestingly enough, they are still there on my iPhone.) What we don't know is whether there are additional features if you use an LG phone. In any case, I would have to say that the iOS solution is more elegant, though proprietary of course. All iOS devices can connect via wifi and you can set an iPad to send and receive texts, and it shows texts sent and received from an iPhone. The text record stays until you erase it. None of this requires you to get a different phone number, which is what many of the texting apps require.