Unfortunately, the expression "lipstick on a pig" seems to be appropriate with this item. As they are, at the root level, a fairly typical example of low-cost Chinese mass-produced handheld game consoles, they have the same QC and design issues inherent to those types of devices. One can specify custom screens, processors, support hardware, etc...but in the end, implementation of those specifications are ultimately in the hands of the same factories grinding out these, often times, marginally performing products, by the thousands daily.
One can hope that eventually the issues with the units will be corrected, but ultimately, if it requires extra work from the factory, with no extra payment, they will continue to ship what they deem acceptable for the price paid, and the quantity of units likely to be ordered. My estimation is that both of these numbers are fairly insignificant in the scope of their average production, so further investment will likely be required to address these issues. And from my experience, the Chinese throw away nearly nothing. They tend to throw marginal items, at a certain "allowable" percentage, in with the good ones, and expect the purchaser to do the weeding out. This is something an experienced importer will expect, and consider in the costs.
These are things the Pandora project dealt with on the first run of their console, and they ultimately gave up on the Chinese production, and moved it elsewhere....at a fairly significant cost.
In the end, you get more than what you pay for with Chinese manufacturers, which is still quite good. But any company expecting to not have to deal with small issues and/or product fallout which can affect the reputation of the product, is naive or fooling themselves. Yes, many a large company has high quality product made in some of those same factories. But to do so, they invest huge amounts of money, place blanket orders for extremely high quantities of units, and are involved on-site on a daily basis. This just isn't going to happen with a unit like this one, unless adoption is high enough to change the nature of the business relationship between the two companies, allowing for more investment and direct involvement at the production end. Unfortunately, if it ever reaches this scale, functionally identical knockoffs will likely follow. It's a hard game to win.
