In my opinion the G5A is a solid device, as you probably saw the videos posted on the GPD forums, its light, hardware is the as the one in s7800b with the excepetion of the screen rez and quality. Battery life might be on the low side.
Hardware reliability, as with most china branded devices, this is hit or miss, that being said, the GPD device is built pretty well and if you do have an issue you can always have it replaced.
The jxd 7800b is not supported by Jxd anymore, but the community has plenty of tweaks, its got a good ips screen but at the end of the day its definitely not portable, The shield is a better alternative to the 7800B.
As for customs, im not in the US anymore, but I doubt they would hold your device, there is nothing illegal about buying electronics from china. You might have to pay a small amount of duty depending on the declared price. Another point is this is not a "knock off brand" its a legitimate gaming device, one of many android devices.
I'll definitely keep that in mind, the smaller device would suit my needs better, I wasn't aware that of the JXD no longer being supported, the G5A seems like the better route to go. Thanks!
I don't know about the GPD but I believe that's the one skelton raves about.
I would not recommend the 7800, It could be a nice device but it has a lot of small yet annoying issues, not much seems to work 100%.
Battery life is ok, not great but not bad.
Screen is pretty good, first batch had a better screen they apparently subbed the LCD in the newest version but it's still decent enough.
touch screen is pretty much garbage, accuracy is terrible on it.
I could go on and on but overall I do not recommend the 7800.. If JXD was still supporting it and fixing issues it would be great, build quality and QC aside.
That's two for the GPD g5a, a lot of people on this community are backing it, which makes it all the more appealing, glad to know that this little device is getting more and more awesome! So that would mean the touch screen on the G5A is far superior in accuracy than the S7800?
People have complained that the GPD G5A has a bad screen but the controls look pretty good.
You also have Skelton/Tincores modified firmware.
Screen put me off buying one.
I mean, how a screen is important, sure, but I need to find a middle ground of sorts this GPD seems to be perfect, retro gaming while being portable and having powerful enough hardware for emulating all the awesome old-school stuff!
Screen is not bad, simply it's not IPS. For me it's more than enough to play retro games. There will be a version with IPS soon anyway.
About what to buy, it all depends on which size you prefer. 7 inch devices are just too big for me. I generally prefer 5 inch (even less if possible). Other people prefer 7 inch because they use it as a tablet too. So basically depends on that. G5a doesn't have front camera, so the use of skype is quite limited xD.
Not a deal-breaker for me, TFT vs IPS, 7 inches simply seems way too bulky for my needs to be honest, so 5 inches would be plenty, not too big and not too small, I don't know of any other supported devices with smaller screens, the problem with even smaller would be the resolution suffering, making retro emulators like Super Nintendo suffer, or N64 and so on, so the G5A would be ideal in that situation
I don't need to use Skype, I can always use a netbook or something
I own the S7800 but lets not kid ourselves here, the 2GBs of ram are totally wasted. Dont think that a device with 1GB ram will perform slower, particularly on a low end android tablet like the ones in question. It simply doesn't make any difference. My device under stress has never used more than about 600-700mb in one go, no matter what I try and do.
Didn't know that either, good to know, and thanks for the heads up!
I own both and I'm very happy with both.
I agree with Joe that the touchscreen accuracy on the S7800 is terrible, but given that I don't play any games using the touchscreen (I use Tincore keymapper for everything), it's a total non-issue for me. The screen itself is fantastic - bright, crisp and vivid...the best I've ever seen on a "cheap" chinese tablet. The repacked firmwares that are available (Tan's and Webclaw's) are really solid, so although JXD is not releasing updates, it's not an issue for me because there's really nothing in need of fixing from my point of view. For me, I don't find there are a lot of small annoying issues... All my complaints were addressed by the repacked firmwares... there's nothing that hinders my gaming. But as Joe says, the touchscreen response is bad, so playing touchscreen games would be frustrating (although I tried one of the Angry Birds games last night, and it played fine... so maybe the touchscreen crappiness mostly affects typing?)
The G5A is a great unit as well, and flashing Legacy on it makes it even better. The only complaint I really have is the quality of the screen... kinda dull, and terrible viewing angles, but if you hold it in the right place, all is good.
As skelton says, it really boils down to screen size and your definition of portable. The larger, brighter, higher-res screen of the S7800 is really nice, and makes a difference for some games (Android titles, more than emulators). But, the unit is larger, and less portable. On the other hand, the G5A is more portable, but I find the smaller screen a drawback on high-detail android games like Nova 3 and MC4.
A friend recommended the LegacyROM to install as firmware on the GPD G5A, would you also recommend that as well? I plan on mostly doing retro gaming (emulators), as well as casual browsing like Facebook, watching videos and so on. Does anyone know if Netflix runs on these Android devices or is that simply not possible since it uses Silverlight? Sorry for the lengthy response, and thank you all for your feedback, I think I've got my heart set on the GPD for sure! It's cheap yet powerful for my needs on the go, and is it true that the battery indicator is wonky? And what would be the best online store to get one from (the fastest/most reliable)?
Some other concerns involved WiFi, battery indicator, prematurely going kaput, etc. I know, these are probably sounding trivial, and I apologize for being such a noob ROFL XD
