Regretfully I had purchased iBall Slide Tablet for my son - battery has already conked off in a month !!! It is supposed to be under one year warranty. Obviously the supplied battery was either tampered or defective. General advice to customers- while insisting on sealed new pack- lookout for seal that can be easily re-stuck after being tampered by the salesmen...
What they do is they carefully open the piece of seal tape that sticks the pack...and apply slight oil to reduce the stickiness of the tape- thus they can stick it back and reopen it whenever they want !!! This is applicable to all electronic devices in general- where the seal is just a piece of adhesive cello-tape. Look closely if the tape can be removed easily...if so avoid that piece and move on.
The display and build of iBall Slide are of acceptable quality. The performance and videos are also at acceptable levels. My son plays the Subway Surfers game- which is quite demanding on the processor and video - it plays well without any hiccups. Badly missed the bluetooth feature though, which is absent in this model.
There is no SIM card as this is not a calling tablet - only WiFi is available for connectivity. And two USB ports for connecting pen-drives, dongles, etc. It came preloaded with Android ICS (Ice-Cream Sandwitch) and some apps -there was no way to uninstall the apps that we did not require - I learned that root is required for doing that - which may void the warranty.
We noticed the battery problem developing like this - it used to finish charging faster and faster but it also started discharging faster and faster. Nowadays it is behaving quite erratically - when we plug it in for charging within a few minutes it shows 100% charged and when we unplug it and within using it for half-an-hour it switches off saying Low Battery!
My son started using the tab these days with the charger plugged in always. Not able to withstand the serious pestering from my son regarding the battery anymore, we took it to our nearest iBall service center in Kandivali West. iBall seem to be having quite a decent number of service centers in Mumbai and even all over India. Coverage seems to be good- but alas the main purpose of service centers needs a serious rethink. These are supposed to serve customers - but actually it is "customer torture"...
iBall Service Center (A MOST HIGHLY AVOIDABLE PLACE). Being right near the vegetable market and the Kandivali railway station (west) - the area is crowded, dirty and congested. Although access is good because of proximity of railway station. The center is located in a dilapidated chawl-type old structure with two rooms.
The first room is the reception which was very small- supposed to hold 5 or 6 customers max- it had around 35 customers and with poor ventilation it was stuffy with foul air and packed like sardines.
There was no display or any information about the procedure to be followed - I came to know after asking another customer, that we are supposed to ask for a token number. So I got a token number - just a number written on a piece of paper - and I had to also ask which number was currently being serviced - no display... nothing.
The three girls at the counter were harried with disgruntled customers milling and arguing around them. Obviously the rate of clearance and handling of cases were woefully inadequate - and we immediately got out into the passage for some fresh air and to await our turn which will at least take another one hour - no point in crowding at the counter.
When our turn came- they asked for the original invoice- which I showed to them- and described the battery problem- they agreed to look into the problem- accepted the tab with its cover and issued me a receipt- telling me to come after a week.
After a week I called them up - they said on the phone that the rectification was still not complete and it was being tested thoroughly and asked me to check again after three more days. It was Friday, 16-Aug-2013, the appointed day- we called up and they said the unit was ready to be picked up at 5pm. We collected it as directed and the center was about to close at 5:30 pm so we decided to test it at home.
We found nothing had been done on the unit - they had just taken the tab from us and kept it with them and returned it after 10 or so days! So much for iBall service... We went there the next day .... and they feigned ignorance and when I asked for a replacement battery - at first they agreed - then they back-tracked and again asked me to deposit the unit with them saying they did not have the battery for our unit readily. Which means - I have to again go through the tortuous process and get back the unit without any improvement - this is not at all customer-oriented - it is just designed to make the customers fed up and turn away in disgust...
At first I used to buy iBall products like iBaton - wireless adapter, and one of their headsets... I used to have a positive image about iBall somehow.... but now all that is shattered - their people at the service center are nothing short of crooks - not interested in solving any problem - but just torture customers away...
Good luck with your customers iBall ... unless iBall is planning to wind up and say good bye to their customers with shoddy quality and terrible service centers.... their entire operations need a revamp if they are to stay afloat.
- Thank You! We appreciate your effort.
