Beware of Counterfeiting Android Tablets in Online Stores!

In the early days of Android going back to more than a decade ago, you had the following options:

• Spend more money on expensive tablets that perform better, such as the whole Samsung Galaxy Tab series.
• Go cheap and buy a cheap tablet from online stores, such as Amazon.

This was when Android wasn’t really built for tablets, and when Android applications didn’t consider being run in tablets and just gave you a blown-up phone interface. Why? Because Android phones were more popular than Android tablets.

Fast forward to the present, we’re witnessing Google and other manufacturers give more importance and love to the tablets. This is because we’re now seeing a majority of applications being adapted to work on tablets and to use their screen real estate. This means that we’re seeing fewer “blown-up phone” interfaces that don’t use the tablet screen entirely. This is also because manufacturers, such as Lenovo, are considering making tablets that try to compete the Galaxy Tab series. As a result, Android has become more optimized for tablets while staying optimized for phones.

Even after this effort is witnessed, you’ll still see cheap Android tablets, though not all of them are bad. Some of them, such as the Galaxy Tab A series, are good, and some of them are not. You now have three options:

• Spend more money on expensive tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S series.
• Get a good, cheap branded tablet, such as the Galaxy Tab A series.
• Go cheap and buy a cheap tablet from online stores, such as Amazon.

The first two are already known since manufacturers, as mentioned above, make good and performant tablets. However, we’re going to talk about the third point.

If you’re buying stuff from Amazon or any other third-party online stores, you’ll notice that there are counterfeit products that don’t last long and may have several build quality issues. Android tablets are no exception.

If you decide to go very cheap, you’ll notice that there are either generic entries of “Android Tablet, Android 10 with 8 GB RAM…” that are sold by some unknown sellers (especially those that have an unpronounciable brand names), or brand names that you may not have heard of in the entry appended to the title template above.

Some of these products look obvious, as shown in their pictures and their descriptions, and some of them try to hide the fact that it’s a counterfeit. The specs may look promising, but let’s cover what happens when you decide to buy one of them. When it comes to SoCs, they often don’t tell you what kind of SoC such tablets possess, but they often possess either Rockchip, AllWinner, or MediaTek.

After you pay for such tablets, it usually takes days to ship the product to you, depending on the seller and the country of the seller’s origin. When you unpack the tablet, it may look innocent at first. However, if you turn it on, you’ll see that something is wrong. Pre-rooted Android system, slow performance, incompatible apps, bad screen viewing angles, and many issues to follow.

The performance of such counterfeit tablets is lackluster, as evidenced by this forum post of 2021. The poster claims that they’ve got such an unbranded tablet (NERLMIAY K1001P95 Chinese Tablet) and that, according to its specs in the store, it should have Android 10 and a 16 GB of RAM. Genuine 16 GB RAM tablets were not made at the time. However, the victim found that his tablet’s performance was extremely slow and that a lot of today’s apps couldn’t be run. Upon further inspection, he found out that his tablet had only Android 5.0 Lollipop from 2014 with a single gigabyte of LPDDR2 RAM and 16 GB of storage. What’s even worse was that this tablet was pre-rooted. The screenshots below (in case they’re removed for any reason) clarify this:

Presumably, the performance issue is because these tablets were not allocated enough RAM to run Android Lollipop with a bunch of heavy applications in it. As for the fake specifications, this was done to play tricks on unsuspecting buyers to make them think that they’ve got a performant and an up-to-date tablet when it’s actually not.

Some more pointers:

• Another Android 5.1 tablet
• Android 4.4 tablet as Android 9.0 tablet
• Android 5.1 tablet as Android 7.0 tablet
• Android 12 tablet as Android 13 tablet
• Android 8.1 tablet as Android 12 tablet

Such tablets also usually don’t have any custom ROM or TWRP recovery to make it customizable. This is because they usually don’t have any source code available, including the kernel source code.

Another thing is that such tablets usually come with quality assurance issues, such as malfunctioning screens, low quality screens, bad viewing angles, defective ports, and so on.

For example, a user who bought a Rockchip tablet suffered from screen issues. While the screen was purported to be 800×480, the software resolution was set to 800×444, making things appear stretched. The perfect viewing angle was 45° degrees, letting you think that there’s something wrong with this screen. The DPI was 120 ppi, worsening the problem.

Another user suggested that a tablet that was bought by their friend had a warning that the supposed generic Chinese “Coby” tablet contained lead, a chemical substance, and to wash their hands every time they’re done using it. Not only that, but that tablet also contained a low-quality resistive touch screen that has very low sensitivity.

Finally, another user bought an Aoson M11 tablet, and it had several issues because the screen was showing weird lines when the screen was turned off. When put to the charger, the touchscreen went glitchy, and when you touch the metal trim around the tablet, it gave you electrical pokes.

That’s not all, because some of them also contain malware in it. Some pointers:

• Chinese tablet containing embedded malware in it that shows pornographic advertisements
• Another MT8382 tablet containing embedded malware in it that bombards you with 18+ advertisements

So, we recommend you not to purchase any generic Chinese tablets. Always stick to reputable brands. We, for one, recommend the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 series as it contains a lot of productivity features, such as enhanced multitasking, that are excellent in implementation. If you want to go cheaper, we recommend the Galaxy Tab A9 series (preferably, the A9+ for Qualcomm Snapdragon and higher screen density) that don’t disappoint you.

Be careful with what to purchase! Stay safe!