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Interface
Manufacturers these days tend to distinguish themselves with heavy OS customisation, take a look at Amazon's Kindle Fire range and you'll see what we mean. Disgo haven't quite taken it that far on the 8400G.
Hidden amongst the settings menu is a theme setting allowing you to choose between the default, and the preloaded Nature theme. There is very little to choose between the two, with the only noticeable difference being a different set icons.
The lack of customisation may be seen by some as a blessing, but we found it a little disheartening.
It seems very strange that in portrait, you can have 8 icons running horizontally, yet only 7 when in landscape, meaning that any icons on the far right just disappear.
The Disgo 8400G's interface will seem very familiar to those that have used Android 3.0 Honeycomb or 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with a Google search icon in the top left, app drawer in the top right and the notification bar along the bottom, populated with Android's on screen buttons and notifications pane.
As standard, there are five home screens, with no ability to add more. Disappointingly there is no infinite scroll, or ability to pinch out to get a home screen overview.
Movement between home screens also seems a little laboured, nothing that is too noticeable, but even the average user will start to notice it.
Long pressing for widgets to fill these screens are gone, with all widgets now accessed from the App drawer.
Again, switching between the App and Widget sections taking a noticeable period of time. Initial widget offerings are rather poor, with only the standard widgets on offer.
Some widgets are resizeable, although there is no clear indication as to which. We were particularly frustrated that the data monitor, being a 1x1 widget, didn't come out like the drawer suggested, and was not resizeable.
Moving apps to the home screens is as easy as ever, with folders being created if you drag one icon over another.
Calls and messaging
The Disgo 8400G provides some interesting ways of staying in contact with all your friends, well, interesting for a tablet anyway. Pop in a SIM card, and you can send/receive text messages and make/receive phone calls, alongside the usual email and IM features.
We found that making phones calls was a tad ridiculous on a device of this size, something that we have previously commented on in the range of phablet's that are hitting the market.
We highly recommend investing in a headset if you plan to replace your phone with the 8400G.
Texting was another story. Being able to send text messages on a larger screen made things understandably easier, especially with the responsive Android keyboard.
The Android keyboard is by no means perfect, and there was a hint of slowdown as the processor caught up, causing misspelt words, but generally the 8400G kept up and autocorrect worked wonders.
The Disgo 8400G also comes with the standard Android messaging options of Gmail, Email and IM in the form of Google Talk. Interestingly Facebook, Twitter and Google+ do not come preinstalled, which is a godsend if you don't make use of them.
