Kurio Touch 4s - Initial Impressions

Christmas time has come and gone, and one of the new acquisitions for the toddler in the household was a shiny new Kurio Touch 4s.

On the surface, it seems like a good idea, a phone sized tablet, with a protected environment, for the little ones, ostensibly to help the adults keep possession of their phones/tablets instead of constantly having to 'borrow' it back from their youngsters.

But there is a catch. Despite the 30 applications that come with the Kurio, the options for adding additional apps are woefully inadequate. Out of the box, the Kurio comes with it's own app store, and nothing else, thereby making all of the other apps your child is probably already familiar with out of bounds.

Good marketing ploy for Kurio obviously, but for the consumer, it's not such a great deal, since the Kurio does not give you access to the hundreds, if not thousands, of otherwise available free apps in the Android ecosphere.

Kurio has indicated that certification for the Google Play store is in the works, but there is no firm date as of this posting, as to when existing Kurio Touch owners can expect this update.

I did manage to successfully install the Amazon Android App Store onto the Kurio 4s, but there are inconsistencies in the results. Some apps install and run correctly, others have conflicts with the Kurio's additional 'kid-safe' security features.

Hopefully the folks at Kurio will make certification for the Google Play store a priority, and work out whatever needs to be done to make sure that apps installed by the 'Owner' account and allocated to the other User accounts will actually be approved by the Kurio added security features.

All logos, trade names, trade marks, and photos of the same belong to their respective owners. The use of such material in this article falls under the Fair Use provisions of intellectual property laws.