LONG AWAITED JP6 TABLET TURNS OUT TO BE NOTHING MORE THAN AN EXPENSIVE, HIGH-TECH TURD

On Saturday, August 14, 2021 staff delivered the long awaited JP6 tablets to hundreds of prisoners at the ISCC. Ordered as early as May 24th with scheduled delivery in June (then July, then August) there were high expectations for these new tablets primarily due to the exploding batteries, lack of ability to download or access purchased apps and systems, and other fundamental malfunctions of the JP5s. The 32 Gig JP6 however, in firmware and software terms, turned out to be a turd - and JPay has, and continues to fail to make good on fixing any of the myriad problems with the tablet more than 2 weeks later.

For more than a week the JP6 not only failed to download new or past emails, it literally (and I'm not joking) ACTIVELY lied to us when we tried to do so.

First of all, we can never actually check our emails (on any tablet), rather, we can only open the email app, then refresh the screen. It's a distinction with a small, but significant difference in terms of computing. In opening the email app and refreshing the screen on the JP6, a dialogue box appeared, stating effectively that the player could not sync over the wifi. That's a lie, as the tablet, and the app, did sync - it just says it didn't. How do I know? Well, the app accurately reflected the number of estamps I had, and my contact list was up-to-date. Oh, and we could SEND. but could not receive an email with the app. The only way ANY of those things could be true is if the tablet/email app had sync'd with the wifi.

Further, problems with the email app was evidenced by the fact that the IN box on the tablet should have been automatically populated with all past and new emails when it was sync'd to the kiosk. That did not happen either - the IN box remained completely empty - until a critical update was loaded onto the tablet a week later. That's when all hell broke loose.

Once the software update was uploaded to the tablet, past emails became available. Unfortunately, that was the only positive. As it stands more than a week after the update (and 2 weeks after getting the tablet), we still cannot create and send a comprehensive email. The ENTER key does not work (so if you want to send an email, it had better be in a single paragraph) and we cannot even delete a failed attempt to create the email unless we put it in the OUT box and delete it from there.

The email app has no quotation marks on the (touch screen) keyboard, you have to change screens just to use a comma and there is no draft folder. There is a new feature - Invite a Friend - that does not work. Indeed, when I tried to use it, it told me that I had reached my "invite limit", and that I needed to delete entries. I only had 2 entries, there is no way to delete either of them, and neither of them was ever sent despite my efforts to do so.

With past tablets, we could turn off the wifi, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the JP6. Indeed, the wifi is on at all times, and according to the app that tracks battery use on the tablet, the wifi uses nearly 50% of the total battery used over any given time.

Although there was word that the JP6 would allow us to record videograms on the tablet (rather than having to do so on the kiosk only) the internal camera on the tablet has been removed (or never installed). There was also talk that we would be able to use the available telephone app (with the inmate phone system) as well as video visitation on the tablet. Neither happened despite the tablet itself being capable of supporting these services. The alarm app does not function, there is no "wallpaper" app installed on the tablet, and there is no photo frame, both available on the JP5 and JP5s tablets.

Effectively, the JP6 is a failure, at least for now. The only good thing about what we have now is the ability to use the LexisNexis app on the tablet, where that feature was removed from the JP5 and JP5s tablets due, they say, to the processing speed of the earlier tablets being too slow (then how did it work for months before they discontinued it?).

I'm certain the JP6 can be salvaged, but the firmware and software issues must be resolved. Problem is, JPay takes months to get things done, and even then, it's 3 steps forward, 2 steps back. Worse yet, their "customer service" refuses to listen to what the problems are, and taking weeks to send "canned" responses to trouble tickets, responses which often are not even relevant to the problem reported. These trouble tickets are limited to 1 issue at a time, and we can have only 1 ticket open at a time.

Note to JPay, get it done right. You've been in business for decades - act like it.