Not a tablet anyway, it seems.

Kidding aside, I believe you've nailed the problem with this tablet's UI: it seems designed by people who don't see the point of a tablet. They understand it as "a laptop without a keyboard".

We've seen that before with Windows CE, designed by people who saw smartphones as underpowered, keyboard-less computers, with a stylus as a poor substitute for a mouse (they even had a right-click button on some styluses IIRC). They "adapted" the Windows UX into a phone as an accessibility issue, although it was to support challenged hardware rather than challenged users. And indeed, Windows CE felt as compelling as Windows with sticky keys, high contrast, big fonts and a Braille reader.

I'm afraid this tablet's UI deserves the same success against iOS devices as Windows CE experienced.

All this just goes to show that for most products there is room for improvement in UX.