Hi, I've recently bought a few Huawei M5 8" tablets as I was after some long term tablets for my kids' school work, etc. I just wanted a compact, powerful tablet with a USB-C port and expandable storage.
I bought one from a UK store and I was VERY impressed.
Two weeks later I went to buy the same and it was 25% more expensive, so I tried another supplier and ordered from there, after ordering, I realised the supplier was based in Hong Kong, but I've ordered loads of devices via Hong Kong before and provided the GSM bands are correct, they're usually fine.... and these don't even have a SIM card, so I figured they would be okay.
The two new tablets have arrived and they're almost unusable: they default to Chinese for everything. I've had this in the past and I can normally install another keyboard, uninstall the unwanted keyboards, but this won't let me install another keyboard and every time I try to use the awful pre-loaded browser everythign defaults to Chinese keyboard, etc.
I then went looking for a Play Store: so I could install some of my favourite apps (and a keybaord) and copy a few things over from the other tablet.... there is no Play Store!!
Now I'm no stranger to sideloading OpenGAPPS onto my Lineage builds, but I shouldn't have to do this for a purchased tablet, should I? I was planning on leaving these as stock as possible.
Can I find a UK/EU ROM that will allow simple, low hassle usage so I can just let my kids fire up Chrome and do their school homework in peace without everything constantly reverting to Chinese keyboards?
That's the way it is with Chinese tablets. You can't rebrand them to European versions, that will usually brick them. Your best bet is probably to unlock the bootloader and install an OpenKirin ROM.
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Hi xda devs,
I'm thinking about buying a tablet to hang it on the wall, which wall act as a kind of weather station/alarm clock etc.
I don't need for that any powerful things, might be even cheapest chinese crap.
I have found for example something like this on dx.com:
dx.com/p/a13-7-capacitive-touch-screen-android-4-0-tablet-pc-w-tf-camera-wi-fi-g-sensor-white-148468
Do you think it's worth to buy it for that purpose? Does anybody know if it's rootable/any roms for that are available? Or maybe you could suggest me something cheap? Optimally at least 4.0 would be nice to have and 7" screen, wifi, and I don't think I need nothing more for that.
Well it could be worth it, depending how much you really want to display.
For the tablet you linked it's not easy to say as there are not many specs. It could be that it's one of the generic "A13-MID" tablets for which some custom ROMs can be found online. But I don't own one of them so I can't say how well those ROMs are applicable etc.
If you want to buy something in this class (Allwinner Processor) which is a bit more a "brand" it's a good idea to look at the tablets supported by this ROM:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1760929
It works really well (use it myself) and there is quite a big community. Just look through the tablet list if there is a model that suits you. E.g. the Ainol Novo7 Elf is a 7" tablet which could already be found below $80.
Pretty low screen resolution at 800x480, but if its just going to serve as a weather station/alarm clock then you'll probably be fine. Also wondering if all these cheap chinese tablets are actually shipping with Gapps installed since I doubt they are Google certified, yet in the screenshots I see Google Play.
My experience with cheap chinese "stuff" is that there is a higher chance that tablets have gapps than phones. Probably something about user expectations.
Hello, I bought a month ago two phones Changhong Z-Me, which are very cheap (I bought two for 160€, about 80€ each). The brief specs are:
4" 854x480 TFT LCD screen
Gingerbread 2.3.7 with chinese & english languages
Snapdragon S2 MSM8255 @1Ghz (only one core despite some sites say)
Adreno 205
512MB RAM (about 350 for user)
4GB ROM (2.9 for user)
microHDMI out 720p support (at least my TV says so, movies are shown very decent)
Well, I received them yesterday and they work very good, but I have got a problem, I can't find a way to change the rom, because there is no forum talking about it. I don't know why, because it is a great and cheap phone. The only thing I have done is to root the phone with the tool Unlock Root 2.42, and it seems it worked (the mobile is in the list of compatible devices).
I want to change the rom because there are many programs in chinese which I can't delete, and there is no google play, instead a changhong store which is impossible to do anything since its server is from china and here in Spain is a pain to suft through chinese sites because they're way slow, and usually the changhong store gives me connection errors because of that.
I have read that I can use other sites like getjar to download apps but I would want to use the official google one. In fact I installed the google play APK but it gives me the error about creating account, and that's because my Gingerbread has no google account settings inside the menus as it is a heavy modifyed rom it seems.
I hope someone aims some interesting about this very nice phone and we all start a little community about it because I find this phone powerful enough to do most of the daily tasks, even play ^^.
Thank you so much!
nobitakun said:
Hello, I bought a month ago two phones Changhong Z-Me, which are very cheap (I bought two for 160€, about 80€ each). The brief specs are:
4" 854x480 TFT LCD screen
Gingerbread 2.3.7 with chinese & english languages
Snapdragon S2 MSM8255 @1Ghz (only one core despite some sites say)
Adreno 205
512MB RAM (about 350 for user)
4GB ROM (2.9 for user)
microHDMI out 720p support (at least my TV says so, movies are shown very decent)
Well, I received them yesterday and they work very good, but I have got a problem, I can't find a way to change the rom, because there is no forum talking about it. I don't know why, because it is a great and cheap phone. The only thing I have done is to root the phone with the tool Unlock Root 2.42, and it seems it worked (the mobile is in the list of compatible devices).
I want to change the rom because there are many programs in chinese which I can't delete, and there is no google play, instead a changhong store which is impossible to do anything since its server is from china and here in Spain is a pain to suft through chinese sites because they're way slow, and usually the changhong store gives me connection errors because of that.
I have read that I can use other sites like getjar to download apps but I would want to use the official google one. In fact I installed the google play APK but it gives me the error about creating account, and that's because my Gingerbread has no google account settings inside the menus as it is a heavy modifyed rom it seems.
I hope someone aims some interesting about this very nice phone and we all start a little community about it because I find this phone powerful enough to do most of the daily tasks, even play ^^.
Thank you so much!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have rooted the and got google Play Store working!! Searching chinese forums for the recovery I could do it but is not my phone if for my friend so he'll collect it from me!!:laugh:
My nephew (7 years old) is keen on getting a mobile gaming platform. Rather than buying a dedicated device like a Nintendo DS (or whatever the latest is called) I was thinking a budget Android mobile with big screen would probably work better. The phone wouldn't be used with a SIM card and thus has the benefits of being cheaper (initial outlay) and access to tons of free games. All the games would be downloaded and updated whilst on WiFi but out and about there would be no internet connection. The phone doesn't even need a beefy processor because even the simple and graphically non-taxing games would suffice.
I had first thought of the Orange (UK) Monte Carlo phone as that was only around £100 for the PAYG handset outright. However, they no longer do this handset. I see they do an Orange San Diego handset which seems promising but no idea how good the Intel Atom processor and 2.3 gingerbread OS would be for the usage scenario needed.
I'm happy to unlock, root and put on a custom ROM on the intended phone to get it to a more recent Android OS version if the one it comes with is quite outdated. However, it does need to playable and usable (even if it isn't the snappiest handset).
Any other suggestions or comments?
P.S: I'm based in the UK as is my nephew
Why not consider an entry level 7inch Android Tablet? My family own several Sumvision Cyclone Voyagers. JB 4.1.1, dual core RK3066 and benchmarks on a par with the Nexus 7 Tablet. This is a Chinese tablet but is sold by several mainstream UK retailers at around the £75 mark.
You'll see mixed reviews, mainly because the shipped firmware was buggy with lags and freezes being common, but current official firmware is good. It's reasonably easy to root, and there is CWM recovery available, and unofficial pre-rooted firmware. I haven't tried any custom ROMS, but there are a least a few users experimenting them.
Hi,
I am working on a project to create kiosks (a device restricted to running only one app) for a company. I need to find a model of a tablet that runs on Android and is really really cheap, the only functionality of the tablet that is actually needed is just being Wi-Fi enabled.
I found a couple of solutions for this:
- The first one involves buying some Nook Color tablets and installing Android on them (I found a wholesale store that sells them for around 20 pounds each) but I'm not really sure about the quality that those will have.
- Another solution would be to find a company in China or somewhere that would create a custom tablet that exactly suits my needs and nothing extra, although I heard about these kind of companies I couldn't find any on the internet.
The idea is that my client needs around 50 of these things, that's why I'm looking for cheap ones. The tablets just need to have a touch screen and Wi-Fi. The Tablets will be locked to showing one single webpage which will be stored on my client's server and have the kiosk app on that page.
Could anyone recommend any really cheap tablets with just Wi-Fi or a company that can build custom ones?
Thank you!
I have a new, still in sealed box, Galaxy Tab 10.1 P7510 that I bought 3 years ago. Can't decide whether
to open the box and use it or try to sell it on eBay and use the money to buy a newer version.
This one is 16gb with a Nvidia Tegra 250 processor and Android 3.1 Honeycomb.
I use my tabs just for slow games, like Minecraft or logic puzzles. I would also use it as a e-reader.
Keep or sell? Any advice would be appreciated.
David
Its not really worth much. I've seen some NIB ones listed for 100 bucks and they weren't selling. You can get a cheap tablet with better specs that the P7510 for that price already.
If you want to use it for games, as an e reader, etc.... You could try using it stock out of the box (without doing the Touchwiz update, as it originally came as stock honeycomb, more like Google intended than Samsung) and see how it runs. You might prefer it that way. Once it got ICS, it really got laggy IMO. Still usable, but not anywhere near a modern tablet.
If you root it and install anything more recent than ICS, you'll run into glitchy things, etc. due to drivers not being updated, etc. I only use mine for browsing the net and an occasion e book and it's fine. I run the Lollipop ROM in the development section and it's alright. The dev did a good job with what he had to work with...... but if you want to watch video or anything more intensive, you may not want to go that root.