[biostem]

Hello all!

I recently picked up a 4.3" Android tablet made my a company called Elsse (www.myelse.com), from Amazon - they had it on sale for $64.99 + free shipping. The tablet works pretty well so far. I wanted to put it out to the community to see if any of you more capable people could take a look at it. The listing on Amazon states it has a Rockchip CPU, but I can find very little info o the tablet otherwise. It is running Android 2.2.1 and has the market pre-installed, (selection of Apps is a little on the light side).

Here's the link to the tablet listing: http://www.amazon.co...=cm_rdp_product

I've been trying to get the firmware for the tablet, but there is very little I could find. The manufacturer's website is www.myelsse.com, but that seems to only be their English site, and various links from that page lead back to a Chinese page.

The seller linked me a version of Angry Birds meant for this tablet, (other version I downloaded would not install), and it had 'MIPS' in its filename.

Video review of tablet (by someone else):



Overall, and considering the price, this is a very good tablet. The screen is not the most responsive resistive screen - you really need to use a stylus. They do include a stylus in the box, though. It has 2GB of internal storage, (partitioned into various smaller parts). There's a microSD card slot, mini USB port, earphone jack, and external speaker. The box also came w/ an adapter that converts the earphone jack into RCA out. One of the weird parts about this tablet is that it only has physical buttons for the back, menu, and power buttons. There's no physical home button, so to exit programs you need to either keep hitting back or find an exit option through the menu key. The version of the firmware on the tablet is not rooted. The Android market does come installed, but it is missing a lot of apps.

Anyway, thank you for reading my post and any advice or suggestions you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

[biostem]

Some more videos I found about this tablet on YouTube:






And some other discussions about it:

http://www.androidta...net-tablet.html


Here's another listing for the Elsse 4.3" tablet, though I don't recognize the seller and have no knowledge of them:

http://www.cheappric...een-tablet.html


It also appears they have a Facebook presence:

http://www.facebook....198641960210995


Thanks for reading!

[biostem]

Ok, so after having the tablet for about a week now, I've gotten better acquainted with it. One of the initial issues I was having was that the battery meter would not register correctly. I decided to take the plunge and did a total factory reset of the tablet. Upon doing that, not only did the battery issue go away, but the WiFi seems more stable and Angry Birds was installed as part of the process. I wonder if someone did some tinkering w/ the tablet before packing it up.. perhaps as part of their QA process? Anyway, It's still going strong. I've been looking into cases for it - it's almost the exact same size as a 4.3" GPS unit, so there are a few choices of cases available. I happened to of had a case for an old square Palm Pilot, which also fits perfectly, so I am using that one now - it has a belt clip which makes it more convenient. I'm also using one of the old Palm styluses since it feels more comfortable in my hand. I found a set of 15 Nintendo DS styluses for $0.99 which I also ordered - I tried one I already had and it works well too.

[lostindroid]

I just got this today for my boy. For whatever reason angry birds wasnt installed. Can you provide the link or info so I can download it? Thanks!

[biostem]

lostindroid, on 21 November 2011 - 04:54 PM, said:

I just got this today for my boy. For whatever reason angry birds wasnt installed. Can you provide the link or info so I can download it? Thanks!

Here's the link for Angry Birds:
http://www.4shared.c..._153_mips.html?

Before you do that, though, I recommend trying the full factory reset to see if it automatically puts it onto the tablet.

I also recommend you download Advanced WiFi Lock Free if you're having issues w/ the WiFi shutting off, even after setting the WiFi Sleep Policy to 'Never'.

[lostindroid]

nm figured it out

This post has been edited by lostindroid: 21 November 2011 - 07:25 PM

[biostem]

The parent company of Elsse appears to be 'ibay365'. Here is their website: http://www.ibay365.com/index.php (Chinese site)

This post has been edited by biostem: 22 November 2011 - 07:56 PM

[biostem]

Here are a few images I've taken of my Elsse. One shows the basic desktop area, the other the system info screen, and the last is of the Android Market:

Attached File(s)

•  Elsse1.jpg (103.02K)
  Number of downloads: 16
•  Elsse2.jpg (81.37K)
  Number of downloads: 20
•  Elsse3.jpg (72.9K)
  Number of downloads: 18

[biostem]

And here are some images of the case of the tablet itself:

Attached File(s)

•  Elsse4.jpg (57.82K)
  Number of downloads: 12
•  Elsse5.jpg (47.42K)
  Number of downloads: 10
•  Elsse6.jpg (51.14K)
  Number of downloads: 7

[wicknix]

I just ordered one of these myself. Should be here by thursday or friday. Looks like an interesting device to hack on. If i get it rooted, or manage to figure out a firmware upgrade i'll post back.

Cheers

[synexo]

biostem thanks for all the info on this. I bought too of these and alas no angry birds. Do you have a link or instructions on performing a factory reset? BTW the angry birds link you posted is no longer available but I found it here:
http://search.4share...4_153_mips.html

[biostem]

synexo, on 01 December 2011 - 01:44 AM, said:

biostem thanks for all the info on this. I bought too of these and alas no angry birds. Do you have a link or instructions on performing a factory reset? BTW the angry birds link you posted is no longer available but I found it here:
http://search.4share...4_153_mips.html

Oddly enough, the factory reset is located under:

Setting -> Privacy -> Factory data reset

There's also an option called 'System update'. I messed around with this one and it seems to make the tablet search for some files on the micro SD card, so perhaps this tablet could eventually take an updated firmware w/o deleting all your data?

Anyway, attached is a .Zip of Angry Birds for this tablet. Good luck!

Here's a link to some styluses I ordered for the tablet. They're meant for a Nintendo DS, but they work well enough, and 15 for $0.99 w/ free shipping, how can you go wrong!

http://www.ebay.com/...984.m1497.l2649

Hope that helps!

P.S. - Make sure you have your tablet connected for charging before performing the factory reset - I've done it w/o, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Attached File(s)

•  angrybirds_2011-03-14_1.5.3_mips.zip (14.99MB)
  Number of downloads: 84

This post has been edited by biostem: 03 December 2011 - 04:03 AM

[wicknix]

Well... after a few days playing around i'm fairly impressed for the price. The resistive touch screen is *far* better than my generic wm8650 7" tablet. It almost feels capacitive. For a 600mhz Ingenic MIPS cpu it still feels quite snappy. Without wifi enabled i was able to get 6 hours 38 minutes on a single charge. Also digging around in the device i noticed busybox is installed *and* that su is installed to /system/xbin/. The only issue is trying to figure out how to start the device in recovery mode so that we can adb push su to /system/bin/ to enable root on the device. So if anybody figures out how to boot these into recovery mode please post how. Once rooted, tweaking this device should be a breeze. I also emailed the seller i bought from asking for the update/upgrade/firmware files, but they said they don't have them. Such a shame. I wanted them to modify so i could release a custom firmware (and to have a backup in case the device crashes).

Cheers

[biostem]

wicknix, on 05 December 2011 - 02:51 AM, said:

Well... after a few days playing around i'm fairly impressed for the price. The resistive touch screen is *far* better than my generic wm8650 7" tablet. It almost feels capacitive. For a 600mhz Ingenic MIPS cpu it still feels quite snappy. Without wifi enabled i was able to get 6 hours 38 minutes on a single charge. Also digging around in the device i noticed busybox is installed *and* that su is installed to /system/xbin/. The only issue is trying to figure out how to start the device in recovery mode so that we can adb push su to /system/bin/ to enable root on the device. So if anybody figures out how to boot these into recovery mode please post how. Once rooted, tweaking this device should be a breeze. I also emailed the seller i bought from asking for the update/upgrade/firmware files, but they said they don't have them. Such a shame. I wanted them to modify so i could release a custom firmware (and to have a backup in case the device crashes).

Cheers

I'm not a developer by any stretch of imagination, but I hope you or someone else is able to get a build of the firmware so you can tweak it out. This little tablet is fun to use, cheap, and works pretty well. In your guys' hands, it should become really great!

Keep up the hard work!

[wepr3]

biostem,
Just wanted to thank you for all of your research on this device, and for the info you posted both here and @ Amazon. I bought this for my daughter, and was utterly disappointed when it did not include Angry Birds. But thanks to you, I was able to download and install - she'll be so thrilled!

Cheers.

[biostem]

wepr3, on 08 December 2011 - 01:22 AM, said:

biostem,
Just wanted to thank you for all of your research on this device, and for the info you posted both here and @ Amazon. I bought this for my daughter, and was utterly disappointed when it did not include Angry Birds. But thanks to you, I was able to download and install - she'll be so thrilled!

Cheers.

I'm glad everything worked out. You may want to shut off the background layer to improve performance.

[wicknix]

After some testing i have been able to root this device. Most of this info was taken from the Cruz T10x/T301 tablet thread. All i really had to do was figure out the proper device block to mount. I have more apps to test, but root explorer works perfectly now and i've been able to delete some of the stock apps i didn't want.

First you need the Android SDK Tools and a Java JDK. Get them installed and set up.

Open command prompt on windows or a terminal on linux.
cd to the directory you installed android sdk tools too, then cd to platform-tools.
Example for windows:

cd c:\android-sdk\platform-tools

Then make sure your device is connected and recognized. Type:

adb devices

You should see this:

INGENIC108A

To root the tablet issue the following commands:

adb shell 

mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 /system

cat /system/bin/sh > /system/bin/su

chmod 4755 /system/bin/su

chmod 755 /system/bin/busybox

busybox --install -s /system/xbin/

echo "root::0:0:root:/data/local:/system/bin/sh" > /system/etc/passwd

echo "root::0:" > /system/etc/group

chmod 0666 /system/etc/passwd

chmod 0666 /system/etc/group

sync

That's it. To verify you are rooted type:

whoami

and the response should say root.
I couldn't get the actual mips su binary to work properly, so just used the above hack using sh. All it does it trick apps into thinking su is installed.

Also playing around with busybox i can confirm this is an Ingenic JZ4760B cpu running at 598mhz with roughly 184mb of ram.

Cheers

[biostem]

wicknix, on 10 December 2011 - 06:48 AM, said:

After some testing i have been able to root this device. Most of this info was taken from the Cruz T10x/T301 tablet thread. All i really had to do was figure out the proper device block to mount. I have more apps to test, but root explorer works perfectly now and i've been able to delete some of the stock apps i didn't want.

First you need the Android SDK Tools and a Java JDK. Get them installed and set up.

Open command prompt on windows or a terminal on linux.
cd to the directory you installed android sdk tools too, then cd to platform-tools.
Example for windows:

cd c:\android-sdk\platform-tools

Then make sure your device is connected and recognized. Type:

adb devices

You should see this:

INGENIC108A

To root the tablet issue the following commands:

adb shell 

mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 /system

cat /system/bin/sh > /system/bin/su

chmod 4755 /system/bin/su

chmod 755 /system/bin/busybox

busybox --install -s /system/xbin/

echo "root::0:0:root:/data/local:/system/bin/sh" > /system/etc/passwd

echo "root::0:" > /system/etc/group

chmod 0666 /system/etc/passwd

chmod 0666 /system/etc/group

sync

That's it. To verify you are rooted type:

whoami

and the response should say root.
I couldn't get the actual mips su binary to work properly, so just used the above hack using sh. All it does it trick apps into thinking su is installed.

Also playing around with busybox i can confirm this is an Ingenic JZ4760B cpu running at 598mhz with roughly 184mb of ram.

Cheers

Awesome news! Now we need to get the firmware from somewhere and get someone developing some custom firmware - maybe even see if we can overclock this puppy!

Keep up the great work!

[wicknix]

Still no luck getting my hands on the factory firmware, but i did make a small discovery. Once you root your device, use a root enabled file manager (like root explorer or ghost commander etc) and navigate to /system. Scroll down until you find the file "userdata.img". Copy that file to your SD card and transfer it to your PC. This file contains the stock applications (from /data/app). You can modify this file and remove the garbage apps like ireader, genial writing, etc and replace them with some useful apps of your choice (so long as they don't total more than 17mb). These instructions assume you use Linux (Sorry windows users).

Open a terminal and cd to the directory that userdata.img resides in. Issue these commands as root user:

mkdir /mnt/loop
mount -t ext4 -o loop userdata.img /mnt/loop

Now you have can view, edit or add/remove the files in /mnt/loop
I used Midnight Commander to delete the crap apps and copy over the new apps i wanted instead (or just use old school command line).
Once finished making changes, just unmount.

umount /mnt/loop

Double check that your permissions are still correct on the userdata.img (should be -rw-r--r--).

Copy your new userdata.img back to your SD card and toss it back in your tablet. Copy it over the original userdata.img (keep original just in case).
Now when you do a "factory reset" of the device it will reflash with your apps installed instead of the useless stock apps.

Use at your own risk. If you don't know what you're doing don't try this. It worked fine for me, but if you brick your device it's not my fault.

Cheers

[wicknix]

Another bonus. I got ad-hoc wifi working. Posting from my Elsse tethered to my phone. Will post a how-to soon.

Cheers

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