[MapleLeaf Tablets]

so, i'm buying either one of these Epad zt180 units or a Telechip TCC8902 720-800mhz, 256ram/4GB Droid 2.1 update1 unit (some call it FE7002, some call it Opad A1)I'm not looking for a hack device i can rip apart, this is a one time purchase and make due type of thing for me.If 10", it will be the somewhat brandless epad zenithink zt180 (checking if it has the wifi heatsink)and I already described the Telechip (its one with full usb and hdmi, but no g-sensor.What I'm trying to decide is ---- after all the "It wasn't Cortex" and "It's not an ipad" type commentsHOW FUNCTIONAL IS THIS?I mean, if you flash the ROM to what's newest.... IS THIS A WORKING INTERNET BROWSER, MSN CHATTER, EMAIL WRITER, AVI and FLV MOVIE VIEWER (FLV both online or offline), WITH ANDROID MARKET ACCESS AND WORKING G-SENSOR AND WORKING FULL USB PORT (that is will read a Memory Stick) , WORKING SD SLOT, WITH AN AS SPECIFIED LONG LASTING BATTERY?--> essentially, will i only be getting a hacking machine that you fight to make work..... as opposed to the Telechip that "Should" do as it is described when turned on ?Tried to be as clear as I could (haha)thanks

 

[thefunkygibbon]

i too am hoping of some user experiences with this tablet.

 

[maric]

I've had my pad a couple of weeks apart for the instability of the firmware its not too bad. Battery life is about 4 hours or so with Wifi. Wifi connects OK around my house but recently it seems to forget to try reconnect the wifi when I boot it up seems to have started doing that since the 0804 firmware. I can't get seem to find a video player that plays all the different codecs that I have on my movies in but the ones that do play are good. The music player is functional and the pad itself is fairly zippy. Browsing is the web is fine, I am running acv and can view comics with no problems.The firmware seems to be the thing that is causing most of the problems and all the bloatware that keeps loading up like QQ etc. So when the firmware gets stable this should be a fairly decent tablet.If there is anything specific you need to know ask and I or someone else will probably answer.

 

[thefunkygibbon]

well i'm coming from having briefly used a ipad (very brief) currently i have a htc desire and i used to have a htc dream (g1) I'm not deluded, i know i'm not going to get the same sort of speeds as any of those devices (well maybe the G1) cant think of any specific questions but if i give you my wants/concerns then maybe you or someone could put my mind at ease.my main use will be web browsing, ebook/comic (acv) and watching tv shows/films whilst on the train to london every day.my main concerns are battery life in hours and how long it'll last til it actually doesnt keep its charge (user replaceable battery?), general crap quality screen, sluggish scrolling in apps such as web browser. music i'm fine with using my phonei hate having to chose between random (crappy) chinese devices as i've been stung before with buying stuff on the cheap from china and they end up either not fit for purpose or not working in general. the fact there are a few different models out there and i cannot seem to find a decent comparison between them all.7" i dont think will provide much improvement in size over my desire to be honest so i think a 10" would be better although if there was a 7" which was much better/faster than this zt-180 10" then i would consider it.

 

[thefunkygibbon]

Also, i read that it doesnt have google market on it, is it possible to install that as a apk? do you have to use slideIT or manually install apk's yourself to get apps on it? dont mind using appbrain but i think that relies on google market anyway

 

[maric]

web browsing is dependant on your wifi connections but is reasonable enough to not get too frustrated except when the device gets its knickers in a twist (firmware related), been coach surfing for a few days now without major issues. Reading comics etc shouldn't be a problem a capactive screen would make things much easier in terms of pinch zooming etc but once you get the settings correct on acv it seemed pretty decent for me. I am re-reading all the Naruto Manga series from the beginning at the moment so hasn't been too bad. I did have Aldiki installed and imported some books but upgrading the firmware removed my apps and I haven't re-installed it yet so can't give you a honest opinion on how well general reading will be. The device has lasted about 4 hours for me that is with wifi on, so on the train I am assuming you will turn it off and your would get much better battery life, and the battery isn't removable. I don't know how good the batteries long term life is like only had it a few weeks I haven't really used the device for video's yet apart from checking they are working, my son did watch some yu gi oh movie on youtube the other night and he didn't complain. Someone else mentioned watching videos for 4 hours so that's long enough to watch a movie or two I guess before a recharge required. Also I think on battery life there is a certain element of luck different people seem to get different charge levels.With the chinese knock offs you can't really expect the quality of say something like the iPad, if you are looking for that kind of reliability or quality I would probably wait for some of the tablets due to be released by the likes of Samsung, LG, etc

 

[maric]

[quote name='thefunkygibbon;33525]Also' date=' i read that it doesnt have google market on it, is it possible to install that as a apk? do you have to use slideIT or manually install apk's yourself to get apps on it? dont mind using appbrain but i think that relies on google market anyway[/QUOTE'] SlideMe works and you can install from your SD card or USB key if you can find the apk's somewhere, someone will hack a new firmware with google market at some point, I think you can push it onto the device using ADB if you know what you are doing I don't so can't give much advice on that

 

[jtbnet]

I've had the Orphan M16 for a couple weeks now... it's from the ZT180-M16-A10-ZenPad4-A105 family all seem to be same machine with Zenithink ZT-180(a) processor (Visually verified) which is an ARM11 running at 1GHz. I'm pretty old school as having started developing hardware in the 70's so of course I opened it up to see the design and construction quality, which turned out to be surprisingly good for the price level... very simplistic design, well done... the 2 holes in the bottom are access for insertion of something about the diameter of a large size paper clip which push spring loaded locking bars around the edges of the screen so makes opening and closing pretty safe and easy...The design and packaging is well thought out and pretty basic... the machine inserted parts look well done... the hand soldered connections wouldn't have passed my inspection in the early days, but nothing was completely disconnected... a few colder solder joints wouldn't have been hurt by quick touchup...There's no problem if you don't have the heat sink on the WIFI as it's a trivail add... wifi is basically a usb wifi dongle, shell-less, hard wired to internal usb port, and stuck down with double sided non conductive rubber tape so adding a stickon heat sink(mine had it) and even an antenna extension is trivial for a careful beginner... The TXPower hack is a big win heat and signal wise but more on that later...Now in the Mid 80's I moved over to Unix OS development/software and here we need some basic cleanup... but again nothing that's not pretty straightforward and will get fixed by many in the near future I'm sure...The Zenithink 0804 software update is better than what was shipped initially on most of these tablets... but it's still a very basic and an over bloated generic build it seems... still a few Chinese APPs built in the English delivery... No Google Market shipped/installed but loading apps from slideme or alternate market places works adaquately... also if you have an android phone grabbing apps. from market and copy the apk's to sdcard allows installing easily in the tablet... Rooting is easy and I'd strongly reccommend for anyone really interested in customizing their install... I mentioned the TXPower 'hack' which really helps as the WIFI is over pushed by a lot on TX power which produces considerable useless heat, wasted battery life, and signal distortion which limits range... the hack is a config file edit (requires root) that lowers to the TXPower setting from 100% to 20% and makes a huge win for really a one line edit...Another useful hack I've used is to replace the generic build libdvm with the Samsung ARM11 Optimised build (found in these forums) which hangs considerably less as handles errors more gracefully and performs ~25% better in many benchmarks...There are a long list of APPS that likley most would prefer to remove as pretty useless... This requires Root as they (lazy?) installed ALL APPS in /system/app... on that note the Filesystem layout is really awfully basic compared to most Andorid devices... For example...Typical layout for Android Phone=====================================================================dev: size erasesize namemtd0: 00040000 00020000 "misc"mtd1: 00500000 00020000 "recovery"mtd2: 00280000 00020000 "boot"mtd3: 04380000 00020000 "system"mtd4: 04380000 00020000 "cache"mtd5: 04ac0000 00020000 "userdata"Layout for ZT180-M16-A10-ZenPad4-A105=====================================================================# cat /proc//mtdcat /proc//mtddev: size erasesize namemtd0: 10000000 00080000 "system" mtd1: 18000000 00080000 "userdata" mtd2: 06400000 00080000 "cache" mtd3: 4fc00000 00080000 "Local-disk" So no seperate boot or recovery partitions in the VERY basic generic build and packaging... No USB driver for ADB connect availble it seems... so need to use 'adb Tablet-IPADDR:5555 connect' format to access over the network instead... After rooting I'd suggest some pretty basic APK installs... - xscope browser (far more functional built on latest webkit lib) - launcherpro home (smoother and less cpu hog) - root explorer (root enabled file browser, built in remount for rw, built in txt edit for config files) - Autokiller (task manager, with memory mgmt. presets) Normally once you get a cleaned up and tuned ROM for these I would Not reccommend task managers like Autokiller, but in the current state, this build is Really rough... boots up starting tons of useless, and sometimes broken apps, doesn't have reasonable memory mgmt tuning applied, so for now I'd reccommend using Autokiller, and setting presets to 'Strict' to force Android to cleanup Idle useless apps ASAP leaving memory for what you really want to do... All I have time for now as I have a real job... but hopefully you can see why I give this early tablet a C+ overall... would be a B+ if not for all the work still required with the software... but that may change in the Very near future from some already ongoing efforts including folks on this forum...

 

[thefunkygibbon]

fantastic and informative post there jtbnet and thanks maric also.it is rather tempting, and although i'm pretty comfortable with rooting and using the CLI on android based systems i'm not at a level as to cook my own roms.if we're at the mercy of a small chinese company actually pulling their thumbs out to create a decent working rom then that worries me. I'd like to think that fans of the unit will create their own much better roms a'la Cyanogen but i fear that that is unlikely given the popularity of these sort of tablets its limited to a small number of people most of which who probably wouldnt have enough knowledge to build a working android rom for it.

 

[thefunkygibbon]

also, would i be able to plug a usb bluetooth adapter into it? I have some BT headphones and would prefer to use them but it looks like the unit doesnt have BT onboard weirdly.also also, wheres the best (reputable) place to buy one? i've seen some for around ?150 or on ebay for about ?180 but obviously would like to pay less.cheers

 

[maric]

Hey JT any chance you could give me a quick run down on how to get root explorer access, I did manage to follow the instructions to change my boot animation is it similar to that?

 

[maric]

ok downloading su and superuser again and following the instructions again solved it

my pad is much cleaner now

 

[sgtgreasy]

this things a turd ...I WILL NEVER BUY A NO NAME CHINA BRAND AGAIN.!~

 

[jtbnet]

this things a turd ...I WILL NEVER BUY A NO NAME CHINA BRAND AGAIN.!~

Where did you buy? What was wrong with it when it arrived?? Maybe we can help as some of us have resolved basic problems post-delivery and still been happy with the purchase...

 

[Laharl]

Maby someone could start up some video tutorials on youtube for root and other things on the tablet?

 

[motley]

this things a turd ...I WILL NEVER BUY A NO NAME CHINA BRAND AGAIN.!~

Please let us know where you got it from and specifically what issues you are having. These kinds of posts are useless without details.

 

[thefunkygibbon]

Please let us know where you got it from and specifically what issues you are having. These kinds of posts are useless without details.

this guy keeps piping up with the same kind of comment about this tablet. never has he mentioned what his beef is:rolleyes:

 

[rpmccormick]

I have been doing a ton of work on this thing, and I have the same beef!For $200, it works for me, but I open it up and re-solder and make my own firmware. If that does not sound like your cup of tea, I suggest getting an Augden 7" which was reliable enough for K-Mart to sell, or an Apple iPad. The only other option is waiting less the 6 months when there will probably be a ton of these from real companies, or getting something like this and accepting it for what it is... cheap junk that barely works, but can do the job decently as long as you are willing to become a modder.

 

[sgtgreasy]

lets see..where do i begin...the touch screen not responsive...u have to slam your finger to get it to function crap.....xp doesnt know what the fuck it is....video is buggy and laggy...the whole thing is quite buggy....its $200 frisbee....what a mistake ..you guys on here seem to be quite happy with it..either your blown smoke up your own ass or u work for china ...either way u guys are full of it...my eken is better than this turd...its slower but actually works? the thought....

 

[motley]

Thanks, this is what we wanted. Who was the vendor and what firmware are you on?