[motley]

Hi guys,I have be lurking on here (and a few other forums) while I awaited the arrival of my ZT-180. I finally received it Friday and have been doing some hacking to make the device better. This is my first experience with Android and it has been great fun learning the platform a bit. Still much to learn...First of all, thanks to all the guys who have provided all the awesome information on this site! I see many of you on other forums as well. I owe a few of you a beer or two already For all the newbs, there is a lot of info on this site if you search and read. I was able to accomplish all the below without asking a single question...the info is out there you just need to find and learn.As a quick intro about myself. I am a professional .NET developer (commercial product used by several fortune 500 companies) and have experience on many platforms over the years (Commodore VIC-20/64/Pet, Apple IIE, IBM 8080 DOS, Novell, Linux, AS/400, iPhone, iPad, and of course Windows). Hence my screen name "motley".I used the following vendor on Aliexpress.com and had a pleasant experience (no other experience or connection with this vendor or Aliexpress in general, so YMMV). Wholesale android pad Product-ZT 180 PadWhat I have done so far:

• Installed 0804 ROM since I received 0708 (reports on 0809 seemed shaky)
• Downloaded Android SDK and learned how to use ADB over IP.
• Installed Superuser.apk and granted root access
• Changed the boot animation to the popular one
• Installed YouTube.apk v130 (easily watch yt vids from the browser like on my iPad/iPhone)
• Installed AndAppStore v1603 (about the same as SlideMe it seems)
• Installed misc apps using app stores, ADB, SD micro/TF, and USB 8GB thumb drive. Learned by self discover that .apk files are just zip files with a defined file structure...cool.
• Wifi - added razor blade as heat sink, soldered in an enhanced 3 inch loop antenna, did TX hack, I set my TXPOWER = 50 after trying 20 for awhile after still experiencing dropout. It is more stable now than ever before, so we'll see how it goes.
• Installed Autostarts v13. This is a must to keep all the crap from starting up at boot time.seems to be working but not yet convinced)
• Installed
• Installed Autokiller v63 (File Expert v43 and mounted Windows shares using SMB. Not sure how useful this is quite yet, but I can mount my share and view images. It won't stream video over SMB, but I can move files to the SD card and then play from there.
• Installed the enhnaced libdvm.so with JIT. Seems to be more stable now. I used the instructions from the Pandigital forum.

So far, I am having fun with the device. For $205 shipped, it was a good buy for this hobbist. Hopefully the firmware will keep getting better and it will be more stable for the average user.My next step is to start experimenting with video and the different formats I can use. Some MP4 videos I have played in Real Player have video, but no audio. In the youtube app, I have audio from both speakers. If anyone has good tips on setting up codecs etc. for this device, please point me in the right direction!Look forward to participating in the community. Thanks again for the valuable on here so far!motley

 

[vasya]

Hi, motleyNice to see another experienced and enthusiastic member of this community!It seems like you quite satisfied with this device. Thanks for useful information and positive feedback. I`m going to buy ZT-180 too.Did you try USB 3g modem to establish internet connection?How do you think, is it possible to install Linux on this device?tnx

 

[Tosko]

[quote name='vasya;38535]Hi' date=' motleyNice to see another experienced and enthusiastic member of this community!It seems like you quite satisfied with this device. Thanks for useful information and positive feedback. I`m going to buy ZT-180 too.Did you try USB 3g modem to establish internet connection?How do you think, is it possible to install Linux on this device?tnx[/QUOTE'] I wonder if the ZT-180 will be capable of running Netbook | Ubuntu is there anyone who can test this? Since I have no clue where to start

 

[rockwater]

I would not use everrising, as I had already placed an order with them once 2 weeks ago when I was told they had the tablet, after I placed the order communication went south and they told me they did not have any in stock. I went with another vendor on Aliexpress and recieved my tablet 8 days later. Also you can check out my 15 minute review posted on youtube about my tablet through my post here on slatedroid http://www.slatedroid.com/zt-180/4883-my-zt180-tablet-review.htmlPictures are worth a thousand words!

 

[motley]

Thanks. Sorry,I don't have a 3G USB device, so I can't answer this for you. I would think Linux would be possible for a skinny version to run on this device since Android's kernel is based on Linux, however I'm not sure how much work it would take for someone with expertise in this area of development. I heard some are going this direction and I might be interested if the touch screen and wifi works well. For me, I'm most interested in seeing Android getting more mature and more stable on this device. There are definitely still some issues to be worked out and many seem to be at the kernel/driver interface level.

http://www.slatedroid.com/zt-180/4883-my-zt180-tablet-review.html[/url]Pictures are worth a thousand words!

Yep, like I said YMMV with this vendor and other vendors on Alliexpress. When I purchased around the same time frame (~July 31) their vendor page on the site said it would be 10 days to process and ship even though it said "stock" as well. It took her about 7-8 days to ship and then it took 5 days to get into my hands on August 13th. There is definitely a bit of a language barrier to communication with these folks, but she did pretty well answering all my technical questions and kept me informed on the shipping etc. When the CPU fiasco was going on, she volunteered to cancel my order if I wanted to even though she didn't advertise it herself as an A8 cortex. She even posted the newest firmware and sent me a link, so i can't complain about the service I got. I sent messages almost every day to communicate and keep them honest.Nice videos...I already watched both of the ones you posted. It's cool that the emulators are working well on this device. I used to be a big fan of MAME on the PC. I'm not much of a gamer these days, but I own a couple self-hacked PSPs (pandora battery hack), a Wii and an XBox360 and like to play games with the family now and then. I might have to check out the emulators you showed and fetch some ROMs to try.Hopefully there will be enough ZT-180's out there to keep development going for awhile. I just want this to be a stable MID with decent browsing, audio, video, and bookreader capabilities etc. I will then be able to concentrate on learning to develop Android apps on this device...this is my main drive.

 

[caio]

Hello,your review is so enthusiast and rich of details that it makes me wanna to immediately buy one of this little toy But before I want to understand a couple of thing:[list type=decimal][*]first one: I would like to know how android 2.1 is stable on these devices, because reputedly seems that it's not yet mature and I would not be glad to find myself with an easy-to-crash tablet[*]second: how is the screen sensibility? I think that this one with ZT-180 is not multitouch, but how do you feel to digit with the soft keyboard, especially compared to the ipad?[*]how much time you can use it on battery and how much the tablet heat?[*]and last but not least, can you browse the web without have to zoom every page with the 10.2" screen?[/LIST]thank you

 

[rockwater]

I get about 4 hour with wifi on and heat wise I notice to be alot cooler then my 7 inch tablet. Screen sensitivity is fine for me but i have read that there have been bad batches with faulty touch screens. 50/50 with apps 50% are working on it.you will not have to do too much zooming with the larger screen

 

[rockwater]

Ive got 3 videos on youtube of my zt180 going check them out to get an idea of video, web surfing, gaming, ect on the tablet would be like YouTube - ZT180 review part 3YouTube - My ZT180 and a 15 minute reviewYouTube - Zt-180 review part 2

 

[Tosko]

YouTube - ZT180 review part 3[/url]YouTube - My ZT180 and a 15 minute reviewYouTube - Zt-180 review part 2

I appreciate your ZT-180 reviews

Part 3 is new, right? And you're a show-off with your "hole in one!" XD Joke, nice shot though

 

[stephen0205]

nice to see your using the re encoded one

 

[caio]

Ive got 3 videos on youtube of my zt180 going check them out to get an idea of video, web surfing, gaming, ect on the tablet would be likeYouTube - ZT180 review part 3YouTube - My ZT180 and a 15 minute reviewYouTube - Zt-180 review part 2

I watched your video and I think you've done a very useful work for a lot of people out there.It seems that the system is quite responsive, but I see that the screen doesn't automatically rotate when you're browsing, is it a bug? when you're using chrome the page scrolling seems to be a little heavy in your video, like if the page doesn't scroll in a fluent way. The video streaming seems to be good, as the gaming with the emulator, what kind of video did you test (speaking of coded and resolution)?

 

[rockwater]

I had full movies of Road trip, Cop Out and The Loser at 720 encoded with xvid, I played family guy encoded with divx, Some wmv do not work for some reason or another. What I mean by 50% of apps do not work, are apps you install. I have over 3000+ android apps and about 50% will not play right no the device or not load at all. 90% of the ones I want will work though like aldiko, nesoid, snesoid, gensoid. The 0804 firmware with some apps would sometimes stop autorotation that is what happened in the web browsing video. I sinced upgraded to firmware 0818 have not done enough testing but so far autorotation has not malfunctioned. Scrolling in the web browser was very smooth and for the most part there is no need to zoom due to the 10.2 screen. As I have mentioned time and time again for 200bucks or less we get what we pay for with this device. I have played around with the Ipad and this does not hold a candle to it but then again the base model Ipad is 500 bucks. As the firmware gets worked over and improved so in turn will the device. Ive installed over 200 epub ebooks, and have over 100 console roms on the sd card in the device. Oh and did I mention unlike the 7" devices you can actually leave the sd card in this tablet when powering off or on, which is very convient. A lot of the 3d android games are not working on the device and I do not know if it is OS related or hardware related, only time will tell

 

[ayman07]

could you link me to youtube v1.3?

 

[motley]

could you link me to youtube v1.3?

Here you go...this where I got it. Some other apps in there as well.app1.zip

 

[caio]

thanks to all, these informations are very useful.Rockwater, where did you buy your model, on aliexp?If I search there I can find a lot of vendors of ZT-180, but can I be sure that all are identical?And about the firmware upgrades, motley told that he received a link where to download it, but it seems to me that this solution is a little bit too seller-dependent, don't you think?Can us be sure that when a firmware upgrade is released we can just flash it on this device without to be worry of a bad flash?

 

[rockwater]

I usually hate posting links to any seller I do not want any to think I am affiliated with the sellers of any of these tablets. I took a risk on a seller on aliexpress who had over 190 ratings and was at 90.5% and got lucking to get a decent seller and get a fully funnctional tablet because from what I have read many buyers are getting duds. Ive reflashed twice so far, 0804, a repack of 0804 with Chinese crap removed and then 0818. Both worked fine, the repack of 0804 seemed to run slightly faster then 0804. I can tell you that it cost me 213 bucks which included shipping. The seller is Wholesale-hot 10.2 inch mini laptop with Android 2.1 OS Also I noticed they dropped the price considerably, it is now 193 bucks including shipping, damn them. I cannot guarantee this seller or any seller nor would I back any of them, to me it is always buyer beware.

 

[ayman07]

Here you go...this where I got it. Some other apps in there as well.app1.zip

I appreciate it. Youtube works great!

 

[HerbZMan]

[quote name='rockwater;40459]I had full movies of Road trip' date=' Cop Out and The Loser at 720 encoded with xvid, I played family guy encoded with divx, Some wmv do not work for some reason or another. What I mean by 50% of apps do not work, are apps you install. I have over 3000+ android apps and about 50% will not play right no the device or not load at all. 90% of the ones I want will work though like aldiko, nesoid, snesoid, gensoid. The 0804 firmware with some apps would sometimes stop autorotation that is what happened in the web browsing video. I sinced upgraded to firmware 0818 have not done enough testing but so far autorotation has not malfunctioned. Scrolling in the web browser was very smooth and for the most part there is no need to zoom due to the 10.2 screen. As I have mentioned time and time again for 200bucks or less we get what we pay for with this device. I have played around with the Ipad and this does not hold a candle to it but then again the base model Ipad is 500 bucks. As the firmware gets worked over and improved so in turn will the device. Ive installed over 200 epub ebooks, and have over 100 console roms on the sd card in the device. Oh and did I mention unlike the 7" devices you can actually leave the sd card in this tablet when powering off or on, which is very convient. A lot of the 3d android games are not working on the device and I do not know if it is OS related or hardware related, only time will tell[/QUOTE'] Can't get those emulators to work, first off i've never used emulators before. About gensoid, I installed the apk, downloaded the roms, placed them on my sd card. Gesoid says load rom, navigate to saved folder on sd card where roms are located, then it starts for a few seconds, and bang i'm back at the desktop.Roms are downloaded in zip files, do I have to unzip them? And what type of file is a rom? Because when I do unzip I see .bin and .smd.Maybe my version of gensoid is the issue , what version are you using?

 

[rockwater]

Any version of gensoid or nesoid worked, SNesoid however I needed the latest version. Also they will not played zipped. Genesis games are .smd, Nintendo are .nes and Snes are .smc extensions. These are the only extensions that will work with these particular emulators.

 

[HerbZMan]

[quote name='rockwater;42118]Any version of gensoid or nesoid worked' date=' SNesoid however I needed the latest version. Also they will not played zipped. Genesis games are .smd, Nintendo are .nes and Snes are .smc extensions. These are the only extensions that will work with these particular emulators.[/QUOTE'] Thanks Rock,I used some newer versions of th emulators, and they load the roms great now. Only 1 problem with geonoid and nesoid, the dpad, start and select buttons show on the screen, but the action buttons do not show (e.g. A,

, any ideas.Thanks HerbZ