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Having fun with the ZT-180 (introduction, my story thus far, and thanks!)

8199 Views 27 Replies 12 Participants Last post by  alessio2
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
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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!
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
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
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
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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.
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.
Ok pull up the menu for the emulator, it should pop up at the bottom of your screen, go under settings, in there you will find options for virtual game pad and buttons, you will also find options for placement, I select bottom + bottom. All three programs have these options
It is a real pain without multitouch, but there are a lot of console games that can be played, most rpgs, strategy, turn based games, ect can be played
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