My Eken Android Bootloop Fix

I want to keep this a little brief.  My Eken W70 was suffering from a bootloop issue after factory resetting the tablet.  This tablet had gone through a previous update to Jellybean although I suspected that the update was an unofficial one.  So, noting that if I don't fix this, I might as well toss this to the bin, I was emboldened into tinkering it in an attempt to fix it.

Random Thoughts

This edition of Random Thoughts is regarding two things.  First is Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut and the Fast Travel feature.  I had made the mistake of fast travelling from Masyaf to Damascus and wondered of a way to fast travel to Acre.  Apparently, if you look at the map, there are icons for "To Kingdom" which when you leave the map through those points, you'll be asked for the option to fast travel.  This only works after Memory 3.

Second is researching on updating the Eken W70 firmware.  The tablet isn't listed in the Eken site anymore and the firmware update files are all bunched up together in the most confusing manner in their FTP site.  As far as I can tell, the W70 and W70+ are similar tablets but the W70+ has a rear facing camera.  I did some research with the Web Archive and this link to identify the proper firmware.  The correct firmware it seems is: W70-1.5.5-1680-NO-WIN8-1.10.zip and the ftp link isn't included as Eken seems to change ftp IPs all the time.

Here are the instructions for Firmware Updating:

1. Download the firmware file
2. Unzip the RAR file to a folder.
3. Open the zipped folder and copy all content in it to an empty SD or Micro SD card.
4. Turn off your device and then insert the SD or Micro SD card into it.
5. The upgrade process will get started automatically when you turn on your device.
6. When the upgrade is finished, remove the SD or Micro SD card from your device.
7. The device will automatically restart again.

That's it!

MoveTab MAQ71DX

So, I just got another one of these OEM tablets from MyView.  It's a bit pricier than the usual OEMs, but it's a dual core tablet which made me a bit leery considering the bad experience I got from the Thomson M-6. I checked the battery rating on this one and it's the same as the Eken which was 3000 mAh.  I gave the tablet a test run and it seemed fine and had Google Play Store so there was not much to complain about.  I double checked the Thomson battery rating and it was 2000 mAh which should explain the completely horrible battery life of that one.

The MoveTab has an 8 GB internal storage partitioned with around 1 GB for installation and the rest for data storage.  It seemed that several of its preinstalled stuff can actually be uninstalled which is a nice thing.  This seems to be a pretty new brand so it may get tricky down the road when the company vanishes, but as long as you get from a reputable store, they will take care of your issues.  Other than that, no real complaints.

GPU is PowerVR SGX531 and the CPU is MTK8377 ARM Cortex A9 which is a MediaTek SoC.  So far, works well with decent wifi and good touch screen functionality.  As an additional note, the website reports it as 2500 mAh but the box I bought had said it was 3000 mAh.  Please do not settle for anything less than that.

More Tablet Details

So, looking at the Thomson M6 made me curious to see what the SoC is.  Finding the means to unearth that information lead me to look for apps that do that.  There's lots available on Google Play and on SlideMe (for the unfortunate Coby Kyros).  I read the findings and here was what I found.

Old Youtube Doesn't Work Anymore

I'll keep this brief.  Awhile back, I had issues with the Youtube android app as it always had the "An error occurred" error, making me downgrade back to 4.1.23.  Now, the old Youtube version doesn't work at all because it cannot seem to connect to the network.  So, I looked for a replacement and found TubeMate.  It works really well though beware of fake apps!  I have a new post regarding this issue, please look into that one!

Thought about the Pavizio X3...

For my mum, I thought of buying her another tablet and saw the low cost Pavizio X3 tablet.  It's this one.

Comparing it with the Eken W70 that we already own, most of the features are identical except for the 4 GB internal storage, which is really tiny.  What caught my eye though was that the processor was a "Boxchip A13 1.0 GHz" compared to the Eken's Cortex A9 1.5 GHz (WM8850), which got me digging deeper into it.

Turns out it's an Allwinner A13 SoC which contains an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU and a Mali 400 GPU.  So for a cheaper price, you get a crappier processor and less storage.  Good to know!

Eken W70 Tablet Boot Issues

Last night, the Eken tablet would get stuck in the ICS boot splash and refused to go to the actual tablet login screen.  It made me look to see how to get this thing into system recovery mode.  A little bit of Google helped, but documentation on this piece of machinery is hard to come by.  I did find it though so, here's how.

1. Make sure the tablet is off.
2. Hold down volume + button and the volume - button and then press the power button (to boot up the tablet).
3. Keep the volume buttons held down until you see the red text appear on the screen asking for confirmation.
4. Release the volume buttons and hit the power button to confirm.
5. The Android bot should appear with a revolving object.
6. The machine will automatically restart and boot to the restored settings.
7. All your apps are gone so you'll have to reconfigure everything.