10DTB42 Android Tablet

Anybody using a Raspberry Pi 3 might be interested to know about this 10DTB42 Android tablet which I have just bought.

Some specifications:
10.1" LCD touch screen
CPU ARM Cortex A53 at 1.3GHz
RAM 1Gb
ROM 8Gb Android 5.1
Cameras front and back
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
GPS
USB 2 micro port
Slot for micro SD card up to 32Gb
Microphone, Headphone out

With it I bought a carrying folder with a keyboard that effectively turns it into a laptop. This came to £129 which I think very reasonable. Straight out of the box, after giving it my router’s Wi-Fi keyword, I was able to change its backdrop to a recent photo of my grandchild. My wife has an Android phone, but I am a total novice to this OS. It has iPlayer, Kindle, Skype and so on already loaded. It appears to be a effectively a Raspberry Pi 3 plus Android in tablet clothes.

No facilities for a mouse as far as I can see at this point. Pointless to muse about RISC OS on a tablet until it has Wi-Fi, I guess.

No facilities for a mouse as far as I can see at this point.

Yes – it has Bluetooth.

USB OTG adaptor? Works that way with my phone…

Thanks. Bluetooth mouse now working with it.
I discovered how to export the bookmarks as an html file from the Chrome browser in Raspbian. What I have not yet discovered is how to import them into the Chrome browser in Android.
My first impressions of Android is that whatever OS they carved it from they certainly chopped its balls off. It is nearly as bad as the old Atari ST – impossible to have your own way with it. Is there any wisdom out there about how to unthrottle Android a little bit?

What’s your problem? I mean that in the genuine sense. I’ve been using Android devices for years and have seen the best and worst of it.
First thing I can say is your Android experience on every single device ever will be unlike any other. OEMs love to fiddle and “value add” by adding shovelware. Unfortunately the “customization” tends to also dip into the settings menus so I can only give nonspecific suggestions.
Because you are clearly a power user the first thing to do is dig into settings and find the build number. Probably in some device information submenu. Tap on it seven times to enable developer options. It’ll tell you if it works.

It varies by device but there should be some more advanced options in there to get you started.

The backend of Android came from the Linux kernel. It then diverged, converged and now ??? Most Android apps are Java based to make them architecture independent. Personally I loathe Java but I’m not the CEO of a multi billion dollar company so I have to put up and shut up.
It’s totally possible to write programs that run on Android using other languages, and via the Dalvik VM JIT or as native code.

Some devices are just slow. Take my Asus TF700T for example. Uuuugggghhhhh. A bean counter decided that skimping on internal NAND quality was a good idea. By using a custom ROM, fiddling the memory management settings, IO scheduler, and CPU throttling it’s quite usable now in spite of it’s limitations.

There are some devices that don’t let you get at their guts, but most do either directly including via terminal program or remotely via adb and a USB cable.

When you can start digging in, disabling services / programs that you don’t use and doing some housework that the messy OEMs failed to do, most devices can run way better than before.

First thing I can say is your Android experience on every single device ever will be unlike any other. OEMs love to fiddle and “value add” by adding shovelware.

So a lack of consistency and a bloatware load. Nope can’t think why anyone using RO regularly would dislike those “features”

Most Android apps are Java based to make them architecture independent. Personally I loathe Java

The main reason people dislike Java is the terminally sloppy and bloating coding of some Java applets which makes there use architecture independent with regard to the abysmal performance – bung that on a processor that is designed more for low power than mega processing and you have a recipe for dog slow performance to the extent users swear the machine has frozen.

So, yes, totally believable that non-IT savvy folks think the machines a crap slow and IT-savvy folks talk about bloatware and bad coding which has non-IT savvy folks think you’re defending the hardware with techno-babble…

So a lack of consistency and a bloatware load.

It wasn’t until I got my first Samsung phone that I understood why Apple didn’t like Android. Before that, it seemed to be only marginally more than “reasonable hardware running something a little better than featurephone firmware”, with it being left to the end user to “find an app” for whatever weird thing they wanted.
And, while I’m being a Samsung fanboy (!), it wasn’t until then that I got anything that resembled a firmware update. God knows my Motorola and Sony(Ericsson) phones were simply not updated.
And, while base Android was basically the same, most everything else was different. Hell, you can’t even rely on any sort of coherent feature set for the stock email program (which is functional but a bit rubbish – still can’t do proper inline quoting like iOS could years ago).
About the only thing you could rely upon is that the phone bakers will have no qualms in pillaging your privacy with endless Facebook applets. There’s one on my Sony with a name that leads me to believe it tracks every bit of music I listen to. I wonder if it still spews information when there’s no associated FB account? Probably. And since it’s a “system” thing, you can’t even get rid of it.
Samsung has its own bloatware, but thankfully not a trace of Facebook in sight. The main complaint is Touchwiz, but – sorry – I quite like it. They’ve tried to make the UI consistent across Android versions even though Google is busy doing an Apple-Mozilla and screwing with the UI simply because “this project manager has a different idea of the perfect UI to the guy before”. They seem to fail to realise that we, the users, aren’t on a quest for perfection – we just want to be able to use the damn thing from one day to the next, one release to the next, without everything being different. Again.

Nope can’t think why anyone using RO regularly would dislike those “features”

It’s not the bloatware. It’s not even the lack of consistency. It’s the advertising. It is absolutely everywhere these days. At work, for example, I saw some of the bosses using Skype to send messages to head office. On the right third of the screen was an animation (GIF? Flash?) of a blonde massaging her tits. Well, okay, this is France, the national identity is a woman wearing a Phrygian cap and nothing over her breasts… but still, are we becoming so conditioned to pernicious advertising that we no longer notice such things? Indeed it is quite something these days that ROOL looks the same with my ad blocker off as with it on. You can’t say the same for most of the rest of the internet, and this always-there-advertising has been taken to heart with Android. Not surprising given who makes it, but still, that’s my data allowance that rubbish is eating. Companies I am not interested it, things I won’t buy, and of course Amazon trying to sell me what I just bought. Yeah…..?

which has non-IT savvy folks think you’re defending the hardware with techno-babble…

Nah, if it was techno-babble, we’d be talking about the memory shear effect of reticulating splines and how this prevents the updater daemon from firing at the specific quantum interval in restricted condition mode in order to allow smooth paradigm transitions in an amalgamation of asynchronous space. These things matter see, why d’you think your phone cost so much? ;-)

why d’you think your phone cost so much?

My phone has three handsets around the house with one sitting in the master cradle connected to the BT line.

The iPhone, currently sitting on charge close by, belongs to the NHS. I have no idea what it costs. Signal pickup was better on the Nokia brick. I can think of a feature I’d like to see on an iPhone – ability to phone from my living room like I could with the Nokia.

My Phone was free* with a plan that costs noticably more than a similar plan without the phone. It’s a Samsung Galaxy S5. Out of the meagre choices of free* phones I chose it because it’s IP67 rated for water and dust ingress. First thing I did for it just like my previous phone which died from water damage# was get it a tough case.

#Phone was not water damaged. The telco said that to avoid warranty. I stripped it, replaced the faulty battery and it works as good as new. I was also clearly the first person to disassemble it because the adhesives were factory applied.

The old “dumb” phones have better reception. They didn’t have a SoC screaming gibberish right next to their RF circuitry at frequencies high enough to interfere with said RF circuitry. I have seriously considered a few times modifying my phone to mount a car kit aerial to it.

Now, OEMs and their custom user experiences. I had my HTC through a couple of Android release cycles. They put extreme effort into making custom standard apps that were as bland as humanly possible. Not only that but the only way I could tell that the OS had been updated was to check the version in settings. They had expended so much effort to hide any advances in functionality. So strange.

I won’t be budged on my stance that Java is a terrible choice for mobile devices. It’s too heavyweight. I think it’s the Orange Pi PC2 I saw in it’s specs that it has Java acceleration which I assume is for Android. I have no idea what it does but I guess some kind of hardware support is both a positive because it makes Java run faster on that hardware and a negative because it makes Java run faster on that hardware.

Back further to the point. OOTB Android devices have a lot of extra crap running. Most of it you can find in Settings > Applications and choose to disable, after reverting any updates because the original program is stored in “ROM” or more accurately /system which is accessible for writing after rooting the device.
Most of my devices (not warrantied) I rooted and removed the apps I didn’t want from /system.
My tablet has busybox on it and various other bits and pieces so it has a form of linux userland. It also has a C toolchain and various other things installed that run behind android.

What was I going to say… Inconsistency. Google calendar. I go to input an appointment and find that the interface has changed completely. They’ve done this to me more than a few times now and I’ve made a mess of things because I had to do it in a hurry and the functionality of the app silently changed on me. Not cool, Google.

I won’t be budged on my stance that Java is a terrible choice for mobile devices. It’s too heavyweight.

+1

What was I going to say… Inconsistency. Google calendar.

Damn nuisance. Constantly causing problems with the proxy/filtering at work. They change things, it breaks and obviously it’s all our fault not the t*** at google.
If you want to start a swearing fest walk into our office and mention google hangouts – I’ll sit in the corner and listen.
Still, as with windows, it drives the hardware manufacturers to produce more capable devices which hopefully can be hacked to use a less demanding OS.

My Phone was free* with a plan that costs noticably more than a similar plan without the phone.

Mine cost €150 of which €100 is being refunded, with a plan that’s around €15 per month more than a no-phone plan. By my logic, 15 × 24 is €360, plus my additional fifty… They must be selling these things at a loss or something.

It’s a Samsung Galaxy S5.

That was my previous phone. Quite nice, but sometimes would “lose” the ability to use the network. It would connect, but no calls could be made. My usual “fix” was to pop out the battery. Quickest way to give it a kick in the ass.

Thankfully my S7 hasn’t done this, ’cos… battery baked in.

I chose it because it’s IP67 rated for water and dust ingress.

Yes, it’s great that phones are becoming better about this, I can use it in the rain (sort of, capacitive touch in rain is…interesting) without worrying about trashing the phone.

#Phone was not water damaged. The telco said that to avoid warranty.

Are you American by any chance? I’ve heard a certain notorious carrier beginning with ‘V’ likes that excuse.

Inside every openable phone should be a little strip that indicates water ingress. Pop open your S5 and take out the battery. See the contacts? See that little white sticker next to the contacts? That will either turn pink or red, or will show little red ’X’s in the presence of too much damp for correct functioning of the phone. It’s the first thing anybody should check (and the first thing you should take a photo of before letting any third party near the device) when a phone malfunctions.

The old “dumb” phones have better reception.

Most of the old dumb phones I ever had, had bigger antenna. One had a pull-out twiglet about 10cm long, the other had a lug that contained a wire coil. I think antenna now are tracks on the circuit board – probably wrapped in flesh (the hand).

They didn’t have a SoC screaming gibberish right next to their RF circuitry at frequencies high enough to interfere with said RF circuitry.

I don’t know about America (different type of network), but I’ve heard it mentioned that the weird processor/GPU speeds used are specifically chosen so that harmonics and such of those frequencies won’t interfere with the mobile communication frequencies. Can’t say any more than that, my ‘experience’ with radio and antenna stuff places things like that near enough the category of “magic” as is available today. One example would be a transponder pair on the 28.2E satellites, this specific pair of transponders use the exact same frequency, but since one is horizontally polarised and the other vertically polarised, they don’t interfere with each other. The switching of polarisation H V H V … was originally done in order that the transponders could be more tightly packed without interference, but to use two on the same?!? The second example is the WiFi antenna on the Pi3. A triangle of emptiness.

I have seriously considered a few times modifying my phone to mount a car kit aerial to it.

I think in modern phones the transmitter circuitry is tuned to the antenna that the device is fitted with, so I’m not sure if an external antenna would work correctly, or if reflected waves (ever mess with CB radio? remember the SWR meter?) would swamp the signal being broadcast.

I won’t be budged on my stance that Java is a terrible choice for mobile devices.

Java makes sense. Okay, it’s crappy and horrible, but it is a sort of bytecode representation of a program that is recompiled into an executable that suits that particular phone. Oh, wait, didn’t you know? While Android apps are distributed in a format not unlike Java (but Dalvik is not Java), the result is translated into something closer to native code when the application is installed. That’s why from around Android 5 or so, installing apps is slower. That’s also why updating the firmware has this part where every app is rebuilt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Runtime

I think it’s the Orange Pi PC2 I saw in it’s specs that it has Java acceleration which I assume is for Android.

Doubt it. ARM processors have frequently contained the Jazelle environment since the ARM926EJ-S in 2001; the first public release of Android was seven years later…

I rooted and removed the apps I didn’t want from /system.

Haven’t rooted one single device. I see it as a tool. A phone/browser/video player. That is why I haven’t made any effort whatsoever at writing apps for Android. I’m just not going to get into that arena. Life’s already passing by too quickly…

and the functionality of the app silently changed on me. Not cool, Google.

iPad Mini with iOS 7 and a working older version of Google Docs. One day, Google decides to send a message from the mothership to entirely disable the application that used to work and that I must upgrade. Note well, I didn’t update to a later Docs, they disabled the version that worked. Remotely. https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20170305
Couple this with Google’s asinine push to get the entire world to https whether it is necessary or not, with sod all user education about not using public APs that push spoof certificates. https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20160928

But, hey, we must do it because Google knows best. It’s like Theresa Flippin’ May is running the company…

Or, as you said: Not cool, Google.

Should we even mention the extremely heavy push to get world+kitten onto G+ even though as far as I can work out (from the profile that I had to create in order to comment on my own YouTube videos), G+ is a half-hearted half-assed attempt to “be like Facebook” only it utterly fails in every single way…

[looks up – oh good, this is Aldershot]

The iPhone, currently sitting on charge close by, belongs to the NHS. I have no idea what it costs. Signal pickup was better on the Nokia brick.

I should add, if my experience of the iPad Mini is anything to go by, they’re using bargain basement hardware in a premium label product. Hell, my crappy insecure IPCAM is better at locking into a WiFi signal than the iPad.
In fact… one USB WiFi dongle, one Vonets (working) and one Vonets (now dead), one SD IPCAM, one HD IPCAM, one media sharer, five Android phones (Motorola, SonyEricsson, Sony, Samsung, Samsung), one EeePC901, and finally two cheap ebook readers…

…all of them are better at WiFi than the iPad Mini.

I’d expect a premium product such as Apple offers to provide exemplary performance, or at least performance on par with other things. But no. It actually offers the worst performance. Hmmm… I guess I’m just holding it wrong…

Rick, I agree with everything you said that I am able to. Can’t comment on iThings. Very occasionally someone says “You know about these things. Can you help me with me iX?”
I just kind of freeze. I know literally nothing about them. The most recent Apple product I own is a G3 beige. That was mostly to use as a fileserver for my IIgs.

The method used for mobile device aerials varies between manufacturer and model. A popular choice for sealed phones seems to be aerial stickers on the shell with contacts on the PCB which press on them. Other methods are a wire aerial plugged ino the board, celuloid ribbon to sticker etc. On PCB doesn’t seem to happen very often probably because PCB real estate is at a premium and the aerial can be offloaded.

I’m not a device repairman. I’ve just had to fix a lot of them.

I’m Australian. The land where trying to get a warranty honoured is like diplomatic negotiations with NK.

I did not know about Jazelle. Interesting…

Sure I remember SWR meters. Mostly from back when AM CB was a thing before the move to UHF. Also for aligning satellite dishes after doing the calculations.
Many mobiles had a plug for an external aerial. Some still do. The S5 has a “test port” which can be used but it seems like a pain.

Where I live is flat. Like dead flat. No tall buildings or anything besides the grain silo. Getting a signal with anything is hard. It’s a struggle to even get one in the main street standing outside. Never mind the people living out of town. If the weather conditions are right they can make a garbled voice call. The rest of the time it’s mostly SMS only.

We use GSM here. 4G, 3G, HSDPA, whatever. Many years ago they phased out analog and replaced the infrastructure for non-urban areas with CDMA and the rest with GSM. Not so many yeas back they phased out CDMA and replaced it with GSM too. A decades long slap in the face for not living in the city. Slowly removing services and calling it progress. It’s why I carry the UHF CBs.

You know what has great WiFi? The esp8266 uC. If I’m not careful it can drown out just about everything. Useful little things.

G+ I suspect is some exec’s denial manifested. “It’ll take off. You just wait. Seriouly guys. Just another year…”

One good thing about Android is there are half decent compiler backends that can spit out Dalvik bytecode now, so people aren’t forced to use Java to write Android apps.

I’m not hating on Android exactly. I have a lot of devices so I clearly don’t hate it. It’s improved massively over the years but I still find myself wishing for PalmOS. It was nice. It was small. It’s OS design also meant that any corrupted data could require a hard reset which was unfortunate.
No matter. I’m just hoping the Android devs will realise that the stupid red circle button overlays on apps is an infuriating step backwards. A few commonly used programs were updated with them. Not only does it make the app look ugly, I kept finding myself needing to know what was behind the stupid buttons.
Anyway I’ve rambled enough.

I’m Australian. The land where trying to get a warranty honoured is like diplomatic negotiations with NK.

So threatening people with being staked out in a tree’d area infested with drop-bears doesn’t work then?

Getting a signal with anything is hard. It’s a struggle to even get one in the main street standing outside.

Slightly better here, the signal is bad indoors but half decent if I step out front and stand in the middle of the road. The bad signal means that being on-call requires the waiting mobile to be on a specific spot of the sofa side table, 6 inches sideways and no calls…

BTW. Aldershot is for rambling.

Many years ago they phased out analog and replaced the infrastructure for non-urban areas with CDMA and the rest with GSM. Not so many yeas back they phased out CDMA and replaced it with GSM too.

To be fair, CDMA was actually much better than GSM at a technical level and it made sense to roll it out (we had it here in NZ too). The big issue with it was lack of deployment worldwide; it never took off in Europe which made it difficult to roam over there and also restricted the number of available phone models.

Telecom NZ used to have a partnership with Sprint in the US in order to get more phones; Telecom didn’t really have the minimum order quantities that some of the manufacturers wanted so instead bought them “via” Sprint.

I did not know about Jazelle. Interesting…

Unfortunately, it was never really useful, partly because ARM kept it closed like a super-secret technology. Modern JVMs don’t (or only minimally) use Jazelle. I think only specific JVMs for Java ME ever put it to use – i.e. “feature phone” class.

partly because ARM kept it closed like a super-secret technology.

Ah, yes. I saw that. Didn’t make much sense to me – here’s a way to get a processor to potentially use Java sort of native but, wait, there’s a catch! You can’t use it and we won’t tell you anything about it and you aren’t even to use the instruction to switch to Jazelle without signing contracts in blood. What?

That sounds like the usual corporate boys club approach to information sharing, or perhaps they were running scared of getting sued by Sun for something – or maybe both.

Now that I have been using the tablet sporadically for a couple of weeks I have come to realize why I prefer desktop computers, with a decent GUI and a mouse. With them it is much harder to perform unwanted actions accidentally. Nothing happens until you depress a mouse button or hit a key – with no screensaver active the screen will stay the same indefinitely. No such serenity is afforded by the tablet; loose sleeves, the electrostatic field from one’s fingers, unspeakable processes started by bloatware installed without one’s personal imprimatur, all make for a dizzying hell, a wilful uncooperative machine. You are in the middle of something, say browsing a website, when suddenly the screen is obscured or totally changed – you tap the back button and nothing happens.

It seems to me that a far far better UI ought to be possible. Perhaps users with rooted machines can set things up better? I know that multiple simultaneous processes are a necessity, but it is impossible to use a machine sensibly unless all user actions have an immediate visible confirmation and process priorities are set to ensure this. If there is a delay in reaction it is human nature to repeat the signal in case it never registered; it is like driving a diesel vehicle with throttle lag – the result is kangaroo progress.

I second Gavin’s post in its entirety. I don’t use a tablet if I can possibly help it – and I hate being asked to help other people with theirs, as if knowing how to deal with my computer implied that I ought to be able to cope with their tablet.

I think things depend quite a lot on the tablet, the version of Android, and the level of effort the vendor put in to make it work (or add their own bloatware).

Jim Nagel was looking for someone to write articles for RISC OS users that are new to Android. I’m sure he’d like to hear about your experiences. :-)

you tap the back button and nothing happens.

While the UI in tablets is quite different to that of a desktop, that right there is your number one problem. The browser back button has had unpredictable and illogical behaviour since the birth of Web2.0, and sometimes it seems as if (third party?) scripting breaks it just because they can (think about it – a Back operation will probably recall from cache which means a missed chance to advertise to you).

If you are using Android, install Firefox and then U-Block Origin and possibly Ghostery (I use both but you need to dig around to get Ghostery 7.2.0.25 as that’s the last one that works reliably with mobile Firefox.
You’ll find doing that makes things infinitely nicer by slamming a lid on all the unwanted rubbish.

With them it is much harder to perform unwanted actions accidentally.

Yes, the Fat Finger Syndrome is fairly well known. It isn’t helped that some tablets and many phones now have the responsive area (and screen) go most of the way to the edges. I think we as a species will need to relearn how to interact with the devices.

Nothing happens until you depress a mouse button or hit a key

I’m sure, given the number of grey hairs taking part in this forum, that we’ve all had our own share of “the day we wish we never got up” stories. You know, minor things like formatting the wrong drive, accidentally deleting what might be your only copy of an important program, or my favourite, copying some source code onto a floppy disc only to release after the things were posted that you’d done a Move and not a Copy so… Yeah. Been there, done that.

While tablets are more accident prone (I’m quite sure you’ve never used a desktop machine while navigating shopping trolleys and small sized humans with erratic movements), one of the useful things is that as long as you don’t root them or get hit with a virus, you really only risk your personal data, and the mobility/fragility of mobile devices means you really ought to back up important stuff often. Why is this good? Because you are locked out of sensitive areas of the device, making it much harder to break the software it in a way that a “factory reset” can’t fix. You can’t say the same for RISC OS, Windows, Linux, etc, all of which could be rendered inoperable by deleting just one file from the system command line.

It seems to me that a far far better UI ought to be possible.

Given that both iOS and Android are broadly similar, I think the issue here is in making a device that can work well when the primary input is a squishy lump of flesh. It amuses me somewhat that we’ve needed to get to Android 7 before devices capable of displaying two applications at the same time, but on the other hand I never use this on my S7 because it’s not multitasking as much as just breaking the screen in two and switching from one half to the other.
No, I have no ideas of how to do it better…

Perhaps users with rooted machines can set things up better?

Unless they install a different build of Android, the only advantage of rooting is the ability to customise the hosts file to kill most of the common advert/spam domains. But in doing so, you are elevating yourself to God status which means the inbuilt protections in the OS will cease to apply. Oh, and quite often the DRM/security subsystem will detect this and simply disable itself – and devices differ on whether or not that can ever be fixed as I think the code for it runs in the ARM TrustZone so it isn’t a part of the regular OS.

If there is a delay in reaction it is human nature to repeat the signal in case it never registered;

Oddly enough, my main problem with this is not the tablet/phone but the connectivity. I’ve posted dupe messages to this forum by Send Reply twice only to find that both did something. Not just on my phone but also on the PC.
I think this is the root of a lot of issues. We’re so used to modern machines being quick and effects being instant that it can be jarring if the signal is weak, replies aren’t instant, and more and more apps are Cloud based so need to await a reply. It takes longer to start Google Docs than OvationPro, and there can be a notable pause between selecting a document and it opening even if the document is stored locally as Docs will still want to sync to ensure you’re using an up to date version of the document.

I don’t use a tablet if I can possibly help it

I do. I’ve been off work all week thanks to a sudden, unexpected, and effing painful boot of diverticulitis. The antibiotics are giving me serious insomnia and I just feel kind of useless. A short trip to the supermarket yesterday wiped me out. Can’t wait to get over this and get back to work, this sucks.
Anyway, I’m lying in bed dreading my next dose of antibiotics (go look up Ciprofloxacin) and writing this on my phone. I’ve only turned my PC on this week to set the PVR to record Dr Who. My phone does IRC, telnet, web, music, videos… There’s less and less need to turn on the PC these days. Plus, in terms of efficiency, the phone runs for quite a long time from a battery, which draws maybe 5W at 230VAC when charging, compared to the desktop machine drawing around 200W plus more for the monitor. Every hour the PC is on would charge the phone continually for a little under two days, but the phone charges faster than that (even when in use during charge) so I’d guesstimate that every hour of desktop use is a week’s power requirements for the phone. Now work out what a week of PC use works out to be. ;-)

Plus I’m myopic so watching a film on a 5" screen is really no big deal, plus with the insane resolution of the S7 and the AMOLED display, the end result is far better than my 19" TFT could manage.

À chacun son goût, as they say here…