[ale] Ultra cheap tablet discussion. Are they useful or can they be made useful?

[Charles Shapiro]

I'm fond of my Rooted and re-imaged Amazon Fire.  Rooting these devices is
tricky, as Amazon actively works against you.  Best advice I can give is to
research software versions and rooting methods, then buy the right one from
Swappa.com or someplace.  Whatever you do, don't install OTA updates.

-- CHS
]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 11:19 PM Ben Coleman via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> When my last Samsung Tab A 7 died on me, Walmart had just come out with
> their Onn-branded Android tablets.  I picked up one of the 8" tablets on
> sale (they are normally $64, but were on sale for $5-10 off).  For what
> i use it for (primarily reading on the Kindle App, Google Play books,
> Packt's app, OverDrive for library books, and Olive Tree's Bible Reader.
>  Occasionally I'll watch something on Hulu or Netflix), it's fine.
> Android 9, 2G RAM, 16GB Flash 2.4Ghz and 5 Ghz Wifi, Bluetooth.  It's
> not a speed demon, but it's about the same speed as the Tab A 7 tablets
> I had been using previously, maybe a tad bit faster.
>
> With the Tab A's, I had gotten to the point where I had to carefully
> prune what apps I had installed on the tablet to keep it running
> acceptably.  So far, I haven't had to do that with this tablet.  I've
> definitely got more apps running on it than I had on the Tab A's, and it
> hasn't really slowed down.
>
> From what I can google, it's hackable/rootable, though I haven't tried yet.
>
> One very odd quirk - though the Android 9 on it is almost stock, it does
> include Walmart apps factory-installed.  When an update to the Walmart
> app became  available, running the Walmart App would detect this and
> insist that it be updated.  However, the update would always fail.  This
> lasted until the next system update for the tablet.  Recently, when the
> Walmart App and the Walmart Grocery app were combined, it started doing
> the same thing if you tried to go into the Grocery app.  I guess I'll
> have to wait until the next system update to use that app.  You'd think
> that Walmart would at least make sure that their own app would run on
> their tablet, or would at least make sure this problem didn't come up
> again, but Nooooo.
>
> On 6/27/2020 6:28 PM, Beddingfield, Allen via Ale wrote:
> > For a couple of years now, I have been seeing these really cheap ($40 to
> $50)Android tablets in Wal-Mart, dollar stores, and places that normally
> don't even sell electronics.  Most of them are some brand no one has heard
> of, or a shameless re-licensing of old school brands like RCA or Polaroid.
> I know they are going to be the cheapest of Chinese made junk, but how bad
> are they?  Would they be usable at all for basic web browsing?  I notice
> that most of them are running Android 5.0 or 6 .0.  Have any of you played
> with any of these, or investigated upgrading the OS on them?
>
>
> --
> Ben Coleman oloryn at benshome.net | For the wise man, doing right trumps
> http://oloryn.benshome.net/     | looking right.  For the fool, looking
> Amateur Radio NJ8J              | right trumps doing right.
>
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