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Old 12-27-2015, 06:36 AM   #344
Nazo
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Join Date: Dec 2015
Device: Boyue T62+
So I just picked up the Boyue T62+ after reading about what I could do with it. I've been trying to read over all of this stuff, but there are... a lot of posts in no particular order obviously. Anyway, it's rooted and Google Play is on there. In fact, I found an Xposed module that fixed Google Play's most significant problem I think. (Have it report the DPI as a standard number like 240 to Google Play and all those incompatible apps that shouldn't be will install. No more market helper mess...) Anyway, I'm sorry, but I have a bunch of questions I haven't yet been able to find the answer to. Some might be in here and I'm just missing them when searching and trying to manually read over a ton of posts and some may show up in Google for someone with better search skills than myself, but right now I just don't have answers.

1. Anyway, the battery life is definitely an issue. I expected this to be worse than, say, my old Nook Simple Touch, but it's definitely going down a lot faster than it should be. I've already frozen and even removed a few system apps and greenified everything that shouldn't be active all the time (I really want to keep a few things going like the Chronus widget showing time, battery percentage, and weather conveniently there on the home screen for instance, but overall I've greenified the grand majority of user apps and several system apps even.) Oh, and I don't install crap like, for instance, the Facebook app at all. *Shivers* Still, screen off battery life is worse than, say, my Nexus 7 tablet which could possibly go nearly twice as long on a full charge. Screen on obviously isn't much worse, but it does still take a bit of power with all those updates. So anyway, I guess my biggest concern of all is to try to get that battery life higher. One thing I'm wondering about is should I be considering installing a different ROM? It's a bit of a pain to set everything back up again, but someone said at least one of the others has a better battery life? I have TitaniumBackup anyway, so getting things back up and running my way isn't too bad really.

2. Is it possible to get it more responsive? I feel like the main thing keeping this thing so unresponsive is the way it so frequently does a full screen update -- like it's essentially waiting on the screen before it will continue. On the Nook Simple Touch I came from there were some modifications people attempted to increase overall screen responsiveness by doing fewer full updates or something like that. After all, this device has a proper refresh button that you can easily press any time. Not something that could be said about that Nook Simple Touch. (I had a program for this, but when my screen started ghosting I could tap that thing ten times and it wouldn't help.) It really doesn't seem like it's the device itself that is causing this sluggishness (though I am aware that the CPU isn't exactly blazing, it's definitely a lot more powerful than that Nook Simple Touch, yet the Nook Simple Touch definitely was far far more responsive in the interface.) I've noticed it's definitely waiting for screen updates when it feels the most sluggish though.

3. One huge issue is the way a lot of apps end up with invisible text. I presume they're using some horrible color choice that is all of one color or another (or some combination thereof) that essentially translates to white, but either way I end up with white on white text in a lot of things. This just isn't ok at all... If I were on CyanogenMod I'd just look for a better theme, but I guess there are no themes here? Is there anything that can be done about this or is it just not really fixable due to how the system is handling the conversion from internally everything thinking it's on a color screen?

4. Another thing driving me a bit batty though is the limited app installation space. I don't know if it's specifically CyanogenMod or if they just aren't up to stuff with modern Android settings, but I'm used to apps just essentially sharing the same internal storage. So internal storage has something like five gigabytes free and yet apps are critically low with barely enough to even install stuff. I've moved as much as I could to the "sd card" (aka internal storage) but most apps won't let me sadly. I guess at the very least is there any way to move more to the internal storage? I've never really looked into this very much since CyanogenMod does that shared storage and I only have issues with apps if I install really huge games on my other devices (and even then it's not bad except for the fact that everyone has decided to stop doing SD card slots so storage of stuff like music can really hurt.) Maybe something that can force more apps to move? I'm aware that this can break stuff like widgets and autostarts (boo hoo) or whatever, but I'm wanting to move stuff that shouldn't be doing any of that anyway. I may finally have all the most important stuff installed after a lot of going through and moving everything I could, but if I ever need anything else then I'm stuck.

5. I'm sure there are no custom ROMs available at this time for these devices (maybe ever? I know Chinese devices like these tend to be a dime a dozen and not even worth the effort normally) but are there any custom recoveries at least? I wouldn't expect something as nice as TWRP, but even ClockworkMod as much as I hate it is better than nothing.

6. Any accessories for this thing? I need another screen protector (matte finish if at all possible) as the one that came with it managed to get dust and somehow a tiny piece of a hair under it which drives me absolutely insane (bit of an OCD thing.) I've been trying to compare the Nook Simple Touch stuff and they're really close, but I think this one is ever so slightly smaller (perhaps by as little as a millimeter or two.) Something to protect it like a really simple minimal case would be nice too. I'm always paranoid about screens breaking, but I'm guessing this isn't the toughest screen in the world as there's no way they use stuff like, for example, Gorilla Glass.

7. Is there any way to disable the automatic USB mount when connected to PC or switch to the official standard MTP mode that Google switched to a long time ago for a number of good reasons so it doesn't dismount and cause problems if I plug it into my PC? I really don't need that at all and it seems kind of unreliable anyway. I use a SSH server most of the time, but for really big stuff I could just directly use the memory card or something really.

Anyway, sorry for all the questions, but I'm trying to switch over completely to this thing and basically just stop using my tablet as, to be perfectly honest, I'm mostly using my tablet for reading and ultimately this should be far better for reading. (I just wanted to be able to do some basic extras on it like check the weather in a pinch, look in Google Keep for important notes, and I've thought about stuff like having a chat tool open on it while in games since the screen can stay on with minimal effect on the battery life.) Ironically the Nook Simple Touch was better as far as battery life and general responsiveness goes but this one has a far far nicer and clearer screen and far far more apps actually can work on it.


BTW, sort of an aside, but I've been thinking about the way it doesn't have a built in speaker. My first thought was to see if it might theoretically be possible to mod in something like one of those little phone speakers. I guess they actually need to be driven from a much stronger OPAMP than this thing uses though (though I can't imagine how or why. Maybe they have really high impedance? I didn't think to try to measure that, but I can't really imagine a non-audiophile mobile device preferring a higher voltage instead of current given the choice.) I've been wondering about looking for some really tiny speaker that is designed for passively running from headphone jacks. Basically little more than an actual headphone speaker. Mostly I thought it would be nice to have music while reading without a cord in the way, but also it would be nice to have notification sounds and such perhaps (and a working alarm wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.) Has anyone ever messed around with anything like this? I guess there's no room inside the case for anything larger than a really small phone speaker, but ideally something really tiny would be best if it's external. Definitely not one of those huge battery powered behemoths.

I've also been wondering about the battery itself. How good is it really? I've almost been considering something such as an external battery mod here versus what is likely a cheap generic. (I didn't want to really pull it out, but on the surface at a glance it appears to be pretty generic anyway.) I don't know if it uses 4.2 or 4.35V yet, but I have a Panasonic NCR18650 that probably gets at least 2800mAh from a standard 3.0 to 4.2V range -- probably more. (These are designed to be able to go down to 2.5V instead, but few things can really use that anyway, so when I say 2800 I mean that these are 3400mAh batteries made for that. It could be as much as 3200mAh or so really though by the 3.0V point. It's hard to tell and I don't have a tester or the patience to set up a manual test.)
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