Boyue T61/T62 / Icarus Illumina E653 review and Onyx T68 comparison

[crt]

I removed Google Play because it would not allow my T61 to go to sleep/shutdown.

I also installed the new firmware (November 2014) from the Icarus site on my T61 a few days ago.

Result: T61 goes to sleep and stays so for a few days (if need be), with almost no battery drain! I think they have performed a good tweaking.

[dnastase]

Originally Posted by Catire

Tried setting my boyue to automatically turn off after a few minutes of inactivity but that fails to kick in, anyone else run into the same problem?

I just tried on mine 1 min timeout, it works.
I have the Boyue ROM.

[bob_tm]

I also had trouble with shutdown on my T62 - it would shut down, but then start up again after just a few secs. Following crt's suggestion, I removed Google Play and (at least for the moment) I can shut it down just fine, but it may be only temporary - the T62 seems to change behavior after a while. I run the original July firmware.

I see several new firmware images on laitianfu1980 pan.baidu.com page. Seems like many of you have installed the 9/15 images and some have installed the 10/18 and 10/20 (the latter reported to cause unresponsive touch screen). There are now a number of other firmware images, but these are split into T62-B and T62-C (e.g. the 11/24 images). My Chinese is not so hot, so I've no idea what these categories mean. Anybody knows anything about this? These images are about twice the size of the original image, so they may be for new, unreleased devices.

Do we have any reports on the quality of the 9/15 and 10/18 firmwares for the T62? Are they worth upgrading to?

I also see that people have installed the Icarus firmware on the T62 (the Icarus E653 being a re-branded T61 as I understand it). Since laitianfu1980 has separate T61 and T62 images, there are probably other differences between the devices than battery and memory (or no reasonable developer would maintain different firmware trains for them). Any educated guesses as to these differences?

[dnastase]

My model number is T62C so T62-B and T62-C may refer to different model numbers.

The firmwares are worth upgrading to if:
- they fix issues
- they add features
- they don't break
So it would be helpful to have changelogs for them.

I find it kind of risky to upgrade with images from an unverified site, presented in a language I don't know.

[dnastase]

Since I'm using the Adobe Reader for the T62, the only one that:
- renders the font crisp
- renders the text nicely (vs the other builtin reader)
I need to have dictionaries work w/ it.

But I can't find any references as to how. There are hints that I need to put dictionaries in the main storage 'Dict' subdir, but what kind of dictionaries ?
Anybody else did this succesfully ?

[dnastase]

About dictionaries, my experience is:

- they have to be Stardict
- they have put in /mnt/sdcard/Dict
- they have to be put in their own individual subdirs
- the Dictionary app may or may not see some of them
- the selected dictionaries in the Dictionary app have no relevance to which dictionaries the Adobe Reader uses
- the Adobe Reader will use all the dictionaries correctly put in /mnt/sdcard/Dict

[Catire]

How is everyone's battery life? I still have 30% left after two weeks (of admitedly not using it as much this week) using set cpu with interactive govenor and max 800mhz, and greenify (paid) to sleep every single app running.

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by Catire

How is everyone's battery life? I still have 30% left after two weeks (of admitedly not using it as much this week) using set cpu with interactive govenor and max 800mhz, and greenify (paid) to sleep every single app running.

When I first tried SetCPU, I thought I must be misreading what I was seeing. The battery life was so much better! I have mine set on interactive governor but left the max at 1030 mhz (I've since lowered it to 930 mhz). I also use greenify. With seven hours of use according to the Battery app (which I think is underestimating it), I am at 75% battery. That's after maybe four or five days since my last charge. This puts my T62 in the same ballpark as my old Nook Simple Touch - and that's pretty good.

[dnastase]

I am happy with the battery life as well. Reading a couple of hours per night (eg: backlight on) and listening to ~4 hours of music per day and I have to charge only once a week.
Occasionally though the device goes through spurs of using lots of battery. They are impredictable, probably some stray process goes haywire.
But other than that, and compared with the Onyx T68, I'm pretty happy.

[dnastase]

For the knowledge base of Boyue T62:

I have tried to use 64Gb microsd. It doesn't work. Either the hardware doesn't support SDXC or the there is no exFat support. Or both.
The device can't mount the card and says card is damaged. It offers to re-format it. If you choose that it will format as a 32Gb card...

[bnpssilva]

Originally Posted by dnastase

About dictionaries, my experience is:

- they have to be Stardict
- they have put in /mnt/sdcard/Dict
- they have to be put in their own individual subdirs
- the Dictionary app may or may not see some of them
- the selected dictionaries in the Dictionary app have no relevance to which dictionaries the Adobe Reader uses
- the Adobe Reader will use all the dictionaries correctly put in /mnt/sdcard/Dict

I did everything like you said, but didn't work. The dictionaries work on Colordict though,

[dnastase]

Originally Posted by bnpssilva

I did everything like you said, but didn't work. The dictionaries work on Colordict though,

Do you have a Boyue T62 ?
They don't work in Adobe Reader ?

Maybe I'm just lucky they work for me ? This whole dictionary setup in the Boyue is very finicky ...

[Teom@n]

Are there big deferences between t61 and t62 without battery? Could I miss good things if I buy t61?

[Moikku]

Thanks to this thread I decided to order Boyue T62 insted of Onyx T68. Got my T62 5 days ago. I was most nervous about the battery issues. But they seem to be fixed in the Nov 27 build (T62C).

With Sep 23 build I got about 10 hours of usage. Now 3 days with the Nov 27 build and with one charge I have now gone down to 54% used. While WLAN has been on for 72 hours and screen for 9. This is quite excellent as I've been installing and testing different applications. There should be tons less screen changes when actually just using the device for reading. So battery usage seems to be quite excellent even without battery saving apps (Greenify/SetCPU etc..) with the latest build.

Still intresting to see how much SetCPU improves the usage time.

Also the audio quality was a pleasant surprise. It is quite nice to be able to listen spotify while reading.

Can easily recommend the device for everyone who doesn't mind that to get everything working you have to invest some extra effort initially. For me the versatility of the device far outweights all the minuses.

[hob]

Originally Posted by Teom@n

Are there big deferences between t61 and t62 without battery? Could I miss good things if I buy t61?

T62:
- 8GB of RAM (4GB more than T61)
- Audio output (headphones jack)
- 3000mAh battery (compared to 2000mAh on T61)
- They look a little bit different

everything else seems to be the same.