Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

I got this from my colleague. And the best description for this device is, that it is Android iPod touch. I got it almost unused, as there is not so much use for that device on daily basis, but it is a nice piece to my collection, and it is really unusual one.



It comes with Android 8, but the manufacturer done it its best to make it as unusable for anything than music and videos, as possible. For example, there is not any store to install apps from. The device comes just with some preinstalled apps for multimedia, and a few social networks clients. And also Audible app. There is also File Manager included, but there is nothing much to do with it. The updating of provided outdated apps is being done by downloading .apks into phone and installing the updates manually. However ! The installation process is locked just to app identificators that are already installed. The system is modified in the way, that user is absolutely unable to install any new app, even by sideloading.

So, it's just a multimedia player and reader. Nothing more, nothing less. The device comes with a 1.9 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of ROM. It's nothing particularly impressive, but it's more than enough for what it's designed to do.

I do like the shape and look of the device, though. The four-inch touchscreen is quite large and reminds me of old compact phones that could fit in your pocket. It is relatively heavy. I was even surprised by that. Unfortunately, I don't have anything to measure the exact weight, and I'm sorry about that. However, surprisingly, the way it feels when you hold it in your hand is really nice, and I like that. You feel like you are holding something substantial.

However, as usual, I wanted to try breaking the rules. I really wanted to install something, and after spending a long time Googling and discovering other users who had struggled to do the same, as well as finding some people offering to prepare special APK installers for a couple of dollars (and I haven't read about any that work), I finally found a GitHub page about Project Lumos-G1. It is a tool that should be installable and able to patch the system files that disable sideloading.

I downloaded the APK file, copied it to the internal memory, and installed it. Surprisingly, the phone installed it without any warnings or errors, which was unexpected as I had tried installing tens of other .apks tHowever, as usualy, I wanted to try to break the rules. I really wanted to install something into, and after long time of googling, discovering struggling user trying the some, and also finding some others offering preparing some special apk installers, which were supposed to be installable, for a couple of dollars (and I have not read about any working one), i finally found a github page abour project Lumos-G1. It is a tool, that should be installable, and should be able to patch the system files, which are disabling the sideloadinghat ended with the message 'Program not installed'. I found the Lumos icon on the menu screen. I launched it and clicked the large "Inject Lumos" button. But it ended with an error. Having read the documentation, I found that patching only works reliably on certain versions of firmware. The next step was to find the correct ROM version to flash to the device. I could not find the exact supported sub-subversion, but I found one that was very similar. I downloaded it and tried to flash it to the device. However, the files were made for SPFlashtool V5 and I could only run V6 on my PC as V5 has some outdated dependencies. I therefore had to find a Windows computer on which to run the Windows binary of SPFlash Tool. I managed to do this and finally flashed the supported firmware onto the device. The flashing process went without problems, but the first boot of the device took about ten minutes and I was getting a little nervous that it wouldn't boot.

In the end, I had the firmware flashed and installed the Lumos again. I then clicked 'Inject Lumos', the process started and the phone restarted. After that, I had to repeat the process as described in the Lumos documentation. After another reboot and opening Lumos again, I saw the message that the device had been successfully patched. I then tried to open the file manager and tap the Mari0 game APK. I waited a little while and it worked! The game is also running. I then installed a couple of other apps and games to see what the device is capable of, and almost all of the apps run quite smoothly. The only problem is that I think the device is not cooling enough, as it gets really warm when I play games. But maybe that's understandable given that it's not really meant to be a gaming device and the manufacturer has done its best to prevent sideloading. However, even though it has a 1,500 mAh battery, after two hours of intensive use, it was only discharged to 84 percent — or at least that's what the system shows.

It's a really nice device. I could definitely see myself using it as my daily phone if it could take a SIM card and run a more recent version of Android.