-
After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.
Tablet Update
- By Hadron
- Ask a question
- 5 Replies
As others have said, using a newer version of Android isn't likely in itself to speed up a slow device. Perhaps it might help if the manufacturer's software is very poorly optimised, but otherwise probably not.
I'd be surprised if there are a lot of apps that require Android 9 or later. There are other reasons why apps might not show up, i.e. why they are not flagged as compatible with your particular device, and if that's the case then updating Android won't change anything. If you give me some examples I can test by seeing whether they show on my devices (I have both Android 10 and Android 5 devices on my desk now
).What do you mean by "downloads are not valid"? I've not tried downloading anything but there seem to be links present.
Forget about version 17. The fact that Lineage 17 exists is irrelevant unless someone has built it for your device. This is the first thing you must understand: on any mobile device (including Apple ones) the OS must be built for the specific hardware. So you can only install software that has been built for your model of tablet: if you tried to install software built for a different device the best case is that the tools would not let you install it, because if it did install it would not work and in the worst case could render it impossible to install something that would. Official software tools will usually protect against this, but the tools used for installing custom software won't (because by definition you are installing software that hasn't been signed by the manufacturer), so it is very important to understand this before starting.
The process in outline:
* Most android devices come "locked" so that you cannot install unofficial system software (also true for iDevices). There are exceptions, some budget Chinese devices don't bother, but most do. This is partly control-freakery, partly to stop customers who don't know what they are doing messing things up and then blaming the manufacturer, or making support calls after they have changed the software and so the manufacturer has no idea what they have done.
* The commonest way to install custom software is to first install a "custom recovery". TWRP is the best-known of these. "Recovery" is a software module independent of the Android software which all android devices have. It is used to install official updates and can be used to fix simple problems, e.g. if the device won't boot because of corrupted data you can do a factory reset from recovery, which erases all data off the device (but does not change the system software in any way - a common misconception is that a "factory reset" would restore the original system software, but this is just not true). The stock (official) recovery will only install software digitially signed by the original manufacturer, so in order to install a custom ROM the recovery module is replaced by a modified version (custom recovery). The custom recovery can install unsigned software, and also do things the stock recovery can't such as a full backup of the current ROM, currently installed apps and their data (known as a "nandroid" backup since the system storage is technically NAND flash RAM).
Like the custom ROM (custom operating system and user interface software) the recovery must also be built for the particular model: installing a recovery built for a different device is very likely to mess things up badly (to the extent that the device won't boot). Actually using an incorrect recovery (after installing it), if it does work at all, is even more likely to do so (especially using it to install other software).
* The instructions for installing TWRP linked from that page seemed to link to a page of YouTube videos. At this point I must disclose that I have no patience with video instructions (much more time-consuming and less useful than a simple set of written instructions, and far less likely to be updated) and so I've not looked at any of these. So I can't tell you whether any of them are any good, whether they are for your specific device or just generic stuff, whether they are out of date (e.g. if they suggest using some "one click root app" they are out of date, as those things haven't worked since Android 6). I also don't know your device so can't tell you what to do there.
The common procedure these days is to "unlock the bootloader" (if possible), which allows you to use a program on a computer called "fastboot" to flash an image of the TWRP recovery over the stock recovery module. I hope that one of those videos is for your device and tells you how to do this. It often involves finding the "developer options" menu in the settings - which usually appears if you find the "build number" in the software information and tap on it repeatedly until it tells you you are a developer (Google think this is cute...) - enabling unlocking in via developer options and then using a fastboot command to unlock. Once unlocked you can then use fastboot to flash the recovery partition with your TWRP image. That sounds complex, but it's relatively straightforward and easier than playing cat and mouse with Apple, who go to great lengths to stop anything like this being possible at all.
* Once you have a TWRP for your device you can follow the instructions on that page to install the ROM. You need the ROM (not source code) in a zip file for this. The instructions look correct to me (I don't know about any quirks of this device, but as a general procedure they look fine).
The remaining puzzle is the ROM itself: the instructions and the link say "lineage 16" but when you follow the link the code is all "pixel experience". I have to admit this doesn't fill me with confidence in the author of this page. Nor does the fact that the ROM links come with multiple versions: "arm" and "arm64" presumably refer to 32-bit and 64-bit builds, and "aonly" and "ab" refer to whether the device has a single system partition ("aonly") or two ("ab" - recent devices from Google and some others have dual system partitions, referred to as "a" and "b"). The problem is that only one of these can be correct for your device, so linking to a page with all 4 and not indicating which also does not fill me with confidence. I would guess you want arm64 aonly, since the cores of that SoC are 64 bit and it's unlikely that a generic Chinese device is using the a-b partition scheme (though Google are going to make it mandatory in future, relatively few manufacturers have adopted it yet). But it's only a guess.
If you do this, the most important thing is to find a TWRP that is built for your model - without that nothing else is possible.
The second most important thing is to take a nandroid before attempting to install the ROM. And that should be stored on a removable SD card or external storage, not internal storage of the device (because you are going to do a factory reset during the install which would erase a backup that was on the internal storage!). If the new ROM doesn't work, restoring the nandroid using TWRP will get your old one back. I would always take a nandroid before performing any modifications to the ROM.
But as I said at the start, it's not certain that this will fix the problems you describe. It really depends on whether they are due to the current ROM or the device itself.
Smart Device Info - Hardware & Software analysis
- By Unforgiven
- Apps & Games
- 1 Replies
Create the Smart Device Info channel and added this thread to it. Good luck!! 
