smartq v7

Lately I have been preoccupied with one of my geeky obsessions. About a year and a half ago, I got myself a Smartq v7 to aid me in my homework. It sounds like an excuse to get myself a new toy :) but it is mostly true. I needed a device to carry my ebooks, pdfs and scans with me as reference material. I was sleeping very little then and in order to meet all my deadlines, I was doing a lot of my homework in 24 hour fast food restaurants and cafes.

At that time, the only ebook readers available were thing like kindle which only displayed stuff in black and white. I needed things that also displayed color because of the artbooks etc. But I also needed it to be reasonably priced and didn't want it too big so a windows tablet was out of the question. There was no iPad then too and I would not have gotten it anyway as apple products are too restrictive for my liking.

I chanced upon a category of products called MID. And there was this product called the Smartq v7 which booted in 3 different OS, android, linux and windows ce. After some consideration I decided to spend some of my government sponsorship money on it.

Man, was it a learning experience. I had never used any of those operating systems then and the v7 used the chinese language versions of the OS. Now, my chinese language skills aren't bad but navigating chinese OSs was still a challenge. Still I managed to get it to a point where I was able to get it to do what I got it for which was cool.

Still, in the end I knew I was not using the gadget to its fullest potential. This device says that it is capable of playing HD video and it even has a HDMI port for playback to TV. The gadget's software was really buggy in the beginning which was it's major flaw. I believe that this is one of the biggest things holding back chinese gadget makers right now. Remember, this was before the iPad and the major wave of smart phones. The specs on this thing is nice and even now, none of the Western gadget makers (at least to my knowledge) have come close to offering the myriad of possibilities the Asian companies, in particular the Chinese ones, have been offering.

Anyway, after some time, I found that I did not need the ebook reading capabilities of the as urgently as before and my more pc based homework kept me at my desk at home or in school most of the time so the device took a well deserved rest.

Lately, while playing with my colleague's samsung galaxy tab, I got the urge to pay my old friend a visit. And I discovered that the OSs in the v7 have updated versions available including android 2.1. Previously the device used an older android version which never worked that well for me and I was mostly using unbutu to read stuff and surf the net.

To get android 2.1 on the v7 is by no means something for the faint hearted. It requires the flashing of the device's firmware and the reinstallation of the 3 operating systems in a very specific way. Let's just say it took me several days to finally get all 3 operating systems running properly on my v7. I started messing with it on Sunday and only accomplished it last night. So yes, it takes a certain amount of patience and the willingness to troubleshoot. The results are worth it though. :)

My v7 is awesome now. Previously, the device was always a little slow and unstable but it is a lot more stable and responsive. I love using android on this device and reading comics and books on it is a real treat now.

For those who may have problems with the firmware, here is what I found out while messing with my v7. Firstly, you must install in the order described in the Unofficial SmartQ MID Board. I'll update with links later when I'm off my milestone. BUT... you must do the following if not you will find, like I did, not only did you not change to the new launch screen, also only ubuntu works. After you follow all the steps on how to write over the nand, you will come to the step where you need to install linux.

After you press the + and menu buttons and the power on button, you will be asked in chinese if you want to rewrite the system settings. At this point, hit "-" to write over the system settings. If you don't, you won't get the new purple background launch page at startup. At least, I didn't till I did it.

After you have installed linux, proceed to install android. By the way, I installed the latest chinese android update from smartq because the latest english one has a problem with the marketplace and you could find yourself stuck at "start download" forever. After many tries with the english android, I searched for a solution and someone at the awesome unofficial smartq forums suggested the chinese android firmware which works like a charm. NOW HERE IS ANOTHER IMPORTANT PART, this I learnt after a gazzillion tries. It wasn't stated in smartq's english site, although it is in their chinese site. You MUST do this to get android to work.

After you install the new android os, make sure you leave the SD card with the new android firmware rom in it before you start the new android os for the first. If you removed it and go ahead to install windows CE or if you swap cards and then started android, android will NOT launch.

After you started android for the first time, you can shut down and install windows CE. Again, you must leave the roms inside when you start it for the first time. If you don't, win CE will not start. [add: Actually, you must leave the CE firmware rom in your SD card all the time for CE to start, not just for the first time unlike the Android firmware.]

As you can tell, I was so preoccupied with my geeky problem, I didn't even have time for anime. :( so Mahou Shoujo Madoka's ep4 will have to wait. Will probably end up watching that with ep5 and movie 5 of Kara no Kyoukai.

Meanwhile, I wil still need to mess around with the smartq but most of the kinks have been ironed out. After that it is anime time, in between feasting for chinese new year. :)

K, gotta go. Back to work, lunch is over. :)