Pipo P9 Testing/Review

[giouncino]

@giouncino
Wow, seriously. Why are you even here and an forum admin of a brand you seem to hate if all you do is cry all the time how PIPO sucks and how a support person has "no brains". The best would be if you would just shut the **** up instead of talking shit about other people and stop trolling all the time in this forum. Reading your posts is infuriating and rarely helps anybody with your shit talk.

Anyway, I seem to have a problem with my Pipo P9. The wi-fi connection seems to be really unstable as being even near the access point, I can't seem to connect with it or it stays connected for a few minutes before losing connection again. It can't be software based as it was fine at the beginning and just started to do that lately. I even installed the newest RileyROM (thanks for your great ROM btw) and I also tried turning off the optimization mode for wi-fi. Nothing seems to help. Did anyone else have this problem and know how to fix it?

Enjoy your problems, I'm happy for you!
And of course, I've already seen this issue on other Pipo, but you are so educated...

Did you marry Pipo or Anna that you seems so much hurt?
Hahaha!

[TimeWalker]

That's the best you can do? Say that I'm married to a brand (seems like something that works in your country) or to a person I haven't talked with yet at all? Weak.
Like the Pipo tablet is my main device and I wanted to be super genious that I bought a "fantastic" and """cheap""" device. (And that line was sarcasm just fyi because it's not my main device.)
Most times you troll around in most threads by always saying that they suck, that the support people have no brains, etc. If you hate the brand and the people behind it why are you still here? Why the hell don't you just stick to the other forums like the Cube brand that you like to talk about all the time. Who the hell cares what brand it is, you're not contributing and I'm surprised that you're an admin in a forum at all. Can't find anything helpful without at least one post of yours saying that the person was stupid enough to buy. You're doing a great job at being toxic here.

Probably my mistake that I even feed a troll like you. But the troll bait was just too tasty and I want to give something back.

[giouncino]

3 posts and only stupidity from you! A record, congratulations!
Again, I'm happy that you have problems with your device: probaly this is what you really merit!

Simply I talk about devices that are good, not just because I bought them, as you clearly do.

[TimeWalker]

You don't need to shove what devices you find good at every opportunity on other people's face even though I never said PIPO was any good. But damn, reading through your posts while searching for info or help is so annoying. Thanks anyway for your great help at... something.

Anyway, back to my issue. After reflashing RileyROM 1.8, 1.9 and the original PIPO ROM, I think I seem to have found the culprit with Wi-Fi dropping often. There is for some reason an ethernet option in "Networks & More" which is turned on. After turning it off, the Wi-Fi seems to work perfectly fine again even when I'm two rooms away from the router. So for anybody that seem to have constant Wi-Fi drops, try checking out the ethernet settings and turn ethernet off.

[giouncino]

I say what device is good to anyone is asking me.
Many users are so happy with my advices for the devices that you cannot imagine, some of them sent their pipo back to the seller asking for refund and switched to one I suggested, with great success.
So if you are not interested on my posts, ignore them, I will do the same with yours, don't worry.

You finally solved your issue with your P9 (I supposed you have broken APxxxx chip responsible for wifi-GPS-BT, a common problem, but probably I was wrong) and I can say you are lucky; now you don't need to ask for customer support from Pipo, the only bad thing is that now you have no possibility (for the moment, but who knows??) to understand that I was right about lack of customer support and/or total no quality control from Pipo....

[TimeWalker]

Yeah, I first thought it was a hardware failure because as said, I didn't have any problems in the beginning and it only popped up lately. Even reflashing different ROMs didn't help. It's a really weird that turned on ethernet made it wonky. I'm not even sure why the hell this even exists as it doesn't have any ethernet ports.

I already know that the quality control and customer support is very lacking. I bought the tablet at AliExpress as I had a 50$ coupon. So I got this tablet for quite cheap. I thought to have one for quick "consuming" - Twitter, reddit, remote for XBMC, etc. I was already disappointed that there's a small whiter spot on the display and that there are few small air bubbles around. I didn't try to contact customer support and stuff because frankly, I don't have the nerve to send that, replace, rinse and repeat. Worse, there are customs and shipment costs. After all, many people already reported bad stuff happening. So I'm sticking with that instead of risking getting more broken stuff.

I guess I could've got something a lot better, but at the time while searching this was the most viable option for me as it was cheap, powerful, 16:10 and someone actively supporting it with custom ROMs (again, thanks riley). I think that finding a good Chinese tablet is really hard as there are so many trying to fight to climb the top spots. Frankly, I'm quite happy with it as a secondary tablet and I do consider myself lucky that I didn't get the other end of the stick.

[giouncino]

This time I completely agree with you except on one point: if you do not need a 16:10 ratio tablet, now better alternatives on 4:3 are very very common and they are on another planet in terms of quality and stability wrt Pipo!

The problem is if you need at all costs a 16:10 ratio, in this specific case, alternatives are really few...

[TimeWalker]

Oh yeah, 4:3 are everywhere. It's most likely because of the popularity of the iPad. After all, almost all of these 9.7" tablets also use "Retina Display" as a feature. I was specifically searching for a 16:10 one that had at least HD resolution which made this a really difficult task. So I agree, finding an alternative is really difficult as these are definitely less popular. Maybe it looks different now as I checked for 16:10 a few months ago back in 2014.

If I would've choosen a 4:3 tablet instead, I'd definitely had choosen a different tablet as opposed to Pipo. For example, Cube Talk was one of them that looked very stylish and seemed to have a better overall quality with great specs. 16:10 with high-end resolution is the only reason why someone should consider Pipo.

[giouncino]

Again I definitely agree with you, and the situation will change very soon accordingly to this news:
https://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2015...ets-is-coming/

I don't think that 4:3 will come to an end (and I'm happy of that because I really love this format!), but probably there will be more choices on 16:10 or 16:9 in the next future.
This will make really hard for Pipo to be still competitive when higher quality Chinese brands will build products with 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios.

[Kenneth]

Just finished swapping my lcd screen from my m9pro to the p9...pipo uses scotch tape allover...i removed it all alot nicer from the inside.

my major problem was to remove the dust particles between the touchscreen and lcd still has some little dust visible when the lcd is off but the M9pro LCD is better than the P9 lcd that`s why is swapped them!!

[giouncino]

I told that many times too: Pipo intenal electronic parts are practically kept together with tape only.
Removing dust was really difficult for me too as soon as I opened my m6pro... We need a white room for that! ahahha!

[mr_oroms]

nice information
thanks all

[rrileypm]

When I started this thread back when the P9 was new, I didn't intend for it to become a Pipo bashing forum. At the time, the P9 was my goto tablet for everything. And it still would be if I had not moved on to a few Windows/Android dual boot tabs I've been messing with.

Giouncino, I respect your position....and have both agreed and disagreed with you on the issues with Pipo.

Here's where I disagree.

I own several Pipo devices, and have supported them all. I've dug into the backsides of each of them.

I've also done some exploring inside Cube, iFive, Onda, Teclast, iRulu, JXD, Archos tablets, as well as many TV boxes. Oh...and I've also had my wife's iPad open.

While Pipo includes tape as a way to secure/shield their parts....so do ALL of the others. Where I see tape...it makes sense to me that tape would be the most appropriate material to use. I'm not sure who I would award the prize for the prettiest inside design to...because they look very equal, in my opinion.

The weakest part of any of these designs includes the touch panel/display connections and the wifi/bluetooth antennas.

Giouncino, you've also mentioned poor solder quality. I've inspected PCB's from the above cross section of brands....and I'm seeing inconsistencies even on the same board. It all depends on the competency of whoever received the board along the assembly line at whatever stage in the process.

Perhaps the big names like Samsung, Acer and the rest have a more automated process with higher quality...but take a look at the price tags of them.

While the mainstream non-geek majority may be willing to pay high dollar for a reliably consistant product...I prefer the less expensive Chinese brands. Because I can play around with them....and if they fail, it isn't an arm and a leg I'm having to give up to replace it.

Where I agree with Giouncino is in the quality of some parts that Pipo has used.

My P1 is toast right now. While unbricking the tablet for the third time, I jammed the power button and it broke off of the PCB. Now, the power button doesn't work and I haven't had time to see whether I can self engineer a fix to it...so it sits safely in a drawer filled with a few other defunct tablets (of various brands) that I may try to fix someday.

I guess the benefit of being a developer is having other devices to take up the slack. But I can't test new ROM's on my P1 anymore.

[giouncino]

I partially disagree with you Randy:

1 Pipo uses a lot of tape inside tablet wrt other brands. Too much in my opinion
2 all Pipo I've opened have extremely bad soldering for battery cables (not a big issuee though) and for all the antennas: and this is a big problem, because this lead at least to degraded sensitivity...
3 the last but not the least is unfinished and unstable ROMs, this is only thanks to your and Freaktab developers work that make these devices usable.

I think that these 3 issues are big problems for a company that want to compete with other brands, simply because the latest products of teclast, cube and others can be easily comparable with Samsung and Apple devices in terms of internal and external build quality and stability. I

f Pipo will not begin to increase their quality control, this brand will not have a long life on the market. Other chinese brands have done huge step forward with latest products leaving Pipo on their back.

Last, Pipo prices are still too high when compared with teclast and cube and I simply don't find any good point for that.

The only pipo product that have really few competitors is the P9 but only because other brands strangely seems not interested in 16:10 format

People generally tand to say: "It's a Chinese product, it's acceptable the not so good quality or stability considering the price".
This is no more valid for many Chinese brands!

[data123]

Is anyone having problems with Asphalt 8? when I try to run it the game screen is black, I found you have to reduce the graphics to low resolution for it to work.

I using Oma build v1.2 firmware