iFive Air with RK3288 first impressions: very good but maximum frequency is only 1.6 GHz

[StardustOne]

I received my iFive Air and the RK3288 is only clocked at 1.6 GHz, Antutu 5.5 scores over 35000, yet it is still not okay to sell and advertise those as 1.8 GHz capable.



It seems as these RK3288 are a bit of a scam. A lot of hot air and when you get it delivered, it is just not as great as it looked on paper.

The tablet itself is great, very sturdy, no squeaking, excellent screen with zero hot spots and very bright even with the lowest brightness setting. Screen viewing angles are excellent, too.

What is annoying, I get irregular red flashing frames around applications like Google Chrome, probably with high CPU utilization.

Sound seems to be mono from the speaker, yet it is loud and clear. The aluminum back looks great too and does not show any finger prints. A screen protector has already been installed bubble free on the screen.

No GPS installed, though.

The WiFi is 5GHz capable, too.

Rooting was very easy with RootGenius and Kinguser is installed after rooting. Beware rooting is mandatory on the tablet to get rid of the baidu malware and the creepy China App store that was pre-installed. I have removed all of those with Link2SD.

[nagasadow]

How about battery life, especially video watching battery life.

[StardustOne]

I don't play movies, but the tablet can be used for at least 8 hours with the lowest screen brightness that is still very bright.

One more thing: avoid changing runtime from DALVIK to ART (at least with the factory ROM from November 14, 2014). It will not work with the stock ROM 1.1.0. I changed the setting and the tablet does not boot anymore. It only flashes the iFive logo until the battery is drained.

The factory ROM does not have any recovery settings so I need now to find a new ROM and flash the Tablet. ART not working is quite a huge disadvantage, since it also questions the Android 5 compatibility.

And if I can save my tabled, I will never enable ART anymore because I could risk to brick the tablet, again.

Very disappointing, indeed.

I cannot use the AndroidTool V2.3 because it gives me error "Match device type failed, stop running" and I cannot use the original flash tool because of a missing cfg file and it always crashes when I try to load the firmware inside of the tool. Unfortunately, I only have Chinese menus.

I was able to find a working Factory Tool that can be used to install the factory image here. This version correctly works with English language. You need to install the drivers for the tablet and the factory firmware update only works when the text Loader is shown next to the USB port the tablet is seen (if you see ADB, it won't work, power on the tablet and see if it changes to Loader).

Update from December 29, 2014

The iFive Air has the WiFi bug. If the WiFi is set to "disabled in sleep mode" (that is my preferred setting) and the tablet goes to sleep, it will not be able to get the WiFi signal anymore after waking it up. To resolve, the tablet needs to be restarted.

[BamaPanda]

Did you get it straightened out? Five is a brand I have been watching ...would hope it could be a good tab for you.