Dual Core Polaroid PMID720 at BigLots

[cliftz]

well they did answer me twice... but I noticed a lot of the PDFs they have of models are missing "updates"... so my hopes are not high... I am really looking for a recovery option. Used Odin on my phones, but am spoiled with CWM recovery and CM ROMs via xda as far as that goes. I am a little uncomfortable with the utility provided by stc in that it is in Chinese.. guess I could gtranslate it.

Still have not figured out how to get into nandroid recovery if it has it on this one button wonder.

I'm thinking of trying one of these threads to create a custom ROM.. I don't know if what is needed can be extracted from the device.... seems to me it should be possible.

xda has threads that mention using Ubuntu 64 bit and version # depends on android version (kernel).. etec etec...
I'm sure its not an easy task.. esp since my gut says this tab may have os issues.. hence no "update"

Oh.... and I went right past this post to the flaming section... why I hadn't replied. I was wondering if the post was for me..... I'm the one that got carried away with using utilities.... to root...!

To date, I've read everything relevant. Digested it and think maybe this tablet, while functioning has many quirks, (e.g., widgets just quit working, or internet will just cut out in my home when I turn the tablet on and it picks up the wireless signal...only happens in my house...each device in the home has a unique IP so I'm truly confused with that...), the company has been saying that there's gonna be an update for well over a year and no update. Their responses, often have been vague at best. I think this tablet and others marketed by the company is just a 'make money' thing by moving tablets through 'economical' stores. Disposable technology like BIC lighters but with bloatware that uses the tablet to advertise and possibly get ya to join or purchase something or both...same ol' story.

I'm rapidly nearing the point where I am having a comfortable understanding [in my mind at least :-)]of this technology, which means I'll probably continue with the programming tuts. The easy programs I've written thus far are working.

Yea, I think the flames were tossed in error. Understandable I suppose with all the conversation about rooting, (which I think is totally appropriate). Afterall, we laid out the bucks to buy the device...jeez, what if the automobile industry was the same way as some of the OS and device companies , would there be no auto enthusiasts? No rims, no nitrous, no dual turbo's, no hydraulics....sad. It's probably heading that way...

The custom ROM sounds like a great idea and no small task. Let us know how you're getting on.

Thanks

[elektrik]

...and speaking of tweaking, etc.. its too bad I don't own this badboy, cause I am squeezing even more performance out of my 701c ;-)

[Kell]

Hi guys, this is my first time posting here so sorry if i break any rules, also, I am not a native english speaker, so please excuse my writing. A couple of weeks ago I saw this tablet at biglots, it seemed quite a bargain, but I always check in the net if someone has something to say, that´s how I found this great thread, from what I read, it appears this tablet is nothing but trouble, but on July 14, everything at my local biglots was on 20% off sale, so I took a risk and bought one, in a worst case scenario, I could take it back.

I must warn everyone i haven't tried to root the tablet yet, i just installed some apps. Taking that into account, these are my impressions and experiences after just 10 days of use:

The bad:

1.- If you use it to watch movies, battery time really sucks, ditto on the 2 hour mark. It´s worst with games, in some cases less than an hour.
2.- Viewing angles are bad, you have to angle the tablet just right to actually watch a movie, if you turn down the brightness, it makes for a better viewing experience.
3.- The resolution is a little low, so expect some jaggies on some games.
4.- The included launcher freezes... a lot.
5.- The camera is garbage.

The good:

1.- Lots of ports, (usb, hdmi, sd) for a really low price.
2.- The hdmi works flawlesly.
3.- Really fast, I haven't experienced any lag.
4.- Games play great and smooth, just finished a couple of fights in Blood & Glory: Legend ( look it up, the graphics are great), but they go trough the battery like a hot knife.
5.- I haven't run into any wireless trouble, in school, coffee shops, the office, house, library, it´s all been perfect ( approximately some 10 different networks).
6.- I´ve used it mainly for teaching, lot´s of ebooks with mantano and bluefire, some word and powerpoint files with mobysistem office suite 7, some mail, light web browsing with dolphin, lot´s of wifi radio with tune radio, some punchquest here and there, I´ve actually gotten close to five (yes 5, i´m not backing down) hours, lowering the screen brightness to half.
7.- As i mentioned before, the included launcher is somewhat buggy, I´ve used ts launcher, but changed seven days ago to 8 launcher, it´s been really fast and responsive.

I´ve given several presentations using a cannon and the hdmi output, the results are outstanding, in this scenario battery has lasted a little over 2 hours, using hd video whit sound, using a 16 gb sdhc card for content storage. I originally was going for the google nexus, but it lacked the hdmi and the sdhc, plus, if I lost it in school or in my commute, i´d be really sorry, but this one, is only half the price and with all the ports I need.


Verdict: good bang for your buck (the ports), great for work, presentations, reading and occasional gaming, terrible for video and serious gaming.

Recommendation: a small external battery pack.

Sorry if my experience differs from the rest. I hope my personal experience can help anyone interested in this device.

[chuck3565]

Hi guys, this is my first time posting here so sorry if i break any rules, also, I am not a native english speaker, so please excuse my writing. A couple of weeks ago I saw this tablet at biglots, it seemed quite a bargain, but I always check in the net if someone has something to say, that´s how I found this great thread, from what I read, it appears this tablet is nothing but trouble, but on July 14, everything at my local biglots was on 20% off sale, so I took a risk and bought one, in a worst case scenario, I could take it back.

I must warn everyone i haven't tried to root the tablet yet, i just installed some apps. Taking that into account, these are my impressions and experiences after just 10 days of use:

The bad:

1.- If you use it to watch movies, battery time really sucks, ditto on the 2 hour mark. It´s worst with games, in some cases less than an hour.
2.- Viewing angles are bad, you have to angle the tablet just right to actually watch a movie, if you turn down the brightness, it makes for a better viewing experience.
3.- The resolution is a little low, so expect some jaggies on some games.
4.- The included launcher freezes... a lot.
5.- The camera is garbage.

The good:

1.- Lots of ports, (usb, hdmi, sd) for a really low price.
2.- The hdmi works flawlesly.
3.- Really fast, I haven't experienced any lag.
4.- Games play great and smooth, just finished a couple of fights in Blood & Glory: Legend ( look it up, the graphics are great), but they go trough the battery like a hot knife.
5.- I haven't run into any wireless trouble, in school, coffee shops, the office, house, library, it´s all been perfect ( approximately some 10 different networks).
6.- I´ve used it mainly for teaching, lot´s of ebooks with mantano and bluefire, some word and powerpoint files with mobysistem office suite 7, some mail, light web browsing with dolphin, lot´s of wifi radio with tune radio, some punchquest here and there, I´ve actually gotten close to five (yes 5, i´m not backing down) hours, lowering the screen brightness to half.
7.- As i mentioned before, the included launcher is somewhat buggy, I´ve used ts launcher, but changed seven days ago to 8 launcher, it´s been really fast and responsive.

I´ve given several presentations using a cannon and the hdmi output, the results are outstanding, in this scenario battery has lasted a little over 2 hours, using hd video whit sound, using a 16 gb sdhc card for content storage. I originally was going for the google nexus, but it lacked the hdmi and the sdhc, plus, if I lost it in school or in my commute, i´d be really sorry, but this one, is only half the price and with all the ports I need.


Verdict: good bang for your buck (the ports), great for work, presentations, reading and occasional gaming, terrible for video and serious gaming.

Recommendation: a small external battery pack.

Sorry if my experience differs from the rest. I hope my personal experience can help anyone interested in this device.

5 hours of battery life is amazing. The max I've gotten with minimum brightness, Juice Defender and wifi on is 3 hours.

[cherylharrell1961]

On the small external battery pack, where can you get one of those and would that work on other Polaroid tablets like the 701i and PMID 4311. That would be great if the small external battery pack could extend the battery life on my 2 tablets.

[Hamloaf]

On the small external battery pack, where can you get one of those and would that work on other Polaroid tablets like the 701i and PMID 4311. That would be great if the small external battery pack could extend the battery life on my 2 tablets.

You can pick up a Uniden external charger at Big Lots for $15. It's very compact and packs 2600 mAh of juice. I got one and it's great for extending battery life. Charges by USB. Very convenient.

[cherylharrell1961]

Thanks so much for the info. I will have to see if our Big Lots has one.

[vrocko]

Portable battery recharger

Friend of mine told me about a portable battery charger he saw at BJ's Wholesale Club in Akron, OH. Since we were in the area he went in and purchased them for us, we don't have cards to the place so couldn't go in and purchase ourselves.

Nice charger and easy to use. Can't remember the name right now but it had the battery charger, cords for most devices (micro usb, mini usb and a cable for Apple products). A charge cable for the battery itself, so when it gets low you can plug it in. Nice carrying bag too.

It says you can recharge devices up to 10 times before having to recharge the battery itself. Lights on the battery tell you how much charge you have left. Can recharge the battery itself up to 500 or 600 times.

Cost $40 but it was well worth it and works fine with this tablet. Carry this with your tablet and you'll almost never run out of power. I looked on their website, bjs.com, but I didn't see it.

This dual processor tablet, by the way, works great with the Time Warner app. I was able to watch programs on our Time Warner Cable account with no lag or slow down at all. My prior tablet did not work well with that app at all.

[microwiz]

Any PMID720 firmware luck yet?

Has anyone heard any more back about the firmware for the PMID720?

I just discovered (the hard way :P ) that the tablet's JB 4.1.1 still had the "install to asec" thing turned on, which means that everything that got installed there went in as .asec files in /data/app-asec instead of .apk in /data/app... which completely breaks e.g. Link2SD :P

I'll probably have to hook up the MoDaCo xposed framework now and use the module that prevents any such installs... and then reinstall everything :P :P

It would be nice if we could get our hands on a vanilla restore, then go about fixing this issue, setting up root, debloating, etc. and have a proper image/ROM to use on this tablet.

[avgary]

Big Lots Digital2 Platinum 751g dual core/8g/1G ram/1024 x 600 Android 4.1

FWIW,

I posted this yesterday after buying the unit last week. Supposed to be released on 8/11. Thought people with Big Lots buying might be curious. Better battery time than Polaroid but no hdmi.

No original firmware at digital2 website. In fact no detail at all. Their support said it would be posted after 8/11.

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?6347-Digital2-Platinum-751G-at-BigLots-8G-dual-core-1G-ram-1024-x-600

[kevanfl1234]

Has anyone heard any more back about the firmware for the PMID720?

I just discovered (the hard way :P ) that the tablet's JB 4.1.1 still had the "install to asec" thing turned on, which means that everything that got installed there went in as .asec files in /data/app-asec instead of .apk in /data/app... which completely breaks e.g. Link2SD :P

I'll probably have to hook up the MoDaCo xposed framework now and use the module that prevents any such installs... and then reinstall everything :P :P

It would be nice if we could get our hands on a vanilla restore, then go about fixing this issue, setting up root, debloating, etc. and have a proper image/ROM to use on this tablet.

I agree there.. nothing yet...as far as a ROM... read a little about the MoDaCo and exposed .. if you have success please post. I"m using TB and am about to try modifying existing ROM. having trouble with syncing on some apps..Don't like to do it without a backup or recovery ROM... I don't think Polaroid should call this an Android tablet without nanroid recovery. If I knew that I don't think I'd have bought it.

[microwiz]

I just bugged Southern Telecom again about the 720 firmware. I may try the cleanup - might even do a factory reset, then re-root and re-install gapps, and give the Xposed framework a go. The concern I have is that some people have reported it leading to bootloops - if that happens, with no restore image available, I guess I'm SOL :/

I feel you about the lack of nandroid or at least factory recovery image - brick this tablet and it'll stay bricked! :P

[supergroomer]

If you just want google play without root, follow the instructions here. http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=2301732 I made a minor contribution to the thread and it does work if all steps are followed. Chuck

I followed these directions and it worked perfectly. Just got this last night for my 10 year old son. He can be hard on things so I didn't want to spend a lot of money. We will see how it goes.

Dave

[supergroomer]

I believe the reason Google has a problem with this tablet, and other tablets and phones like it, mostly has to do with the micro SD card slot. They won't authorize anything that has a SD card capability and they are working hard at crippling any function of an external SD drive that a device might have.

I think Google is afraid that having a SD card would make it too easy for people to share paid apps and causing them to end up loosing revenue in the long run. Also, they want to push more people to use their cloud service instead.

I don't think so. My Asus Transformer 300tf has an SD slot and had google out of the box.

Dave

[kevanfl1234]

click click bang. :-)

I just bugged Southern Telecom again about the 720 firmware. I may try the cleanup - might even do a factory reset, then re-root and re-install gapps, and give the Xposed framework a go. The concern I have is that some people have reported it leading to bootloops - if that happens, with no restore image available, I guess I'm SOL :/

I feel you about the lack of nandroid or at least factory recovery image - brick this tablet and it'll stay bricked! :P

well I finally got to the point where I screwed around enough to make my pmid720 worse instead of better.. with play store errors and sync issues, maps... I had error messages left and right. So rather than fix all I screwed up.. i decided to do factory reset (yetch...!!!).
I factory reset WITHOUT wiping cache or dvalk and of course SD. The first thing I did was root with
binary root with restore.. used option with 4.1... worked perfectly. I then I installed TB to verify root.. which it would'nt do until I chose an option in the menu - don't recall which one but after that I verified and had full stupid user -su....

what I did next was took a big chance and loaded playstore.apk from my phone jb4.22 CM 10.1.2 epic MTD.. the kernel is v3.0.83 so I felt 'safe'.. that loaded fine.. logged in and loaded current Google calendar.. still had sync issues.. found that googlecalandersyncadapter.apk was not installed ..got that from my phone as well.. now I have no sync,maps or play store issues. All files from my phone were loaded with ES3 File Explorer.

lucked out.. no issues.. now I'll try to break it again.. even though that is a long recovery option... Polaroid needs to allow a recovery option... I just wonder if it has to do with one hardware button... no combo to enter recovery mode...unless a restart with live image connected does it... but I do not see an option to save an IMG and kinda think it would brick it... not having a ROM to load