Today I am sending back a Tronsmart Vega S95 which is S905-based. I had several issues with it and simply could not surmount the challenges. So I am looking around at other options. I see this MX-IIIG <http://www.banggood.com/MXIII-G-Amlogic-S812-Quad-Core-2GB8GB-Bluetooth-1000M-LAN-Android-TV-Box-Mini-Smart-PC-p-985181.html> which is S812-based and hope I can find out some more information so I do not repeat the same frustration:
1. Does this device have a battery backed-up real time clock? The Vega did not and this meant that date/time was always incorrect until Android finished booting and got network time. Mainly an issue for the date/time of nandroid backups or other operations in a custom recovery.
2. Is there a good, solid custom recovery for this device? I do not see it on the official TWRP list. I think I see one listed here <http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/amlogic-based-tv-players/16228-twrp-for-amlogic-devices> but I want to see if others are actually using it and are successful in all operations including flashing, backup, and recovery. I looked around for a CWM recovery and am not finding it right away.
3. The Vega was plagued with a variety of boot time freeze/hang problems. Sometime before the boot animation. Sometimes after the boot animation. Sometimes just after display of the home page. The cause for this was never known. It seemed that some ROM worked slightly better than others. And the Remix ROM available for it seemed much better. It had a different kernel from all the others so maybe that was the source of the problem. So I want to know if these problems also occur on this device?
4. The Vega had great difficulty with SD cards. Sometimes they worked, sometimes not. The problem seemed much worse with larger cards - 16 and 32GB. A 4GB card seemed to work pretty well but is far too small for my needs. The issue was not tied to one specific card, all cards were tested very completely under Windows, and problems occurred with both FAT32 and exFAT formats. Larger cards did not seem to get mounted or even be seen as mountable in TWRP on the Vega. Much of the time they would show up in Android however. But they would seem to get corrupted - maybe due to all the hangs and forced power offs. All in all, it was a giant pain.
5. Is this device easily rooted? I see that some seem to sell pre-rooted so I assume so. But I want to be sure and to know the procedure.
6. The Vega seemed to be able to load a recovery image from the SD card (if it was a small one) when powered on and the FN button pressed. That was very handy for early testing. Does this device have the same behavior?
7. The Vega seemed to have holes on the board for a serial console connection but no actual pins soldered to the board. I wonder if this device has pins for a serial console? This can be very helpful in finding kernel issues.
8. Is kernel source code available? I will need to build a few kernel modules including USB->Serial. So having correct kernel code is essential to me.
Thanks for your help!
1. Does this device have a battery backed-up real time clock? The Vega did not and this meant that date/time was always incorrect until Android finished booting and got network time. Mainly an issue for the date/time of nandroid backups or other operations in a custom recovery.
2. Is there a good, solid custom recovery for this device? I do not see it on the official TWRP list. I think I see one listed here <http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/amlogic-based-tv-players/16228-twrp-for-amlogic-devices> but I want to see if others are actually using it and are successful in all operations including flashing, backup, and recovery. I looked around for a CWM recovery and am not finding it right away.
3. The Vega was plagued with a variety of boot time freeze/hang problems. Sometime before the boot animation. Sometimes after the boot animation. Sometimes just after display of the home page. The cause for this was never known. It seemed that some ROM worked slightly better than others. And the Remix ROM available for it seemed much better. It had a different kernel from all the others so maybe that was the source of the problem. So I want to know if these problems also occur on this device?
4. The Vega had great difficulty with SD cards. Sometimes they worked, sometimes not. The problem seemed much worse with larger cards - 16 and 32GB. A 4GB card seemed to work pretty well but is far too small for my needs. The issue was not tied to one specific card, all cards were tested very completely under Windows, and problems occurred with both FAT32 and exFAT formats. Larger cards did not seem to get mounted or even be seen as mountable in TWRP on the Vega. Much of the time they would show up in Android however. But they would seem to get corrupted - maybe due to all the hangs and forced power offs. All in all, it was a giant pain.
5. Is this device easily rooted? I see that some seem to sell pre-rooted so I assume so. But I want to be sure and to know the procedure.
6. The Vega seemed to be able to load a recovery image from the SD card (if it was a small one) when powered on and the FN button pressed. That was very handy for early testing. Does this device have the same behavior?
7. The Vega seemed to have holes on the board for a serial console connection but no actual pins soldered to the board. I wonder if this device has pins for a serial console? This can be very helpful in finding kernel issues.
8. Is kernel source code available? I will need to build a few kernel modules including USB->Serial. So having correct kernel code is essential to me.
Thanks for your help!