Many open android tablet devices [LWN.net]

Many open android tablet devices

Posted Oct 21, 2010 19:41 UTC (Thu) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
In reply to: Many open android tablet devices by dlang
Parent article: How not to recognize free hardware

The new ZT-180 based 10" tablets are open, including a linux based USB loader which someone released last Friday (I successfully flashed mine with it). The 7" inch (VIA8508 and WM8505) ones I think are all open, I think the Rockchip ones are also. Many of these are considered Eken M00x clones or mine is a FlyTouch clone I believe. They load via a uboot script folder placed on the sdcard. Do fact check yourself before ordering. :)

There really isn't a lot of hardware on the devices to struggle with device support problems. Most of them use an RT2070 or 3070 wifi USB dongle, linux kernel support. I think they all meet the "Open Device Level 0" criteria in my other post, and most meet the Freedom 1.1 criteria of Level 1 also. I have no idea if they meet Freedom 1.2, they might. No modem -> no modem processors, perhaps thers is firmware on the wifi? Feel free to email me via slatedroid if you need more specifics (same username w/ caps). Boy do I wish LWN supported user emailing!

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Many open android tablet devices

Posted Nov 10, 2010 1:21 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

I believe I may have overstated the openness of these devices. What seemed to me at first as evidence of the code being available for them (alternate ROMs), was really just evidence of the devices not being locked down. However, it turns out that for some (most?), the source is not actually available. It is a strange situation, the manufacturers seem to still be releasing new ROMs with bugfixes, but they are not releasing the code. What a shame, I cannot see what they gain from this. Many on these forums would enhance the code and make the devices more valuable if they did.