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In August of 2015, 175 Euros got me a tablet with a 10 inch screen, 1GB of RAM, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon, and 16GB of storage - with more space available if one needed it via an SD card slot.
In my preliminary use, the tablet was quite fast in web browsing (with ad blocking of course - otherwise the ads bring down even desktop browsers to their knees). That's what I mostly expect from my tablet - adequate browsing, and reading PDFs while listening to music.
Oh, and running Debian in a chroot of course. Many benefits there; I am a Linux/Unix/BSD/embedded guy, living my life in the command line - and I need to be able to do everything that I do with my main computers, on my tablet as well (like running Privoxy, dictd, my local Flask servers that are accessible only from the tablet, tunneling via local SSH's SOCKS tunnels to tether beyond the idiocy of providers... you get the idea).
And I trust Debian. Far more than I trust the Android ecosystem.
That was when it hit me; I searched, and searched, and searched... there was no open rooting process for this tablet.
The article is quite an interesting read and describes the author's long and painful oddysey through the bowels of an Android tablet to root his device. Do any Soylentils have suggestions on models for those interested in easily rootable tablets? I'm seriously considering buying all the necessary hardware and machining a body just to get a fully capable tablet.
[If someone has successfully done this, please provide as many details as possible in the comments to allow others to replicate your experience — brand, model, OS, OS version, etc. -Ed.]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:18AM
The submitter is a command line guy? Then he should forget tablets. Yes, command line can be done on a tablet, but it's a pain. If you're going to plug in a keyboard, you might as well have a touchscreen laptop with keyboard instead. If you're going to use the popup keyboard, you'll soon notice there are a lot of missing keys and awkward workarounds.
I have an older tablet, a Toshiba Thrive, which only recently did I get around to jailbreaking. It came with Android 3, and was updated to 4.0, and that's as far as Toshiba went. I especially wanted to get rid of that "awesome" bar that's permanently eating screen space at the bottom, and learned it wasn't possible before Android 4.1. Thankfully, there is a now mostly moribund community that figured out how to jailbreak the Thrive 5 years ago, and through their efforts I was able to put a Cyanogenmod on it equal to Android 4.1. They recommended 4.1 as the highest version the Thrive hardware can support and still perform acceptably. If I want more current versions, I should buy a newer tablet. Until then, no Pokemon Go for me.
Before I found the Thrive community, I stumbled around, trying this KingRoot app to jailbreak it, and that didn't work. Came across this KingORoot, which from what I read is a rip of KingRoot with malware tacked on. Learned about "sideloading" to install apps, since I refused to give the tablet a valid credit card number to get the Google Store working so I could install apps in the approved manner. Couldn't even install free apps. Set up a valid email address with a fake name, to connect the tablet to Google Mail, then fooled around with Google Opinion Rewards to try to earn some credit so I could at least get the store to allow me to get free apps, but it wouldn't work I think because it wanted my location and the Thrive doesn't have GPS. Also tried a credit card number generator, but that was no good, the Store isn't content only to check the validity of the number, it checks whether the number actually works. I was thoroughly stymied by all the barriers built into Android, and very annoyed how pushy they are at trying to pry a valid credit card number out of your pocket. I'm also leery of all this location and other monitoring the system is programmed to do to users.
Absolutely check first to see if there is a jailbreak for the device you're considering. Or resign yourself to handing over your credit card info and living in fear that your young relatives get their claws on it and inadvertently buy $5000 worth of game apps and boosts.
Anyway, to use the command line on the Thrive, the terminal software employs the volume down button as the ctrl key, and a combo with volume up for other useful keys such as up arrow, tab, and pipe.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:43AM
For a decent full-key on-screen Android keyboard, check out the hacker's keyboard, available both on the play store [google.com] and F-droid [f-droid.org].
As for the play store requiring a credit card, it most certainly does not, as long as you limit yourself to free apps.
(Score: 1) by Sourcery42 on Wednesday November 09 2016, @06:18PM
You can get paid apps without giving El Goog a credit card number. You can buy prepaid Google Play cards in just about any brick & mortar store with a decent electronics department, then redeem them to buy stuff. The Play Store will nag you occasionally to setup a payment method, I'd say about quarterly, but I've always been able to dismiss it.
I probably buy a $15 card every few years; the liability is fairly limited that way if one of my little monsters somehow manages to start spending it. There are few things worth paying for in mobile, but I do like to give back to developers who do good work.