Lenovo Tab 2 A10-70 MM 6.0 Custom Roms and Ports

[uncognic]

I flashed the ROM to my tablet, Cellular version, I don't care for the cellular as I don't think it's unlocked, but it's been 2 hours since it's on the loading screen. Any help?

 

[hwgasdfasdf]

Do you mean the progress bar on the first time it boots? If it gets stuck there, you can try power cycling it and let it try again - sometimes it gets further, sometimes it doesn't. If you try that a few times, and it keeps getting stuck, try going into recovery and format cache / dalvik and data, and then reboot and let it try again.

I am also having a LOT of problems re-imaging my tablet.

My current best method is this:
Prepare a microsd card with the latest OTA update + supersu zip on it

use SPFlashTool to flash the image that has twrp and the modified boot image incorporated in post #322. ONLY use "Download" or "Firmware upgrade" mode in SPFLash tool - DO NOT USE FORMAT ALL + DOWNLOAD! This gives you v214, but you have a modified boot + recovery image so you have TWRP recovery at this point. And it's overwritten the whole image so you're starting fresh.

Once that's done flashing, do NOT allow it to boot normally. Boot to recovery and apply the latest OTA update zip (ver 216). Once that's been flashed, power off the tablet. Use SPFlashTool to re-flash the boot.img and twrp recovery image (which got overwritten by flashing the 216 zip OTA update). Then boot to recovery again, and install SuperSU. If you see ANY red errors when installing SuperSU, you've done something wrong.

Only at this point can you allow it to boot normally. It will take a while the first time it boots, but if i do things in this order, it will actually boot after 10 or 15 minutes - the progress bar on the first boot goes all the way through, and it goes automatically to the first-boot setup wizard. Once it's at the setup wizard, I'd suggest powering off (just hold the power button until it turns off) and using SPFlashTool to read-back the entire image at this point so you can get back to this point easier / quicker later - yes it's a bit of work to define all the partitions start addresses and lengths, but it's well worth it.

Now, if I complete the setup wizard, but do not connect to wifi or enter a google account, everything is working excellent - the tablet is fast and responsive, just as you'd expect for a freshly installed image. I can connect to wifi - I can install firefox by adb (because I haven't setup any google account / play store yet) - everything is PERFECT.

BUT, the minute I add a google account, it all goes to crap. It tries to update google play services, even if you have application updates disabled, and something breaks, and the tablet just goes to a black screen and you're completely done at this point. You can reboot, it looks like it's working normally, then it tries to do whatever it is it tries to do again, and it will just black screen. The only option at this point is to re-flash the image you took before adding the google account using SPFlashtool. I have no idea how to work around this, but it seems like some forced update is bricking these devices. This is what really pisses me off about android - you have zero control over the software, and google just does whatever they want, including bricking your install.

Edited to add: ok, you can also reboot, and if you're quick enough after it starts up, turn off wifi, and remove the google account entirely. That seems to get it out of it's bricking loop.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd sure like to hear about it - I've wasted 4 days trying to re-image this tablet, and have gotten stuck at many places, and tried many things, and now when I figured out how to get the re-flash to work properly, f'ing google is bricking the install if you add any google account! Just great! It works perfectly fine if you never setup a google account!

This really feels like some planned obsolecense, as most people will not muck with an old tablet and put this much effort in, they'd just throw this out, and go buy a new device when there's absolutely nothing wrong with this hardware for light tasks. I'm really sick of this crap from Android - it's just as bad as Apple now for this kind of anti-repair forced obsolescence BS!

 

[Bleskerinno]

BUT, the minute I add a google account, it all goes to crap. It tries to update google play services, even if you have application updates disabled, and something breaks, and the tablet just goes to a black screen and you're completely done at this point. You can reboot, it looks like it's working normally, then it tries to do whatever it is it tries to do again, and it will just black screen. The only option at this point is to re-flash the image you took before adding the google account using SPFlashtool. I have no idea how to work around this, but it seems like some forced update is bricking these devices. This is what really pisses me off about android - you have zero control over the software, and google just does whatever they want, including bricking your install.

Sorry I've been absent, but been busy with work.

It's this precise thing I noticed as well hwgasdfasdf; a perfectly fine tablet that you can use for media consumption but when it comes to touching the Wifi connection, it suddenly stops, starts breaking and simply crashes constantly, always freezing and what not.

Concerning the NVRAM error, you said you found a solution. Care to share the file or the proccedure you did to fix that?

Thanks

 

[hwgasdfasdf]

Sorry I've been absent, but been busy with work.

It's this precise thing I noticed as well hwgasdfasdf; a perfectly fine tablet that you can use for media consumption but when it comes to touching the Wifi connection, it suddenly stops, starts breaking and simply crashes constantly, always freezing and what not.

Concerning the NVRAM error, you said you found a solution. Care to share the file or the proccedure you did to fix that?

Thanks

I may have found a solution last night after my post. After you add a google account, immediately turn off the wifi, and go to your account settings and turn off ALL of the account syncs. I only enabled Contacts sync, and Gmail sync, and left all of the others disabled, then you can turn wifi back on, and now it doesn't randomly black screen and crash. So the issue causing the random crashes seems to be with account sync, not upgrading google play services or the play store - but I'm still skeptical that upgrading those doesn't also cause other issues.

It's complaining that it won't run play store unless I update google play services - all lies - I turned off auto updates and I haven't updated google play services, and the play store works. It's a super old version, but it still works just fine - I disabled all play store notifications - problem solved (or kludged) for now.

I will do some trepedacious testing of upgrading google play services and play store manually (over adb) to some older versions. I'm very skeptical of letting it just do whatever it wants. The tablet works absolutely fine with the old versions, and is MUCH faster than it was before, and much faster than the other one that didn't brick itself, so I don't want to "upgrade" right back into reduced performance again.

The difference in responsiveness and speed of this freshly imaged un-upgraded one compared to my other working one which is somewhat upgraded (I have auto updates turned off on that one too, but it is updated newer than the stock image) is actually shocking! The old one feels horrifically and painfully slow in comparison. And if you compared the two before, that one was a lot faster than this one, before it bricked itself. This one always had issues since upgrading it to MM / android 6 a couple of years ago.

The NVRAM issue, I have a temporary workaround for, but not exactly a fix yet. I used SPFlashTool to read back NVRAM partition from my second A10-70F which is still working and didn't suddenly zombify itself to the point where it wouldn't even turn on, and then flashed it to this one (so they both have the same wifi and BT mac addresses currently, which is less than ideal, but they're not both turned on at the same time - and usually they are not in the same physical location, but I would still prefer they had separate mac addresses). I tried changing the wifi and bt mac addresses in the image before I flashed it back, only changing the last character of both mac addresses, and I got the NVRAM ERROR = 0x10 again. There must be a checksum that needs to be updated when you change the MAC or something (or I did something wrong). That was kindof in the middle of figuring out the proper steps to flash too, so who knows what state the rest of the system was in then. I find if you don't do the imaging steps in just the right order, you end up with weird behavior - the progress bar on first boot never completes, or if you get it to complete, the wifi is super unreliable later, etc etc. It seems very touchy to end up with a stable system in the end. I'm not sure why every image doesn't "format the partition, THEN copy stuff to it", but it seems like some just copy stuff on top of what's already there, leaving some old stuff behind, then you end up with weird issues.

I also tried the "replace the file in /data/nvram/APCFG/APRDEB/[WIFI, WIFI_CUSTOM] in a root shell" method mentioned in another thread as a generic solution for mediatek devices which have this NVRAM problem, and wasn't able to change it, remove the error message, or make it permenant. If I change that file, it changes the mac address temporarily, but then I get NVRAM ERROR = 0x2 when I turn the wifi back on. On reboot, it goes back to the invalid mac address and NVRAM ERROR = 0x10. If I read back /data/nvram/APCFG/APRDEB/WIFI, it still contains my changes, but it obviously does not like them and is defaulting to the invalid mac address.

I have a replacement motherboard on the way (when I thought the issues was the EMMC memory was screwed on this one, which is clearly NOT the case - it's all software / android problems), I will be able to use that one to read back the NVRAM partition there and then I can compare the 2 working images to see what else is different other than just the MAC addresses, and this should point me to the checksum.

If you look at the file /data/nvram/APCFG/APRDEB/WIFI, it looks like the last 2 bytes are a checksum, but I couldn't find any common 16-bit checksum method that would give me that checksum for the contents of the rest of the file. There's a couple other 16-bit values that are in the middle of long stretches of 0's that also could be checksums (possibly on only parts of the file??). I think comparing to the NVRAM image from the other motherboard will be enlightening here.

I will post again when I figure out more.

 

[uncognic]

When I flash magisk on to the tablet, I do it using TWRP and a MicroSD card, right? Or do I use SPFlashTool and flash boot.img. Also, because TWRP fails to clear my cache/Dalvik, I flashed cache.img using SPFlashTool, is that okay, or does it affect anything

 

[hwgasdfasdf]

When I flash magisk on to the tablet, I do it using TWRP and a MicroSD card, right? Or do I use SPFlashTool and flash boot.img. Also, because TWRP fails to clear my cache/Dalvik, I flashed cache.img using SPFlashTool, is that okay, or does it affect anything

After spending (wasting) 4 days on this, my suggestion is to do it EXACTLY how I outlined above. This is the only method I've found where it reliably boots up the first time. If you have the cellular tablet, follow the same instructions, but use the "L" images everywhere instead of the "F" images.

I never mentioned anything about flashing magisk - I tried that at some point and came to the above series of steps that's reliable, and I'm not wasting any more time on figuring out anything to do with flashing. If you do it the way I outlined, I'm 90% sure you'll have a good flash without any weird quirks, and it will boot the first time. If you do anything else, you're on your own - hope you have 4 days to burn!

1) flash the image from post #322 using SPFlashTool - all of the partitions in the scatter file - use download mode
2) flash the latest OTA zip from post #2 from an external sd card in TWRP
3) flash the boot.img and recovery.img from post #2 using SPFlashTool - adjust the scatter file to point to those boot and recovery images you extract from the zip files you download - only flash the boot and recovery partitions
4) boot into twrp recovery, install the SuperSU zip from the external sd card in TWRP - I'm using v2.82 that comes in the zip from step #1 (aka post #322)
5) boot normally and wait 10-20 minutes - you should end up at the blue first boot setup wizard thing
6) optionally turn the tablet off at this point and read-back the whole image in SPFlashTool (all of the partitions that have files in the original scatter file from the image from post #322) - if you screw up past this, you can reflash the whole image in one go from this backup rather than starting over at step 1
7) boot normally and go through the setup wizard - do not connect to wifi or add a google account in the wizard
8) open the play store and disable automatic updates
9) connect to wifi
10) manually add google account from settings -> accounts
11) immediately disable wifi before it tries to sync anything back
12) go to settings -> accounts -> [your account] - disable all of the sync options (other than gmail and contacts - I'm pretty sure the application sync is the one that's actually causing the issue, but I haven't tested that theory yet)
13) turn wifi back on - you now have a stable fast system, though very out of date update wise

Beyond this, I haven't done enough testing to say yet.

If you test anything beyond this point, please post it. Especially "I updated google play services and play store to the latest versions, and the tablet is still fast", or "and now it's much slower".

After you're done with step 13, the tablet takes about 22 seconds to boot from when it vibrates when you press the power button to when it's ready to swipe up at the lock screen. My other A10-70F tablet, which doesn't have a lot installed on it (VLC, firefox, and a file manager, and that's basically it - I mostly only use it for watching dowloaded youtube videos or other media while on an airplane) but is considerably more updated, takes quite a while longer to boot and is in general much more sluggish. And I have almost everything disabled from starting automatically.

 

[uncognic]

I've gotten it booted, but play store tells me to connect to internet before it lets me in to disable auto updates. I'm not sure what to do.

 

[hwgasdfasdf]

I've gotten it booted, but play store tells me to connect to internet before it lets me in to disable auto updates. I'm not sure what to do.

Then connect to wifi and immediately go to the play store and disable auto updates. I didn't remember exactly what step I did that at, but at some point I realized that auto updates are turned on right from the beginning even in the original version and you don't want that. I would do that after you turn off the sync setting for your google account as that seems to cause the bigger issue.

Turn off the syncs, then connect to wifi, go the play store and turn off the auto updates.

 

[bluedesire]

*Cheers* I think over to flash this Rom, is that better for this Tablet? is it faster?

Is there any Way to get a newer Android Version? Whats about Lineage OS is it possible or would you recommed me to flash this Rom to the Device? Which i found currently on post #322? is that the newest? I have read the post once today i will try out the Tutorial from this Post #766 thanks very much for this tutorial i have read it chilled now i have understand what i have to Do, so fingercross and hopefuly that Works.

I have long Time ago flashed many devices so i have no fear before Flashing but i will get sure is the right Tutorial by 39 Pages and 769 Posts i don´t know which the best Way is

 

[bluedesire]

Now I have flashed the Rom as mention in Post #322 all works fine with this, but this isn´t the Custom Rom / bigrammys Rom, by the Try to Flash the Bigrammys Rom V1 after full flash Tutorial on #766 it flops up a DRAM Fail, if i select only Logo from the List then same error i cant update the Rom, with these Custom Rom V1, the Tutorial on Post #766 works fine, but its how ever the Same Flash Break Eyes Burner when i turn it on i would like to have a dark Logo or dark Boot or Boot without Sound were nice, also i would friendly ask how can i flash the Custom Rom v1? or is there a better Rom? Flash over SPF Tool no problem its easy, when understand how to

By Flashing Custom Rom V1 on my A10-70F Device (only Wifi) it shows this, anything what i choose full or not full choose only system only logo same error?

 

[adivvkvns]

*Cheers* I think over to flash this Rom, is that better for this Tablet? is it faster?

Is there any Way to get a newer Android Version? Whats about Lineage OS is it possible or would you recommed me to flash this Rom to the Device? Which i found currently on post #322? is that the newest? I have read the post once today i will try out the Tutorial from this Post #766 thanks very much for this tutorial i have read it chilled now i have understand what i have to Do, so fingercross and hopefuly that Works.

I have long Time ago flashed many devices so i have no fear before Flashing but i will get sure is the right Tutorial by 39 Pages and 769 Posts i don´t know which the best Way is

on the russian 4pda forum there is an up-to-date (2023) ported lineage OS 13 unofficial rom (Android 6.0.1), this is the only thing that the maintainers could provide us, please use a translator. If the links are not available, feel free to pm me (i have the archive only for F-variant). the only problem with rom is that formatting the SD card as an internal memory expansion does not work.
a couple of years ago I remember a guy saying that our tablet would run android 7.1.x and even 8.x (Oreo), but something went wrong...

I understand that many people have this tablet in good and even perfect condition still after so many years. it may still be enough in 2023 with that hardware, but tablet's potential is severely limited by the slightly outdated android 6.0.1. here should be at least 8.1 oreo or higher. There are almost no maintainers left in the world who have and are dealing with Tab 2 a10-70. If a helping hand does not reach out to us from heaven, all hopes are doomed.

 

[uncognic]

on the russian 4pda forum there is an up-to-date (2023) ported lineage OS 13 unofficial rom (Android 6.0.1), this is the only thing that the maintainers could provide us, please use a translator. If the links are not available, feel free to pm me (i have the archive only for F-variant). the only problem with rom is that formatting the SD card as an internal memory expansion does not work.
a couple of years ago I remember a guy saying that our tablet would run android 7.1.x and even 8.x (Oreo), but something went wrong...

I understand that many people have this tablet in good and even perfect condition still after so many years. it may still be enough in 2023 with that hardware, but tablet's potential is severely limited by the slightly outdated android 6.0.1. here should be at least 8.1 oreo or higher. There are almost no maintainers left in the world who have and are dealing with Tab 2 a10-70. If a helping hand does not reach out to us from heaven, all hopes are doomed.

Can I have the link to the 4pda forum?

 

[Stage_PR23]

Already have the lollipop rom & rooted (via magisk), recovery still stock since hardware buttons is stuck af. Only thing I need in my tablet is a custom kernel....