Onn Surf 7" gen 2 on sale for 28$ today. Bought one... Was able to unlock bootloader

[Okiera29]

Onn Surf 7" gen 2 on sale for 28$ today. Bought one... Was able to unlock bootloader

So, stopped at walmart this morning for stuff and saw the Onn Surf is now on Gen 2. 2.0 GHz quad core, 16gb storage and 2 gb ram. Seemed pretty decent for 28$. Much snappier than my 2017 Galxay Tab A 7". Runs Android Go 10. So far, have a 128 GB sd card in the slot. I have ran a few games(Raid Shadow Legends, Pubg) on it and it seems pretty decent so far. Hoping somebody smarter than me can find out if we can root and rom it. I would love to have pure ASOP on it. Even if that doesn't happen, would love to have root to get rid of the pre-installed stuff. At the price point, I couldn't pass it up. I haven't figured out the CPU, guessing it is a Media Tek. The GPU is a Mali-G52 MC2 if that helps. Running GeekBench right now to see how it scores. Seems it is not bad. Chip is listed as ARM MT8168B Motherboard is listed as tb8168p1_bsp if that helps at all. Geekbench gave it a 542 score. Not sure how that compares.
I was able to unlock the bootloader in the normal fashion. adb reboot bootloader. fastboot flashing unlock. fastboot reboot when finished unlocking. It then had a series of prompts on the screen that I followed. Once it was done, I rebooted via fastboot. The reboot took a bit as it factory reset the device as expected. I was trying root with mtk-su, but have been unsuccessful so far.
Well, it looks like mtk-su will not work on this device. So I will have to wait for someone much smarter than I to figure out root for us

 

[moslondon]

I just got this one also at walmart. For $28 is not bad. It feels snappier than amazon fire 7 or 8

 

[juan_carlos__007]

So, stopped at walmart this morning for stuff and saw the Onn Surf is now on Gen 2. 2.0 GHz quad core, 16gb storage and 2 gb ram. Seemed pretty decent for 28$. Much snappier than my 2017 Galxay Tab A 7". Runs Android Go 10. So far, have a 128 GB sd card in the slot. I have ran a few games(Raid Shadow Legends, Pubg) on it and it seems pretty decent so far. Hoping somebody smarter than me can find out if we can root and rom it. I would love to have pure ASOP on it. Even if that doesn't happen, would love to have root to get rid of the pre-installed stuff. At the price point, I couldn't pass it up. I haven't figured out the CPU, guessing it is a Media Tek. The GPU is a Mali-G52 MC2 if that helps. Running GeekBench right now to see how it scores. Seems it is not bad. Chip is listed as ARM MT8168B Motherboard is listed as tb8168p1_bsp if that helps at all. Geekbench gave it a 542 score. Not sure how that compares.

I got it as well [emoji1] for $28 it very very good, it comes with a $10 grocery pickup coupon as well [emoji23]. These devices can really use custom roms, some overclocking, and remove the Walmart bloatware which is not as bad as a fire blu cell phone that I used long time ago. The first thing I did was to disable the widow animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale. Tried kingo root app it does not work on this device, tried custom navigation bar .apk not compatible with this device will try to root either by conventional way or magisk.

Sent from my 100015685-E using Tapatalk

 

[fatfingered]

Saw these in store and grabbed 2. Set one up and tinkering with it. Runs a bit smoother compared to Fire 7 2019. FCC ID A2HCT9E78Q for those interested. Has BT 5, tiny noticeable audio lag watching YT video & Pluto TV connected to bt wireless earphones. Android 10 Go doesn't appear to support youtube pip mode.

 

[Okiera29]

I will be interested to see how development goes. Seems like at lot of devices use this SOC, so that leaves some hope. I had some wifi issues yesterday, but restarting the tablet fixed it. So far, I am happy for 28$. It is quite a bit lighter than my Samsung Tab A 7 ". Pubg is still running fine. Frame rate is nothing to write home about, but that is to be expected

 

[FredQ]

I'm in the same boat. Picked one up this morning, unlocked the bootloader successfully but had no luck with mtk-su or any of that. Hopefully someone smarter than me gets this figured out

 

[DB126]

I'm in the same boat. Picked one up this morning, unlocked the bootloader successfully but had no luck with mtk-su or any of that. Hopefully someone smarter than me gets this figured out

Unlikely; need to read up on the (ridiculous and inexcusable) vulnerability mtk-su exploited, manufacture response and the heavy-lift challenges rooting newer Android builds. Possible, but unlikely.

 

[FredQ]

After spending most of last night trying to get this working I'm uploading what I've got in the hopes that someone can get it to boot.

Following several tutorials and using a combination of SP Flash Tool and WWR MTK I managed to create the scatter file and then extract the whole rom giving me the boot.img.

However, after patching the boot.img with magisk manager and flashing it I'm getting a boot loop. I can flash the original boot.img back and it boots as normal but obviously this is without root.

If anybody wants to take a look and see if they can get it figured out feel free.

There are 4 files. The scatter file, original boot.img, then there are 2 magisk patched boot.img files. The first one is smaller than the original boot.img which I read is quite usual but some devices don't take well to the size difference. So the second patched img is padded to match the file size of the original. I can't get any of these to boot, both put me in a boot loop which can only be fixed by flashing the unpatched img again.

Model: 100015685-E

https://app.mediafire.com/91m2g8if4iain

 

[RetroTho]

After spending most of last night trying to get this working I'm uploading what I've got in the hopes that someone can get it to boot.

Following several tutorials and using a combination of SP Flash Tool and WWR MTK I managed to create the scatter file and then extract the whole rom giving me the boot.img.

However, after patching the boot.img with magisk manager and flashing it I'm getting a boot loop. I can flash the original boot.img back and it boots as normal but obviously this is without root.

If anybody wants to take a look and see if they can get it figured out feel free.

There are 4 files. The scatter file, original boot.img, then there are 2 magisk patched boot.img files. The first one is smaller than the original boot.img which I read is quite usual but some devices don't take well to the size difference. So the second patched img is padded to match the file size of the original. I can't get any of these to boot, both put me in a boot loop which can only be fixed by flashing the unpatched img again.

Model: 100015685-E

how did you manage to get out of the boot loop? I'm currently stuck in it from trying the exact same thing and I can't seem to access recovery mode or the boot loader or even manage to turn off the tablet.

 

[FredQ]

To get out of the boot loop I had to flash the original boot.img using SP Flash Tool. Put the scatter file and the boot.img in the same folder. Then open the scatter file in SPF Tools and with only the boot.img checked click download when the tablet screen goes black as it's looping. It should then flash the file and when you power the tablet back on you should be good.

 

[jason7246]

are you guys using windows 10 or 7 or? also, i have the -a verision of this tablet (100015685-A) and i was able to just get the scatter file that includes only the, Preloader? if that sounds right, and nothing else using WwR MTK v2.51(wich i believe is what RetroTho is using). now when i try and take that scatter file and use it SP flash Tool to do anything with it, it doesnt seem to do anything. i seen something about VCOM drivers (which i thought i had installed) but just in case tryed to install them using the .bat, and had no luck,(hence the OS question). so what am i missing if someone can help me? id like to try and get a complete rom backup if possible, to be safe, before i do anything else. or at least a boot.img and recovery.img. any help would be much appreciated.

 

[TheCaptain22]

Removed

 

[thecaptain0220]

After playing around with this for a while I got it to work. The problem is with Android Verified Boot. I used the scatter file created by @FredQ (Thanks!) and SP Flash tool to dump the vbmeta partition. Then I used the following commands to flash the modified boot image.

fastboot --disable-verity --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot erase cache
fastboot flash boot magisk_patched.img
fastboot reboot

This disables AVB and allows it to boot. I verified that I had root afterwards.

http://gofile.io/d/HXCmPd

 

[thecaptain0220]

One unfortunate thing I found out is that the way the navigation bar is handled changed with Android 10. So far I haven't found a way to remove the Walmart button. This was one of the things I was hoping to do with root.

 

[Okiera29]

After playing around with this for a while I got it to work. The problem is with Android Verified Boot. I used the scatter file created by @FredQ (Thanks!) and SP Flash tool to dump the vbmeta partition. Then I used the following commands to flash the modified boot image.

This is great news! Thanks for the hard work. I will attempt to replicate on my second device and report back. Root should at least make it easier to get a system dump and such. Thanks again!

Well, shoot! now I am getting "--disable-verity is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file" when I run the first command.

Never mind, if I run fastboot --disable-verification --disable-verity flash vbmeta vbmeta.img then it runs fine. Just flashed your patched boot as well. I will report in a moment. Well, now disable verity works, but it says there is no vbmeta file or directory. so it fails. so far, no root
Well, DUH! needs to be in bootloader mode LOL. Now that I have it there, all commands work, but I still don't have root after flashing your patched boot image

 

[FredQ]

After playing around with this for a while I got it to work. The problem is with Android Verified Boot. I used the scatter file created by @FredQ (Thanks!) and SP Flash tool to dump the vbmeta partition. Then I used the following commands to flash the modified boot image.

fastboot --disable-verity --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot erase cache
fastboot flash boot magisk_patched.img
fastboot reboot

This disables AVB and allows it to boot. I verified that I had root afterwards.

http://gofile.io/d/HXCmPd

Amazing. I'm up and running and rooted now! Thanks for the help

 

[jason7246]

After playing around with this for a while I got it to work. The problem is with Android Verified Boot. I used the scatter file created by @FredQ (Thanks!) and SP Flash tool to dump the vbmeta partition. Then I used the following commands to flash the modified boot image.

fastboot --disable-verity --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot erase cache
fastboot flash boot magisk_patched.img
fastboot reboot

This disables AVB and allows it to boot. I verified that I had root afterwards.

http://gofile.io/d/HXCmPd

hi, do you know if this will work with 100015685-A? thanks

 

[teddyv1974]

seems like finding a way to root the $28 onn tablet is coming to an end (a video tutorial would be great)

but when i do unlock the bootloader on my 100015685-e tablet (adb reboot bootloader, fastboot flashing unlock), adb gives me this and my tablet keeps disconnecting from my laptop

C:\Users\Ted\Documents\platform-tools>fastboot flashing unlock
< waiting for any device >

this does the same thing with fastboot oem unlock

what is going on and how would i fix this? nothing was done towards the tablet

 

[Okiera29]

seems like finding a way to root the $28 onn tablet is coming to an end (a video tutorial would be great)

but when i do unlock the bootloader on my 100015685-e tablet (adb reboot bootloader, fastboot flashing unlock), adb gives me this and my tablet keeps disconnecting from my laptop

C:\Users\Ted\Documents\platform-tools>fastboot flashing unlock
< waiting for any device >

this does the same thing with fastboot oem unlock

what is going on and how would i fix this? nothing was done towards the tablet

Sorry, I was not clear in my first post. I know this sounds silly, but make sure developer options are turned on and that OEM unlock and adb debugging is turned on.
Go to settings, about tablet. Then tap the build number at the bottom seven times and that will turn on developer options. Then in developer options, turn on oem unlocking and adb debugging.
Then run adb devices. It should return your tablet's serial number and 'device' If it shows the device 'unauthorized' (mine did the first couple of times) revoke ADB authorization and plug the tablet back in.
Then it is just adb reboot bootloader and then fastboot flashing unlock.

 

[teddyv1974]

Sorry, I was not clear in my first post. I know this sounds silly, but make sure developer options are turned on and that OEM unlock and adb debugging is turned on.
Go to settings, about tablet. Then tap the build number at the bottom seven times and that will turn on developer options. Then in developer options, turn on oem unlocking and adb debugging.
Then run adb devices. It should return your tablet's serial number and 'device' If it shows the device 'unauthorized' (mine did the first couple of times) revoke ADB authorization and plug the tablet back in.
Then it is just adb reboot bootloader and then fastboot flashing unlock.

i was going to edit my post but oh well

i had fixed what i was looking for: i used snappy driver installer origin to update my android driver, android adb showed up in my sdio list and i installed the driver from there, that resolved my issue (stupid mistakes can happen)