This is possibly my dream tablet; how 'dev-friendly' is it?

[jelbo]

The Z4 Tablet is possibly my dream tablet, it has a great screen, microSD slot, good battery life and it seems dev-friendly.

I've got no Sony experience and I see surprisingly little custom ROM development. How 'dev-friendly' is this tablet? Does Sony provide source codes, drivers? Are they easy in unlocking bootloaders and flashing stuff like radios? Does it seem likely custom post-Marshmallow ROMs will be cooked in 1,5-2 years from now on?

 

[DHGE]

do some research!

e.g. here "Anybody work on root?" much off topic posts unfortunately

there are two section with the title "Development" here ...

look at the phones: Z3+ and Z5 (nearly the same sources)

and all you need with almost useful documentation in SONY's Developer world:

http://developer.sonymobile.com/

 

[jelbo]

e.g. here "Anybody work on root?" much off topic posts unfortunately

there are two section with the title "Development" here ...

look at the phones: Z3+ and Z5 (nearly the same sources)

and all you need with almost useful documentation in SONY's Developer world:

http://developer.sonymobile.com/

I admit my question was a bit lazy, but it'd be pretty easy for people like you with lots of experience/knowledge on this Sony platform to give me a general idea.

I ordered a Z4T, but while reading this subforom while waiting for the shipment, things start to itch me a bit.

I'll anwer my own questions the way I see it now: Sony is pretty developer-friendly by providing source code and build instructions, but it's pretty buggy and there are very few developers doing stuff for the Z4T. I guess it's because of the bad availability of the device and the relatively small user base. The people @ FXP build ROMs, but I haven't heard much about how useful these builds are. If anything, I heard people downgrading from the 5.1.1 build. Rooting is only possible by unlocking the bootloader and flashing @AndroPlus' custom kernel. His current TWRP build has a bug that makes it impossible to restore a device backup.

Sony provides the option for unlocking the bootloader, but you'll completely lose your warranty. Furthermore, the TA partition will be irreverably changed and you'll lose functionality.

Marhsmallow has been announced, so there's that.

 

[DHGE]

SONY's devices are good compromise for me

@jelbo

Good summary!

My opinion:
The SONY devices are good hardware. I like them because they are water resistant since I lost a phone after cycling in heavy rain.

I have a Tablet xperia Z with CyanogenMod on it. Android 5.1
The start with that 3rd party ROM was slow and it was quite buggy. Also battery life was worse than with stock ROM.

I have a SAMSUNG Galxy S5 phone. They have Knox-protection on their devices. Quite evil compared to SONY. Because it was released with Kitkat I could root it via exploit and keep Knox untriggered. I could get CyanogenMod, even Marshmallow Alphas for the phone. But the drivers are not that good and the battery life with stock is very good (up to four days for me).
So I will keep that phone on stock and I used Titanium Backup to get rid of SAMSUNG's bloatware.
SAMSUNG do not provide documentation and many of their SOCs are proprietary - no chance to do any development for these devices.

Long post short: SONY is very open and relatively easy to hack on their devices.
Better (now) in price and features than the Nexus devices IMO. I would never buy a device without any chance to do development on it.

I think the bug in TWRP will get fixed soon (has bitten me once).

 

[jelbo]

Thanks for your kind reply

@jelbo

Good summary!

My opinion:
The SONY devices are good hardware. I like them because they are water resistant since I lost a phone after cycling in heavy rain.

I have a Tablet xperia Z with CyanogenMod on it. Android 5.1
The start with that 3rd party ROM was slow and it was quite buggy. Also battery life was worse than with stock ROM.

Sounds familiar. In my experience with the last few phones I've had, AOSP-based ROMs were always a tad slower and less battery-friendly than stock or stock based ROMs. For example, the stock 'Google Play Edition' ROMs ran like a dream on my HTC One m7, but others were always less smooth / battery friendly.

So, for the Z4T I'm not partularly worried about the lack of 3rd party ROMs. I'll be fine with stock rooted. But for the longer term, because of the unpopularity, I think it's unlikely to see much going on in a year from now on and that kind of makes me doubt my purchase.

I have a SAMSUNG Galxy S5 phone. They have Knox-protection on their devices. Quite evil compared to SONY.

Yes, but not more evil than Sony I think. Samsung's bootloader unlock 'trips' Knox and it'll disable features like secure storage and services that depend on it. It's also irreversible. It's an awful lot like Sony's irreversible TA partition 'tripping'.

Because it was released with Kitkat I could root it via exploit and keep Knox untriggered. I could get CyanogenMod, even Marshmallow Alphas for the phone. But the drivers are not that good and the battery life with stock is very good (up to four days for me).

I could root my Galaxy S6 using an exploit, without tripping Knox. I'm running 5.1.1 with an engineering bootloader, while still having my Knox untriggered. It's a luxury I'm not gonna have on the Z4T, unless an exploit will be found.

SAMSUNG do not provide documentation and many of their SOCs are proprietary - no chance to do any development for these devices.

Yes, it's one of the reasons I want to avoid a Samsung as my new tablet. Exynos is a black box, so custom, stock-based ROMs will be the best you can get. BUT, I'm doubting now. Custom, stock-based ROMs are fine with me - as you mention, battery life is great. And on top of that, Samsung is so popular that lots of development is being done. I think chances are bigger to see the Marshmallow successor being ported for older Samsung devices than we'll see on this Sony Z4 Tablet in the future. But that's an assumption, I don't have Sony experience, but I see things re pretty dead here, even though the device was released quite a long time ago.

Long post short: SONY is very open and relatively easy to hack on their devices.

I'm not really seeing that yet, but again, I've only looked at the Z4T now.

Better (now) in price and features than the Nexus devices IMO. I would never buy a device without any chance to do development on it.

The microSD is an essential part for me. If the Pixel C would have had a microSD-slot I'd have chosen that. Development and future updates are a huge selling point for Nexus devices.

I think the bug in TWRP will get fixed soon (has bitten me once).

Let's hope so.

 

[scoobydu]

Hopefully the Z4T will get some more love soon, as I have just sent my Pixel C back and taken a punt at a open box Amazon warehouse deal last night with 40% off the LTE

I love my Z3CT, Z3C and Ultra, which have had great support from the devs, so am expecting the Z4 to be the best hardware of the lot, but would also love a root method while keeping the bootloader locked for now.

Heres to hoping perhaps MM will lead to some kernel exploits.

 

[jelbo]

[...] as I have just sent my Pixel C back [...]

What made you return your Pixel C?

I love my Z3CT, Z3C and Ultra, which have had great support from the devs [...]

Did it take a while to get to that point? Do you think the Z4T will have the same support?

 

[scoobydu]

What made you return your Pixel C?


Did it take a while to get to that point? Do you think the Z4T will have the same support?

Dont get me started on the Pixel C from Google UK pricing error on day 1 and their refusal for a week to refund or swapout 32g for 64g devices, due to their error; then I had a hardware fault with the screen not responding after 24hrs of use. I found their support just awful More issues were being reported in the xda forum and I decided I wasn't going to spend £550 to beta test for google. Nice solid device but heavier that the Z4 and sliding the keybard across the keyboard to remove it, just made me nervous of scratching something everytime I did it.

To be honest the Z4 forums are very quiet, but so were the pixel c's; as a few people were commenting.

I had to root my Z3 Tab by loading the Z3 phone firmware and rooting that, as that had a kernel vunerability and the kernel on the Z3 tab didn't.

Once the Z3 phone firmware was loaded and rooted, I could backup my TA partition and reload the Z3 tab firmware, rooted.

Its generally the phones that get root and the tabs have to utilise what they can, unless of course a dev has the tab.

The tab forums got much busier once the device had a less risky root method.

Sad to see that Nut hasn't got a recovery done, but I am assuming that due to root only being available by unlocking and losing TA, so limited testers, but haven't had time to read the history yet.

I have to say though that the Z4 is fantastic in comparison to the Pixel C and I am very glad I have reverted to the device that I know especially at £360 for the LTE version + keyboard on Amazon open box. First time using and the device is pristine. To be fair the Z4 is many iterations of getting it right and the Pixel is googles first try. Once its at Pixel C v4 it will probably be very good!

Heres to hoping MM is officially released soon, so the chances of rooting may get better.

from Nut
This is the reason why I didn't release XZDR for the Z3+/Z4/TabZ4 yet, too much difference with the Shinano and older device trees.

Edit:
That should be solved with 2.9 though...

Seems the 64 bits is a material change, so things need to progress in 2.9 from my early readings.

 

[jelbo]

Dont get me started on the Pixel C from Google UK pricing error on day 1 and their refusal for a week to refund or swapout 32g for 64g devices, due to their error; then I had a hardware fault with the screen not responding after 24hrs of use. I found their support just awful More issues were being reported in the xda forum and I decided I wasn't going to spend £550 to beta test for google. Nice solid device but heavier that the Z4 and sliding the keybard across the keyboard to remove it, just made me nervous of scratching something everytime I did it.

To be honest the Z4 forums are very quiet, but so were the pixel c's; as a few people were commenting.

I had to root my Z3 Tab by loading the Z3 phone firmware and rooting that, as that had a kernel vunerability and the kernel on the Z3 tab didn't.

Once the Z3 phone firmware was loaded and rooted, I could backup my TA partition and reload the Z3 tab firmware, rooted.

Its generally the phones that get root and the tabs have to utilise what they can, unless of course a dev has the tab.

The tab forums got much busier once the device had a less risky root method.

Sad to see that Nut hasn't got a recovery done, but I am assuming that due to root only being available by unlocking and losing TA, so limited testers, but haven't had time to read the history yet.

I have to say though that the Z4 is fantastic in comparison to the Pixel C and I am very glad I have reverted to the device that I know especially at £360 for the LTE version + keyboard on Amazon open box. First time using and the device is pristine. To be fair the Z4 is many iterations of getting it right and the Pixel is googles first try. Once its at Pixel C v4 it will probably be very good!

Heres to hoping MM is officially released soon, so the chances of rooting may get better.

Thanks for your reply, good info. I'm glad to hear some reassuring comments on the Z4T. Looks like you had a great deal as well. In the Netherlands they're hard to get. I payed €635 for the WiFi model... I'm still doubting a little bit to go for a discounted Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 for €380 though. I read it'll even get Marshmallow in April. Price difference is pretty big and there's lots of stuff for it already.

I'll have a look in some Xperia phone subforums on XDA.

 

[scoobydu]

Thanks for your reply, good info. I'm glad to hear some reassuring comments on the Z4T. Looks like you had a great deal as well. In the Netherlands they're hard to get. I payed €635 for the WiFi model... I'm still doubting a little bit to go for a discounted Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 for €380 though. I read it'll even get Marshmallow in April. Price difference is pretty big and there's lots of stuff for it already.

I'll have a look in some Xperia phone subforums on XDA.

Yes there are no deals on the Z4 Tab in the UK and all the new prices are the same retail price.

Thats why I decided to take a chance on the Amazon one, as I could return it if it was damaged or anything; and normal 12 months warranty with Amazon.

For me I haven't had a Samsung since my Tab 7.7 and wouldn't personally have another, but each to their own. The devs were always complaining at Samsung not releasing all the source code to their SoC's, wheereas Sony seemed to be more dev friendly.

The Z3 Tab is fantastic if you didn't mind the 8inch, but I am hoping once the Z3+ root is forthcoming and general 64bit root/recovery is done, then we will have some progress; he says, not being able to help the devs on whats seems a lot of work.

 

[alex009988]

I've got no Sony experience and I see surprisingly little custom ROM development. How 'dev-friendly' is this tablet? Does Sony provide source codes, drivers? Are they easy in unlocking bootloaders and flashing stuff like radios? Does it seem likely custom post-Marshmallow ROMs will be cooked in 1,5-2 years from now on?

It's a shame that such a good device is so low supported by free developers even though it seems it's more open by the Sony in comparison with Samsung.
I noticed that some people think in the thread that not so much users have this device. I have an old phone so called HTC desire HD which was released in the faraway 2010, it is excellent supported as it even has the contemporary android 6.0. I don't believe that there are more HTC decide HD users rather than xperia tablet z4 users. Moreover, I see as my comrade-users of our device crying ? everyday on a Russian 4pda.ru site, that we wait but there's no a good root method, there is no a good description or a video showing us how does the only custom ROM work. What works and what is broken. And just not seeing good news over the course of several months. Of course, I am very disappointed in dramatic fashion, but I hope The change will come.
Thank you for attention!)

 

[DHGE]

cut the drama

- you should not compare a phone to a tablet (numberwise)
- look into the fora for phones Z3+/Z4 and Z5
they have nearly identical SoCs, differences a sometimes build options
- there is a HUGE xperia cross devices forum here with tons of additional info

- the Z4 Tablet became available in June 2015
- the first sources from SONY showed up in .... June 2015
- I rooted the device in July - having done no Android programming or rooting before
- I ordered the device after researching (see below) and before there was root available because my findings showed that there would be sources and documentation from SONY so that if all else fails I would get later a custom rom or could even roll my own

- a video for "seeing" developing/hacking? Dream on...
- there is lots of documentation (even video) available, maybe no video on how to do a web search or an xda search
- searching (and reading and trying things out) worked for me - coming from SAMSUNG phones with no prior development experience on Android ... TRY IT

 

[scoobydu]

- you should not compare a phone to a tablet (numberwise)
- look into the fora for phones Z3+/Z4 and Z5
they have nearly identical SoCs, differences a sometimes build options
- there is a HUGE xperia cross devices forum here with tons of additional info

- the Z4 Tablet became available in June 2015
- the first sources from SONY showed up in .... June 2015
- I rooted the device in July - having done no Android programming or rooting before
- I ordered the device after researching (see below) and before there was root available because my findings showed that there would be sources and documentation from SONY so that if all else fails I would get later a custom rom or could even roll my own

- a video for "seeing" developing/hacking? Dream on...
- there is lots of documentation (even video) available, maybe no video on how to do a web search or an xda search
- searching (and reading and trying things out) worked for me - coming from SAMSUNG phones with no prior development experience on Android ... TRY IT

Good summary.

Small point, but the rooting element is by unlocking the bootloader, which not all will want to do. It is though an option that exists and we are thankful for those that have done so in order to progress the dev support.