[General Questions and Answers] codQuore:
Hi, I am creating this thread for anyone who purchases the Ampe A85q Quad Core.

I got mine from FocalPrice Singapore for £70 (inc a £5 discount) just over a week ago and it runs great, at times so I am now looking at improving it, where possible and with the blessing of XDA here, I will post as much info as I can and hopefully do a few things to it, to make it better. I have already found some information out that I will share but having never replaced an existing Rom and such, I am hoping some help is available to guide where necessary.

Today my daughter bought it to me, it had locked up and crashed in an ON state. After a long-hold power, it switched off and switched back on as normal. I then factory reset it and then changed the language and disabled Google PinYin.

Confusingly, the Ampe website (szampe.com) shows the tablet labelled as a A8003QD but another googled site shows it listed as both. Having checked the makers site and specs I see it must be the same tablet. As this tablet is quite new, there are very few results for it.

Official link : http://www.szampe.com/en/Products_show.asp?id=180&i=4

Supporting site showing matching model number : tattoo-ipl.com/productsshow.asp?id=1619

Szampe is now offering a A8003QD Ampe Firmware Update, direct link :

2013/7/24 - http://www.szampe.com/UploadFile/file/2011-08/0335.rar (525MB) #Note I am yet to try this and will add any eventual outcome to this thread.

The download just finished. The rar file contains

FOLDER : A8003QD 爱魅 改乐投风格、4K不支持4个窗口播放的软件20130427 (translated = A8003QD love charm happy to vote to change style, 4K does not support 4 Window Play Software 20130427)

------ and contains >>>> aimei_anpei8003_a31s_v2.0_4.1.1_20130429_[1024x768_ctp兼容_双Camera0308_gsensor兼容_ddr360].img

FOLDER : 全志A31升级工具安装 (translated = Allwinner A31 upgrade tool is installed)

------ and contains >>>> 升级指南（A31主控）.doc (translated = Upgrade Guide (A31 Master))

------ and contains >>>> PhoenixUSBPro_Cn_V330_20121204.rar

------ and contains >>>> PhoenixSuitPacket-V1_0003Beta.rar

------ and contains >>>> PhoenixSuitPacket.msi

Having converted and translated the above .doc file I see some instructions on what to do, however some of the instructions appear to be missing. I need to get this done better so it can be followed properly.

Problems :

Rom language - The tablet came with English setup already. A factory reset changes this back to Chinese.

Keyboard is set to English UK.

Google PinYin can and is now disabled

Some of the features are still in Chinese and I cannot see a way to change them.

Some lag on boot up lasting for a while but appears to stop until put in sleep mode which starts again for a while.

As mentioned above a freeze/crash and black screen then remained after the sleep mode kicked in. Had to long-hold power to turn it off, when I switched it back on, it seems back to normal. I suspect this was caused by some app or other one of my kids installed.

Hopefully I can get this update done and see if things are better and if not, consider a rom replacement. #reboot required now as the windows installer is playing up as I cancelled the first pheonix installer to look for any newer and english version. Back later today.

Edit :

Managed to get through the firmware update and am now going to check it out to see if anything has improved. I think it may be best to give this a couple of days of letting the kids do their thing as well as my own. Of course I will update this again.

update : So after a few hours letting the kids do stuff and having a bit of a play myself, this firmware update really has improved the tablets running qualities. For example, the usage immediately after boot / browsing / gaming / pattern and face recognition unlock all seem to run flawlessly now. The face rec unlock used to sometimes not even load and go str8 to pattern, 30% of the time it wouldn't recognise me and was laggy to happen in most cases. This now runs rapid, loads every time and I think due to lighting and moving around the room, only failed to recognise me, once out of around 10 tries. I tried a game or two with the kids and found reactions were spot on every time, to screen touches. The kids felt it was running nicely now too.

Again, if I find anything contrary to this, i will add another update below.