[Miscellaneous Android Development] martyfender:
Well I just had somewhat of a good/bad experience.

I finally saw that my Wamart, where I work, finally got some new Nextbook Ares 8A's, so I decided to purchase one, considering I had 8hrs of overtime during Black Friday week. (overtime is rare for Walmart.)

The box was thinner and so I thought I would be getting a newer, version of the 6.0.1 tablet. And there was no indication as to the Android version on the box.

Boy, did I get a complete surprise! They, unbelievably, kept the 8A name for a completely different hardware version and Andriod version!

The new Ares 8A has a 4x ARM Cortex-A53@ 1344 MHz. It is a 64-bit ARMv8-A. It has Android Nougat 7.1.1.

As far as I know, there is not a way to root it. There is no bootloader mode. a standard bootloader partition does not seem to exist, at least in the way I know how to access it. It does have a stock recovery mode. There is the option in the developer options to allow the unlock of the bootloader, but how can one do that without a bootloader mode?

When the system boots for the first time, it asks for the activation code, or DISA code from the receipt , as in the past few versions of the tablet.

After that the system checks for updates after entering the wifi info to connect to the internet.

It asks for several new setup options from the start and then throws you into about an hour wait finalizing?

What a bad user experience waiting! It turns out what you are waiting for is for it to download every playstore update available for apps that are already installed on the system. It does not even give you the option to bypass this. It just states that you can uninstall later. My guess is that this is Googles new, more secure method to insure users have the latest security updates and to lock down the device so user's like us here on xda have a more dfficult time rooting our devices.

The device was taking so long preparing the device that I decided to reboot.maybe something was hung in the install process, because I had to go through setup again, but it remembered many of my choices and booted to the desktop, this time, quickly .

After I use it for a few days, I whll give you my evaluation of it.

I am disappointed that I can't root it though!

UPDATE: After using this tablet for only a day I am impressed with it's perfomance vs the Intel x86 6.0.1 version. The new one only has a 2850 mAh battery vs the older, 4300 mAh battery. Despite that, the battery life seems very good. The 4xARM Cortex-A53 @ 1344 MHz, 64 bit processor seems much snappier than the Intel 1920 MHz processor. I experience no noticable lag.

Although I miss being able to root it, there are so many additional options in the settings, that root may be almost pointless on this device. The only game I have installed is Gamelot's GT Racing 2. It seems to run great. The only other game I had installed, in the past, was Asphalt 8. I may install it again on this tablet, as it was much more resource intensive.

I welcome any suggestions to test this such as benchmarking utilities or games. I have never tried Android benchmark utilities.

This device is only using 255 Mb in swap vs the 400 MB with the older device. The older device uses zram, I'm not sure with this device, since in android nougot, the system root directory is locked down where one can't open it.

Asphalt 8 seems to run very well on this device with only a brief game play.

I installed AnTuTu benchmark and it revealed the Intel performance was much better than the Arm?

Intel x86: 59223

Arm 64 26950

Here is a link with info on the Allwinner processor:

http://linux-sunxi.org/A64

I believe I will be returning this tablet, now.

Nextbook apparently cut their cost by reducing battery size and including a slower processor.

Plus, as many of you may know, Intel got out of the mobile processor business, so Nextbook may had had no choice?

The Intel site listing is still showing the Intel Atom x5-Z8350 for sale though, so it does look like Nextbook was trying to cut costs and charge the same $68 for a lower performance tablet.