[Device Reviews and Information] MiSSigNNo:
Little review and tablet issues:

I've been waiting for this tablet for 1 month and it has finally arrived. I bought this tablet for two reasons:

1. I was looking for a tablet with a Wifi AC chip for ~$100. None of the tablets around that price tag had this type of chip (best had Wifi N chips). Therefore after researching for a little while I found out that this was the only option available. The only alternative was Huawei Mediapad T5, with a worse battery (5K vs 7K mAh) and also a $100+ increment in price (~$100 for the Chuwi vs ~$200 for the Huawei).

2. The tablet it clearly powerful, fast and way better in terms of power than other tablets I've been using (even Samsung Tabs). But there are some issues that may be a turnoff for some users and most of them won't be easily solvable by the company.

After reading some reviews I can confirm several issues that won't be fully resolved:

Screen issues

1. The touch screen it's not the best (better with the latest ROM, see workarounds).

They have made an overkill in the Tablet specs (decacore,...) with a cheap touch panel. The game experience is very poor despite they are selling it as a "Gaming Tablet".

Chuwi seems to be more focused in selling at all costs than actually providing what people expect from their products. Probably they should have been selling this tablet for $50-100 more with a better screen, but this way they would have found other alternative products that may have provoked most people not buying this... difficult decission for Chuwi, ending obviously on a really bad experience (for most of the powerful games, like PUBG mobile)

Here is a video comparing Pocophone F1 with Chuwi Hipad:

https://vimeo.com/313134711

There are clearly some lag issues (the stroke is behind the finger most of the time) and it's very imprecise, without the possibility of draw a perfect line, but a trail of individual dots recognized.

Screen Issues Workarounds (WIP)

- I'm going to test a capacitive pen to see if this makes the touch screen a lesser issue. When I test it will comment. With the latest November update, the touch screen performs a little bit better, but marginally better.

- With the new kernel 3.18.60 (Rom 11th Jan 2019) it seems that the tablet it's a little bit more responsive.

- It works worse with the capacitive pen than with the finger.

Game Streaming Issues - Solved

2. Personally I was not interested in playing games directly on the tablet, but streaming games from my PC. And also found some hindrances:

- Steam Link Beta is not currently working: sound works, input works (touch controls) but video is not showing. Not sure where is the problem but when we start the app an error message says: Steam Link performance hasn't been verified on this device (Techain Hi9Air), so it may not perform well

Game Streaming Issues Workarounds

- I'm currently testing two apps: Remotr, KinoConsole. I like Steam Link because it's fully integrated and works extremely good. I've found some issues in Remotr (drag-n-drop not working) and in KinoConsole (issues with streaming image distorted). I don't find any value in Parsec atm at least for what I'm looking for (playing on the go without have to pre-setup anything).

- I've solved the Issue with Steam Link Beta. Here is the solution: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam_Link/comments/akz50n/troubleshooting_android_video_issues/?

Wifi Issues

3. WiFi chip is very poor: I've been testing with iperf2 tests and there is a 50% speed reduction vs a Pocophone F1. It's important to say that in the same spot Chuwi Hipad is getting around -70-75dBm while Poco F1 is around -60dBm

If I find new issues I will comment them.

Wifi Issues Workarounds (WIP)

3. With the wifi thing there is nothing to do, if I could possibly return the tablet, I may do it, but since I bought it overseas I may forget about this.

For me it's important to have a good Wifi signal, because as I said I'm using it for playing streamed games and with a bad signal games are unplayable.

- Currently I've switched my AC router to a D-Link DIR 882 with a modded DD-WRT ROM to DHT80 and it's working fine. The chip seem to be really bad compared to other alternatives (like my Pocophone F1 Wifi chip), but I have to say that for under $150 I've not seen an alternative tablet with AC at all at the current moment (1Q 2019)

Dissasembling Chuwi HIPAD for repairing (screen, battery, ...)

One of the issues I've found is that opening the tablet it's extremely difficult compared to other alternatives. The tablets its extremely sealed without any screws and just left to open with pure pressure:

The BIG problem is that it's so hard to open the case that I've ended breaking the touch screen, so be extremely careful when pressuring the thing trying to not bend the tablet too much or press on any point of the screen. I changed the screen of a Chuwi Hi8 Pro 30 minutes before doing this, so I know what I'm talking about: I would say that the risk of breaking with this model is 8/10.

Why I've tried to open the case? Because in the last days I noticed that the tablet touch screen was not working. I expected that the cable was not adequatelly plugged, or maybe the touch screen was faulty (I think that the touch screen was faulty so I don't really care about breaking it).

Here is an image of the PCB:

UPDATE: 30/3/2019

I started changing the screen and here is the result:

Two mistakes:

1. Ordering the new screen before being sure that I was able to extract it.

2. Trying to extract it WITHOUT an adequate heat gun (just with a hair dryer)

The screen is TOO big, and they only sell the screen replacement WITHOUT the touch panel. In the majority of the tablets they don't sell the touch panel with the screen replacement, BUT the difference is that the screen are rarely sticked to the panel with industrial glue. Therefore, if you don't have a really good heat gun, you won't be able to remove the panel from the screen and you will end breaking the panel. I've changed a lot of screens in other tablets without hassle just with my hairdryer, but this screen it's way harder. If you have never changed a screen the probability of breaking everything as I did is 100%. But for the cost of this tablet, I'm not sure that going for a service it's worth so If you cannot repair it yourself, i think this tablet is not worth at all.

Development: Rooting, Recovery, ROMS

I would like to create a comprehensive list of Rooting, recovery, possible ROMS, that may appear for this recent tablet in the future. The tablet is new and not very well known for most people yet, so we might have to wait a bit until other users start to find some value in this budget powerful tablet, depite of the caveats we have already found.

Flashing Process with SP Flash Tool (no unlock needed)

Remember: there is a risk of briking the tablet!

This will do a full wipe to your Tablet so remember to backup your data before doing so

This is the easy method to flash the tablet. All we need are some tools:

1. The SP Flash Tool: (Download v5.1728 here)

2. A ROM: (check in the bottom section for ROMs).

3. Drivers: There are multiple options, but here are some working drivers for Windows:

64bit: https://chuwiinnovationtechnologysh...jo5exkkrpmd350sicz4ae45yegp/file/337087008142

32bit: https://chuwiinnovationtechnologysh...jo5exkkrpmd350sicz4ae45yegp/file/337086745908

How to flash with SP Flash Tool:

1. Extract ROM and SP Flash Tool in the same folder. Try to avoid special characters in the folders like chinese chars to avoid issues during flash

2. Open flash_tool.exe

3. In "Download Agent" select MTK_AllinOne_DA.bin

4. In the "Scatter-loading-File" select MT6797_Android_scatter.txt

5. In the "Download Only" dropdown select Firmware Upgrade

6. Turn off the tablet and disconnect the Tablet from the USB cable

7. Press the button "Download" in the top

8. Connect the Tablet to the USB cable

9. If everything it's right (including driver installation) it may appear a red line in the bottom that goes to 100%. Just wait until the process is complete with a green tick opening in a window.

10. If it gets stuck at some point (for example at 72%) for some minutes, it will end failing the installation and you will have to start over. Remember that there is a risk of bricking the tablet.

Rooting process

Remember: there is a risk of briking the tablet!

This will do a full wipe to your Tablet so remember to backup your data before doing so

Last time I did the process was with: Android: 8.0.0 custom build Hipad_v1.1_20181107

After updating to the new ROM (Android: 8.0.0 custom build Hipad_v1.1_20190111) tested root process again and worked flawlessly.

1. First we need to install the USB drivers

64bit: https://chuwiinnovationtechnologysh...jo5exkkrpmd350sicz4ae45yegp/file/337087008142

32bit: https://chuwiinnovationtechnologysh...jo5exkkrpmd350sicz4ae45yegp/file/337086745908

2. Install ADB like any other device. There are multiple tutorials out there.

3. Activate the USB debugging option and the OEM unlocking option in the developers option menu (unlocking it by pressing 7 times in the Build number just like any other Android vanilla device)

4. If we plug the USB to the computer and we do a "adb devices", we will see it listed after permitting in the device:

So far, everything exactly the same as rooting for any other Android device.

5. Download the latest Magisk Manager APK from the site https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases/ and install it

6. Download the latest boot.img file (download your ROM to get the boot.img within) and place it somewhere you can find it in your phone (Downloads folder for example).

7. We open Magisk Manager and press "Install"

8. There we press: "Patch Boot Image File" and in the file explorer we select the boot.img file we have already downloaded and wait until it is patched.

9. After it's patched we will see this message:

Patched image is placed in:

/storage/emulated/0/Download/patched_boot.img (or whatever route we have used for installation)

10. Connect the Hipad with the PC and transfer that "patched_boot.img" file to the computer to a directory (for example C:/CHUWI we will use this for the example)

11. Now it's time to flash

Here goes the most risky moment. Because we have to enter the bootloader, unlock it and then flash the new "patched root boot image"

12. We go into the console and type: adb reboot bootloader

And it will automatically reboot into the Fastboot

13. Now we unlock the bootloader with the command: fastboot oem unlock

IMPORTANT: Remember that after OEM unlocking the system will wipe to factory default. Backup everything if you have anything important installed in the device

We will see a message that says: "Unlock bootloader", press Volume up to unlock and Volume down to cancel: We press the volume up button.

14. After this, we have an extended bootloader menu that permits going into fastboot, recovery and system fromt there. At this point we are ready to flash the rooted boot img.

15. We type: fastboot flash boot patched_boot.img

And we will see something like ths:

$ fastboot flash boot patched_boot.img

target reported max download size of 134217728 bytes

sending 'boot' (10415 KB)...

OKAY [ 0.348s]

writing 'boot'...

OKAY [ 0.141s]

finished. total time: 0.489s

16. Finally it's time to reboot to check results by typing: fastboot reboot

17. After OEM unlocking we will see the orange Chuwi logo meaning that we have "unlocked it" and suggesting we are in an "untrusted state". That's fine.

18. Be aware, that after doing this it will take a little bit more than usual to boot Android. Just wait for it.

19. When device has rebooted Magisk Manager will be already installed but we will have to update because everything has been wiped as I warned before. If everything has gone right (maybe we will have to reboot again after the first boot for some updates to take in place) we will see this in Magisk Manager:

20. And that's all folks! Root installed in our device:

TWRP process

At this moment we don't have a TWRP or any other recovery compatible with this hardware, stay tunned.

Official ROMs

* 11th Jan 2019, Android: 8.0.0 custom build Hipad_v1.1_20190111: Download

- Big improvement in the touch screen, It seems that the touch screen it's a little bit more responsive

- New kernel 3.18.60

* 6th Nov 2018, Android: 8.0.0 custom build Hipad_v1.1_20181107 Download

- Slight improvement in the touch screen

Other ROMS

We don't have any custom ROMS available yet :(

Let's see if some ROM devs want to test this and make a custom ROM like Resurrection Remix 6 (based on Oreo).

Updates

- This tablet will be updated mid-2019 to Android 9.0 Pie: https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=78278868&postcount=994