yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] R0W3Y:
The flashed a9 is so good now. I'm really impressed that a small group of enthusiast devs have managed to pull together the best ereader there is.

A few suggestions for making it even better as a reading device. Some of these may already be possible (my knowledge of Android is limited). I'm not expecting any of these and already love the device, they're just some ideas.

Fine control over lighting

Especially for reading in the dark, the control centre slider is cumbersome and I'm not sure it can even reach low levels. I'm quoting the corresponding percentages shown in some 3rd party lighting apps here, but ideally each step is the real DC-dimmed hardware step.

I've been using custom MacroDroid macros with homepage shortcuts to:

Access the lowest hardware lighting levels available on the A9

Quickly switch between the exact levels I want to use regularly (Off, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%)

Show me the exact level, without me having to interact with the controls

There's a couple of drawbacks:

Having to go to the home screen to use them

Having to manually enable MacroDroid in Accessibility on every restart

Something like the Inkpalm lighting control centre would be better:

Clicking the sun switches the light on/off and this is visually toggled

-/+ changes by one step

Shows you the exact light level you're currently using

The ability to long press the volume up/down to change the lighting by 0.5% would be good too.

Scroll using the volume buttons

This is a popular feature on Boox ereaders and I love it. Basically physical page turn buttons for apps that don't support them. I've implemented it on my A9 using EasyScroll but it could be better. On the A9 scrolling by what it says is '690px' on any app using the volume buttons usually works well. That seems low for the actual number of pixels moved to scroll a whole page on average and I assume it will be higher (1,380?).

Drawbacks of Easyscroll:

Needs restarting fairly often (it's a bloated app, and this feature is just a small part of it)

It uses an allow list, which you need to add every new app to (should be a block list as so few apps allow physical page turn buttons)

Having to manually enable in Accessibility on every restart

More flexibility for the e-ink button

Recent changes have allowed much better control with the e-ink button, but still I'm using Buttons remapper to enable long press as 'home' and double click as 'recent apps'.

This isn't a big deal, but it's another app to re-enable in Accessibility after each restart. Maybe there's a way to do this automatically I don't know of :)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Segnaro:
❯ .\adb shell
HLTE556N:/ $ whoami
shell
HLTE556N:/ $ su
HLTE556N:/ # whoami
root
HLTE556N:/ #

I now have root.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] user0u:
Great! How did you manage to acquire it, if I may ask?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Segnaro:
I don't recommend doing this without an EDL cable, since at one point my phone was unable to boot into fastboot.

Once I had perm unlock:

fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification vbmeta.img
reboot

Check that phone still boots.

Install Magisk.apk.
Run Magisk.apk on boot.img from stock firmware
Retrieve patched boot.img, rename to magisk-patched-boot.img.

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot flash boot magisk-patched-boot.img

reboot

Open Magisk, check that SuperUser tab is enabled.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] user0u:
Awesome. Great work!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dferreira:
That was the trick! Mine is also now permanently unlocked:

- fastboot Hisense unlock

- fastboot erase avb_custom_key

- fastboot continue

Phone will reboot and ask for wipe data -> press volume up and wait.

Phone will restart and we have a permanent bootloader unlocked.

Now on Settings I see "Bootloader is already unlocked" SUCCESS!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dferreira:
Verity is also false 🎉 onwards to root and install Play Services.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dferreira:
Everything aligned, Magisk also updated 3 days ago :D

Release Magisk v26.3 · topjohnwu/Magisk

[General] Fix device information detection script [General] Update BusyBox to 1.36.1 [General] Update toolchain that produces broken arm32 executables [App] Fix root service unable to bind on OnePl...

github.com
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Segnaro:
Ahah that might explain why an older version of the patched boot.img I had bricked my phone.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dferreira:
And I'm rooted as well!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Segnaro:
Awesome! Thanks for simplifying the steps.

I'm thinking this method might work for unlocking the bootloaders on other Hisense devices as well.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Sheep888:
Can somebody explain the steps in the right order? And do i need an edl cable? 😅
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Segnaro:
So with magisk installed I grabbed

[MAGISK]LiteGapps_arm64_11.0_v2.5_official.zip from https://xdaforums.com/t/litegapps-systemless-custom-gapps.4146013/

Installed it as a module in Magisk, and now I have a working Play Store.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kandwo:
I agree! I would love to know your step-by-step instructions, preferably for Linux :)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gizhel:
Thank a lot to everyone ! i didn't expect seeing the Hisense A9 rooted due to his low popularity and niche market. I'm very happy :D Btw the first message talked about a reward. How do we manage that ? :)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Segnaro:
Here's my rough draft of the instructions. Don't quote this post, these instructions could have errors.

You should have an EDL cable handy since it's possible this process could brick your phone.

YOUR PHONE'S DATA WILL BE WIPED BY THIS PROCESS.

Assuming you already have adb and fastboot drivers installed and usb debugging enabled.

Step 1 - Unlock bootloader

Download dferreira's fastboot from here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yctvfkUehZyvTbHUNn1gjaNzwJ31GVfl

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot Hisense unlock
fastboot erase avb_custom_key
fastboot continue

Phone will reboot and display a message in Chinese to confirm a complete data wipe.
Press Volume Up and wait.

Step 2 - Obtain a magisk patched boot image

Download boot.img and vbmeta.img from here:
https://xdaforums.com/t/hisense-a9-root-reward-offered-snapdragon-662.4495809/post-88926415

If you're on firmware L2037.6.08.01.00, use this boot.img instead:
https://mega.nz/folder/vrRiUDTb#V5BmrlMU0NS8s0EeOQ87Vw

Install the Magisk Apk from here:
https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases/tag/v26.3

Open Magisk
Select Install
Select "Select and Patch a File"
Pick the "boot.img" from the file manager
Select "Let's Go"
Move the magisk_patched image file from /sdcard/Download to your computer
Rename to magisk_patched_boot.img

Step 3 - Flash vbmeta and magisk_patched_boot.img

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot flash boot magisk_patched_boot.img
fastboot reboot

At this step the phone should now be rooted. Open Magisk and check that the Superuser tab is enabled.

Step 4 - Installing gapps

Download [MAGISK]LiteGapps_arm64_11.0_v2.7_official.zip from
https://sourceforge.net/projects/litegapps/files/litegapps/arm64/30/lite/v2.7/

Open Magisk
Select "Modules"
Install from storage
Select "[MAGISK]LiteGapps_arm64_11.0_v2.7_official.zip"

The Play Store should be available on reboot.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Threedollarbridge:
Hey friends, does anybody have the full stock ROM for the Hisense A9? I managed to lose WiFi and try as I might I can't find the original ZIP elsewhere. I saw that dferreira uploaded a ROM that was broken up into RAR files, but that sadly doesn't work for me.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dferreira:
This also happened to me today as I managed to kill the OS with a bogus Magisk Gapps last night before Segnaro's post. The boot.img was updated on the latest ROM version so you can't use the factory ROM boot.img. So if you are on the latest version of the OS, you need to use EDL to retrieve the updated boot.img, and use that with Magisk otherwise no WLAN (updated kernel version it seems).

Using Winrar, unrar the first file and it will unrar all of them. With that, you can use QFIL Qualcomm tool to restore your phone to older ROM version and WLAN will work again. I shared previously a command (qdl on Linux) to restore the phone when on EDL mode.

The instructions here assume you are on the factory image, not the latest OS. If you do this on the latest OS, you will lose WLAN.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Renate:
These sort of things are caused by a mismatch between the kernel and kernel modules.

Apparently the WiFi is implemented in an external kernel module, *.ko
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dferreira:
It's an issue with Magisk and latest OS. I extracted boot.img from latest OS, patched it with Magisk, same result. A search revealed folks are having issues with Magisk 26.3.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kandwo:
And what will I do with dferreira's fastboot? Should it be installed on Linux and replace any existing fastboot libraries? Or should I just run the commands within the folder?

So if my Hisense A9 has been updated to the latest OS version the instructions in post #175 will leave me without functioning Wifi?

Is an EDL cable needed to extract this boot.img?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ext23:
Definitely more battery drain than on debloated stock OS, but I'm assuming this is mostly due to Google services. I think I lost 10% overnight.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] R0W3Y:
Maybe the AOD? Mine seems to be draining faster now I've managed to activate it. I might be mistaken, and it could well be similar to the stock AOD drain.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] damianmqr:
I will profile the AOD to see if anything causes a wakelock. One difference is that stock disables AOD at night completely (meaning it's just a static image). if that turns out to be the only issue I will add similar functionality. For now, enabling battery saver will disable the AOD and limit background services, you can see if that helps when enabled before night.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] treff89:
I'm loving the ROM, @damianmqr. Thanks so much for your epic work on it, and good luck when your exam results come out.

I spotted you a couple of coffees on Ko-Fi as a token thanks!

I realise everyone's piling feature requests on, but I have two regarding the AOD:

1) Any chance of having AOD work in landscape orientation, which I lock my phone in? At the moment only the chess board shows up, no notifications or time.

2) Would be a great feature to have the text of notifications show up on the lockscreen, rather than just a tiny icon.

Thanks for considering!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] damianmqr:
Thank you for the support!

And thanks all for the great suggestions, I will consider both yours and those by @R0W3Y for one of the next releases right after I attempt to tackle the battery issues
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] biodbl:
I have gapps and the mine lost 2 or 3% overnight in offline mode
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] todd-scoops:
I reflashed mine with a fresh copy. Let it sit overnight with the AOD and I lost about 5-6%. Much better than the 20% an hour I was seeing
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ext23:
You mean a full wipe?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] todd-scoops:
Yeah, a full new install of the latest image and a wipe.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] R0W3Y:
I manually measured the battery level before and after sleeping last night. The drain was 2.3%/h. Latest LOS21 and a9 apk. Custom AOD. Wifi/Cellular on, notifications/light/bluetooth off.

I wasn’t running a battery monitor for the above as I thought it might influence the test. I’m less certain about some shorter tests I’ve run with Accubattery that seem to indicate:

It doesn’t make a significant difference to drain selecting ‘Disable custom AOD on stock’ (so using the regular AOD style) or deselecting ‘Always show time and info’ (effectively no AOD). Still over 2%/h in Lock Screen.

Switching on battery saver reduces Lock Screen drain to almost zero (no AOD, plus other battery saving measures).

So for now I’ll try just keeping battery saver on constantly. The main drawback I’ve noticed so far is it forces system dark mode. Easy to override to light on most of the apps I use, but not everywhere on the device.

I’m not really bothered about having an AOD, as long as it’s obvious when the device is in standby. Without running the AOD, sometimes the lock screen is black (fine), sometimes it shows a static version of the last screen (I’m then not sure if it’s actually locked or not unless I try to interact with the screen). Still not a big issue, just means I sometimes click the power button a few times until the screen is black.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] damianmqr:
Thanks for investigating the issue!

I will try to use energy profilers to look into this further and see if something can be done to still allow more power efficient AOD.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Luke 10:
Hi guys. I sucessfully rooted Hisense touch lite B4 version. I flashed VuanHs Hisense touch lite B4 files which were the correct files for my version bootimg . I flashedthe correct version of GAPPS for android 11. This allowed me to open google play store but it quickly crashed. I restarted about ten more times and it worked perfectly after that. Every day I used google apps and installed apps perfectly with no hangups from the play store. This all stopped one day when I went to the play store and it hanged on a blank play store screen. I thought I should restart but that led to a bootloop. I tried the exact same steps again but whenever I installed gapps again and no matter which gapps, magisk gapps, lite gapps etc I always get the there was a problem connecting with google services error. I tried resetting via recovery, reseting by system settings, clearing google cache, force stopping google, correcting date and time but to no avail. Any help would be appreciated. I wonder is there a hard reset mode or something.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] HoldenOut:
Hi everyone, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this. I don't see a thread for the Hi Reader, and I've seen others have rooted their Hisense Touch, so I'm asking here:

is there a way to root the Hisense Hi Reader to get Google Play Services (without a workaround like 2accounts)? I would like to purchase this device but would need Google Docs on it.

I'm not asking about the 6.1" Pro version, but the 6.7" Hi Reader with UNISOC T610 processor and ships with Android 10.

Thank you in advance.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kevkiid:
Wrong thread. A9 focused here.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kevkiid:
Sorry focused on A9 here.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jixbo:
Upgraded to this without wiping, looking great!!

Having an issue now, all my incoming calls are unkown! Tried clearing data from google phone (the one I'm using) but didn't fix it. Tried another phone, and I do get the caller id there, so not my provider.

Any ideas?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jixbo:
I fixed it by disbling 4G calling / VoLTE. I'm not sure if I had it enabled before... I did get a little "HD" mark in my calls, does it mean it was 4G?

I still have another issue, I was already getting with the previous version. After booting, the screen refresh is skewed. Very slow, showing very black or very grey... until I change the refresh rate once, then everything works well again. I am on the latest version of @damianmqr accessibility app.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] damianmqr:
I hadn't noticed this issue myself so it might be hard to debug, but if I can think of some plausible fixes I will include them in coming versions.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] vbhai:
This is caused by the wrong mbn profile being selected. You’d have to use QPST to set the correct mbn profile for your carrier to get caller ID on WiFi calling and VoLTE.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] iCloud:
Thankful for the prop changes to pass root checking, as some apps that previously crashed are now launching successfully(y)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
Ok, I am stuck at the unlock part.

I have downloaded fastboot linux-x86.zip and entered Fastboot Mode on my A9.

I can connect to the A9 with ADB. but...

- On my Mac: it does not run: zsh: exec format error: ./fastboot

- On my RaspberriPi4 it does not run: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

- On my Intel NUC with Debian12 it does not run: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error.

Seems as if the

- Mac is Apple sillicon

- The raspberry Pi is ARM

- The NUC is 32Bit

and all are not the right architecture... I don't have access to a windows machine.

Anyone here with a tip?

(now installing a emulated debian bookworm on my mac... and hoping that'll fix it... )
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tricolor5743:
Can’t you run x86 apps in the Mac terminal using Rosetta 2?

For example like this

M1 Mac — Switching Terminal between x86_64 and arm64

This is a simple writeup on how I switch between x86_64 and arm64 in the Terminal app on my MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon.

vineethbharadwaj.medium.com
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] R0W3Y:
I tried on my silicon Mac but resorted to using bootcamp on an ancient macbook (didn't know the tip above). Only other Mac user I recall on here used a Linux VM.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
That would have been really sweet if that worked. But I still get 'zsh: exec format error: ./fastboot' as output when I follow that tutorial and follow the steps
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tricolor5743:
That’s unfortunate. I never tried it with fastboot but I remember that I used to run x86 homebrew binaries like this when I had an M1 Mac, so I thought it might work…
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] vbhai:
It is to do with the architecture. The fast boot binary that @dferreira build is for x86_64 arch. You can either build from source for arm or use another PC with the correct architecture. Maybe @dferreira can build the fastboot binary for arm if you ask.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ext23:
So after a few days of use, I'm more than satisfied with the ROM at the moment! I'm seeing maybe 5-6% battery drain overnight with wifi and mobile on. Airplane mode didn't make a whole lot of difference IIRC (as Android seems to keep wifi on anyway...).

@damianmqr, would you mind explaining the alternative brightness curve/linear brightness curve/force alternative backlight scale in Phh Treble Settings? I suspect that whatever they are, they aren't functioning properly, e.g. enabling them means my device always wakes up at full brightness, (actually, my device still wakes at full brightness even with these settings off) and I can't manually turn brightness down (the slider just jumps back to full). Not a problem as the default settings seem to work well, I'm just curious.

Also I'm not sure what causes it but the AOD sometimes doesn't update the clock. Is there some kind of timeout? Could it be based on ambient light or other sensors?

If I had one more feature request, it would be the ability to customise the AOD clock. An on/off toggle, position/size/date on or off, that kind of thing. This is purely for vain, aesthetic purposes though as it sometimes clashes with book cover art lol.

Apart from that, it's honestly perfect and using the A9 outside of just reading is now a pleasure and not a chore. Thanks again!!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
I installed debian in a vm on an old intel macbook pro from 2015 I still had. Thnx for thinking along. Now onwards to a truly liberated A9!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
One more question; I am now ready to get going with LOS21. But in @damianmqr description it reads:

"Download the system.img you want to use (for example from Andy Yan's GSI builds https://sourceforge.net/projects/andyyan-gsi/files/)"
​

1. how do I know which system.img I want to use (what are the differences)?

2. There are a lot of files under that link; how do I know which one to choose?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] R0W3Y:
The latest img is the file attached to https://xdaforums.com/t/hisense-a9-root-reward-offered-snapdragon-662.4495809/post-89536575
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] damianmqr:
Shouldn't be, it might be some optimization that Android is doing but I'll look into it

I'll see what can be done about this, adding a lot of customization might be tough as most of the screen space is populated but I'll try to add at least some of it

These instructions are for when you want to patch your own image, I have provided a working LOS21 in the post @R0W3Y linked so patching your own isn't necessary
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
Yes indeed, saw I was not looking right. Thank you!

I just patched yours also, because I was not reading right. o_O

For what it is worth; that gave one error:

Patch_system_img.sh: line 55 setfattr: command not found
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] damianmqr:
setfattr should work on most linux distros, semanage would be an alternative but on my distro I didn't have it installed by default and that's why I went with setfattr (I don't use SELinux but AppArmor).

On debian you can just run apt-get install attr to get the command, but it's interesting it wasn't pre-installed already.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
Ok, rebooting now after flashing.

Only error I got was when running fastboot -w

% fastboot -w
Erasing 'userdata' OKAY [ 2.690s]
Erase successful, but not automatically formatting.
File system type raw not supported.
Erasing 'cache' FAILED (remote: 'Partition doesn't exist')
fastboot: error: Command failed
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] damianmqr:
Cache wipe is expected to fail, it should work fine as userdata was erased okay
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Hadi99:
Any plans to add ESS dac support on GSI?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
It works like a charm; very very nice. Thank you a lot for this.

Now onwards to remove all apps with shades and make this as monochrome as possible... :-)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] vbhai:
@damianmqr Did you figure out what's up with vibration? Any leads?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Mike(Ger):
Can you share which changes you made? I finally got my A9 yesterday and I will switch to @damianmqr 's build later today :)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] doschxda:
I am still figuring things out, but posting progress and keeping track of tips from others here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/1da6u20
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jixbo:
Thanks. Not really sure how to do that... but it was working before updating to the latest @damianmqr patch. Any idea what could have happened? Or how can I revert it?

Could it be a change or bug in the latest GSI rom?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] treff89:
With damianmqr LOS 21, does anyone else have a problem with the phone not staying in standby if it enters via display timeout (i.e. automatically switching off after leaving it for 1 minute)?

Mine works just fine when I enter standby with the power button, but if it times out then the AOD comes up for 2-3 seconds then phone switches back on again.

Doesn't bother me in daily use, but can cause signif battery drain if I miss a call with the phone in another room - keeps powercycling indefinitely.

I've tried fiddling with settings and the only thing that stops it is disabling the native always-on lockscreen.