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Posts: 592 | Thanked: 1,603 times | Joined on Apr 2010 @ Berlin / Germany
#135
Originally Posted by TheKit View Post
I got pretty much inspired by https://jolla.comes.today/jolla-tablet-on-taobao-china/ article and firmware from http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=96474. In a nutshell, official Jolla Tablet is a device based around Intel Atom Z3735F SoC (Bay Trail) and can work both with Sailfish OS and Android (by the way, Android device tree it's based on is called "anzhen4_mrd8_w").

There have been a lot of cheap Chinese tablet using the same SoC, and usually they come with Android/Windows dualboot. So what's preventing us from running Sailfish OS on them? Android firmware can often be easily ported between such devices, but kernel is device-specific, so custom ROM makers just use the stock kernel from their device unmodified.

For Sailfish OS, we can't, since systemd requires some kernel options which are most of time turned off in Android kernels. Enabling them and recompiling kernel would be easy if Chinese manufacturers didn't violate GPL and actually provided kernel sources, but that's not the case. Thankfully, since most of hardware is similar, it's possible to base custom kernel on other device source.

I have Sailfish OS running on Onda V820w tablet. It's not perfect yet, but the hardware itself (touchscreen, audio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, front and back cameras) works. Many thanks to Stskeeps for providing modules folders which were missing from Jolla Tablet kernel sources. The biggest problem was getting kernel working with camera sensors. Even though the needed drivers are present, PMIC regs and GPIO pin meanings turned out to be different. Just a few values to change, but it was very troublesome to debug and I had to disassemble Onda stock Android kernel to understand what's wrong.

Below is a guide to installing Sailfish OS on Onda V820w (tested with V3, see serial number to understand what revision is yours if you happen to have it). Hope community will be interested in running Sailfish OS on other similar devices and we can have more supported. I'm happy to help with what I can either here or at #sailfishos-porters on IRC.



Update: automatic installer (all data is going to be erased!) image for ONDA V820W V3: https://mega.nz/#!8FZRiBwB!FBBD8CUMa...Qp713VqT-FoAhM. Unpack it to the root of FAT32 formatted USB drive and boot tablet from USB drive.
How do you think are the chances to get your image running on another Baytrail tablet Medion Lifetab S10366?
Its also based on anzhen Android Device Tree.

Here is my post about it:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=99355

Thanks
 

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