Thursday, January 19, 2017
Bridging the gap
Bridging the gap
A little while ago, I introduced my kids to Angry Birds after installing it from the app store on Google Chrome, and they were immediately hooked. I dont mind them playing it because it is teaching them some good hand eye coordination and it keeps them entertained, allowing me to focus on things like school work. Unfortunately, I may have created a monster though and now I often have to kick the kids off of the computer so I can get work done without needing to retreat upstairs to my "office" ( I use the term loosely). On a whim, I bid $60 on a used android tablet on ebay and I was shocked to find that I won the auction!
Now, obviously a used android tablet that I picked up for less than a hundred dollars is not going to win any races or set any records, but it will do what I need it to do; be a mobile device that the kids can play angry birds and watch movies on.
I was able to pick up the device for so cheap because the previous owner forgot the password to the device and the manufacturer Coby Electronics does not provide any kind of support like firmware recovery tools or drivers for the device on their website. What can you expect from a device that costs about $150 brand new? Luckily, me being the brilliant hacker that I am.... I am fully aware that simply issuing the command via terminal
adb reboot recovery
will restart the tablet into the Android recovery environment, from which I can perform a factory reset. Presto! unlocked Android tablet. It kind of sucks that I ended up getting a Coby Kyros 7005 because there is virtually no after market customization for it, unlike its slightly more powerful cousin the Kyros 7015 which gets the full Honeycomb treatment. Oh well, its not really for me. Its for my kids but it would be nice to be able to upgrade to something better than Android 2.1.
Perhaps further down the road the devs will produce at the very least a Froyo rom for the 7005, if not Gingerbread or Honeycomb. Well have to see what happens. In the mean time, Ill be patiently waiting for my new tablet to arrive.
Available link for download
