ViewSonic G-tablet Review
Posted by comhack | Filed under Android, Linux, Tablet
To begin with, here is the first post I made about the Tablet listing the specs: http://www.comhack.com/wordpress/?p=265
I finally received my ViewSonic Gtab Monday, November 22nd and I figured I would give it a good week to fully ‘feel out’ the device before writing a review.
Well to begin with the default UI is complete garbage. ViewSonic decided to include an interface on top of Android called TapNTalk which is extremely sluggish and remind me of FisherPrice instead of a power tablet interface. There is no flash or market even though the box claims there is. When I first booted the tablet I got a bunch of forced closes, no camera access, and it was extremely sluggish. Here is the stock pic of the TapNTap interface on another tablet device. It basically looks the same on the Gtablet: 
So of course, I planned on installing another ROM immediately without even playing with the interface. Since the tablet was initially released at the beginning of November, there have been lots of developement on the tablet. So far there are three different custom ROMs available for the device. To begin with, you have to install ClockworkMod Recovery which is basically a boot manager that allows you to install a custom ROMs, backup a ROM, partition the device, and includes other various utilities. Here is a screenshot of ClockWork Recovery: 
In order to install the ‘boot manager’, you must first have Nvidia’s NVFlash installed on your system. After that the process is pretty straightforward:
- Download and Install the Froyo OS Image from NVIDIA here
- Download and extract the following file into your /home/user/android_tegra_250_Froyo*Something*/ folder. (and yes you want to overwrite any files in that directory with the ones in the zip file)
- Place your Tablet into APX Boot mode by holding VOL- and Power (with your device powered down) until The Viewsonic logo disappears. Your screen will be blank and the device will appear to be off, however it is not it is now in APX mode.
- Plug your device into your computer using a USB Cable
- Open a Command prompt. and navigate to the Android_tegra folder. cd /opt/Nvidia…… Once there type the following at the command prompt-
"nvflash --bl bootloader.bin --download 9 clockwork.img- Allow the process to finish and tell you to press Enter to Continue.
- hold in VOL+ button while powering on to enter clockwork
Thats it!!!
Once I had clockwork up and running, I booted back into the defaul UI to download some ROMS. First I downloaded the Cyanogenmod 6.1 beta 2 ROM since I have ran various releases of it on my Android phone for about 6 months or so. The ROMS are simple to install via Cyanogenmod. All you need to do is select “install zipcard from sdcard” then select the ROM. Then “wipe data/factory reset” and “wipe cache“. Then reboot, pretty simple huh?
I also downloaded a package called Gapps that is needed in order to get the Google apps and Market on the device. Well I managed to flash the Cyanogenmod ROM just fine but I had issues gettting Gapps installed. Everytime I installed it, Clockwork said successful but I did not get the items in the menu. I had heard there was a manual way to push the apps on the device but I decided to try out another ROM first.
The second ROM I tried out is called TNT-Lite which is basically the default interface but stripped of the TapNTap overlay. So it looks more like Android but with a stock settings menu. This ROM came with Gapps preinstalled but the market did not have all the applications available. So I looked around and noticed that there was a simple market fix available:
- Get a copy of Titanium Backup and sideload it
- Make sure the Market is working with your Google ID, of course.
- Go into Settings — Applications — Manage Applications and Force Stop both the Market and Google Services Frameworks apps.
- In Titanium Backup, go into “Backup/Restore”, look for “Google Services Framework 2.2″, click on it and then choose “Wipe Data”. Then go back to the home screen.
- Run the Market app. You should get an error (that’s a good thing, as that’s what we want. If you don’t get an error, re-try the steps above until you do).
- Reboot, and wait at least a minute after the OS is up to let things stabilize.
- Run the Market again. You should see an immediate difference
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=845175
So I had TNT-Lite up and running with Gapps working. So I start customizing the tablet further but I was still not completely happy with TNT-Lite. So for about 4 or 5 days I went back and forth flashing Cyanogenmod on the device but could never get Gapps working so I went back to the TNT-Lite. I messed up the tablet a few times and I had to go back to stock once just to get the device working again. Luckily, it is impossible to brick the device since you can just reflash the default UI. Anyway, in that time, two more releases of Cyanogemod came out and another version of Cyanogenmod was released.
I eventually found a method to install Gapps that used the Android SDK(adb) on my computer. Basically I had to extract the Gapps.zip file and reboot into Clockwork recovery and mount the /sys partition. Once I was in Clockwork recovery, I had to plug the tablet into my computer via usb. Then I had to open up a terminal and type in:
╔═ comhack@Venus 02:31 PM
╚═══ ~-> adb devices
List of devices attached
171440094180b317 device
That started the adb daemon and identified the attatched device. Then I had to manually push the apps to the device using adb:
╔═ comhack@Venus 02:31 PM
╚═══ ~-> adb push gapps/* /system/app/
╔═ comhack@Venus 02:31 PM
╚═══ ~-> adb push framwork/* /system/framework/
╔═ comhack@Venus 02:31 PM
╚═══ ~-> adb push lib/* /system/lib/
╔═ comhack@Venus 02:31 PM
╚═══ ~-> adb push permissions/* /system/permissions/
After all the apps were manually loaded on the tablet, I unmount /system in Clockwork recovery and rebooted. After a minute, or so I seen the Cyanogenmod splash screen and then it log into my google account, set Time/Date, etc. I finally had Cyanogenmod up and running with Gapps installed. WOOT
After that I needed to do the Market fix and install Flash. To install Flash I went to here and downloaded a version specifically for the Gtab. I extracted the file and simply click on the Flash.apk file and it was installed immediately. After that I proceeded to install about 30 apps on my tablet and customize the gui to my tastes.
All in all, this was a great purchase. Although, unless you plan on installing a custom ROM and/or do some tinkering, you are better off waiting on something better to come out. The specs on the device are top of the line but the default interface is crap. So if you do not mind tinkering, I would suggest getting the tablet. You will not be disappointed.
Here are some pictures of my tablet running Cyanogenmod 6.1 Beta 4. Sorry for the image quality, my computer room is kind of dark:
6 Responses to “ViewSonic G-tablet Review”
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V. T. Eric Layton Says:
December 1st, 2010 at 5:25 pmAwww… it’s so cute!
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comhack Says:
December 9th, 2010 at 2:20 amThank You to the XDA team working on the G tab, and if anyone else is thinking about returning this product consider this before you do so, because Samsung, Apple, or any other manufacturer will not give the type of updates and support you can get here from an open device like this, from a place like XDA.
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BambisMusings Says:
December 9th, 2010 at 10:36 amCute and awesome!
Great job!
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comhack Says:
December 9th, 2010 at 3:05 pmThanks Bambi!!
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Regena Eon Says:
February 13th, 2012 at 5:42 pmawesome post. thanks.
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comhack Says:
February 14th, 2012 at 3:10 pmThanks for the comment. I have since moved on to another tablet. I currently have a HP Touchpad 32gb running Android 4.0.3 (ICS), WebOS 3.05, and Archlinux|ARM.
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