MDT7P2-01 - 7" Android Tablet - Nextraq

[nerd4life]

We're tossing about 40 or so of these at work that have just come out of a number of fleet vehicles. Crazy cuz they're not even that old afaik.

Anyone had any luck getting a different OS installed on something like this? Lineage, etc?

I can yank one apart and take pics of the board, etc, if that helps.


https://www.calamp.com/resources/hardware-spec-sheets/mdt-7p/

 

[don256us]

It came with Android 5.0 which came out in 2014. I didn't know that, I looked it up to get an approximate age on these units. The last version of 5.0 was in 2015. My guess would be that they no longer support higher levels than what's on them of the OS.

As a starting point, I would try to see what version of Android they have. That would give you an idea of what you know will work if you are able to figure out the rest. I would think that it at least would work with 6.x but I don't know that.

 

[nerd4life]

I looked at it a bit more yesterday. It does have 5.0. I'm able to connect to wifi, but no way to access the internet otherwise, no play store, and it won't let me add any accounts (ie. google account).

Maybe I can side load chrome or similar (if that's the right verbage). I am going to try and get f-droid on there at least.

 

[don256us]

Agreed that you will have to sideload something. I would think that Android 6.0 would be reasonably safe to try although I know nothing about doing it. This thing is proprietary all the way. The question is : How well did they lock it down. Probably not much.

 

[nerd4life]

Update here.

I finally gave up on google on this one. No biggie.. The apk's would sideload fine following a guide for a fire tablet I found, but the google play services would crash everytime I tried to add an account.

So, f-droid to the rescue. Using f-droid, I downloaded private browser, works like a charm. And downloaded newpipe for streaming music off of youtube. I had to use newpipe legacy as the first one I downloaded kept throwing some type of error.

Everything is running well now. I deleted everything I could. These things are slow, but not too bad if you're using them for just music on youtube. lol...

 

[don256us]

That's a neat project you got there. Thank you for sharing.

 

[don256us]

I guess would be that they no longer support this

I'm sure you're right but that's the fun of it. He has a device that a vendor has locked down in a way to make it proprietary. He is looking for a way to make it more friendly and to see what it can do. Changing it from a useless, end of life, gadget into something that resembles a consumer class gadget.