Android Gaming Tablets

[BaldMonk]

I'm kinda surprised there's no mention of these things here.

The Android OS is home to a plethora of emulators, and these recent Chinese devices have made it so you can have everything from a portable Amiga, to a portable Dreamcast... Depending on the specs you purchase.

The quality varies depending on the manufacturer, but they're mostly pretty equal.

This is my device.


It's a quad-core, with 1GB RAM, 8GB (actually only about 6 or 7 usable) of onboard storage, SD Card slot, HDMI out... And it's awesome!

It seriously plays nearly anything you throw at it. I have it emulating:
Atari ST
Commodore 64
Commodore Amiga
MS Dos
MAME
PC Engine
Neo Geo Pocket
NES
Gameboy
Super Nintendo
Nintendo 64
Gameboy Advance
Nindendo DS
SEGA Master System/Game Gear
Mega Drive/Genesis
SEGA Saturn (sloooooooow. Very early development stages)
Dreamcast (Still very early, but basically full speed)
Sony PSX
Playstation Portable (most games run full speed)

Nothing quite like being able to play these in bed before lights out

[ransom1122]

Can we have a bit more information on what the product actually is. Or the other variants you were saying? Who sells them? How much? ? Etc.

Any youtube links of the device in action?

P.s love the ninja turtles figurines in the background

[BaldMonk]

Certainly

Well, the product is basically just an Android tablet. But instead of needing to purchase a bluetooth controller to play games, it has them built in.

They've been making them for a few years now in China, making them very cheap for what they are... But yeah, some of them have a few issues. Mine included.
Also, being from China, customer service is relatively non-existent after the purchase.

You can buy them from a LOT of places... All of varying reliability.
www.willgoo.com and
www.geekbuying.com seem to be the most reliable.
I got mine from www.aliexpress.com which is also very reliable depending on the seller's rating... So take notice.

My one cost me $150 NZD shipped 3 days DHL. The model is Sanemax CS707.
[ Show youtube player ]
I deleted all the Chinese stuff on it and installed apps from the Google Store instead.
I mainly bought it for it's thin form factor, and the fact it has an IPS screen.

The most reliable brand so far seems to be GPD. It also has the most community support, with a fella named Skelton releasing firmware updates that fix all the issues out of the box.
G7 (7 inch) review [ Show youtube player ]
G5 (5 inch) [ Show youtube player ]
Q9 (7 inch, IPS screen, Coming soon) [ Show youtube player ]

There is a great community that helps and supports each other too.
http://boards.dingoonity.org/
Scroll down to the "Android Devices" section for more information.

P.S: Haha, yeah, I'm a designer by trade and my girlfriend reluctantly lets me have my "inspiration" on my desk... The turtles are just the tip of the ice-berg

[ransom1122]

Any android tablet with a bluetooth controller does the same thing?

[BaldMonk]

More or less. Though, the tablet needs to have bluetooth... Not all do.
And some versions of Android (4.1 and 4.2 especially) don't like some controllers.

Have a look at play.google.com and see what emulators take your fancy.
MOST of them allow you to remap your keys to the controller you have connected.

[ADz]

I'm considering getting the JXD S7800b, Looks a great option

http://www.jxd.hk/products.asp?id=63...classid=009006

[ransom1122]

Which emulator is this Device from China using for its Amiga Emulation?

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by ADz

I'm considering getting the JXD S7800b, Looks a great option

http://www.jxd.hk/products.asp?id=63...classid=009006

I own a JXD S7800b and it's fantastic!

[fitzsteve]

I have the original JXD 7300 and it's a great bit of kit. I had some trouble at first as the guy who sold it to me had deleted a lot of important system files in an attempt to clean it of personal data lol.

I installed a Custom FW and I'm really pleased with it still, having owned it for about a year now.

I've got a review over at Amibay:

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php...ming-Tablet%29

When/if it dies I'll upgrade to the latest version.

[ADz]

Originally Posted by hansel75

I own a JXD S7800b and it's fantastic!

Just placed an order

[BaldMonk]

I've heard mixed things about the JXD tablets... But a lot of people are happy with them too.

Originally Posted by ransom1122

Which emulator is this Device from China using for its Amiga Emulation?

None... You need to choose your own.

I used to use this one, but it's last update kinda broke it's compatibility, and it hasn't been updated in ages.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...?id=org.ab.uae

But now I use this one. I tried this ages ago, and it was soooo complicated, but tried it again recently and it's amazing now. You can save different configs per game, load hdf files, play A1200 games(others can't) and most importantly, it plays It Came From the Desert at the correct speed.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ra.uae4all.sdl

[fitzsteve]

UAE4All rules, you want the updated version that's floating around on these forums - it runs great

By the way, JDX users with CustomFW to get full speed Emulation you need to whack the CPU up to it's fastest setting!

I'm running Classic Workbench/WHDLoad on mine just fine

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by ADz

Just placed an order

Nice one, it's a great little machine and having 2gb ram is pretty sweet to.

I will say it's not a strongly built as something like a Nexus 7 tablet is, i wouldn't like to drop it or anything.

But if you look after it you won't have any problems, the physical controls are nice to.

I have been playing a lot of N64 zelda on it lately and it runs it perfect.

Mine runs stock at 1.4ghz and i haven't bothered upgrading the firmware or overclocking it as it runs nicely as is.

But if your interested in tweaking it, look here-

http://boards.dingoonity.org/jxd-dev...9/#msg88379JXD

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by BaldMonk

I've heard mixed things about the JXD tablets... But a lot of people are happy with them too.

I had the JXD S7200B. Worst piece of crap I've ever bought.

The OS was buggy beyond hope, UAE didn't run full speed on it, had probems with key assigns, some emulators didn't want to run at all (FPSE) and the ones which ran could crash at any moment. The battery also lasted just 2 hours, and when it was going to discharge the tablet started freezing and becoming unresponsive. It also started reboot-looping if the battery wasn't over a certain percentage and sometimes it could even corrupt your Android storage (had to reflash so many times it wasn't even funny). The overclocking function was a big scam, it would report a faster speed but the CPU was locked to 800MHz anyway. If I were you guys I would do some benchmarking - the value shown could be completely placebo.

Worst of all, the 4.0 update was completely unusable

The hardware in them is also seriously underpowered and these people clearly have no idea on how to create an Android-based system except from copy-pasting source stolen somewhere else.

I'm not sure if they've got any better, but if they're still like that, STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM THEM!

Originally Posted by ADz

Just placed an order

I seriously hope that yours will work better than mine did

[ADz]

I think you're referring to the a model not b model. The b models come pre-installed with 4.2 so if you had pre-4.0 you cant have had the b model?

Also were you using stock rom or custom rom? It sounds like you were using stock if your over-clocking wasn't working.

[edit] Ah I just noticed you had the JXD 7200, not the 7800B.

This is the model that I have on order..
http://www.jxd.hk/products.asp?id=63...classid=009006

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by jbenam

I had the JXD S7200B. Worst piece of crap I've ever bought.

The OS was buggy beyond hope, UAE didn't run full speed on it, had probems with key assigns, some emulators didn't want to run at all (FPSE) and the ones which ran could crash at any moment. The battery also lasted just 2 hours, and when it was going to discharge the tablet started freezing and becoming unresponsive. It also started reboot-looping if the battery wasn't over a certain percentage and sometimes it could even corrupt your Android storage (had to reflash so many times it wasn't even funny). The overclocking function was a big scam, it would report a faster speed but the CPU was locked to 800MHz anyway. If I were you guys I would do some benchmarking - the value shown could be completely placebo.

Worst of all, the 4.0 update was completely unusable

The hardware in them is also seriously underpowered and these people clearly have no idea on how to create an Android-based system except from copy-pasting source stolen somewhere else.

I'm not sure if they've got any better, but if they're still like that, STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM THEM!


I seriously hope that yours will work better than mine did

I've had no issues whatsoever with my S7800b in which i have used daily for the last 6months since i bought it

It has quad core at 1.4ghz, 2gb ram and the Mali-400 MP4 GPU in it, and i have found it to be fast enough for everything i have needed it for.

Battery length on it is comparable to other tablets, and my S7800b has no problems emulating the Amiga.
It also has enough grunt to emulate the PSX, 32x and most N64 games, heck i even played a few PSP and Dreamcast games on it once, they were slow but they worked.

Pretty much any 8bit and 16bit system is emulated at full speed on it, even native Android 3d games all played fine, Dead trigger 2, GTA:VC, Epoch etc, all play really nicely on the S7800b!

My JXD comes with Android 4.2.2 and i have had no issues with the OS, it's always fast and responsive.

I have also benchmarked my JXD and the results were very similar to the Nexus 7 i tested as well, in some cases the JXD was faster, so i doubt there is any fake overclocking going on with this unit.

The only negative about the JXD's is that they aren't made as strong as some of the brand name tablets are, but that's to be expected from any chinese knockoff tablet and again, as long as you treat them right and don't drop them, you won't have any problems.

Maybe you just had some bad luck with yours, or that the S7200B is simply a lot weaker then the S7800b.

Edit- When i bought my S7800b and was waiting for it to arrive, i was convinced i was going to flash it and overclock etc, but to be honest since having it i haven't felt the need to do that as it works fine out of the box for all my needs.

[jbenam]

I think they might've hired someone who finally knows how to design Android tablets then The S7200B was a real disaster, trust me.

I dunno about getting another one though, my Nexus 5 (Snapdragon 800, 2.3GHz) is barely powerful enough to run whatever I want (no compromises here - 0 frameskip, accurate image quality, best sound settings, blah blah), so I'm pretty sure that a 1.4GHz chinese-no-brand quad-core won't cut it

[BaldMonk]

Hansel: Yeah, I was the same... I was planning on doing all the overclocking etc on mine, but so far have only needed to ROOT so I can replace the horrible stock mapper with Tincore.

jbenam: Really? Your N5 is slow? What are you trying to run exactly?
The thing with these tablets, is that they're not running in HD... The screen resolution impacts on the performance. I have 2 phones with basically the same specs, except the phone with a 1080p screen and 2GB RAM runs worse than the 720p phone with 1GB RAM.

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by jbenam

I'm pretty sure that a 1.4GHz chinese-no-brand quad-core won't cut it

[ Show youtube player ]

Powerful enough for you?

It may not be full speed but dreamcast emulation is a huge achievement on a tablet, and needs quite a bit of grunt to run as good as this video shows.

And if the JXD can do that, then it's pretty safe to say that any system that came out before the dreamcast can be emulated decently on the S7800b.

And from my experience with the S7800b it plays all the emulators nicely.

I also suggest you flick through these videos to see how smooth android games run on it, plus one of Mario64 running at full speed-

[ Show youtube player ]
[ Show youtube player ]

The S7800b does have a reasonable amount of power in it, and the thing is the JXD's are one of the few options when it comes to having real controllers on a tablet

Edit- One thing of note with android tablets in general, you can have the most powerful tablet still run like crap if you clog it up with to much sh#t running in the background etc.
I personally use a memory cleaning program on mine, plus it cleans all out the crap files that clutters up on them after a while.

Edit 2- If anyone wants some emulators for the android tablets, this is a good place to get them from, nice tidy layout with apk download links, plus links to the payed emulators on googleplay-
http://www.vincenzoscarpa.it/emuwiki...&w=1920&h=1080

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by hansel75

[ Show youtube player ]

Powerful enough for you?

I don't need videos or benchmarks - I have a device which is AT LEAST 2x times as powerful than the S7800B and that's not enough for me.

I won't compromise for anything less than full 60fps with no frameskip, and everything cranked up to the max

I mean, a lot of people think that frameskip or skipping audio is acceptable, but not me We're obviously not talking about SNES emulation here (even my fridge can do that, nowadays) but of something like DOS emulation... Ultima Underworld 1 for example runs barely at full speed on my Nexus 5 and will slowdown sometimes.

It all depends on what you need to do with a device. I don't need SNES or Amiga emulators as I have the real deal for that