New WonderMedia WM8650 Android Tablet PC

ffxx68 said:
Hi all,

I have a 8505 netbook and I'm seriously thinking to "upgrade" to a 8650 tablet. A few things I haven't found yet in the reviews:

1) Battery drain. How long it runs on battery (average usage: 50% on the internet on WiFi; 50% idle/screen off)
2) Standby or Hibernation modes. Does everything works fine after after returning to work? I know WiFi *might* have issues, like needing a restart or so.
3) 3G dongle support. Which are the supported devices?

thanks
Click to expand...

Battery drain depends on the size of the battery. 3200m batteries will last 5-6 hours. I have a 2400 batter and on the dimmest screen setting an with wifi off Ive made it to five and a half. with screen dim (still perfectly visible btw, full brite hruts my eyes) but wifi on Ill average 4 hours. Hibernation mode freezes my tablet with screen off on but Iver heard it doesnt do much to stop power drain i just set mine to screen off after ten minutes which works just fine.
 
Hi all,
i've just gotten myself a wm8650 from ebay, its been one dAy n i pretty impressed with it.

Did any of u tried connecting a thumb drive through the extension port n successfully running it? I tried to load a 32mb on it but the sync-ing was so long that i eventually forced shutdown my device

The listing on ebay states the battery is 2600mah, n i could only get about <=2.5 hr of runtime, at dimmest
setting with wifi. So, is it true that the runtime should be around tis for a 2600mah?

Thank you,
Bob
 
hmmm....ive got a 2400mah outlasting your battery which is supposedly bigger...might be some fqalse advertising on your tablet there...2:30 is typical of an 1800mah battery. Which app killers/task managers are you running and what processes do they show? (i reccomend Watchdog Lite & Advanced Task Manager for this purpose) It could be you have a background app using up your cpu which is draining your battery...also what apps are you running CONSITANTLY when you use your tablet? running videos and music will drain faster that simple web browsing/games/ebook reading. I average 3-4 hours of life but can get as many as 5 hours depending on use. If your running heavy CPU and emmory apps this will lessen your battery life. (of course most of the time I run tethered to a power outlet but hey it doesnt bother me) also are you running some IM applications? Using wifi heavily will drain you quickly too.

I have no problem running a thumb drive on the extension port...again I suggest you check what background apps are running. let us know and werll go from there.
 
I've only installed 'my task killer' from the chinese app market n dolphin browser.most of the apps are default. Nope, i didnt play song/video in the background,nor is IM app running. I only used it for checking mail n stuff,not even youtube but with a mouse connected,so im quite puzzled that urs can last 4+hrs.

Is it possible to off auto sync of thumbdrive?

Should i not power off every time im finish using it or simply let it sleep?
which way drain lesser power?
 
Last edited:
Hi,

I share the view of many that I found this a very good tablet at least for my needs, yet I am having a small problem. all of a sudden the tablet seems to keep loading, it doesn't hang it just keeps loading without ever getting to the OS. I noticed that if I press the back button the light turns of yet again the loading screen, keeps loading without hanging.

I tried the suggestion to master reset it by pressing the power button for 8 seconds yet it didn't have any effect.... Any suggestions please?

To be precise my model is a Wondermedia Wanxin TX-7B.
 
Hi yendor,

I faces tat problem only when i insert usb into the port, after some time, I will press the power button for 4sec till screen turn off n restart again.Works at least for mine. Try locating n pressing the hidden reset button.

Cheers,
Bob
 
Hi all,
I've recently got a no-name 8" 8650 tablet for about HKD700 (USD90) including shipping cost from China. There's a label stating PC-802 as the model no, and another label with wording "HS-MID". From Settings->About Device, the kernel version is 2.6.32.9-default and the build number is "generic-eng 2.2 Froyo v1.1.1-20110308.162514".

CPU is slow and I think that's the reason why the touchscreen (resistive) isn't too responsive. After some time of use, I've now basically mastered the use of the touchscreen ... just be a little bit patient and don't jam the CPU with too many touchscreen events within a short period of time (initially I would repeat the same touchscreen action after seeing no immediate respond, which would make the situation worse). CPU speed is now good enough for me to read ebooks, perform light weight web browsing, read newspapers/magazines, playing some logic games, though it's still slow when running MapDroyd for offline map reading. I read from a Chinese forum where people said speed is much improved after flashing the ROM to 1.2.2 or 1.2.3 (I think mine is 1.1.1). Viewing of web sites with flash is still an issue.

The 800MHz speed of 8650 is actually the total of 5xxMHz CPU + 2xxGPU. Hence CPU speed is more or less same as 8505, with the improvement being the addition of GPU, making the flashplayer and therefore Android 2.2 possible.

So far I still have some minor issues below:
1. there's no physical 'menu' key on the device - for some apps such as VuDroid (a PDF viewer) or the game Sokoban which take on full screen such that the menu icon is hidden, I can't find a way to bring up the menu
2. the Android location manager seems to be missing. From "Settings", I can see Settings->Security, but it should be "Settings->Location & Security" as in other tablets. Hence we can't define the source of location, say from GPS. Impact is that most of the map software would crash - google map, RMAPS, BigPlanet Tracks, etc. The only offline map software I'm able to run is MapDroyd.
3. It seems the GPS component of Android is missing ... this is related to 2 above.
4. I can't make my USB bluetooth adapter working ... nothing happens after I plug it in. The adapter works well in Linux.
5. battery life not too good - about 1hr45min with wifi on, 3.5hrs reading ebooks with wifi off
6. a potential issue is difficulty replacing the battery - it seems not quite possible to unscrew the device without damaging it. Will try when my battery has reached end of life.

rooting using z4root seems to work ... temporary rooting successfully completed but I haven't tried anything serious after that.

I really wish to try out some new ROMs, but I'm currently studying how to backup the factory ROM (using NANDROID/ROM Manager???) for recovery purpose in case something goes wrong. I can find at least one new ROM of version 1.2.2 in HcH'z TechKnow [www.HcH.net.tc] - Index page which appears to fit my model, but there're many forum threads saying that the device may hang up at certain stage if the new ROM is not fit for it, which is scary!
 
Last edited:
ksng_android said:
Hi all,
I've recently got a no-name 8" 8650 tablet for about HKD700 (USD90) including shipping cost from China. There's a label stating PC-802 as the model no, and another label with wording "HS-MID". From Settings->About Device, the kernel version is 2.6.32.9-default and the build number is "generic-eng 2.2 Froyo v1.1.1-20110308.162514".

CPU is slow and I think that's the reason why the touchscreen (resistive) isn't too responsive. After some time of use, I've now basically mastered the use of the touchscreen ... just be a little bit patient and don't jam the CPU with too many touchscreen events within a short period of time (initially I would repeat the same touchscreen action after seeing no immediate respond, which would make the situation worse). CPU speed is now good enough for me to read ebooks, perform light weight web browsing, read newspapers/magazines, playing some logic games, though it's still slow when running MapDroyd for offline map reading. I read from a Chinese forum where people said speed is much improved after flashing the ROM to 1.2.2 or 1.2.3 (I think mine is 1.1.1). Viewing of web sites with flash is still an issue.

The 800MHz speed of 8650 is actually the total of 5xxMHz CPU + 2xxGPU. Hence CPU speed is more or less same as 8505, with the improvement being the addition of GPU, making the flashplayer and therefore Android 2.2 possible.

So far I still have some minor issues below:
1. there's no physical 'menu' key on the device - for some apps such as VuDroid (a PDF viewer) or the game Sokoban which take on full screen such that the menu icon is hidden, I can't find a way to bring up the menu
2. the Android location manager seems to be missing. From "Settings", I can see Settings->Security, but it should be "Settings->Location & Security" as in other tablets. Hence we can't define the source of location, say from GPS. Impact is that most of the map software would crash - google map, RMAPS, BigPlanet Tracks, etc. The only offline map software I'm able to run is MapDroyd.
3. It seems the GPS component of Android is missing ... this is related to 2 above.
4. I can't make my USB bluetooth adapter working ... nothing happens after I plug it in. The adapter works well in Linux.
5. battery life not too good - about 1hr45min with wifi on, 3.5hrs reading ebooks with wifi off
6. a potential issue is difficulty replacing the battery - it seems not quite possible to unscrew the device without damaging it. Will try when my battery has reached end of life.

rooting using z4root seems to work ... temporary rooting successfully completed but I haven't tried anything serious after that.

I really wish to try out some new ROMs, but I'm currently studying how to backup the factory ROM (using NANDROID/ROM Manager???) for recovery purpose in case something goes wrong. I can find at least one new ROM of version 1.2.2 in HcH'z TechKnow [www.HcH.net.tc] - Index page which appears to fit my model, but there're many forum threads saying that the device may hang up at certain stage if the new ROM is not fit for it, which is scary!
Click to expand...

I couldn't root the device and it seems to be rooted but SuperUser apps didn't work
I flashed with 1.2.2 ROM once and everything was ok but I bricked the tablet with a wrong SU command and I tried to flash it again but now battery indicator and touchscreen don't work !
Be careful, mine has green LED and turns to RED while charging and vibrates on boot and stock ROM was 1.2.2 20110402
There's no huge difference to mid users if they go for custom ROM but I'm using many of SU apps and had to flash it
BTW, VPN connection is not even in custom ROM and I'm trying to find a way to make VPN connection work
I need to mention that a 720p video file cannot be played smoothly but you can just think you can PLAY it in your tablet !
 
reza_243 said:
I couldn't root the device and it seems to be rooted but SuperUser apps didn't work
I flashed with 1.2.2 ROM once and everything was ok but I bricked the tablet with a wrong SU command and I tried to flash it again but now battery indicator and touchscreen don't work !
Be careful, mine has green LED and turns to RED while charging and vibrates on boot and stock ROM was 1.2.2 20110402
There's no huge difference to mid users if they go for custom ROM but I'm using many of SU apps and had to flash it
BTW, VPN connection is not even in custom ROM and I'm trying to find a way to make VPN connection work
I need to mention that a 720p video file cannot be played smoothly but you can just think you can PLAY it in your tablet !
Click to expand...
You're right. I've checked again and the device was not rooted, even though z4root said it'd done so.
My target is to flash to this ROM in the thread: http://techknow.freeforums.org/uberoid-wm8650-2-2-v1-2-2-nl-20110414-8-hch-t438.html
My only concern is whether wifi sensitivity will be degraded. Currently my wifi works well when around 15 ft away from the wireless router separated by 2 thick walls. It would be good if I can backup my current wifi drivers before upgrading ... but unfortunately this can't be done without rooting. Hence I'm still thinking whether to upgrade or not.

In my case the LED behind the back key seems to have no colour while on, and is red while charging, and there's no vibration when rebooting. After going through all different posts, I believe I need to change a line in the file FirmwareInstall/packages/fs_patch/root_patch/system/default.prop from,
ro.wmt.touchpannel=0
to
ro.wmt.touchpannel=1
in order for touchscreen to work.

Your case is strange - if it works the first time, then it should work the second, unless there're changes you've made in the first flashing which you forgot in the second.

BTW, none of my installed software can be moved to SD in my current v1.1.1. Hope this is resolved in 1.2.2!
 
Hi,

Im new to this. recently I bought from ebay a 8" Supposedly Dual Core Via 8650 800Mhz Tablet with 256 ect ect.... Im a Iphone/Ipad Guy but my wife has an android phone so i thought it will be cool to have an android tablet. Well The tablet arrived yesterday from Hong Kong and i had high expectations for it, dont get me wrong, ive never expected to perform close to an ipad but also not as the first android tablets on the market. This are the things/situations so far:
1. The cpu was supposed to be a 800Mhz Dual Core/ But it says ARM926ej-s Rev 5 (v5l) 299 Bogomips
2. It was supposed to be Flash 10.1 Enabled and it had a Adobe Flash Player Evaluation installed But With That Processor ( and Correct me if im Wrong) V5 its impossible to play flash videos since its not Hardware compatible.
3. The volume on this thing is so dang low, I cant hear nothing out of it.
4. The WIFI signal is very poor, and The touch Screen was supposed to be dual touch or something like that but nope..

Overall it looks good, and hey you cant ask a lot of features for such a small price, but 100 bucks nowadays are very difficult to find to be trowing it away on something that does not work.

Al least:
1. Angry birds is more playable than on my wife Motorola backflip but still slow.
2. Downloaded a Youtube player and can watch videos.
3. It plays music
4. It plays videos Smoothly, not choppy.

Things that frustrated me:
1. The CPU. Ive been looking for info all over the internet and cant say i found an answer since it varies from site to site. Is it ARM11, is it ARM 9 is it dual core, Is it 800 or 600 or 300... Im too tired to keep looking.

Well Thanks and have a nice day.
 
I've bought one of these WM8605 things too (labelled M7007T at 88$ all inclusive: $87 free shipping M70007T Google android 2.2 WM8650 Tablet PC 7 inch wholesale). It' being shipped from China now and I'm really curious of what I'm actually getting.

Standing to the level of the feedback provided by the reseller (read some of the latest on the page for example) the assistance level is close to 0. The idea with these cheap devices (but you know already I think) is: 1) give me some money, 2) here's your stuff, 3) forget about us.

I own a WM8505 "netbook" already, but I wanted some more power and didn't want to spend more than 100$. I'm also one of those geeks trying to tear down and mod his toy as soon as they get it (I've done some hacking on my netbook already), but I'm really scared by reading at the several forums reporting "bricked" devices after flashing them. Of course who's writing on those forums it's mostly because they got problems (I think), but I'd prefer to understand before flashing if it's going to work. Some idea on what to check, before the upgrade?

About performance, BogoMIPS are about double on the 8650 than 8505, so it looks main ARM core MHz has been actually doubled. And the Graphical coprocessor allows the use of Flash 10 at least and view some "normal" video. I'm not advertising anything here, but if WM made this upgrade I think they didn't make it on the chip label only!

About battery, it's not clear what you get actually. That is the trickiest point with all these cheap tablets I think. My WM8505, with a 1800mAh (that's what the label reports) lasts with WiFi 100% and screen 50% of the time for about 1hr. I don't expect much more than that on the higher frequency, double core 8650 (in spite they claim a 20% better power efficiency).
 
Last edited:
with full blazing wifi and bright screen youll get about 2.5 hours out of the battery. turn down the screen youll get about 4 hours, turn off everything and you get about 5. the "normal" video is normal for Youtube only. things like Blip and other video is a bit choppy using stock flash in a browser, but this can be corrected by using either a Flash video downloader with player OR by using the skyfire browser which buffers the video appropriately.
 
I see. Hope the same with mine :)
Isn't there a "standby" or "hibernate" mode, to avoid a full shutdown and (lengthy) reboot, if one doesn't need to use it for some time?
 
ffxx68 said:
I see. Hope the same with mine :)
Isn't there a "standby" or "hibernate" mode, to avoid a full shutdown and (lengthy) reboot, if one doesn't need to use it for some time?
Click to expand...

there is...doesnt do much for the battery.
 
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