Old Android 4.4.4 tablet

[JHMarx]

Hello:

New member here.
Admin: please excuse me if this is not the right place to post this, move it as appropiate.

Recently gifted to me, I am attempting to keep a (practically) unused Logicom L-Element 741G tablet from the landfill.
It has a Rockchip RK 3066 - 1.20 ghZ SOC, 494MB RAM and 5.45 GB internal storage.

CPU-Z 1.43 says this about it:

SOC
Cores:                   4
Architecture:       4x ARM [email protected]
Revision:               r0p5
Process:               40 nm
Clock Speed:      216 MHz - 1.20 GHz
CPU0                    216 Mhz
CPU1                     216 Mhz
CPU2                    216 Mhz
CPU3                    216 Mhz
GPU Vendor:       ARM
GPU Renderer:   Mali-400 MP

SYSTEM
Android version:         4.4.4
API Level:                       19
Bootloader:                  unknown
Build ID:                         F86P_GMS_S_V001
Java VM:                       Dalvik 1.6.0
OpenGL ES:                   2.0
Kernel Architecture:   armv7l
Kernel Version:            3.10.0 (eng.renj.20150424.130400)
Root Access:                no
GPlay Services:           6.5.99(1642632-038)

I have managed to make it much snappier by disabling everything *Google*' that I could disable via [Settings] -> [Apps] without observing any adverse effects for the time being.

It is incredible just how much useless bloat these things come with.

Eventually I would like to directly uninstall all these googthings and recover as much on-board storage as possible to try to make as it usefull as possible. eg: wireless access for basic email reading/answering from a couple of accounts, composing texts when travelling, etc.
No web surfing intended.

Much to my chagrin, I have not been able to get an email client to work, having tried with both the native application bundled with Android 4.4.4 (package:com.android.email) and another one called Mail 1.12.20 (Mail-1.12.20.apk) authored by Green Apple Studio, the problem apparently related to SSL certificates.

To see if it was an Android version issue, I then tested access to my accounts via webmail using the Fennec Firefox 68.5.0esr browser downloaded from F-Droid with success so I think I can safely (?) say that it is not a problem with the Android version but it is painfully slow and I'd rather not use webmail.

Opening up the Mail-1.12.20.apk file, I was able to see that the META-INF directory contains a CERT.RSA file dated 2017-03-13 with the data below, which may have bearing on the problem at hand.

Nguyen Hao
Identity: Nguyen Hao
Verified by: Nguyen Hao
Expires: 03/06/65

Subject Name
C (Country):    84
ST (State):    Hanoi
L (Locality):    Hanoi
O (Organization):    appleinfo_studio
OU (Organizational Unit):    appleinfo studio
CN (Common Name):    Nguyen Hao
Issuer Name
C (Country):    84
ST (State):    Hanoi
L (Locality):    Hanoi
O (Organization):    appleinfo_studio
OU (Organizational Unit):    appleinfo studio
CN (Common Name):    Nguyen Hao
Issued Certificate
Version:    3
Serial Number:    07 9D 1A 9B
Not Valid Before:    2015-03-19
Not Valid After:    2065-03-06
Certificate Fingerprints
SHA1:    4D 32 DE 8E E3 86 62 BE F4 7F 1F 6A C7 68 F3 8C F8 40 0E BE
MD5:    71 53 9D 0A FC 43 28 F5 F2 92 C3 78 E7 88 15 8C

I would appreciate any pointers on how to solve this problem, if at all possible.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

JHMarx

 

[Traveller]

The certificate file only says when the tablet was compiled. It has nothing to do with your issues as it merely tells Android that the APK is a valid one. As to your idea of uninstalling files from the system partition of the tablet, while you can do that on such an old tablet, doing so will not net you any additional storage space as the partitions in Android are not dynamic but static. This means the partitions will not resize themselves to move the free space to user storage.

The age of the tablet here is going to work against you. It's no longer possible to sign in to a Google account at all on such an old tablet. Email and web browser clients will generate errors due to not supporting current standards, and no updates that support current standards will be available on such an ancient tablet. If you're looking to use the tablet as a basic e-reader, find a version of an e-reader app that works on Android 4.4.4, install it, and drop in a MicroSD card to load your books on. Otherwise, there's really not much you can do with the hardware.