CNXSoft – Embedded Software Development

QC802 is one of the cheapest RK3188 mini PCs available on the market, as it sells for just $76 on Kimdecent aliexpress store ($73 after you get an Aliexpress coupon). AndroidPC.es got one sample, and posted a review in Spanish. I’ll post a summary in English of this review, but first let’s have quick look at the specs:

• SoC – Rockchip RK3188 quad core Cortex A9 @ 1.6 Ghz + Mali-400MP4 GPU
• System Memory – 2GB DDR3
• Storage – 8 GB internal flash + micro SD slot (up to 32GB)
• Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 2.1
• Video Output – HDMI (male)
• USB – 1x USB Host 2.0, 2x micro USB ports including one for power, one USB Host (or OTG?)

So the specs are comparable to other devices.

QC802 Unboxing Pictures

The package contains the device itself, a 5V/2Apower supply, an HDMI cable, a micro USB to USB cable for power, a micro USB to USB adapter and a user manual.
There’s also an unboxing video.

The picture of the device shows the 2 microUSB ports, the microSD slot, the full USB port, and HDMI output. They also mention there’s a recovery button to reflash the firmware in case of issue.

First Boot and First Impressions

After connecting your input devices to the USB posts, the device to your TV’s HDMI port, and connected the power adapter, you should see a standard Android Home Screen after a few seconds.

Volume -/+, power, and full screen icons are all available in the status bar, so that’s a positive. AndroidPC.es guys mentioned that the power button will actually fully turn off your device, and not only the display signal.

Looking into the settings menu, the device runs Android 4.1.1 on top of Linux kernel 3.0.36+, but Android 4.2 firmware is expected soon. Out of the 8GB NAND flash, 1GB is reserved for apps, and the rest of data.

They found Google Play to work well on the device, and only failed to install one app called Mitele (incompatible device), a Spanish video-on-demand service.

The device is not rooted, but apparently you can do that by downloading a Windows program called ZhuoDaShi-2.2.17. I’d assume standard RK3188 root procedure may also work.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Tests

QC802 uses Realtek RTL8188EUS, and features an internal antenna fixed to the casing. Performance was found to be pretty good, but there was some disconnections from time to time, but apparently the issue could be fixed with an app called Wifi Fixer to make sure the connection is always active.

They also tested Bluetooth with Bluetooth File Transfer app, and found no issues transfer between their smartphone and the device in either direction.

Benchmarks

They ran Antutu, Nenamark 2, Vellamo and Epic Citadel benchmarks on the device.

The Antutu score (11,735) is quite lower than other RK3188 mini PCs I’ve used which normally achieve close to 15,000 with the stock ROM (e.g. MK908), and around 17,000 with custom ROMs. However, a closer look at the score shows 0 points for 2D and 3D tests so something clearly went wrong with this benchmark. The CPU and RAM scores are about the same as MK809 and T428.

Other benchmarks provide expected results: Nenamark 2 renders at 60.0 fps (the maximum achievable), Vellamo 1500 (HTML5) / 548 (Metal), and the device gets 4,053 pts in 3Dmark.

Video Playback

Video tested (from samplemedia.linaro.org) could all play:

• H.264 codec / MP4 container (Big Buck Bunny), 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• MPEG2 codec / MPG container, 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• MPEG4 codec, AVI container 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• VC1 codec (WMV), 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• Real Media (RMVB) 720p RV8/RV9/RV10 – Video OK (No audio in test files)
• WebM 480p/720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK.

They could also play Bluray video at about 10Mbps and 20 Mbps, as well as a MOV file @ 14 Mbps from a USB mass storage device. However, I don’t know the storage source (network, USB, or flash).
They also streamed flash videos from the Android web browser smoothly.

Conclusions

Pros:

• Price
• 2GB RAM improve fluidity between apps.  (cnxsoft: One of the main advantage of having 2GB RAM over 1GB RAM to me, is that you can switch from one application to the other without have to fear Android will kill your app. This is especially true for games).
• RK3188 performance makes everything very responsive.
• Good performance of the GPU.

Cons:

• The firmware still needs adjustment, and an update will be available soon.
• The wifi signal enters low power mode when not in use.

Kimdecent sells some cheap RK3188 mini PCs such as QC802 for $76, but instead of sending me yet another RK3188 device, they agreed to send CS868, an HDMI TV dongle powered by AllWinner A31 quad core processor, so that I could review it. This mini PC comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB Flash, the latter being larger than the 8GB flash found in most other devices, and is available for $95 on Kimdecent Aliexpress store. More details about the specifications are available on Unuiga U28 post since the hardware is the same. In theory, AllWinner A31 has a much slower CPU than Rockchip RK3188, but its PowerVR 544MP2 GPU should outperform the Mali-400 MP4 found it the Rockchip processor, and A31 supports 4K2K video decoding. In this post, I’ll show some unboxing picture, give my first impressions, test Wi-Fi performance, video playback capabilities, and run some benchmarks.

CS868 Unboxing Pictures

I received the device in a parcel with lot of bubble wraps, so the package was not damaged,  but there’s not much to say about the package as it’s just a no name “mini PC for Android OS” without specifications, or other useful information.

CS868 mini PC and its Accessories (Click to Enlarge)

Inside the package, we’ll find CS868 mini-PC with a metallic casing, a short HDMI cable, a 5V/2A power supply, a microUSB to USB cable for power, and microUSB to USB female cable for the microUSB OTG port of the device, and a not-so-useful user’s manual in English and Chinese explaining how to use Android on mini PCs.

A closer look at the device reveals a fully metallic casing, HDMI male connector, a micro USB OTG port, a micro SD card slot, another micro USB port for power, and a full USB host port. There are lots of ventilation hole on both side for cooling the device.

You can also watch the unboxing video.

First Boot, Settings, and First Impressions

Since Cortex A7 is supposed to have a lower power consumption, I’ve tried to power the device directly from the USB port of my TV, unfortunately it won’t go further than the boot animation. So I’ve connected the RF adapter for the Mele F10 to the USB port, and used the provided power adapter to power the device, and after a few seconds, the device will boot and you’ll have to choose between 2 launchers:

• Standard Android Home Screen
  
• A 3D launcher designed for TV
  

I’ll keep using the standard Home Screen since I find it a bit more convenient with the input device I use.  We have the Volume buttons, and a power button in the status bar, but no option to go to full screen. You’ll also notice a 4K widget, which is an interesting media player I’ll describe in more details in the video section.

I’ve gone to the setup menu to configure Wi-Fi. The device also supports Wi-Fi direct, but not Bluetooth, nor Ethernet, ven with external USB dongles. You can also  setup to device for VPN access, as a hotspot, and add a 3G USB dongle.  The screen section lets you select 720p, 1080i, and 1080p modes at either 50 or 60 Hz, and you can also choose 1080p24. A slider is also available to let you zoom in/out to adjust your screen overscan if needed. There’s an option for Audio output, but clicking on it, just exits the Settings, so audio pass-through is not available. Screen Lock option is available in the System Settings, so if you require your device to be lock this should be possible (I haven’t tried). Developer options all seem available including USB debugging, CPU usage, GPU usage and more.  In the “About tablet” section, we find out CS868 is indeed the model, and this device runs Android 4.1.1 on top of Linux 3.3.0. The firmware is dated 2013/05/06, it’s rooted, and can be downloaded via Kimdecent website.

Google Play worked fine, and I could install most apps I tried such as Antutu, Angry Birds Star Wars, MX Player, YouTube, Dead Trigger, and more. The only exception was Sixaxis Controller, but this is normal behaviour, as the device does not support Bluetooth.

The system is pretty responsive, although It does not feel as fast as RK3188 devices,  and I can experience slowdowns just after boot, give it one or two minutes to be fully responsive, and while installing many apps via Google Play. The device did not hang during use, but there are still some annoying issues. I lost audio 3 times during my few hours of testing (reboot required), Wi-Fi failed to initialize once (reboot again), and at one point the device was stuck in the boot animation “AllWinner Tech A31 Quad Core” forever. Restarting the device did not help, so I had to flash the firmware via PhoenixUSBPro.

Wi-Fi Performance

Contrary to my habits where I have one and only section for Wi-Fi and video testing, today I’ll reserve a full section to Wi-Fi, as I have a story to tell…

As I started to test video playback, and noticed very similar problem to what I experienced with Tronsmart T428, that is 1080p video would just no play smoothly. So I stopped video playback testing, and went straight to my “transfer a file from SAMBA to flash over Wi-Fi” test. The result was catastrophic, as a 278MB file took 7m 46s to transfer, at an average rate of about 600KB/s, by far the worst result I’ve ever seen (Other devices usually take 3 to 4 minutes to transfer this file). Real-time transfer speed shown in ES File Explorer fluctuated greatly but never went over 1MB/s. Two consecutive devices with terrible Wi-Fi performance? Impossible!

I remember once I had a USB Wi-Fi dongle that was extremely slow using mixed 802.11b/g/n setting in my router, and the performance improved massively by setting the router to use 802.11g only. So I did that, and the performance improved, but not enough to my taste: 5m 45s (~800KB/s) , and the transfer started very fast at 1.60M/s until 80%, to collapse at the end around 200KB/s.

Then I had an unthinkable idea, what if my router (TP-LINK WR940N v1) , or rather its firmware, was the cause of my Wi-Fi misery?

I went to the router setup interface and found some information about the firmware:

• Hardware version WR940N v1/WR941N v4 00000000
• Firmware: 3.9.18 Build 100104 Rel.36350n.

A Google search quickly directed me to the firmware download page of my router, with a more recent firmware: 3.13.9 Build 120201 Rel.54965n. So it looked like my firmware was just over 2 years older than the latest available version, I downloaded the file, and upgraded it.

Let’s try that file transfer test again: 1m 30s, or 3.09MB/s. That’s the fastest speed I’ve ever seen with any of the little devices I tested. Of course, I can’t use that number to compare to other devices without repeating the test for the earlier devices (which I may do), but at least Wi-Fi transfer speed won’t be the limitation for the video playback tests.

The moral of the story is that if one of your Android mini PC has poor Wi-Fi performance, don’t start to open the case and try to add an external antenna, check your router has the latest firmware revision first.  I’ll have to check the effect this new router firmware has on T428 as well.

CS868 Video Playback

I’ve installed MX Player for this purpose, and made sure the hardware decoder is used, or mention it if software decode is used instead.

Let’s started with samplemedia.linaro.org videos from a CIFS/SAMBA share in Ubuntu 13.04:

• H.264 codec / MP4 container (Big Buck Bunny), 480p/720p/1080p – OK
• MPEG2 codec / MPG container, 480p/720p/1080p – OK
• MPEG4 codec, AVI container 480p/720p/1080p – OK
• VC1 codec (WMV) – Video OK, but audio suffers from short static noise (<1 second) from time to time
• Real Media (RMVB) 720p – OK for RV8/RV9/RV10, but MX Player switched to SW decode
• WebM 480p/720p/1080p – OK

I’ve also played several movies in AVI, VOB and MKV container formats, and they could all play, although for some files buffering at the start was pretty long (20 to 30 seconds), and some, but not all, appeared to suffer from audio/video sync issues. MOV videos from my Canon point and shoot camera will buffer as with all other devices I’ve tried (over Wi-Fi). The status bar will automatically hide when playing videos.

I’ve also tried higher bitrate videos:

• ED_HD.avi (1080p MPEG-4 – 10Mbps) – The start is OK, but in some scenes where the bitrate must increase a lot, the video is very choppy.
• big_buck_bunny_1080p_surround.avi (1080p H.264 – 12 Mbps) – OK
• hddvd_demo_1080p.mkv (1080p VC1 – 17.5 Mbps) – The video can’t play smoothly most of the time.

There’s very good support for different audio codecs on the device:

• AC3 – OK
• Dolby Digital 5.1 and Digital+ 7.1 – OK
• Dolby TrueHD 5.1 & 7.1 – OK
• DTS-MA and DTS-HR – OK

I’ve also tried with one of my 4K2K video samples: HD.Club-4K-Chimei-inn-60mbps.mp4. At 60Mbps, it’s impossible to play over Wi-Fi, so I copied to the flash, and played it with MX Player. The only problem is that is uses software decode on that file, so I had to revert to using 4K Video Player included with the device, and it played perfectly.

4K VideoPlayer really showcases the power of AllWinner A31 VPU, as you can see your video file lists in thumbnail, and all 15 thumbnails are playing your videos. You can also open several videos and arrange them in different windows. I tried with 4, and they all seemed to play simultaneously smoothly. Watch the video below to see what it looks like. It may not be that useful, but I find it’s pretty neat.

CS868 Benchmarks

I’ve installed both Antutu 3.3, and Quadrant, but the latter refused to run.

T428 got about 15200 points, and as expected CS868 gets a lower score with 10,559 points. The RK3188 device is almost twice as fast when it comes with RAM, and CPU integer and floating point scores, which is due both because of the difference architecture (Cortex A7 vs Cortex A9), and frequency (1.0 GHz vs 1.6 GHz). The GPU scores are about the same, although I expected A31 to outperform RK3188 in this particular test. The flash write speed seems much better in CS868 compared to T428 (35.8MB/s vs 7.1 MB/s), but I’m not sure how reliable this test is.

Quadrant and Antutu system information show the CPU frequency ranges between 120 and 1008 MHz, the screen resolution is 1280×720, there’s a total of 1660 MB RAM available to the system, the rest being probably reserved for the VPU, and about 1200 MB are available.  The 16GB NAND flash is partitioned into 2 partitions: a 1GB partition for apps with 746MB available, and a 12.24 GB partition that is basically empty.

Inside CS868

CS868 looks like a pain to open, so I skipped that part. Luckily, Linuxium did it before me, and we can still have a look inside.

Click to Enlarge

The board is fitted with a largish heatsink.

(Click to Enlarge)

Once we removed it we can see AllWinner A31, the 16GB flash, and 4 RAM chipsets, but the pictures are quite not clear enough the see the name of the components. [Update: Better pictures are now available on G+ Mini PCs' Community]

(Click to Enlarge)

On the other side, we’ve got four more RAM chipsets, and flash, as well as what looks like a Realtek Wi-Fi module. There are also 6 pads (LED, 3V3, D-, D+, GND, and WPS), but none of those should be useful for serial access. Maybe it’s now possible to debug using D-/D+ pins (USB), I don’t know.

Conclusion

CS868 mini PC has potential, but as it stands the firmware need some improvements, as HDMI audio may cut, and once Wi-Fi failed to initialize. I also had to re-install firmware since the device refused to boot, however I may be partially at fault here, as several times I just disconnected and reconnect power to reboot the device without using the power button first. Performance wise, CPU performance is much slower than RK3188 based devices, and 3D GPU tests appear to be roughly equal according to Antutu, so A31 devices may have to be priced lower than RK3188 to become more interesting. Video playback is where CS868 stands out, it managed almost all files I threw at it, with the only issue being WMA audio, and some long buffering time with a few videos. HDMI pass-though could be a nice feature to have for some.

Concerning Linux support, the main advantage of AllWinner A31 devices such as CS868 is that the source code for Linux and U-boot is already available, and this may take a few more months before RK3188 source shows up. However, performance in Linux is likely to be poor for a quad core devices, and GPU acceleration won’t be available due to the PowerVR GPU. Ian Morrison ran a subset of Phoronix Suite tests in a chroot in Android, and found that for some tests results are about the same or even lower than Rockchip RK3066 devices, mostly those relying on single core performance.

Geekbuying was kind enough to send me another RK3188 mini PCs for review. Tronsmart T428 is very similar to MK908 I reviewed earlier, with 2GB RAM and 8GB flash, but the latest device runs Android 4.2.2, its Wi-Fi module supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, and T428 can also be used as a Miracast Display. Geekbuying sells for the device for $96.99 including shipping, but before to buy the device I strongly recommend you read the review. I’ll post some unboxing pictures first, then carry on with my first impressions, video playback capabilities, Wi-Fi performance and some benchmarks.

Tronsmart T428 Unboxing

I received the device is in the package below.

Tronsmart T428 Packaging (Click to Enlarge)

T428 comes with a short HDMI cable, a 5V/2A power supply, and a USB to microUSB cable for power.

A close look at this mini PC shows the casing is made of plastic and metal (on the lengths), comes with an HDMI male port (my preference), a USB port, a microUSB port for power, an LED, a microSD slot, and a recovery button.

Tronsmart T428 (Click to Enlarge)

You can watch my unboxing video.

First Boot, Settings, and First Impressions

I’ve connected Mele F10 RF adapter to the USB host port, T428 to the HDMI port of my TV, and the power supply to the micro USB port of the device, and we’re ready to go. After a little while, we get a standard Android Home Screen (All apps added by me).

Home Screen (Click to Enlarge)

We’ve got Vol-/+ buttons, Power Button, and sometimes, but not always, the full screen icon… So mostly all good here.

I’ve gone to the setup menu to configure Wi-Fi. The device also supports Wi-Fi direct, Bluetooth (built-in), and you can setup to device with VPN, as a hotspot, and add a 3G USB dongle, but there’s no Ethernet option.  The screen section lets you select 1080p or 720p modes at either 50 or 60 Hz, as well as 576p50 and 480p60. There’s also a slider to let you zoom in/out to adjust the UI to your screen. There’s no option for HDMI audio output, so HDMI audio pass-through is not available. There are plenty of options available in Developer options including USB debugging, CPU usage, GPU usage and many more.  In the “About device” section, the model number is T428, and the device is running Android 4.2.2 with Linux kernel 3.0.36+… The firmware version is 2013/04/19.

I’ve installed several applications with Google Play including Antutu, ES File Explorer, Angry Birds 3D, MX Player, YouTube, Facebook.., and everything went smoothly. The firmware does not come rooted, but RK3188 rooting instructions (Windows only) worked fine.

All applications could run smoothly, and the firmware is stable, and the only issue I encountered, which I reckon is a major one, is that Wi-Fi signal will drop from time to time [Update: I resolved Wi-Fi stability issue by updating my router firmware, see CS868 review for details] .  T428 does not overheat. I’ve also managed to pair a Sixaxis game controller (not possible with MK908 firmware), but I haven’t been able to play games yet, since more work is needed (Droidmote setup). But that’s for another blog post. [Update: I wrote instructions showing how to play Games with a PS3 Bluetooth controller]

T428 Video Playback and Wi-Fi Performance

I’ve just installed MX Player to test video playback, making sure H/W decoding is enabled for the video I tested.

I started testing with samplemedia.linaro.org videos from a CIFS/SAMBA share in Ubuntu:

• H.264 codec / MP4 container (Big Buck Bunny), 480p/720p/1080p – OK, but the video plays for 1 or 2 seconds, then freezes to buffer a few seconds, then plays normally until the end. So this issue is minor, and mainly annoying for reviewers…
• MPEG2 codec / MPG container, 480p/720p/1080p -  OK.
• MPEG4 codec, AVI container, 480p/720p/1080p – OK.
• VC1 codec (WMV) – 480p/720p/1080 OK, but there’ a thin line with artifacts at the bottom of the screen
• Real Media (RMVB) 720p – OK for RV8/RV9/RV10.
• WebM 480p/720p/1080p – OK

I’ve also tried several full movies (AVI and MKV), and I did not notice buffering issues. Video playback looks relatively bad here, but this is only a Wi-Fi issue, as the signal drops, and sometimes completely cuts off. [Update: A new router firmware mostly fixed the performance issue with this device, so I've also added audio codec and high-bitrate testing below]

T428 supports the following high-quality audio codecs:

• AC3 – OK
• Dolby Digital 5.1 and Digital+ 7.1 – OK
• Dolby TrueHD 5.1 & 7.1 – OK
• DTS-MA and DTS-HR – OK

Even after firmware update, higher bit rate videos can’t play smoothly:

To confirm Wi-Fi sucks big time, I’ve copied one 278 MB file between the network share and the NAND flash, and it  took 4 minutes 04 seconds (1.14MB/s). I’ve never seen a device with such bad Wi-Fi before. Hopefully this is only a firmware issue. During the transfer in ES Explorer, I can see real-time transfer speed oscillate between 70KB/s and 1.50 MB/s. So it’s not a constant speed, it fluctuates heavily, contrary to all other devices I’ve reviewed. I’ve also removed Mele F10 2.4GHz adapter, just in case it negatively affects Wi-Fi performance, but the result is the same when I use USB keyboard and mouse. There’s an Android 4.1.1 firmware that may fix the issue, but I haven’t tried it.

Wifi Update: After updating the router firmware, I can transfer the same 278 MB file in 3m 02s (1.53MB/s), at regular speed, and the Wi-Fi signal does not drop any more. Since I’ve updated the router firmware, I can’t use my historical test results for comparison, and the only other device I’ve tested in this configuration is CS868 mini PC, which transfer tshe same file in 1m 30s (> 3MB/s). So even though Wi-Fi is snow table, and perfectly usable, the performance may not be optimal.

T428 Antutu and Quadrant Benchmarks

The device could achieve good results with both Antutu and Quadrant benchmarks.

With 15207 points, T428 scores a little higher than MK908 (14,464), but both are still on the same range. Finless ROM can boost the score to about 17,000.

Tronsmart T428 Quadrant Score (Click to Enlarge)

Tronsmart T428 gets about the same score as HTC One X smartphone (Snapdragon S4 or Tegra 3).

Contrary to MK908, 2D and 3D tests were very smooth in both benchmarks. System information section shows the frequency can oscillate between 312MHz and 1.6GHz, the SDK is rk31sdk, and the board is said to be rk30board. The resolution is 1280×672, there’s 1606.7MB RAM available out of 1914.7MB (After running advanced task manager). The “internal partition” is 504MB large with just 76.41MB available, and there’s 5.24GB available in the “NAND flash” (data partition) out of 5.82GB.

Inside Tronsmart T428

Sorry nothing here today. I’ve tried to open the device, but failed, as some part of the casing seem glued, and as I pushed the metallic part of the casing, I could see I bended them a bit too much to my taste. I’ve also been told there’s no easy way to open it, so if you want an hackable device, this may not be the one for you.

[Update: Ian Morrison managed to open it (Click for pictures), but he mentions it's not designed to be opened, an you're likely to damage the case trying to do so]

Conclusion

Tronsmart T428 is fast, smooth and stable (as in no crashes or hung system) just like MK908, unfortunately Wi-Fi performance ruins it all.  This is a shame as all other aspects of. [Update: Wi-Fi has become stable after a router (TP-Link WR940N) firmware upgrade]. This device seems promising: Full screen and power buttons, Miracast Display support, all video codecs I’ve tried seems to be supported fine, support for 5GHz can help if there are lots of 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi hotspots in your location …

Considering the terrible Wi-Fi performance, I can’t recommend Tronsmart T428 at this stage, and you’d better go with Tronsmart MK908 which works much better, at least until we’re sure a new firmware can fix WLAN reliability and performance issues.
After resolving T428 / TP-Link router interoperability issues by updating the router firmware, my assessment of T428 has completely changed, and the device is actually pretty good, with only minor issues, such as an internal flash partition for apps that I find too small (504MB), and fills up too quickly, the lack Ethenet  support (USB dongle),  no support for HDMI pass-through…

Up to now, I always connected USB keyboard and mouse to Android mini PCs I tested. It works but it’s not always fun to use. Mele F10 Fly mouse is a dual sided 2.4GHz remote control with one side being somewhat of a standard remote, while the other side is a QWERTY keyboard. A gyroscope is also integrated in to the remote, which allows it to be used as a “magic” remote and mouse the mouse pointer. I’ve bought one on DealExtreme for $25.20, and I’ll do a short review about the remote today, even though it’s not exactly a new device.

Mele F10 Unboxing

I’ve received the F10 in a slightly damaged package. This happens often as to save on costs packages are often sent in bubble mailers, but all items I’ve received have usually worked fine.

The other sides of the package indicate Mele F10 can be used in Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS, Android, and Linux operating system, and that the device is FCC and CE certified. The device size is 169 x 48 x 19mm, its weight 160g.

Mele F10, RF Adapter, and User’s Manual (Click to Enlarge)

Inside the package, we’ll find the remote itself, a small 2.4GHz USB adapter, a USB to mini USB cable for charging, a sheet of paper that serves both as a user’s manual and a warranty card.

We’ve got the QWERTY keyboard, the standard remote, and a mini USB port for charging. There’s also an emplacement on the right on the mini PC port which is not populated, but that on some model is used to fit a microphone to be able to use voice commands. Not shown in the picture above, is a LED that blinks when you press a key, and when the internal battery needs to be recharged.  There’s also an IR transmitter at the front of the remote, but this is most probably useful for Mele’s own set-top box only (Edit: It’s only used for the Power button). If you use a Linux box with an IR sensor, you could also record the remote code with lirc, and create a specific file. I don’t know how this is handled in Android.

Mele F10 Review

The battery was already charged when I received it, but it’s probably a good idea to charge it before use. To get started, you need to connect the 2.4GHZ USB Adapter to your device/computer, and the very first time, press the right mouse button (Back) and the left mouse button (Enter) at the same time for 2 seconds to synchronize the mouse, and when the pointer disappears press one of the mouse buttons again. I only did this in the first device I tried, and the remote just worked  straight-away with the other devices.

I connected the USB adapter into G-Box Midnight MX2, MK908, and my Linux PC, and it worked immediately without any extra set-up required.

This kind of 3-in-1 remote is really awesome when using with Android touch based applications such as a web browser, navigating Android menu, etc… The only flaw I found is that the mouse pointer alignment seems to shift overtime, and you have to recalibrate it manually, by hitting the sides of the screen. The video below shows this issue and the “fix” clearly. If you have small hands, the qwerty keyboard may feel a little too long, and you may have to stretch out to reach the keys in the middle.

In XBMC application which is designed for IR remote, it’s possible to use the arrow keys to navigate, but the OK button is the right mouse (Enter) button, and the center button in the middle of the remote which is counter-intuitive. There’s also not play/pause, ffwd and frwd keys found on typical set-top box, so you have to use the mouse pointer for those controls. In XBMC Linux, AFAIK, I know there’s a way to configure keys, but I don’t know if it’s feasible in Android (Edit: Yes, we can reconfigure key assignments, see comment). However, Mute and Volume -/+ buttons work properly on the remote which is a plus.

After seeing one of the latest Mele videos where they showed a game (Similar to TurboFly 3D) controlled by a fly mouse, I kind of hoped some of the games could take advantage of the F10 gyroscope, but that’s not the case. You can play games such as Angry Bird Star Wars using the mouse pointer controlled by the Mele, and I can indeed play TurboFly 3D, but only in keyboard mode by using the arrow keys to control the spaceship, and mouse button to fire.  I contacted Mele for details, and they replied “Most game can not played by the current F10 fly mouse”, which implies a new version should be released with the most popular games supported.

In the video below, I show Mele F10 used with the Android Browser, XBMC, and Angry Birds. I also show the “calibration” issue of the remote.

In conclusion, Mele F10 is a very good device for many applications in Android, and I did not experience the frustration I got with standard IR remotes in Android. However, the current button arrangement is not ideal for XBMC, and none of the games I tried could make use of the gyroscope, although I could play some games in mouse and remote modes.

In newer version, I’d like them to fix the “alignment” issue, provide some play/pause, ffwd, frwd… keys for media player applications, and support more games with the gyroscope. A Bluetooth version would also be useful as many recent Android mini PCs and set-top boxes come with built-in Bluetooth.

Mele A1000G Quad is an Android set-top box featuring AllWinner A31 quad core Cortex A7 processor with 2GB RAM and 8GB Flash. You can check the full specifications in my previous post. Eddy Lab got hold of an engineering sample with a similar model but without SATA that looks like A3700 [Update: Model name is apparently G39A04], and he, or they, took a few pictures, and tested the device (Link in Korean). I’ll re-post some of their unboxing pictures, and share some of their screenshots and benchmarks in this post.

Mele  Quad Core Media Player Package Content

The device comes with a 5V/2.4A power adapter, an HDMI cable, and an IR remote.

The device features an Audio out jack, a micro USB socket, a power jack, and HDMI connector, an RJ45 Ethernet connectors, 3x USB host ports, SPDIF output (Optical), and an SD card slot. It’s very similar to the original Mele A1000 except VGA and AV ports are missing, as Mele considers it is an high-end STB, and people who buy this device are likely to own an HDMI capable TV. There’s also a hole to access a recovery button on the bottom of the enclosure.

Mele Quad PCB (Click to Enlarge)

They also took several pictures of the actual board, and we find out the Wi-Fi module is based on Relatek 8188EUS, the 2GB RAM is composed of 8 Hynix chipset, the Ethernet phyceiver is Realtek RTL8201CP, the PMIC is AXP221, and according to another poster, the 4-pin connector on the bottom right in the picture is the UART (Left to right: 3v3, Tx, Rx, Gnd). Since u-boot and Linux source code for A31 is available (except some parts), this should make a fun hackable Linux platform to play with.

Mele has designed a customized, with a Windows-8 style Home Screen, user interface for their A20 and A31 based media players.

Eddy Lab then went through all the Settings menu, where we find connectivity options for Wi-Fi including Wi-Fi Direct and WPS, Ethernet, Wi-Fi tethering and hotspot, and more, but there’s no Bluetooth submenu. The Sound menu allows you to select PCM, SPDIF or HDMI pass-through, and the display menu will let you adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and select several video output modes between 576p and 1080p60.

The “About device” section informs us the “model number” is “softwinner”, and the device runs Android 4.1.1 on top of Linux kernel 3.3.0. Root checker confirms the firmware is rooted.

Bluetimes MX5 is an Android 4.2.2 set-top box powered by AMLogic AML8726-MX that costs around $70, or about $30 less than devices with similar hardware such as G-Box Midnight MX2 or Tronsmart Prometheus. AndroidPC.es got hold of one sample, also called 10moons D6, took some pictures and reviewed the devices for us.

Bluetimes MX5 Unboxing

The package contains the media player, an RF remote control and a power adapter, but no cables, which is one way to save on costs.

Looking at the rear panel of the device front left to right, we can see an external Wi-Fi antenna, the 5V power jack, one USB port,  a composite RCA connector and stereo RCA output, an Ethernet RJ45 port, HDMI output, and SPDIF output.

An SD card slot and another USB host port are located on the front panel.

So Bluetimes MX5 just has 2 USB ports, which is a bit less than the 3 to 4 USB ports found on the more expensive devices, but the rest of the connectors is about the same.

First Boot and First Impressions

The first time you boot you’ll be asked to choose between several launcher including a Windows 8 (Metro Style) launcher. Since they did not have the latest firmware, they decided to download the latest version, and upgrade the firmware. There are no special icon in the status bar, and we can find the Home button, Back, Tasks List, and Screenshot buttons. However, the status bar is hidden automatically and the volume is controlled from the remote control, so extra Vol -/+ and Full Screen icons are not needed.

A lot of applications are pre-installed in this device including many Chinese apps which can’t be uninstalled without rooting the firmware.

In the settings, “About” section, the device is called D6_Duo_4.22, and is said to run Android  Jelly Bean 4.2.2 with Linux kernel 3.0.5 kernel. “Developer Options” menu is missing, but clicking 7 times on the Build Number field will make it appears. I tried this trick on G-Box Midnight MX2 as well, and it works. I suppose Google did this to avoid normal users accessing and playing around this menu. There’s 1.58 GB available space on the 4GB flash. Android UI is 1280×720, but you can output HDMI to vairous 480, 576, 720 and 1080 modes. There’s also composite output, but they did not try. The audio settings let you choose between PCM, SPDIF or HDMI pass-through like with other AMLogic boxes.

AndroidPC.es folks are quite impressed with the RF remote control, and mention you can easily navigation in Android, XBMC and the Play Store with this remote. It also allows you to power on or off the device, and adjust the volume.

Finally, they tested Wi-Fi and Ethernet performance and stability, and seemed satisfied with both. Videos below 20Mbps could play smoothly over Wi-Fi.

Bluetimes MX5 Benchmarks

They ran several common benchmark on the device.

Antutu score is 7787, which is no surprise as it’s about the same score I got with the Prometheus. Nenamark 2 benchmark was rendered at 35.3 fps,Epic citadel at 28.0 fps, and the device got 1191 pts with Vellamo HTML5 and 371 pts with Vellamo Metal benchmarks which are results consistent with other AML8726-MX based devices.

Video Playback

According to their tests, All videos from samplemedia.linaro.org can play perfectly:

• H.264 codec / MP4 container (Big Buck Bunny), 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• MPEG2 codec / MPG container, 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• MPEG4 codec, AVI container 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• VC1 codec (WMV), 720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK
• Real Media (RMVB) 720p RV8/RV9/RV10 – Video OK (No audio in test files)
• WebM 480p/720p/1080p – Audio/Video OK.

Matricom sent me one of their latest G-Box Midnight MX2 media player based on AMLogic AML8726-M6, with 1GB RAM, 8 GB flash, running Android 4.2, and with full support for XBMC. This is an update of the G-Box Midnight based on AML8726-M3 which supports XBMC in Android, as well as XBMC Linux thanks to community builds.

Specifications:

• SoC – Amlogic AML8726-MX Dual Core Cortex A9 CPU + dual core Mali-400 GPU
• System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM
• Storage – 8GB Flash + SD card slot (Up to 32GB)
• Video Output – HDMI v1.4, composite (CVBS) and component (YUV)
• Audio Output – HDMI, AV, and SPDIF
• Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n internal Wifi + 10/100 Ethernet Port
• USB – 4x USB 2.0 Ports (1 might be OTG)
• IR sensor
• Power Supply – 5V/2A

The hardware and software is very similar to Tronsmart Prometheus (See review), as both are based on AML8726-MX, run Android 4.2 and support XBMC. To make things even more interesting, both are about the same price, and sell for $99. G-Box Midnight MX2 can be purchased on Amazon, and if you’ve previously bought a G-Box Midnight, you can get $20 discount with 9BVTY875 coupon. Matricom provides support on MX2 Forum, which is a plus if you don’t like to be left on your own when a problem occurs. Another key advantage of the box is that it provides OTA update, something I’ve never seen in other mini PCs or set-top box I’ve tried, and will avoid you going through, sometimes cumbersome, update procedures.

G-Box Midnight MX2 Unboxing Pictures

I’ve received the device in the following package.

The box contains G-Box Midnight MX2 set-top box, a user’s manual in English and Chinese, an AV cable, a 5V/2A power supply, and an infrared remote control. There’s also an A4 paper that serves as a quick start guide and provides warranty information. One interesting point is that you can update the box with a third party firmware WITHOUT losing your warranty. This is quite rare to be noticed. However, you’ll be required to pay for shipping charge if you brick your device with such firmware.

Let’s have a closer look at the device’s ports. On one side, we’ve got a USB port (OTG?),  SPDIF out, AV out, HDMI out, Ethernet, and the power jack, and on another side, 3 more USB ports, and an SD card slot.

If you like unboxing videos, please have a look at the one I’ve shot.

First Boot, Settings and First Impressions

There’s no HDMI cable, so let’s find one to connect to the Box and the TV, together with an Ethernet cable for connectivity, and connect the power to get started. You’ll also need to add 2 AAA batteries in the remote control. During the very first boot, you’ll be taken through a wizard to select your Language (English, simplified Chinese or traditional Chinese), adjust the screen position if needed, and configure Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi. There are 2 launchers available: a stock Android Home Screen or the 3D launcher shown below. The custom launcher is IMHO much better when using an IR remote.

3D Launcher (Click to Enlarge)

The 3D launcher will provide access to “Online Cinema” (XBMC/Netflix), Games, Video Chat, Settings, Web Navigation (with bookmarks to famous websites), and Local Apps (pre-installed Video, Music and Picture apps) sub menus. The interface feels just a little sluggish to me during the transitions, but still usable.

I’ve previously used a mini PC with stock Android and an IR remote control, and that was a pretty bad experience. But thanks to the 3D launcher and XBMC the experience is pretty good with the remote provided. However, if you’re going to use other part of Android, it’s not a good idea to use the remote, even though it has a “Cursor” button that allows you to move the cursor with the arrow keys. Please don’t do it, this will be bad for your mental health and family harmony. Thank you. Seriously, I strongly recommend connect a USB or wireless keyboard or mouse, or purchase an RF remote with a gyro if you plan to do things like web browsing, or use other apps made for a touch screen.

In the settings menu, you’ll have to option to configure Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Ethernet for connectivity. The display menu will let you choose the video ouput resolution (480p/i, 576p/i, 720p50, 720p60, 1080i50,  1080i60, or 1080p60), as well as CVBS/YUV output modes. Unfortunately, my TV failed to detect both CVBS (composite) and YUV (component) outputs, and would just report “No Signal”. The audio settings will let you choose between PCM (downsampling), SPDIF out, or HDMI pass-through. There are no Developer Options at all, as the menu is hidden. Finally, looking into the “About MediaBox” section shows the device name is indeed “Matricom G-Box Midnight MX2″, and it’s running Android 4.2.1 with Kernel 3.0.50. The firmware comes already rooted,

Google Play app in pre-installed, and I could installed all applications I tried such as ES File Explorer, Root checker, Antutu, Quadrant,Angry Birds Star Wars, YouTube, Facebook, etc… They could all run fine, but many Benchmark would just hand the machine. Interestingly, it’s still possible to turn off the device with the remote when Android hangs, and it’s a true power off (not standby), so a small micro-processor must be handling the remote power off button and the power logic.

Apart from the benchmark failing to run, the firmware was rather smooth, and stable. You can have a look at a 5 minute demo showing boot time, 3D launcher, XBMC menu and video playback performance, and settings “walk through”. No commentary, only background music.

Video Playback in XBMC

Since the box is promoted as an XBMC device, I won’t test video playback the usual way (e.g. MX Player), but I’ll just use XBMC directly to play videos from SAMBA shares. XBMC is very smooth being rendered at about 50 fps.

Firstly, I tested the videos from samplemedia.linaro.org:

• H.264 codec / MP4 container (Big Buck Bunny), 480p/720p/1080p – OK
• MPEG2 codec / MPG container, 480p/720p/1080p – OK (sort of). It can play but the aspect is distorted like the videos play with an aspect ratio of 1:1 (square).
• MPEG4 codec, AVI container 480p/720p/1080p – OK
• VC1 codec (WMV), 480p/720p/1080p – OK
• Real Media (RMVB) – RV8/RV9/RV10 samples all make XBMC exit (crash?).
• WebM – 480p/720p OK, 1080p is very choppy. This is most probably because this is handled by the CPU instead of the video decoder.

Since I’ve connected the device via Ethernet, I’ve also  tested some high bitrate videos:

• ED_HD.avi (1080p MPEG-4 – 10Mbps) – Black screen audio only.
• big_buck_bunny_1080p_surround.avi (1080p H.264 – 12 Mbps) – OK
• h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbps_birds.mkv (40 Mbps) – OK
• hddvd_demo_17.5Mbps_1080p_VC1.mkv (17.5Mbps) – OK, but I can see some artifacts at the beginning for 1 or 2 seconds.

The box passed all tests with videos with common Audio codecs:

I used audio downmixing to playback those files, but, at least in theory, you can also select HDMI or SPDIF pass-through if your equipment (TV / Home Theather) supports it.

Finally I’ve played several movies (AVI, MKV, VOB…), they could all play just fine, and I could not notice any audio/video sync issues.

Wi-Fi Performance

Time to disable Ethernet and connect to my Wi-Fi router to test Wi-Fi performance. I transferred a 278 MB video files between SAMBA and the internal flash, and at first I thought something was wrong with my setup, simply because the transfer took 2:00 (2.32 MB/s), which is must faster than any other mini PCs or set-top box I’ve tried before. The previous record was held by Measy U2C which managed to transfer the same file in 2m46s (1.67MB/s), so that’s a massive 39% improvement over the best device I’ve tested. Just to make sure, I had to try the same test with MK908 again, and it would transfer the files at 1.44MB/s.

I had to try if high bitrate videos could be played smoothly:

• big_buck_bunny_1080p_surround.avi (1080p H.264 – 12 Mbps) – OK
• hddvd_demo_17.5Mbps_1080p_VC1.mkv (17.5Mbps) – OK

I also tried h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbps_birds.mkv for fun, but obviously 40Mbps is just too demanding for Wi-Fi, so after the first few seconds of playback the video became very choppy.

I’m not sure what they have done with Wi-Fi, but they have done it right, and made all other mini PCs and STBs look like junk when it comes to Wi-Fi performance.

G-Box Midnight MX2 Benchmarks

Both Antutu and Quadrant hung the device at start time, so I used the remote to power off and on the media player, and decided to use another benchmark: Nenamark 2. Damn! Same results. OK, I thought, benchmark are not that important since it’s a known platform, but let’s check CPU information, with CPU / RAM / DEVICE identifier. Same result! It looks like this device really does not like to be ask “private questions”. Finally, I was able to run Vellamo benchmark.

Vellamo HTML 5 score (1157) puts it between Sony Tablet S (Nvidia Tegra 2) and Samsung Galaxy S2 (Exynos 4210), which are also devices based on dual core Cortex A9 processor, so this score seems about right.

Inside G-Box Midnight MX2

After removing the four screws at the bottom of the enclosure, we can access at the hardware which is composed of a baseboard (HD18 V2.2) and a CPU board (A13_V1.0). After a quick search, we can find HD18 set-top box based on AMLogic AML8726-M3 which just looks the same, so I assume Matricom, or their manufacturer, used the same baseboard and casing design, and replaced the CPU module with one featuring AML8726-M6.

GBox Midnight MX2 Board (Click to Enlarge)

We’ll find the connectors and components on this side of the board including the 4 USB ports, SPDIF, HDMI, and AV outputs, Ethernet and the Wi-Fi/Bt module (Realtek), the SD card slot, an LED, and the IR sensor. You’ll also notice the heatsink on the processor to help keep the device cool during operation. I could not find connections for the serial console, maybe removing the heatsink would provide access to the right pads. As pointed out in one comment, the 4 pads on the left of the RAM chips could indeed be the UART connection.

On the other side however, there’s not much to see…

Conclusion

G-Box Midnight is one of the best media player I’ve reviewed. During my few hours of testing, it operated smoothly and, benchmark issues put aside, reliably. XBMC is working just fine, and it could play most files I threw at it. The exceptions being some MPEG-2 files with incorrect aspect ratio, Real Video files make XBMC exit, WebM 1080p can’t be played smoothly, and Elephant Dream shows only a black screen. Audio decoding was perfect with all files I tried, and I did not experience any audio/video sync issues. XBMC results are actually very close to what I could achieve with Tronsmart Prometheus, especially since the latest firmware is said to fix audio/video sync issues. Two characteristics make this device stand above the rest:

• OTA Updates – Not available on any other media players or mini PCs I’ve used. I haven’t been able to try it as there’s no update available right now.
• Wi-Fi performance – 40% to 100% performance improvement over the competition.

If you’re going to use this device mostly a a media player, the remote control is really nice to have, as you can just use it as a normal set-top box, with little things like a play/pause button not available with other devices. Real power off is also a positive as it’s not seen in most other devices. However, to use any other Android apps, just get yourself another input device (keyboard, mouse or “fly mouse”) for your own sanity.

The only major problem I encountered is that composite and component outputs do not work at all with my TV, so I don’t know if I have a defective unit, or it’s due to a firmware issue. There are also new things I’d like to be implemented like multi-user supports which is supposed to be implemented in Android 4.2, and a Miracast Display support in order to use your Miracast Certified tablet or smartphone as a Miracast Source.

Even though XBMC works very well in Android now, some of you may still prefer having XBMC running in Linux, and it’s likely we’ll eventually see builds for the G-Box Midnight MX2, as the community provided those for the first generation G-Box Midnight. You may have to be patient though.