Chinese Chaofon AN1 Smart Watch

Hello, lovers of Chinese and not very gadgets. I’m sure many people are fed up with this endless stream of faceless tablets, especially, for example, companies like Google are pressing the price and quality bars with their Nexus, making the acquisition of the next Chinese tablet know-how a dubious idea.
I guarantee - this tablet review will not. While everyone is looking forward to a new wave of wearable gadgets, namely “smart watches” from Apple, Motorola, LG and others, the Chinese did not pull for a long time and urgently released their version of smart watches, the sample of which fell into my hands.

Meet, 100% know-it-yourself watch phone - SmartWatch AN1.
Spoiler: at the end of the review, he will hack.

Story

If you have ever done a review of something on a Habré, then be sure that sooner or later you will be knocked on the good Chinese and will offer you to tell Habr about this or that gadget, and the choice of something hoo wide: apart from tablets, It is known that there are no useful items for their IT specialists in their depressed warehouses. And to review the Chinese tablets, especially in Habré, is an ignoble matter, starting in 2012.
But this time, the fartanul: a cute girl invited me to look at their smart watches and, if interested, make a review. Of course, because the topic of wearable gadgets I care about for a long time, but here such a case fell out to evaluate the Chinese approach. April 23 sent via Singapore, May 19 in our mail, quite quickly. Most photos are clickable.
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Figure 1. Well they filled out the declaration. I hope the content
the cherished box will pull on more than an MP4 player for $ 0.06.

Kit and features

With the characteristics of a strange situation: on the sites of shops, on the box, and in fact, the characteristics are different.

OS	Android 4.0.4, on the box and in the firmware is 4.1.1
CPU	1GHz, Single Core, MT6515 ARMv7, graphics: OpenGL ES 1.1, PowerVR SGX 531, AnTuTu score: 5855
Memory	512M RAM, 4GB NAND (a markup such that is available around 512M - in half on / system and / data)
Screen	2 ", 320x240, capacitive TFT (5 points)
Connection	GSM, EDGE, GPS, FM, Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi b / g / n ( MT6628 chip)
Slots and Ports	microUSB, microSD, SIM
Dimensions	60 x 41 x 15, 72g with battery (900mAh, Lithium, 3.7V)

For reference: the MT6515 processor is an absolute counterpart of the MT6575 , the only difference is in the absence of 3G from the 6515. The MT6575 came out in 2011, and hit the market by early 2012. The AN1 operating system is listed everywhere as Android 4.1.1, even in firmware, but in fact There is Android 4.0.4 ICS, which was released in 2012 the same year.

The device comes in 5 different colors: black, white, pink, gold and white, gold and black. As you can see, my chances of getting a review device of normal color were 20%. On the other hand, the chances of getting exactly pink are the same, so I am eternally grateful for the gold. Swag!


Figure 1. In the summer, the hand literally boils beneath them.

awolf:
gut nafig it to you at all
just do not say what was going to use as a clock
they can kill

xlab:
This is a clock, how to use it.
Do not chop the wood
though wait a minute ...

Figure 2-3. The standard contents of the box: subject, headphones, wire, power supply, instruction in broken English.


Figure 4-5. Vol + button, back button, plastic usb cap, speaker, you can see the hole for the camera

The lid for usb consists of hard plastic, immediately began to move away and became completely useless - had to be removed. The strap is made of silicone rubber, it tightens well (if desired, you can put a harness).


Figure 6-7. Home button, power button on the other side of the case. The battery is removed very easily, under it there are slots for microSD and SIM cards.

There is no audio jack, the microUSB headphones were included, and they also act as an antenna for FM radio. The best application is to cut off half, and use the remaining piece of wire as an antenna, while the radio will work through the speaker.


Figure 8-9. Wearable on the wrist music box conditional Uncle Vasya.


Figure 10-11. The TFT screen barely drags, but everything is clearly visible. Best of all, of course, at night.

The screen behaves like any other one from the TFT family - it inverts colors at different angles, it is badly seen in the sun, there is grit, light spots. About TTX I do not know. The backlight cannot be adjusted.


Figure 12. SWAAAAG!

Price and Availability

I have no coupons and ref-links for you, and the price, in my opinion, biting - 4300 rub. You can buy this model in TinyDeal (there are other models of normal colors in the same place, there is even a discount on black). On DealExtreme, the wrong characteristics are shown from the box and the photos on the watch are mixed up and down, so I won't give you any links there. Let them learn to study their goods.

Software and firmware

As I wrote above, Android 4.0.4 is on the device. This is easy to check: first, you can look at the build.prop dump (under the characteristics table) and find the build identifier ALPS.ICS2.MP.V1.18 , secondly, you can poke several times on the line with 4.1.1 in the settings and to catch easter eggs from 4.0.x:


Figure 13-14. About Phone.

The firmware is practically AOSP, with minor modifications in the direction of reducing weight and usability on the screen 2. "Standard android - no more, no less. Then there will be only selected screenshots.


Figure 14-15. Lock screen and desktop (set the clock MIUI ).


Figure 16-18. 3 screens of embedded applications. In addition to SuperSU.

From the embedded applications, the following can be noted:

• Dialer 2 - alternative to the standard dialer, correctly displayed on the screen 2 ", screenshots in Fig. 19-20;
• File Manager is a convenient wizard, it can see hidden files and open files from the card in the corresponding applications;
• CameraMX is a third-party multifunctional application as a camera, a screenshot in Fig. 23. Examples of photos you do not want to see;
• One Shot - opens CameraMX when it starts up and takes a snapshot without question. Spy feature;
• Sound Recorder is an easy-to-use voice recorder, writes to .amr. Spy feature;
• Icon with hieroglyphs - stopwatch, screenshot on Fig. 24. When I got the device out of the box, there were more applications installed with similar names and even more dumb content, but after resetting all the data they went somewhere, which means they were not embedded;

Figure 19-20. I definitely like the look and feel of the dialer.


Figure 21-22. Incoming and outgoing call.


Figure 23-24. CameraMX with paid filters (in-app purchases). Some kind of stopwatch (with a banner).


Figure 25-26. Messages and contacts.


Figure 26-27. Post application. By the way, you can be used quite seriously - it is very convenient to check messages.


Figure 28-29. Browser. Despite the screen size, the touchscreen performs its function extremely well.

The browser works smoothly, the canvas is scaled without brakes, the video opens right on the page or in a separate application, a short demonstration in the video below.



Reviewer is not related to the video.


Figure 30-31. Gallery and music. The music application works correctly even with .m4a from iTunes.

There is no built-in Google Play, apparently in order to save space and to get rid of google-probes. Installing GApps manually is possible, but please note that the android version is 4.0.4 and the SDK is 15. There is not enough space on the / system partition, it should be set selectively. I'm not a fan of google services in my watch , so I decided that I would manage with the forum w3bsit3-dns.com and Yandex.Store.


Figure 32-33. Yandex.Store, correctly working on 2 ". The status of installed applications (as usual).


Figure 34-35. Reading PDF (with normal performance, but at 2 "320x240 is a perversion). Maps.


Figure 35-36. There is support for A-GPS. The GPS test went smoothly - the satellites were quickly found, although I was inside the room near the window.

As for playing video, here MK6575 obviously does not pull. A sample resolution of 720x304 came with noticeable lags in a standard video player, VLC and MX Player (with active HW Decoding). Therefore, if you need to watch a movie on the clock, you must first convert it to the screen resolution (320x240). Only it should be noted that with active use of CPU / GPU resources, the battery lasts about 2-3 hours.


Figure 37-38. Battery consumption in standby mode (left overnight). CPU / GPU benchmark in AnTuTu.

Bit of phreaking

Before you make lewdness with the firmware and carcass of the chasofone, you should get NAND dumps while the device is still alive. First of all, you need to ruin the system, if you have not done it yet - I personally ruined it as soon as I took it out of the box. Framaroot copes with its task.


Figure 39-40. SuperSU is installed, the access request is working.

Now you should use the kitchen Mtk Droid Tools , created by our compatriot.


Use the Backup (1) option to copy blocks from all NAND partitions. Option (2) will repack the downloaded blocks into the format perceived by the SP Flash Tool. Option (3) automatically generates and flashes CWM recovery . The button for entering recovery mode is VolUp, you just need to hold it when the device is turned on and until CWM appears.

The boot process of the entire MTK family, and mt6575 in particular, proceeds as follows: preloader -> uboot -> kernel. Accordingly, the preloader does the initial initialization, reads the NAND markup, and jumps to the uboot address. Depending on the reason for switching on (normal, plug in cable, ...), uboot continues loading or not. Preloader is responsible for drawing the charge indication and the logo, while the uboot decides what to do.

Preloader is also responsible for NAND firmware using the SP Flash Tool utility, which is used, roughly speaking, by the Chinese in the factory. In older models of Mediatek, the firmware was produced through the UART, but in our case everything happens quickly and via USB.

To flash NAND parts, turn off the device, click “Download” and connect the cable. When the cable is connected, the Preloader is detected by the program and the process begins. All parts automatically cling from a scatter file generated in MTK Droid Tools ( MT6575_Android_scatter.txt ). However, the description of the NAND markup must fully coincide with the actual markup on the device. In case of a mismatch, the program will safely notify about the error and write to the log what exactly did not match.

Thus, if there are backups and the preloader is still alive, the device is unkillable. In the case of a preloader, the mt65xx has a special meta-mode , until it had to be checked (fortunately), but this mode is called by either a) pinching VolUp when connecting a usb cable, or b) closing a special test pin to the ground.

And then I could not resist.


+ partial photo of the back side (there is nothing interesting there).

The cheaper the device is made, the easier it is to disassemble it. The case was fastened with 8 identical cross screws, after unscrewing it, it broke up by itself (itself). Inside, as it turned out, the traditional hot melt glue or some kind of yellow electrical tape is not used. The entire periphery is neatly laid out on the shelves and pressed against the top of the case. On the same side of A are all the pins of interest to us. First, judging by a similar example for the mk6577 , the meta-mode activating pin is located on the right in the corner and is labeled as KCOLO . Secondly, there are pins tx4 , rx4 , tx1 , rx1 , one of them is clearly responsible for the UART. At random, it turned out that tx1 and rx1 in the lower right corner.



The battery can be cut with a knife and then the wires from the UART will be removed without interfering with the battery. Now to this NEXT on the hand even more questions from others.

Kernel boot line The minicom needs to be configured to baudrate 921600. My pl2303 seems to cope with quartz. After loading, you can communicate with uart tx / rx via / dev / ttyMT0 and nothing will interfere with this.

• Log download in preloader mode (after connecting the cable): http://pastebin.com/9Qe9H9Z6
• Log download in standard mode (after pressing the power button): http://pastebin.com/0XtVkSzj

This conclusion has helped in understanding the processes mk65xx and in the future will be very useful when debugging custom / uboot kernel assemblies, if it is not too lazy.

Further hacking can be done in amateur mode (setting and customizing the firmware until the device is morally obsolete) or in guru mode - try to glue the existing sources into one puzzle and build AOSP 4.1+ for example. By the way, the source code for the SoC mk65xx is publicly available. Various companies post the source codes of the firmware, observing the GPL, but at the same time they manage to merge certain confidential parts belonging to Mediatek. Repositories on GitHub are point-deleted by the DMCA, but on w3bsit3-dns.com there are immortal archives: http://w3bsit3-dns.com.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=535287 . Our compatriots are distinguished by special enthusiasm towards mt65xx, for example, luckasfb , honorary forum user w3bsit3-dns.com and an amateur who collect custom firmware for the mt65xx family from leaked sources. I will soon check the situation for MT6575 a little deeper, since Android 4.1 will allow using the new Google Search with the recognition of Russian speech and, in particular, the matchless assistant Dusya right on the watch on his arm.

Results

The brand and the manufacturer could not be found, in the tags and prints flashes XINGHAN, nothing good could be found. Like the model - F9-2S. The device was made in the period October 2013 - March 2014, went on sale in April 2014. The overall quality is notable for exceptional savings on everything. Platform and OS - end of 2011.
All this is like some kind of experiment of small circulation and with a large price. Even with attempts to deceive the ordinary buyer. : <

On the other hand, lovers of gigahertz cores and megabytes of RAM will forgive me, these characteristics are not first-priority. The system works noticeably quickly (better than on some phones that I used to touch), the browser scrolls smoothly, Wi-Fi speed is normal (I have up to 15MBit / s on the network), the battery lasts for viewing the time all day. In any case, watch videos or read books on a wristwatch - it can damage the elbow of the left hand.

And finally, the main component for me is the hacking ability of the device. On the smart watch scale, the Smart Watch AN1 deserve a solid 8/10 , where 0 on the scale is Geeksphone Peak (I did a review exactly a year ago, by the way), and 10 on the scale is SoC Allwinner A10 and everything connected with it.

It sounds stupid, but I'm afraid of hours. They are ticking. And penetrate the brain.

—Dennis Lehane. Shutter Island.