Mlais M52 is dead, long live Mlais!

I bought this phone cheap, for £85. http://techan0.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/on-buying-mlais-m52-red-note-mt6752-and.html. Anything cheaper I would have immediately regretted, believe me I've made that mistake many times. Anything much more expensive and I'd have felt the pinch of staggering depreciation and let down when the manufacturer abandoned us for their latest "flagship".

I'm calling time on this phone despite it being my daily work horse (that's hardly a compliment considering the abuse I dish it when writing apps). It has been over three months since an official update, it's been six months since a version update (4.4 to 5.0). There have actually been more version updates for this phone than the hugely popular Lenovo A820 I had before. It's just that things move on so fast these days that no manufacturer offers long term support to keep up with Google. It's rare that a phone is so successful that the community take it upon themselves to push quality updates (as recently exhibited in I.nfraR.ed's A820 KitKat ROM).

The M52, despite my best efforts, has not been such a success to date. The budget end of the high spec phablet market is overcrowded, there is so much choice that phone design is practically left to the consumer. There is a nuance for every taste. I chose the M52 because plastic is cheaper and is easier for the radio signal to penetrate. I think I was in the minority with Mlais on this.

The most tangible failing of this phone, arguably, totally acceptable for the price. Some view it as a product of Mlais' inexperience in the design of phones (ie a design flaw rather than compromise). I am referring to the white patches on the screen. It makes an already unprepossessing phone rather more ugly. It's a matter of taste, but for a work horse, I'm still amazed by the high quality camera, totally legible screen and freedom from bloat-ware and lag.

There is work afoot (in Russian!) regarding a 5.1 port to this phone. Personally I don't see any need for the upgrade. Like the A820 skipping 4.2 and 4.3. If 6.0 brought big changes I might work on that port, software support is overrated when it seems to be mostly bug and security fixes.

Corporate users may require this for their valuable data, but they're probably the people most likely to bank roll Apple for the sake of inspiring (false) confidence in their clients. I certainly can't see any of them taking a free upgrade of unknown provenance.

I'm signing off the MTK phones blog for a bit as I want to broaden my interests. I'll surely be back when I next upgrade.

MLais M52 Teardown

I got stuck trying to swap SIMs and decided the put on engineers that delivered this bargain machine for £85 had not tested this and that the pins had some how bent to deny me access. As will become apparent it was the metal girdle pressing the SIM card against the contacts that was the culprit, or, more specifically, a wayward curl of plastic from the SIM itself blocking (easily removed with a sharp blade).

Anyway, on with the teardown:

The boards are visible after the usual procedure to remove the back plastic:

1. battery out, then hold the power to short any residual charge
2. undo screws (about a dozen on this monster) including one with a security sticker on it, they can be tight so have a good bit
3. nails or if they matter plastic like a toothpick

Both camera modules are instantly accessible and should their interface ever become standardised (#ahem# #project ara# #ahem#) we could find drop in replacements. I've been looking at many camera modules, for many uses, mostly for quad copters, and sadly nothing is standardised at the level of integration of flagship phone cameras.

Got your cameras out and away from dust and harm? Good. These are the locations (drawn in mauve) of the electrical connections that must be unfastened for the circuit board to be levered out.

That's showing them undone. I should go through them one by one so you needn't sweat it about breaking any when you try. Does anyone still do this or is it just the Know-How team at PC World when they grade their computers refurbished? Here goes, clockwise from the power button at the bottom left.

1. Power button - tricky this as you kneed a sharp blade slid precisely along the plastic shell to lever up the flexible button. It will retain most of its stickyness and has mechanical fixation by other means.
2. Wide ribbon - flip up the black lever where the cable enters.
3. Main camera module - lift directly up applying even force if you're careful.
4. Goodix orange chip ribbon - flip the black lever at the back where it pins the ribbon.
5. Front camera - pull connector directly upwards, don't worry about the black tape on top, it isn't connected elsewhere
6. Volume button ribbon - afforded its own ribbon connector! No expense spared! Like the Goodix connector of similar size, flip the black lever from the opposite side of cable entry

Next undo the screws, again they can be tight for a mobile phone. There are 3 in the photo but I struggled for a long time prising up the PCB because another screw is hidden under the silver tape where the connector for the volume button ribbon is opened. Carefully peel the tape back, using a sharp blade for a clean initial purchase. Don't worry too much, it's quite sticky still and there isn't really an alternative. It helps keep temperatures down.

With the 4 screws removed one proceeds to lever the PCB up from the top, be very careful at the bottom because there is a broad ribbon I couldn't find a way to disconnect running behind the battery. I must record here, because it isn't in any of  my pictures, that I couldn't find how to undo this last connector, on my Lenovo teardown it's a vertical plug in connector like the two camera modules here.

This is the rear of the PCB in all its glory. The blue square is very likely masking the MT6572, I can see the beginning of an M and it is right the size and place with enough attention given to cooling. Trying to remove the blue foam leaves a layer on the chip which isn't convenient when all the while that stubborn last ribbon is the last link between PCB and phone. With more experience and motivation I'm sure I could deal with both obstacles.

The chip models might be some use to ROM developers so here they all are beginning from the front:

What's this? Behind a heatsink the inscription,
6671122.1
1510 NX
is visible (or HX or even MX)

GOODIX
GT9157
1443-B37A
147C1200
E5L 401 xxxx (or E5I)
see http://www.goodix.com/Products/touchscreen-chip-for-mobilephone/hotknot/
This is our touchscreen controller and supports a form of NFC screentouch communication called "HotKnot" (probably only with other GT9157s)

Primary camera, ribbon marking is
JAL-JBL
-A128B
(8604)

Front camera ribbon markings:
JAL-JBL-
A128F(4-8)

On The Flip Side

a radio transceiver
MEDIATEK
MT6169V
1513-AMTH
BTP2NV39

The 2Gb DDR3 ram
SAMSUNG 516
KMR820001M-B609
Some probably unique number.


Other phones with the MT6169V
Pioneer K88L
Meizu-MX4
TCL Momoda 4G

After reading some other teardowns I notice that they aren't so easy to find and the MLais is not very anti-tamper for my part. There are some metal screens I didn't try very hard to look behind but much less than on equivalent phones, though the phones listed above do tend to have many more chips than I discovered, they are a bit older, or perhaps I am missing some.

M52 Red Note ROM Updation and Modding

MLais obviate the ROM scene with their clean ROM. Taking out the trash is much easier. There are many bloatware lists already online, just Google, "safe to delete apk files", or "BLOATWARE LISTS". Few pertain to this year, MediaTek, or Lollipop. I probably just lack imagination, or sleep, to create an original post tonight. Enough waffle:

Full name	Display name	Purpose	Size (Mb)	Confi- dence (<10)	Effect of removal
/system/res	Sound and Audio Tests	Test data	10	9	None
/system/app/MtkWeatherProvider	Unseen	Reads tea leaves	0.3	9	None
/system/app/MtkWeatherWidget	Unseen	Rolls bone dice	9	9	None
com.android.deskclock	Clock	Widget. inferior alarm	2	9	None
com.agold.launcher.wallpaper	System Wallpaper	Default MTK wallpaper	10	9	Features FC if accessed
com.android.wallpaper	Live (wallpaper)	Default android wallpaper	2	8	None
com.google.android.marvin-talkback	Talk	Screen reader	1.5	4	No reader
AgingTest.apk	Unseen	Factory test for battery, not trojan	11	8	None
agold.AgoldFactoryTest.apk	Unseen	Factory test for QA	9	9	?

Anything else, LEAVE ALONE! These are only my opinions, think of them as mini reviews. Perhaps I can add another column for more phones once the porting scene develops.

Another refinement for rooted users is moving favoured apps to the /system partition. One advantage is they become both privileged (in apps-priv folder) and protected. Immediately removing root access promotes this protection. System apps update themselves outside of the system partition which exposes them to at least the danger of accidental erasure (rolling back) when a factory reset is performed. Most factory resetting here is done when I mess up something with my tinkering

1) Add favoured apps. File explorers, alarm clocks, music and browsers, of permanent utility.
2) Move them with another app, from /data/app to /system/app.
3) Delete default system apps that have been superseded by new system apps. HINT, most likely the /system/priv-apps. @cough@ AOSP keyboard @cough@4) Write down what gets changed so it can be repeated if disaster strikes
5) Beware of modifying /system/build.props. The trivial mods I made the 20150526 killed its successor. Even tweaking a single line cause an intermittent fault screen fault.

update 3/10/2015

I've since modified build.props, it's not having much effect though- couldn't rename the device in wifi and bluetoot. com.agold.launcher.wallpaper was rev-enged and deflated to allow wallpaper theming, it appears to have worked but did complain initially.

I'll be upgrading before I do any more modding. Whatever bugs I come up against can be dismissed by Google because my device is already "broken" once rooted. Google is slowly starting to toe the security industry's party line; support for rooted devices is not a given. eFuses and SE Linux are meant to support consumer services to rival Apple, time will tell how well this direction will integrate Android's dev community.

[Review] On Buying the MLais M52 Red Note, the MT6752 and Screen Size

Size

5.5" is a bit big, for comfy, one handed, back on bed reading. It's also tricky for one handed reading when propped vertically. One quickly adapts but anyone with girl sized hands should think twice. Returning to my decrepit 4.5" device illustrates that even there both hands come into play and the thumb must stretch. Developers cater to this by concentrating functionality vertically at the bottom so that the hardest part is not in-app navigating but comfortably balancing the device for long periods. The balance is way different on a 5.5" but totally worth it to preserve healthy vision; even if you have little girl hands the tablet alternative presents the same problem.

Choice

There are many great 5 and 5.5 inch phones. The Elephone P6000 is probably the best value 2Gb phone right now, for a £7.50 saving it sheds just a half inch inter alia. Whilst Elephone has a better logo and more phones this year, MLais are not as new as one could surmise. There is a rumour they have long been manufacturing unbranded phones under their MStar OEM label for third parties to brand and market[1]. (MStar is now largely owned by MediaTek[2][3]).

Attracted by the big screen, big brand, my first choice was initially the Lenovo Golden Warrior A936 (also called the Note 8). At six inches and with solid Lenovo branding it is a direct contender for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (5.7") crown. Entry to this division requires mention of "Note" somewhere in the title and a 5+" screen; a typical "phablet". Lenovo is the third biggest SmartPhone manufacturer worldwide since at least 2012

Period	Samsung	Apple	Lenovo*	Huawei	LG Electronics	Others
Q1 2015	24.6%	18.3%	5.6%	5.2%	4.6%	41.7%
Q1 2014	30.7%	15.2%	6.6%	4.7%	4.3%	38.6%
Q1 2013	31.5%	16.9%	4.7%	4.2%	4.7%	38.1%
Q1 2012	28.9%	22.9%	5.0%	3.4%	3.2%	36.6%

Source: IDC, May 2015
* Motorola figures have been captured under Lenovo
www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-market-share.jsp

The A936 Note 8, at around a third the price of the Galaxy equivalent, was still over priced compared to other Chinese phones, like the MLais.

At about 6 times the price Samsung would be in trouble had they not plenty more fingers in other pies. Samsung does a lot for Android which gives smaller Chinese manufacturers a bit of a free ride (and savvy consumers, a bargain). They've invested in the software, still supply much of the hardware to their rivals and probably treat their workers better. Notwithstanding that conditions have since ostensibly improved all phones source at least some of their manufacturing from factories like the Foxconn ones that made headlines with a spate of employee suicides in 2012 [4][5].

Samsung's Galaxy Note might appeal with it's pen or pulse rate features. Subjectively, these might be seen as gimmicks but their reputation and customer service is worth something, just not 600% to anyone even remotely tech savvy.

See my earlier post What's To Like About MediaTek and Their GPL Compliance for more about the benefits of MediaTek hardware.

CPU

Octa core doesn't make any difference in day to day use, unless you want to multiply clock speed by number of cores and come up with a ridiculous claim of 16GHz[6]. You're getting a 1.7GHz phone. I've underclocked it to 1.3GHz and was surprised at the difference in response times a few hundred MHz makes. When it comes to saving juice I'd happily disable half the cores before underclocking[7]

Most of the same considerations apply as when 64 bit came to the desktop, to wit 64 bit addressing impacts code density when less than 4Gb is addressed[8]. ARM has introduced new instructions to recoup this code density, to wit Advanced SIMD (NEON), but operating in 64 bit mode they lose access to THUMB instructions which use 16 bit instructions to double code density from 32 bit mode.

Windows 7 in 64 bit effectively forked the code so while it was nice to upgrade to Windows 7 x64 to access more RAM, many programs were still operating in legacy 32 bit mode as their 64 bit versions were not robustly established as reliable. A smooth transition from 16 to 32 bit was before my time but I started programming C++ as 16 bit console applications using DJ Delorie's DJGPP, simply because it was more freely (as in "free", and widely) supported. With phones supplied as proverbial "black boxes" freedom yields to Lollipop's 64 bit designs.

Camera

The camera is actually 8 mega pixels, not the 13 claimed. This is alright for me because it is the sensor size that matters[9] and I had no expectations to dash there. MLais's stock ROM is preconfigured to shoot 8MP now, 13MP is just interpolation (like DVD upscaling). The picture is actually very good and I'm 90% convinced that it is a Sony lens of one quarter inch size. The 13MP device originally planned, according to the boffins was a whopping one third inch (the same as the iPhone 5S)!

The quality is amazing, on an overcast day like today I have an incredible photo I'm saving for later. Who wants to see other peoples snaps anyway, the hardware tells the story.

Software

As other reviews mentioned, I've read too many to revisit them here, the device ships with near stock AOSP.

What is AOSP?

AOSP, the Android Open Source Project, is a good thing. It takes the free and open source parts of Android and attempts to port them to myriad phones. The success of this depends on manufacturers releasing proprietary drivers for inclusion with the open source Linux kernel and Android ecosystem.

Unfortunately, in the context of "shipping with near stock AOSP" this means a bit of a raw deal as we are denied the proprietary Android software that Google has forked from open source. Hangouts, Google + (who cares?), Gmail, the Play Store (worry not), Play Services, etc.

But this means a lighter weight Android we are free to customise.

To a degree, yes. The unfortunate part is that proprietary software is not so easy to replace once it is gone. AOSP antecedents are like distant poor relations to the software Google has developed independently. It is very easy to live without Google's "improvements", especially if Big Data (Big Brother) scares you. A full and recent breakdown of the differences between AOSP and Google apps can be found on the second page of the last link.

I had an AHO (Android Handset Alliance) approved phone before this and was a bewildered by all the new apps Google added with KitKat, I never used any as the phone was hamstrung at the hardware level, something that cannot be said of the M52.

But it has the Play Store right?

Yes, while I believe this is part of GMS, and don't understand how it got there in the absence of the rest of the Google eco system it is there. The familiar favourites, Maps, Calendar, Gallery and Gmail are included, albeit in AOSP earlier incarnations. The Play Store has really been developing fast recently, I elect not to avail myself of it at present so cannot comment on whether all the new features, mostly related to payment and gaming are compatible with the phone.

The play store gives you a choice of app to replace what Google would have installed by default and not let you remove.

The software is clean, I will attempt to tidy it up some more, as I never liked the stock (AOSP, not Chrome) browser. The stock browser in this one is identical to JellyBean's, so no big learning curve. Obviously having 2Gb on tap, and 1GB free makes it an absolute dream for multi-tabbed browsing.

Most of the apps I have sideloaded onto it so far were faultless. A lot of older apps, particular those requiring root access don't play nicely with this newer, more secure, Lollipop edition of Android. Most I updated, others I simply uninstalled.

Battery

I've had this phone "off the wall" by now, playing MegaTramp with periods of idleness (50%) while my moves restored. 6 hours (lol) of this dropped 35% of charge. This morning I had a couple of hours screen on time and am confident there are 6 hours of juice for a low brightness display.

Conclusion

By underclocking to resemble the P6000 and measuring responsivity as best I could I am pleased to have the faster processor. I've got over the sheer bulk of 5.5 inch display after a couple of days use. I am even glad it retains a bezel as this greatly adds to comfort in holding without "touching". The bezelless design just screams "valuable", while a big screen is more a symbol of one's manhood.

I received no commission to write this. The phone cost around £85 in the UK from Gearbest's UK warehouse and was delivered next day so obviously I am grateful! If anyone wants to send me a phone, I can review that. Thanks to everyone whose pages I've referenced and the whole XDA community. I needed to write this to condense the pages of user experiences I'd observed on there. I've compiled Linux kernels before, not Android, great fun, but not very productive as our glorious Gideon might say. This phone deserves a large user base, with that will follow updates.

To buy this phone from Gearbest, for under $129 from the EU/UK or China warehouse, and hopefully gain me their recognition, please click, www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_155030.html.

Media

I won't bore you with a bunch of photos, any seller will be replete with these, here are a few that weren't obvious, taken from my unboxing video, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm41jYmbz6I, just before my old phone died!

Antutu

I know I said no photos but Antutu seemed de rigueur with new reviews. I get Antutu scores of between 45500 and 48600 (fresh out the box).

 

 

Footnotes

1. There's a dearth of evidence to support this but see the MStar S100 for proof they share designs (the S100 is a 1Gb, 8Gb, quad core version of the M52)
2. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/us-mediatek-mstar-merger-idUSBRE97Q0G420130827
3. http://www.mediatek.com/en/news-events/mediatek-news/mediatek-inc-and-mstar-semiconductor-inc-announce-merger-agreement/
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html
5. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/woman-nearly-died-making-ipad
6. MediaTek touted the 6752 as 2GHz, eg http://www.mediatek.com/en/news-events/mediatek-news/mediatek-launches-mt6752-a-64-bit-octa-core-lte-soc-latest-lte-product-to-enable-super-mid-market/, also Chinese marketing is notoriously open to artistic license.
7. It turns out disabling half the cores is ARM's "big.LITTLE" industry standard (since the Galaxy S4). It needn't apply to our "puny" A53's (of which we have 8), but typically these slower coresare paired with A57's or otherwise faster cores. In this strategy only 4 cores are ever active at a time, adding weight to my argument that 4 is plenty. http://www.neowin.net/news/the-qualcomm-reign-on-smartphones-and-tablets-is-almost-over-all-hail-mediatek claims MediaTek uses all 8 cores. I've also read that MediaTek's powering each core, rather than cluster of 4 is more efficient.
8. The MT6752's A53 cores use 32 bit physcial addressing, saving silicon estate, while "absolute" virtual addresses are 48 bit. The A57 based Opteron A1100 only uses 128GB, overkill for today's sub 4Gb phones.
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format