This marks the launch of a new category which deals upon the many facets of the Android platform’s initial “flaw” known as fragmentation. I’m gonna call this one Droidventure/s.
One morning when not much work is on the pipeline, one of our workers came to me with a white tablet and was wondering whether I can unlock it for him. The markings on the back, though barely visible, revealed the tablet to be the Prestigio Multipad 7.0 Ultra+ (PMP3670B)… the problem was that it was asking for a Google ID combination because of too many wrong pattern attempts on the lockscreen; but even equipped with the username password set, you wouldn’t be able to make it through because the device was not online.
Attempt No 1 – Hard Reset
The easiest method to clear this up was to remove all login information within the device which can be achieved through the recovery mode. While this is normally very easy to do, pressing the Vol- and power buttons at the same time seems to encounter “ghosting” and wont start the tablet up. After an entire day of attempts with other multiple combination sets available online I eventually mastered how to get to the Pre-Recovery Screen (Android mascot with green exclamation point warning sign) by pressing the reset button at the back and immediately pressing and holding the Vol- button right after. There is supposed to be another combination to perform after this to get to the menu (Vol+ and Power) but it didn’t yield me anything, its as if there isn’t a recovery mode on this model.
Attempt No 2 – Firmware Update
Of course reflashing the device with a Stock ROM came to mind but you can only do this if you can get the tablet to be recognized by your computer as an ADB device. The drivers that came with the initial update package was not being accepted by both my Windows 8.1 unit and even the Windows 7 unit, so I gave up on this and retried my hand at hard resets again… to no avail. This second method is on the official site under support for the Prestigio Multipad 7.0 Ultra+ page and has a high probability of success should you be able to install the device drivers. Instructions are provided with their update package.
Attempt and Success No 3 – Phoenix Card
After I had almost given up on the device I came upon a more updated version of the firmware (buried inside the Prestigio official server site) which is introduced through the microSD slot. For reference, the build number that I was able to successfully reflash is – PMP3670B.20131014.4.01.02 which is Android Jellybean 4.2.2
Compared to the original Nexus 7, the Prestigio Multipad 7.0 Ultra+ is both shorter and less wide but a little bit thicker by about 2mm. The display area is quite long and there is a noticable stretch that is being applied to the entire system – expanded in portrait mode and compressed in landscape mode. There isn’t a lot of bloatware on this and it comes pre-installed with an ES File Explorer, an Officesuite Pro for immediate productivity and a Super-HD Player for entertainment. There nearly 2GBs of internal storage with an additional 0.98GBs for data and an expansion slot at the back. Viewing angles aren’t great and colors seem to be a bit desaturated. It responds fast and amazingly is able to play 1080p videos without a stutter. A true media consumption device if anything!
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