JXD S5110 - An Ice Cream Sandwich hand-held


Hi!


Have you had more time to delve a bit into it? I'd be quite interested in getting one, but since I read you were disappointed, I'd like to konw more before I make up my mind. I am quite a fan of Android ICS, that's a very good system IMO. I have an Acer A100 tablet, but gaming on it is so-so, touchsecreen really can't beat proper gaming controls. So this JXD thingy might allow me to have what I've been looking for (and not completely found with the Pandora), a retro-gaming with a good internet browsing capability.


What about build quality, general performance, bettery life? Have you flashed the ICS rom? What apps are available through the PlayStore (are Gameloft games compatible for instance?).


Thanks in advance!
 
@Nikojiro, from the reviews I've found on youtube, performance on ICS is bad (limited to 600 MHz), Wifi is dodgy and performance is ok. Controls, OTH, I've heard are pretty bad. Like certain combinations don't work.


I think that in it's best performance possible it would be a little slower than a Pandora given that it has to use Dalvik's VM and it doesn't have NEON support which Pandora devs claim makes a difference. I haven't taken the plunge because of those things.
 
the performance of these recent cheap android devices is less than the pandora. Even though the specs on paper are higher. Most of it can be tied to having to run on a vm... you can write code for neon in android using the ndk. Some of the beefier emulators do use it, N64oid for example.


Android does somewhat hinder the performance potential... but you can't deny the advantages of it as well, you don't need a dedicated community of developers to make the device useful and relevant. Most of the software "just works"


but all things considered, for the price.... it's really not a bad deal
 
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the performance of these recent cheap android devices is less than the pandora. Even though the specs on paper are higher. Most of it can be tied to having to run on a vm... you can write code for neon in android using the ndk. Some of the beefier emulators do use it, N64oid for example.


Android does somewhat hinder the performance potential... but you can't deny the advantages of it as well, you don't need a dedicated community of developers to make the device useful and relevant. Most of the software "just works"


but all things considered, for the price.... it's really not a bad deal

This device's SoC doesn't support NEON. One of the reasons they are so cheap is that they skimp on the CPU itself. Sure it's a Cortex A8/A9, but everything optional for performance, like vFP or NEON, is skipped. That isn't a major issue, however.


All things considered, the VM itself isn't really a hindrance. Most of the intensive code is written with the NDK, making the overhead really small. On top of that, dynamic recompilation engines can be made to perform almost on par to native clients by using things like reflection. I think I saw a presentation on that a few years ago (Circa 2005) when a guy made a psx emulator with just Java using the Java Bytecode as the target for the emitter and letting the JVM do the optimization, especially making use of the fact that this machines support reflection. With clever and elegant techniques, the guy showed the emulator running full speed on a moderate laptop of the era. I think it was called jPSX or something like that and the idea was really cool. Unfortunately the guy promised to release the source-code but it never saw the light. A shame, really, but I digress.


The fact of the matter is that no matter how much slower this devices perform compared to Pandora, the likelihood that the difference won't be big (if at all) between them is very high, making them attractive for their prices. Again, performance is a minor problem with these things. The bigger issue is lack of support on the hardware, stability of the software and build quality ruining the experience with bad controls.
 
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you may have more intimate knowledge of these specific chipsets in use than myself... I don't know... but from my knowledge the AML8726-M3 SoC has a NEON SIMD co-processor on it. Unless JXD has asked for it be removed from the SoC AMLogic provides, then I'd think it's there as a chipset standard, not just because it's a cortex a9 standard.


http://forum.openhan...=25.0;attach=11


The controls on this aren't "bad" necessarily.... they're just not as good as the pandora. I can give you plenty of examples of actual bad controls odroid, wonderswan, wiz, ngage, etc.


The stability of the andorid 2.3 port is perfectly fine, or at the very least acceptable, the updated android 4.0 port is pretty horrible though. Also to JXD's credit, they are doing a good job of keeping the os up to date and fixing and adding things in firmware updates. A lot better than my previous experience with their other non-android devices. I do have a problem with the bundled software as most of it is illegal roms and blatantly pirated apps. After downloading emulators from 3rd party sources.... these run emulated games extremely well. And when I said "not as good as the pandora" I'm really really nitpicky about my emulation. For example I can spot the difference between 30 and 60fps I don't think most retro gamers really care as long as it's playable at a decent framerate. It's nitpicky difference in performance, not full speed vs jumpy/laggy. leaps and bounds better than the dingoo, psp, caanoo, wiz or anything else in it's class. Pandora still got's it beat though.


the build quality is also pretty good for a <$100 device, what concerns me though is the QC on these though... There is a extremely high failure rate of DoA's and devices falling apart shortly after being used a couple times. The actual quality of the build is fine on mine for example, but I've heard other people say their shoulder buttons are failing, battery being loose. I take these issues with a grain of salt because you see these kinda things on mainstream devices as well and even more niche products like the pandora. just these seem to happen in higher rates with these cheaper devices. Of the 10 people I talk to that got a S601, I know 4 of them that has had a different hardware failure of some sort that is not present on mine and had to send it back to the reseller to fix/replace.


the target and advantage is absolutely the price point... and for the money 1/5th of the price of the pandora... it's a really good buy if you can't afford the pandora. Can it compete head to head with the pandora? Not even slightly.
 
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Hi!


Have you had more time to delve a bit into it? I'd be quite interested in getting one, but since I read you were disappointed, I'd like to konw more before I make up my mind. I am quite a fan of Android ICS, that's a very good system IMO. I have an Acer A100 tablet, but gaming on it is so-so, touchsecreen really can't beat proper gaming controls. So this JXD thingy might allow me to have what I've been looking for (and not completely found with the Pandora), a retro-gaming with a good internet browsing capability.


What about build quality, general performance, bettery life? Have you flashed the ICS rom? What apps are available through the PlayStore (are Gameloft games compatible for instance?).


Thanks in advance!

Basically everything that lugaidster has said, but if you want more info please ask the folks in the link below, as 20 or so of the people from there (me being one of them) already own one.


http://boards.dingoonity.org/android-devices/jxd-s5110/405/


By the way, are you from Australia?


http://boards.dingoonity.org/android-devices/jxd-s5110-for-$50-with-free-postage~/
 

That seems fishy as hell, I've been looking for information of several of these SoCs and from the screenshots I've seen of Quadrant, none of them report Neon support (And I've been looking into tablets with this SoC, not the JXD specifically). Furthermore, I mentioned this in particular, because they seem to have a very low performance in AnTuTu and Linpack on Android. I might be wrong though, maybe SONY can clear our doubts.


Hey SONY, would you be so kind as to take a few screenshots or photos of the mobile from Quadrant in the system information tab? (Not the benchmark) and from AnTuTu benchmark itself? I'm trying to determine if it indeed has NEON and how it's performance stands to other Cortex A9 cpus like the tegra2 (I know it's single vs dual core but regardless). If it actually has it, that would make it, at least on paper, faster than the Pandora (hardware-wise anyway, software is a whole'nother can of worms) as it would have a newer generation Cortex, OoO vs in-order, and higher frequency plus a newer GPU.


On the controls thing, I disagree completely. Even the pandora has bad controls IMO, In my opinion only the Caanoo has good controls, as I hate flat analogs and I have big hands. Plus, I've never liked those types of d-pads, which is probably why I hate the X360 controller. But that's a personal thing IMO. Regardless of that, the controls on the JXD have been reported to block certain combinations, which is why I brought it up, and the analog is hard-wired to the d-pad. That means, no real analog.


Edit: Apparently they cut corners on the cache.
 
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Often the OP team have been totally bewildered by how cheap these Chinese manufacturers were saying their next gen handhelds would be, and here is the answer: It's cheap because every possible corner was cut.


Even China can't bring this stuff in cheap and actually have something as powerful as, for example, an iPhone.


That's what we're realising too, and it's why we need to change our advertising and business model a little in the future.
 
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This device's SoC doesn't support NEON.

Yeah it does. The only Cortex-A9 SoC without NEON is Tegra 2. All of them have VFP, and all Cortex-A8 SoCs have both.


If these Android devices are running emulators slower than their Pandora equivalents it's probably because of overhead in the I/O APIs, that can add a good chunk of time to a frame regardless of how fast the emulation itself is. For some good examples see the old Gizmondo handheld, or the original Freerunner phone, those had really slow framebuffer interfaces. I'm sure the situation on Android isn't nearly as bad but it also can't be nearly as good as getting direct access to a hardware framebuffer like you can on Pandora or other handhelds like GP2X/Wiz/Caanoo or PSP.
 
Often the OP team have been totally bewildered by how cheap these Chinese manufacturers were saying their next gen handhelds would be, and here is the answer: It's cheap because every possible corner was cut.


Even China can't bring this stuff in cheap and actually have something as powerful as, for example, an iPhone.


That's what we're realising too, and it's why we need to change our advertising and business model a little in the future.

Well, at the end of the day...You get what you pay for.


Pandora = An awesome product that's screams quality, software and hardware wise. Overall, a great investment.


Chinese shit = Straight to the bin!!!
 
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