Sailfish OS on ONDA V820W V3 and other Intel SoC-based tablets
 

I got pretty much inspired by https://jolla.comes.today/jolla-tablet-on-taobao-china/ article and firmware from http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=96474. In a nutshell, official Jolla Tablet is a device based around Intel Atom Z3735F SoC (Bay Trail) and can work both with Sailfish OS and Android (by the way, Android device tree it's based on is called "anzhen4_mrd8_w").

There have been a lot of cheap Chinese tablet using the same SoC, and usually they come with Android/Windows dualboot. So what's preventing us from running Sailfish OS on them? Android firmware can often be easily ported between such devices, but kernel is device-specific, so custom ROM makers just use the stock kernel from their device unmodified.

For Sailfish OS, we can't, since systemd requires some kernel options which are most of time turned off in Android kernels. Enabling them and recompiling kernel would be easy if Chinese manufacturers didn't violate GPL and actually provided kernel sources, but that's not the case. Thankfully, since most of hardware is similar, it's possible to base custom kernel on other device source.

I have Sailfish OS running on Onda V820w tablet. It's not perfect yet, but the hardware itself (touchscreen, audio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, front and back cameras) works. Many thanks to Stskeeps for providing modules folders which were missing from Jolla Tablet kernel sources. The biggest problem was getting kernel working with camera sensors. Even though the needed drivers are present, PMIC regs and GPIO pin meanings turned out to be different. Just a few values to change, but it was very troublesome to debug and I had to disassemble Onda stock Android kernel to understand what's wrong.

Below is a guide to installing Sailfish OS on Onda V820w (tested with V3, see serial number to understand what revision is yours if you happen to have it). Hope community will be interested in running Sailfish OS on other similar devices and we can have more supported. I'm happy to help with what I can either here or at #sailfishos-porters on IRC.

Update: automatic installer (all data is going to be erased!) image for ONDA V820W V3: https://mega.nz/#!8FZRiBwB!FBBD8CUMa...Qp713VqT-FoAhM. Unpack it to the root of FAT32 formatted USB drive and boot tablet from USB drive.

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

Hi, sorry for replying so late, but this really caught my attention as it could be a cheaper alternative to the Jolla Tablet. First, I want to thank you for the detailed tutorial and for the effort.

Would you (or anyone else with this tablet) please be willing to share any experience with using it for a few weeks?

What about the battery life? How much power does it draw when idle?
Does the miniHDMI-out work?

And the final question - since the port is based on the Jolla Tablet files (if I understand it correctly) and it uses the same kernel version, do the proprietary parts of SailfishOS work as well? Namely Alien Dalvik, Jolla Store and MS Exchange (never used it, but I'm curious).

Thanks.

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

Hi there
Also interested for my
Toshiba Encore WT8-A-103

Specifications

Toshiba Encore WT8-A-103Notebook: Toshiba Encore WT8-A-103 (Encore Series)
Processor: Intel Atom Z3740
Graphics Adapter: Intel HD Graphics (Bay Trail)
Would be great it someone could make a port for it

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

Unfortunately, I was more interested in getting SailfishOS running on it than actually using the device, so can't really share much user experience. Battery should be around 3 hours for general use. miniHDMI is untested, since I don't have a display to plug it in, but it probably won't work, since Sailfish OS doesn't support more than one screen so far and they purposefully shipped Jolla Tablet without HDMI port.

As for the device itself, build quality/official OS (Windows/Android I mean) support/etc is not to be compared with more expensive devices, but it still does a lot for the price in terms of hardware itself.

And for the last question, yes, but it probably goes against the rules.

Since your device doesn't have official Android firmware, libhybris can't be used, but pure Linux adaptation will be probably much more generic. You can try running latest build of Remix OS and Android-x86 itself (they've integrated many kernel patches for Bay Trail) or general Linux distro to see what in terms of hardware support is likely to work and what's not.

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

+1 for Encore port. Btw, have you tried getting your encore to dnx/fastboot mode? mine just flashes the dnx mode screen and continues booting, whereas on my jolla tablet dnx mode works correctly?:confused:

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

Any chances for Nokia N1? Have an TW-Version (Android 5.0.2) with unlocked boot loader.
But i can't find kernel and android sources for this Tablet.

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

i bricked my tablet by flashing sfos with fastboot. any ideas how to unbrick? i cannot even flash original os

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

which one?
I think, now you need to put your Tablet into Flash mode and flash it with Intel Phone Flash Tool or Intel Plattform flash tool

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

the onda v820w, i used both tools, but it gives me an error like flashing ifwi failed - sn. i tried sfos, android 5 for this tablet and the factory image for android, how i understood

Re: Sailfish OS on Intel SoC-based tablets
 

now i maybe try booting a life cd and putting sfos to the internal nand. the question is how i get grub.cfg bzimage and grubia32.efi. but maybe ihave to install a Linux to have it