The JXD S7300, One Month Later

Skelrom V1
Skelrom V1

The S7300 from JXD has been available for about a month now, and if you followed the comments from eager pre-orderers you’ll know that whilst the hardware side of it is fairly solid, the stock firmware leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn’t really come as a surprise, does it? Thankfully there are already 2 custom ROMs available for the device which fix many of the issues.

The first is called NCCE and it’s maintained by Damedus and Vektor of the Dingoonity forums. They’ve borrowed libraries from Skelton (another talented developer) and libraries released by Ainol (who are one of a scant few Chinese manufacturers who decided to Open Source the firmware for their AMLogic tablets) to improve game compatibility. There have been some speed tweaks too, along with a fix for the dpad bug that failed to register fast changes in direction. You can read all about it, download it and follow the instructions to install it here.

The 2nd ROM is from Dingoonity legend and saviour for untold previous consoles, Skelton himself. He originally said he wouldn’t have time to develop for this device, but it looks like he just couldn’t stay away! This ROM includes Clockwork Mod Recovery as well as many other fixes and improvements. It’s based on JXD’s latest firmware (v1.3) and is available to read about and download here.

As yet, I don’t think the 50hz issue has been resolved. This means that 60hz NTSC games perform far worse than their 50hz PAL counterparts due to screen refresh rate not matching that of the game. Hopefully this can be fixed in the future.

Damedus kindly explained to Gadgetmiser over at Dingoo Scene the main differences between the 2 ROMs (Thanks Damedus and Gadgetmiser!)

NCCE is using aroma to give it a visual appeal on how to install extra apps and features. As for game libraries we used the same libs that skelton facilitated me, on top of 1.3 that has the dpad fixes. Dont know if skelrom added any more changes, but i used a tweaking tool(From Jellybam) in the ncce environment to speed things abit, I had some bootloops, start over until I found the tweaks that wouldn’t give a negative impact to the rom. we also removed the phone issue that showed the battery being used to get network signal and removed the airplane mode. Vektor did some battery changes and wallpaper changes and added the skelton libs into the firmware, and from there its been getting aroma to work. so as you see its up to you which to use and as for the features you can easily use aroma patch to install any apps u want from our optional pack its not restricted to NCCE, also its all open source so feel free to modify as you like, you can use skeltons CMW too to make a nandroid and return back in case you mess something up.

The choice, is yours.

As usual, you can grab yourself one of these things from our trusted friends at Willgoo for $165.99. If you’re strapped for cash, maybe you’d be happier ordering from Lightake instead –

just bear in mind that their shipping times can be very slow sometimes.

It might be worth noting also that many people have contacted JXD asking for Source Code. Whilst this is usually a futile effort there have been some hopeful responses from JXD so far.

jxdemail

Perhaps they’ve taken note from Ainol who have magically not bankrupted themselves or helped spawn a thousand clones by doing the right thing, following GPL and releasing their source code. If you feel strongly about it, a polite and concise email to them can’t hurt. Try this address —> service@jxd.cc

9 thoughts on “The JXD S7300, One Month Later”

  1. Absolutely different experience using the NCCE firmware 0.3b on this handheld.
    The stock ROM looks amateurish and runs nowhere near as well by comparison.

    Hardware quality is good. No soldering or unexpected functional problems with the analog sticks and screen has no flaws.

    I’d say it’s darn close to being a daily driver.

    Reply
  2. I ordered mine this morning after reading about the firmware updates too.
    I liked the look of this piece from the start. I’m really glad it has the attention of the developers.

    Reply
  3. I just want to say after learning about the firmware upgrade I did ordered mine through willgoo last night. I think that the design is better than the archos gamepad and the battery life seems better too. I did have a jxd 7100 but it broke after a week but reading a bunch of reviews and seeing the videos online, the 7300 seems to be a winner. Heck ebay must think so. They are selling some of those devices as high as 400 bucks!

    Reply
    • Cool. I think you made the right choice, I’d go for this over the Archos. In fact, I ordered one for my brother so hopefully in a couple of weeks we can make a thorough video review. Who knows, by that time we might have the source code too.

      Reply

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