SmartQ V5 - media player and more

Wednesday, January 27 2010 @ 21:29 CET

I bought a SmartQ V5 (I bought mine from DX). This small device have one interesting feature compared with other devices like this: it comes factory installed with three operating systems: Linux (Ubuntu), Android and WinCE. When you boot, you can choose which os to boot.

As delivered, the device came with Android and WinCE in chinese, but for Linux you can choose english as a language. Also, all documentation delivered on paper with the device is in chinese. You can figure out much from the pictures. Use the SmartQ MID forum (unofficial) for more info. You can download english WinCE firmware from the V5 download page, but it seems like Android is only in chinese.

Firmware upgrade

• File naming: the linux image is named SmartQV5, the Android image is named SmartQV5_AD and the WinCE image is named SmartQV5_CE.
• Flashing procedure
  1. use a FAT-32 formatted SD card
  2. Copy one firmware file to the root directory of the SD card
  3. hold down the "+" (plus) button (leftmost button), then press the power button. Hold both buttons down until the power led turns red, then green. Release the buttons.
  4. You will get texts (in english and chinese) which shows the progress of the upgrade. When the device shutdowns and reboots the upgrade is finished.
  5. Repeat the above steps for other operating systems.
• Upgrade fails: if the power led turns yellow and you get a line on the screen which is "SD-chinese-!" it means that the device rejected the SD card for some reason. If it doesn't help to format it as FAT-32 again, try another SD card.

Notes: the charger / power adapter has an american mains plug, so you need a plug adapter for it

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