In a tiny victory at work, I've been given an old Galaxy Tab for people to use to take competency tests on. Six months ago I was explicitly told that all tests should be taken with pen and paper.
Slightly less victorious; the cable for it is apparently shagged.
I took the plug apart (because it's of an age when you could still do that) and noted that two of the four wires were bare copper, and were touching. So I taped them up, and that appears to have worked!
Now I'll leave it to charge for a few hours to see what it does.
Then I'll rustle up the bravery to ask someone to order a £3 replacement cable off eBay...
@DJDarren It sounds like a great place to work! I'm kind of jealous that my status as a full time carer for my wife means I won't be able to apply for any jobs there!
I massively underestimated just how comprehensively old Android devices are fucked over by the relentless march of time.
This one is running 4.0.4, which won't even sign in to the Play Store any more. Say what you like about Apple, but the iPad 2 from the same year can still access the App Store.
@DJDarren sign in to the store, yes. But most big name apps won't install/update/function...
I have an iPad 2 (currently just for watching in the bath tub) - Netflix UK recently barred signin from the un-updated version of the app that was installed back when it was more supported. Amazon Prime video still works for now.
@pug50 Yes, sadly true. The App Store will install the last version of the app that worked with your OS, but that doesn't mean the app will actually work.
I suppose the point is that I could make an iPad 2 work for what I need, though it wouldn't be a great experience. But I'm unfamiliar with Android, so am in at the deep end a bit.
@maxormark Oh aye, I know. Though there is a trick to it that means you can still use apps you already own by downloading the last working version from your purchased list.
@DJDarren Unfortunately, I was trying to revive an old iPad 2, which had been reset, and the backup had all the updated versions of Apps. Tried to get the old ones from the App Store and couldn't.
Option 2 is my preferred route, as it'll make the device generally more useful, HOWEVER, this is where being a Mac user bites me in the arse.
All the guides are from a Windows perspective.
And the sheer volume of Android devices means it's tricky to find what I need to make it work with this specific tablet. It's a 2011 Samsung Tab. Many of the threads are from 7/7 years ago, and full of dead links.
@DJDarren One thing Android does permit, which iOS doesn't, is the use of unofficial play stores.
If you have a working browser on the tablet, head over to https://f-droid.org/ and install F-Droid. Not only is it an alternative repo, but all of the software there is FOSS.
They definitely have QR readers available, I can't vouch whether any of them will work with Android 4 but 🤞
@DJDarren On newer versions of Android there's usually a check-box somewhere in the settings to permit installing from a non-Google play store. I honestly can't remember if that still needed to be selected as an option way back in v4.
@DJDarren I've installed LineageOS on Android tablets with a Mac, but it is not a pleasant process, with no user-friendly graphical tools available. Worth putting the effort in, though, to extend the life of older kit. I'd recommend researching on the XDA Developer forums primarily: https://forum.xda-developers.com
I have owned several Android devices, that I've never used for anything serious, but I don't think any of them ever did a major update. One did a small system update once and when I looked it was because it was going out of the update period after a year or two so it was just a "so long" update.
Crazy.
My old iphone from 2012(?) was still current up until iOS 16.
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