JT-B1...are you experienced

I just bought a JT-B1. This is the 7” android touchpad. Has anybody played with one before? Any wisdom to share?

 

Got the unit in the mail today. So far, the form factor is great. Its just the right size for carying in a cargo pocket. The battery life seems to be very good. Most of the apps work ok as is, but...its a seven year old operating system and there doesnt seem to be a way to update it so far. The browser works sort of. It wont load wikipedia or some other pages because of an ssl layer error probably because of the ancient os. It sems to be a pretty good navigatipn tool.

 

Its also slow as hell and occasionally hardb to manipulatw. Its also missimng thdt targeted key thing that newer tablets have thfat figures oit which kwy is tje one ypu ment to hit based on your input...as you can see. Still learning.

 

Turns out its a great nav tool. The nav app works great as doea the onboard gps. I was able to download thte kindle app and its a fantastic ebook reader too. Some of the web sitea work, and some dont, which makes the web a much less tempting distraction. Facebook and this website work. All in all i like it. thfe battery is amazing. im thinkking its going to make 8 hours at least.

 

After using this unit for a few days I have to say I really like it. The weight and feel are great. It’s a really nice GPS and great ebook reader. I got an sd card for it and loaded some movies and music on it. It’s got a great screen for movies, and the sound is good enough to enjoy music on. It sips power. I used the wifi to download a ton of ebooks and offline maps, watched a whole movie and did about 6 hours of stuff total. At the end of the day I still had 40% battery power left.
It won’t open Microsoft office files, but will open acrobat files. It likes .mp4 movies but won’t open .m4v movies.
It’s value as a web surfing tool is pretty low. It’ll get some web sites, but not most, and again, you can’t upgrade it as far as I can tell. The App Store has a scant few apps that even work with android 4...I mean like three or four as far as I can tell, so don’t count on downloading a bunch of new whiz bang apps. You pretty much get what you have. I was able to install the kindle reader and update the gps app, but that’s about it,
I think this is going to be my go to airplane entertainment system and end of the day ereader. It’s everything proof and using it will save my iPad batteries on long days, but it’s not going to replace my iPad or laptop.
I paid about $70 for it on eBay and it’s well worth that money. Would I drop $400 on one? Nope.

There is a FZ-B2 that has the same form factor. It looks like it has android 6, which would dramatically improve your app options, I think. I’m not really an android guy, so if anybody has any input I’d love to hear it. There don’t seem to be any screaming FZ-B2 deals as of today. Most are over $500.

All in all a decent unit that’s hobbled by an un-update-able OS. As long as you’re comfortable with the box you’re stuck in, it’s a pretty good tool.

 

So I’ve learned a few things this week. There are more apps that work with this thing than I previously imagined.
I found a screen shot of one of these that had Polaris gps navigator and Opera lite on it, so I tried those. The Polaris app was good, but keept trying to link to web ads that didn’t work, and then locking up. I downloaded a bunch of map files ...like hundreds of megabytes (which killed the battery in a few hours) and then decided to upgrade to the $7 version, called GPS Waypoint. It works great...mostly, and got rid of the ad lock ups, but...I had to re download almost all the maps, which was a pain in the arse.
It all works now, and I was able to transfer all my waypoints from my Garmin unit to the app. GPS waypoint is clunky, and does some very non-intuitive things, but overall it’s pretty good. You can download free topo, nautical and satellite maps, which is handy on a waterproof tablet you can read in the daylight. I have some hiking and kayaking trips coming up and I think it’s going to be very useful there.

AIReader solved all my “I can’t open this attached word file” issues.

When I downloaded the GPS app I guess it awoke the google beast, and it got rid of the excellent Nav app and replaced it with google maps, which works pretty well...but...so far I can’t find a way to get it to download offline maps for when I want to use the devise unconnected.

Opera lite works and loads most websites so far, which was not the case with chrome or the browser that came with it.

I’m slowly getting the hang of this thing. Pretty useful if you can find the right apps.

 

Ok...so I figured out how to download the offline maps in google maps. You just search for an area...like Atlanta, then tap the city name and it gives you the option to pan and zoom to the area you want then download it.

...and just for the record if you do a google search for google it doesn’t break the internet.

Google has good instructions on how to use their map app. Who knew?

 

offline maps for android that are the best are here by nokia and maps.me. free and you can dl the area you are in. It was a decent device in the day. Not much you can do for mods for it. Not sure if it can even be rooted.