What’s the best ROM/Custom Firmware for the Ainol Elf II

Hello guys and welcome to our new blog followers and readers! Today I want to talk about the choice of custom firmwares (alternative ROMs) for the Ainol Elf II.

If you were following the blog, you should already know that I got my Ainol Elf 2 tablet delivered from china using EMS about a two weeks ago, and during these two weeks I was testing all of the available official firmwares and custom ROMs to get the best out of my tablet especially that chinese tablets aren’t very good at performance. However this tablet seemed to be the best 7″ tablet when it comes to performance/price, and it did a very good job with all of the firmwares I tried, but there are always some advantages and disadvantages for each ROM.

I won’t be talking alot about performance in this post, benchmarks will arrive in another one. This post will talk about the tablet in the user’s perspective (do games work? is there a lag? are there some features missing?)

Ainol Elf 2 unboxing!

My Ainol Elf II arrived today by EMS (8 days after I bought it from McBub). McBub included an English Manual and a USB wall charger (US one even if I live in a EU area, better than nothing). Here are the pictures of the unboxing:

Ainol Novo7 Elf 2 vs Aurora 2 : IPS screen

Just a little comparison video that shows the difference between the normal screen of the Elf 2 and the IPS screen of the Aurora 2. I really didn’t wanted the IPS screen because I don’t think it is worth the additionnal 20$ but you might want to consider that if you are a hardcore gamer, or an internet addict.

My Elf II just left the CHANGSHA sorting center in its way to Tunisia from China!

2012-08-23  18:18:00	CHANGSHA	Posting
2012-08-24  08:46:34	CHANGSHA	Arrival at Sorting Center
2012-08-24  11:23:41	CHANGSHA	Despatch from Sorting Center

Tracking status

I made a decision!

Hey guys! Welcome to my blog :p !

I’m Wassim Gharbi from Tunisia and I made this blog for current and future Ainol Novo7 Elf II (2) users that want to get informations about this tablet before buying or customize it after buying. As I’m writing this, my Ainol Novo7 Elf II is being shipped to me from China by EMS.

So, After a lot of thinking and hundreds of Youtube video reviews played, I decided to buy the Ainol Novo7 Elf II (2) tablet because of its specs and of course price. So, how did I decide to buy this tablet? First of all, I wanted a 7″ tablet pc, 10″ tablets were big for me (especially that I already got my hands on an iPad and saw how big it was…). I wanted a tablet that has a quiet large screen but that can fit in a small school-bag, because I entend to bring my tablet to school as a replacement for school books. The second criteria was the OS, I already got an iPhone and an Android phone, I love both even if my Android experience wasn’t really good because of the low-spec Android phone I had. Android was the only choice I had, because iPads are big, Blackberries and HPs aren’t so popular. Now, let’s see the choice of cheap Android 4.0+ 7″ tablets: We have the Ainol Novo7 Aurora II, Ainol Novo7 Elf II, a generic chinese A10 tablet labeled as Gpad G7/McPad/YeahPad/…, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7″ and Google Nexus 7.

The last two, were out of my budget so we find our selves with the two Ainol tablets and the Gpad G7/YeahPad. The Gpad G7 was very cheap (>60$) but it lacked a lot of functionalities I really wanted such as the HDMI port, the dual core processor (even if its processor is very good, and near dual core performance), the dual core graphics and community support. So, I had to chose from the Aurora II and the Elf II, both of these tablet have a lot of very good reviews: some of the reviews say that these are the BEST 7″ tablets (excluding Nexus 7). In benchmark, these two tablets have a higher score than the Galaxy Tab 2 and are exactly below the Asus Transformer. The Aurora II and the Elf II have the same dual-core 1.5Ghz Amlogic processor, they also have the same GPU, the same 1024*600 HD resolution and they both have an HDMI output. The only difference I can notice is the IPS screen of the Aurora II (180° viewing angle) and I didn’t really want such a good display on my budget tablet. So I had to choose the Elf II. I’ve also seen that developers (here) were working on a CM10 (Jelly Bean 4.1) version for this tablet so that was very good for me

Here is a comparison table from McBub.com:

Now that I chose the tablet, I had to find a reliable website where I can buy the tablet. I already got McBub in mind, because they have community support, they also have a very nice and helpful customer support that is available directly from their website via instant chat. I searched a lot and found some websites that have the tablet in a lower price than McBub but they weren’t as reliable as McBub, so I decided to buy from it. Another advantage of this website is that it has accessories for almost every single tablet they sell, so finally I placed my order at the 20/08/2012 with the tablet itself, some accessories for my iPhone and for the tablet and I choose EMS shipping to Tunisia because regular post was unreliable and very slow and also to avoid DHL tax fees. The shipping cost was a little bit high (65$ compared to 111$ for the tablet) but I didn’t want to wait more for my Elf II :p.

McBub has a 3 days maximum processing time, and they respected it. On the 23/08/2012 (today) I received an email from McBub saying that my order was shipped and I was given an EMS tracking number to use on ems.com.ch or e-suivi.poste.tn . Stay tuned and subscribe to the blog for more information and for the review of the tablet 🙂

Thanks for visiting the blog!