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Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite (samsung-gta7litewifi)

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Revision as of 11:39, 21 September 2023 by Hexaheximal (talk | contribs) (Use pmbootstrap flasher in the installation instructions instead of mtkclient directly)
Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite
The postmarketOS "Loading..." screen on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite
The postmarketOS "Loading..." screen on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite
Manufacturer Samsung
Name Galaxy Tab A7 Lite
Codename samsung-gta7litewifi
Released 2021
Type tablet
Hardware
Chipset MediaTek Helio P22T (MT8768)
CPU ARM Cortex A53 MPCore
GPU PowerVR GE8320
Display 800x1340 TFT LCD
Storage 32GB or 64GB, depending on the specific model
Memory 2GB, 3GB, or 4GB, depending on the specific model
Architecture aarch64
Software
Original software Android
Original version 11
Extended version 13
FOSS bootloader no
postmarketOS
Category testing
Pre-built images no
Mainline no
postmarketOS kernel 4.19.191
Unixbench Whet/Dhry score 0.0
Features
Flashing
No data
USB Networking
Works
Internal storage
No data
SD card
No data
Battery
No data
Screen
Broken
Touchscreen
No data
Multimedia
3D Acceleration
Broken
Audio
No data
Camera
No data
Camera Flash
No data
Connectivity
WiFi
No data
Bluetooth
No data
GPS
No data
NFC
No data
Miscellaneous
FDE
No data
USB OTG
No data
Sensors
Accelerometer
No data
Magnetometer
No data
Ambient Light
No data
Proximity
No data
Hall Effect
No data
Haptics
No data
Barometer
No data
Power Sensor
No data


Warning WARNING: Make sure that you are prepared to lose functionality before installing postmarketOS. Samsung Knox will blow an efuse when the OS is modified that will permanently disable Knox-only features like Samsung Pay, and you will NEVER be able to use those features again.
Notice While the kernel compiles and flashing is available, this device is in an extremely early state of development. Here Be Dragons

Contributors

hexaheximal

Users owning this device

  • Hexaheximal (Notes: maintaining the postmarketOS port, 3GB RAM 32GB eMMC model)
  • Zillion (Notes: T220, Currently running OneUi for kernel development)


Unlocking the bootloader

At least at first, the Android settings app does not allow you to enable bootloader unlocking. (On some devices it requires that it can connect to Samsung's servers first, but I would not recommend ever connecting it to the internet on stock Android)

However, it can be done with mtkclient:

$ mtk e metadata,userdata,md_udc
$ mtk da seccfg unlock

If it worked you should see a warning like this:

Do not panic! Your device is not broken!

If you *don't* see that warning, then it didn't work.

You can safely skip the warning, although on stock Android it might fail to boot in which case you will need to choose the factory reset option to clear userdata etc. again.

Installation

You will need to run pmbootstrap to build the boot.img:

$ pmbootstrap init
$ pmbootstrap install
$ pmbootstrap flasher flash_kernel
$ pmbootstrap flasher flash_rootfs

Reading logs

Before reading the logs, make sure to install mtkclient and then erase the expdb partition so the existing boot logs don't get mixed in and get confusing:

$ mtk e expdb

Once you have done that, boot the device. As soon as it powers off during a bootloop (and if it doesn't, hold down Power + Volume Down for ~10 seconds), run these commands:

$ mtk r expdb /tmp/expdb.bin
$ mtk reset # turns the device off, optional
$ cat /tmp/expdb.bin

Please note that the kernel part of the logs is quite a mess - it does not use proper newlines and instead uses what seems to be null bytes.


Downstream kernel status

The downstream kernel panics almost as soon as it boots into the kernel when compiled from source, but when using the prebuilt kernel & dtb it boots and USB Networking even works.

Mainline kernel status

The MT6765 close-to-mainline kernel does not boot due to the android bootloader refusing to boot with a dummy dtbo.

See also