I’m afraid my brief infatuation with Yixin may be nearing an end. I was having trouble with freebie voice recorder apps from the Android Market. Since many require an external chip to store the voice files, I knew it was time to purchase an 8 GB micro SD card. That started a chain of events that led to the disabling of my Yixin 7200’s power button.
Valuable lesson I learned: highly sticky moving tape can be dangerous.
I tried to get the SD chip to “catch” as I slid into the small opening on the side of the Yixin. It didn’t. I turned the chip over and tried again. No luck. The Yixin clearly recognized the SD device, briefly flashing an acknowledgment message, and then just as soon as the chip popped out, it informed me that it no longer had SD storage
So what to do? I cut a small strip of moving tape we had lying in our “stuff” drawer and simply taped over the SD chip so that it connected with the pins. Mission accomplished.
Though I was a little disappointed in the build quality—but not entirely surprised—of this low-cost Android tablet, I thought I could live with this minor ad hoc fix.
Moving tape used to hold micro SD chip in place
When it came time to power the Yixin off for the day, I realized I had accidentally taped over the small, unobtrusive on-off button.
After peeling back part of the tape, I then pressed the button and held, expecting the Android OS to pop-up the power-down box. Nothing.
I noticed that the button had lost its springiness. Did tape glue permanently gunk up the button, or had I unwittingly de-springed it when I taped over and forced it into a down position for 30 minutes or so?
In any case, I can longer shut the Yixin off.
I will be deciding the fate of my latest low-cost Android experiment in the next day or two.
Related articles
- Year of the Yixin: Inexpensive, Capable Android (technoverseblog.com)
