Archos 7 Home Tablet

One of the users on the ArchosFans Forums has been building a custom firmware image for the Archos 7 HT to bring full Google application support to the device.  I decided tonight to go ahead and give his update a try and see if hacking the firmware would be something I’d bother digging into or if I should stick with pure application development.  Flashing the firmware on the device means I will lose all data and installed applications, but since I had just documented the applications I use in a previous post on here I wasn’t too worried.

The first step in the update meant heading over to the Operation Unbrickable post by Dom on ArchosFans and grabbing the latest firmware image.  He’s been pretty good about keeping the first post updated with the most recent information, so if you are going to update your tablet be sure to read the entire post, paying particular attention to the Instructions paragraph.

With the update downloaded to my PC I hooked up the tablet via USB (making sure to have it plugged into the wall) and dropped the file onto the device.  As soon as I disconnected the USB the Archos prompted me to update, exactly as it should.  The system then rebooted and finished the update before displaying a new Android setup screen in portrait mode which kind of screwed me up for a moment.  I followed Dom’s instructions at this point so I could activate the WiFi and after another quick reboot (which required me to use the reset button for some reason) I was able to go through screen calibration and link my device to my Google account.  Since I have my Gmail setup as a clearinghouse for all of my accounts I instantly had access to all of my email again, that was much easier than I had expected.

The first thing I did with my freshly flashed device was to open up the Android Marketplace that was lacking in the base Archos load.  The application opened up with no problems and allowed me to search the directory and quickly install what I wanted.  I have to say having the Marketplace is much preferred over the AppsLib application simply due to the number of available applications.  I grabbed Facebook and The Weather Channel apps as my first tests, and both have worked flawlessly so far.  I now am off to reinstall Swype since using this default keyboard is driving me insane, and then I should be back to 100%.

Now I need to get my Android development environment setup, but that’s another post…