Hands-on: Lenovo P8

My Pixel C’s screen shattered. I figured I’d find someone to repair it—maybe Google US could do a mail-in fix. So I contacted Google US support directly, went back and forth for ages, and they said it’s out of warranty, told me to find a technician in China Mainland myself. I said I don’t have the screen component, and they said “neither do we.”

Fuck. What now? Guess I’ll buy a new one…

Except there are basically no Android flagship tablets anymore!

So in the end I bought this…

Lenovo P8

Why this one? Three reasons:

1. Cheap
2. Snapdragon 625—great battery life, enough performance
3. ROM is close to stock

Once it arrived, Lenovo’s build quality felt decent, and honestly 8 inches is just the right size…

It came with the China ROM. I strongly recommend flashing the international ROM and then rooting it.

For flashing the ROM, see: https://bbs.saraba1st.com/2b/thread-1572399-1-1.html

For root, see: https://bbs.saraba1st.com/2b/thread-1504884-1-1.html

Also worth checking: https://www.whois42.me/2017/12/14/p8/

One important thing: you need to back up the QCN. If you don’t, you’ll lose your tablet’s fixed Wi-Fi MAC address.

After rooting and flashing the international ROM, you can update to the latest Android 6.0.1… yeah, that’s as new as this tablet gets.

Once rooted, you can do whatever you want—kill the stuff you don’t like, keep the stuff you do.

One nice built-in feature on the P8 is adjustable color temperature.

The downside is the bootloader can’t be unlocked—otherwise I’d throw Lineage OS on it. Hoping for a breakthrough in the future.

Battery life is insane. Playing Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile, it easily lasts over 5 hours. Got to hand it to the 625.

Screen protector and case

The Lenovo P8 has no oleophobic coating by default, so a screen protector is essential.

The best-seller on Taobao is USK’s protector, but that one’s a trap—barely any oleophobic coating, and the surface feels rough.

Reddit recommended buying the protector for the “Huawei Honor Tablet 2” from Shimoe, but it seems that one’s discontinued…

So here’s what I recommend instead…

Guangrende Flagship Store’s protective case

But the case isn’t the point—it’s that they include a tempered glass protector, and that included protector actually has an oleophobic coating! A modern-day case of buying the box for the pearl…

The case itself is a no-brainer: buy the official Lenovo one. Don’t get a flip cover—it gets in the way when gaming.

Honor of Kings / PUBG Mobile optimization

The 625 is supposedly enough, but gaming still has its limits. That said, the Lenovo P8 isn’t completely hopeless for Honor of Kings—you can spoof the device model!

Using the Xposed framework with AppEnv, change the device to vivo X20A—it has to be X20A—and then Honor of Kings will enable multi-core optimization and even King’s Moment.

That’s not enough though. I recommend GLtools to virtualize the GPU as a 540—basically overclocking—which also boosts frame rate.

After these changes, Honor of Kings runs at a stable 50 FPS on medium effects and medium particles, and you can even enable high frame rate.

As for PUBG Mobile, it runs smoothly at lowest settings + 40 FPS. That pretty much covers these games.

Fixing Wi-Fi drops

It seems all Snapdragon 625 and 835 phones have this Wi-Fi drop issue—ping suddenly spikes while gaming, etc. The cause is nothing else but Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi power-saving strategy.

Changing gEnableBmps=1 to 0 fixes the drops, but then Wi-Fi isn’t power-efficient anymore.

Is there a solution? Yes—look, the OnePlus 5 doesn’t have this problem. Just copy the OnePlus 5’s config file over…

For details, see here: http://bbs.gfan.com/android-9190504-1-1.html

Problem solved.

All in all, the Lenovo P8 as a budget tablet is well worth buying. It meets my current needs:

Gaming, watching YouTube—the only complaint is Android 6.0 doesn’t support YouTube Red’s picture-in-picture. Nothing else to grumble about.

I’ll stick with this thing until a new flagship tablet comes out.

Finally, farewell Pixel C. I’ll miss the two years you spent with me.