There are a few threads and blog posts online about rooting Boox products, but I thought I’d share my own experience with the latest firmware as it was slightly involved due to the fact that Onyx has yet to post firmware download links on their site. A lot of credit goes to Tho85 as their post linked above set the groundwork for my experience. See this post of mine as a “spritual successor” to theirs.
As expected, upgrading to 3.3.1 removed root on my Nova Air. Unexpectedly, the upgrade
rendered my tablet completely useless as I ran into ContentBrowser keeps stopping
messages on startup when using the Onyx Launcher as my home app. I could boot
successfully into a different launcher, but attempting to open apps like Notes (which
are embedded and run within the Onyx Launcher itself) consistently failed with that
message. Google only turned up one search result for this error, which was just a
reddit thread suggesting a
factory reset. So I went ahead and did that. Luckily, I had created a backup of all my
notes before the upgrade, and regardless of the launcher issues was still able to use
USB debugging to adb pull other files I wanted to save before the reset.
Rooting
Getting a boot.img
Typically, this boot.img can be retrieved by following the Decrypt firmware updates
section of Tho85’s blog post, but I was unable
to do this since Onyx hasn’t yet posted 3.3.x firmware download links on their site.
Instead, I needed to follow Boot into Emergency Download (EDL) 9008 mode, which went
something like this:
- Set up Qualcomm Sahara / Firehose Attack Client / Diag Tools by following their installation guide
- Reboot the tablet into EDL 9008 mode:
adb reboot edl - Grab the boot partition from the tablet:
python edl --loader=Loaders/prog_emmc_ufs_firehose_Sdm636_ddr.elf r boot boot.img --memory emmc- Note
--memory emmc. I think that the default behavior of this tool has changed since Tho85’s post, as their commands didn’t specify the usage of this argument. - Note for Nova Air 2 users: I had to use
0014d0e100000000_d40eee56f3194665_FHPRG.bininstead as the Loader, and the partition wasboot_arather thanboot. - Note for pyenv users: I ran into libusb issues due to pyenv expecting it to exist
somewhere that it didn’t. Following this suggestion in a GitHub issue thread (running
sudo ln -s /opt/homebrew/lib/libusb-1.0.0.dylib /usr/local/lib/libusb.dylib) solved this issue.
- Note
Patching the boot.img
- magisk root
- copy boot.img over to the tablet, run install
- copy patch over to laptop
adb reboot fastbootfastboot boot magisk_patched*.img- Note: On a Nova Air 2, I had to hop into
fastboot reboot bootloaderfirst in order for thefastboot bootcommand to be recognized.
- Note: On a Nova Air 2, I had to hop into
- confirmed the patched boot image worked
fastboot flash boot magisk_patched*.imgfastboot reboot
Configuring
- Install AFWall+:
- Disable network access for everything, then approve it for the apps and services I actually want to use. I have nearly all Onyx-related apps/services disabled.
- Why? I saw some requests being sent to Tencent IPs, which are most likely harmless, but I’d prefer to play it safe. Boox isn’t transparent about what all is running on their tablets. On the other hand of transparency, their public sdks have resulted in some interesting tweaks to exsiting applications to better support low latency e-ink writing in apps that don’t already account for this use case.
- Install
a decluttered launcher - Set up notes to backup to Google Drive:
- Within notes settings, enable saving to pdf on exit
- Install
Autosync for Google Driveand configure it to watch the/notedirectory
Asides
Why the Nova Air?
I used to have an iPad that I used almost exclusively as a Notability machine in college, which was easily the best tablet note taking experience I’ve ever had. However, after college it simply didn’t get much use. Writing grocery lists and to-do lists for chores on a > $1000 device felt like a waste, so I handed it off to my sister for her to use for the remainder of her undergrad and grad school.
A few months after getting rid of the iPad, there were a few rare occasions where I found myself missing the ability to jot down quick notes/diagrams that could be shared electronically. I tried using the markup feature within the Notes app on my iPhone to scribble down diagrams, but that was no good.
I happened to be in the market for a new laptop, so I went with the ThinkPad X1 Tablet gen 3 to try and scratch the note taking itch. However, the pen’s build quality and the ergonomics of a Surface-like laptop just didn’t work out for me really. I ended up almost never using the pen or the touchscreen of this device, and its speakers stopped working one day. Definitely a bit of a bummer of a laptop for my purposes.
I started looking into devices like reMarkable since that seemed like a great product for my use case: e-ink display, wouldn’t need to be charged frequently, and note taking is the device’s main feature. But I immediately lost interest when I saw how restricted the OS was, as well as the fact that some features seemed to be locked behind a subscription. At this point, I realized that all I really wanted was an e-ink Android tablet with low-latency stylus input. I found the Nova, and that was that. It’s been great so far!
The future
E-ink tablets, and e-ink in general, seems to be gaining traction in the US recently. Lenovo Smart Paper is an example of a big company investing in this sector in the US. That being said, I am still anxiously awaiting a pure Android e-ink tablet that doesn’t include a proprietary OS wrapper like so many of the current devices on the market have, the Smart Paper included.
Do you know of any options on the market that provide a pure Android/Linux experience? I’m keeping tabs on the PineNote, but it is not in a day-to-day usable state just yet. That is honestly my frontrunner at the moment. For the next few years though, I’ll stick with the Nova Air.