Jide Remix Tablet Revived

A custom ROM that brings Android 14 (LineageOS 21) to the Jide Remix Ultra Tablet (model REMIX SK1WG), the 2015 11.6" NVIDIA Tegra 4 tablet with a keyboard cover.

Model	Support
Remix Ultra Tablet REMIX SK1WG (Wi-Fi, 2 GB / 64 GB)	Supported: first release, see below
Other Remix devices (Remix Mini, Remix Pro, ...)	Not supported

Jide left the consumer market in July 2017 and ended Remix OS, and the last firmware it shipped is Remix OS 2.0.305 (Android 5.1.1, June 2016). The tablet still works, but it is very slow (Remix OS and Google Play services on 2 GB of RAM and an old eMMC) and nothing on it gets security updates any more. This project puts a clean, lightweight Android on it, with the hardware that makes the tablet useful: the 1920x1080 screen with GPU acceleration, touch, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio, sensors and the keyboard cover.

There are no Google services: the system is LineageOS's "mini" Wi-Fi tablet set, and the stock 1000 MB system partition is kept as it is.

Status: first release. LineageOS 21 installs with fastboot and runs day to day: smooth at the panel's full 1920x1080, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth audio, speaker, headphones, microphone, sensors and the keyboard cover. Known limits: the camera does not work yet, SELinux is permissive, and updates are installed by re-flashing. Download it from Releases, then follow Install.

What works

Area	Status
Boot to the home screen	Works, from the flashed boot partition
Display, 1920x1080, GPU	Works, through NVIDIA's own Tegra 4 graphics drivers from Remix OS with compatibility shims. SurfaceFlinger composes on the GPU (NVIDIA's overlay path garbles the panel)
Touch	Works (FocalTech FT5x06). No double tap to wake: the controller ignores it
Smoothness	Smooth scrolling once the everyday apps are compiled, which happens on the device after the first boot
Wi-Fi	Works, 2.4 GHz only (the BCM43341 has no 5 GHz). No hotspot, no Wi-Fi Direct
Bluetooth	Works: Bluetooth headphones play through A2DP (AAC/SBC, encoded in software). The chip has no address of its own, so the first boot makes a random one
Audio	Speaker, wired headphones (the speaker switches off while they are plugged in) and the internal microphone work. A headset microphone is never selected
Media playback	Works through Android's Codec2 software codecs. NVIDIA's hardware video decoders are not used (they need Android 5.1 libraries)
Web browser and WebView apps	Work on the GPU through ANGLE, with WebGL 1 (no WebGL 2: the GPU is OpenGL ES 2.0). Pages that blur what is behind them (CSS backdrop-filter) scroll slowly: the Tegra 4 GPU takes 40-100 ms per frame on them
Sensors	Accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and light sensor are listed. Adaptive brightness works
Backlight	Works, off when the screen sleeps
Keyboard cover	Closing the cover puts the tablet to sleep; opening it does not wake it (the power key does). The keyboard and touchpad work (plain USB HID)
Camera	Not working yet: the stock camera driver needs Android 5.1 libraries. A V4L2 driver is in progress: the back camera already sends frames to the Tegra's CSI receiver, the images do not reach memory yet
Security	SELinux is permissive and the security patch level is from early 2025. Builds are signed with the project's own release keys
Updates	By re-flashing (data kept); there is no over-the-air update

The bring-up log, with every problem found and how it was fixed, is in docs/BRINGUP.md.

Hardware

Part	Details
SoC	NVIDIA Tegra 4 (T114), 4x Cortex-A15 up to 1.8 GHz, 32-bit
Board	NVIDIA macallan reference platform (shared with the Asus Transformer Pad TF701T)
RAM / storage	2 GB / 64 GB eMMC, microSD slot
Display	11.6" 1920x1080, DSI
Touch	FocalTech FT5x06
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth	Broadcom BCM43341
Audio	TI TLV320AIC325x
Sensors	MPU-3050 gyroscope, KXTF9 accelerometer, AK8963 compass, CM3217 light sensor
Keyboard cover	Plain USB HID over the pogo contacts (keyboard + touchpad), a Hall switch for the lid
Video out	None: the SoC's HDMI block (and its HDA audio device) is there, but the tablet has no HDMI connector
Stock kernel	NVIDIA Linux 3.4.108
Bootloader	Unlocked, unsigned images boot (fastboot boot works without flashing)

Install

Installing replaces Remix OS and erases everything on the tablet (apps, accounts, files). The bootloader of the REMIX SK1WG is already unlocked, so there is nothing to unlock: you only need fastboot.

What you need

• A Jide Remix Ultra Tablet, model REMIX SK1WG, with the battery at 50% or more. Other Remix devices are different hardware.
• A PC with Android's platform-tools (fastboot). On Windows, also Google's USB driver for the bootloader (how).
• A good USB cable, plugged into the PC itself, not a hub.
• The latest ...-sk1wg-images.zip from Releases, extracted. It holds boot.img, system.img and system_ext.img.
• Recommended: Jide's official Remix OS 2.0.305 images, to go back to stock one day (how).

Steps

1. Start the bootloader. Switch the tablet off (hold Power for 10-15 s if it does not respond). Hold Volume Up + Power until the bootloader menu appears, then pick "Fastboot Protocol" on screen. Without that last step every fastboot command times out.
2. Check the connection. In a terminal, in the folder with the images:

   fastboot devices
   

   The tablet must be listed. fastboot getvar product should answer Macallan.
3. Flash and wipe:

   fastboot flash boot boot.img
   fastboot -S 256M flash system system.img
   fastboot -S 256M flash cache system_ext.img
   fastboot format:ext4 userdata
   fastboot reboot
   

   system_ext goes to the stock cache partition on purpose: the system partition is too small for both. -S 256M sends the large images in pieces.
4. First boot. It takes several minutes: Android compiles the apps on the tablet. Then the setup wizard starts.

Updating to a newer release: the same commands without fastboot format:ext4 userdata, so your data stays.

Going back to Remix OS: flash Jide's official images, see docs/INSTALL.md.

Backup: only your own files and photos, which the wipe erases. Nothing else is needed: the install writes only boot, system, cache and userdata, which Jide's official images restore, and never touches the bootloader or the tablet's other partitions.

Warnings

• Flashing a custom system always has some risk. You do it at your own risk.
• Never flash or erase the bootloader (fastboot flash bootloader). A bad bootloader is the one thing fastboot cannot fix.
• Never write the USP (staging) partition. On NVIDIA devices the bootloader installs a bootloader update it finds there at the next boot; a bad one is a hard brick.
• Never run fastboot oem lock. A relocked bootloader may refuse to boot anything but signed stock images.
• Never choose "Forced Recovery" in the bootloader menu. It puts the Tegra in its USB recovery mode (APX), and there is no tested way back from there for this tablet.
• Never repartition, and leave the dtb partition alone. This project only ever writes boot, recovery, system, cache and userdata.
• Try every new kernel or recovery with fastboot boot first: it runs from RAM and writes nothing.

For developers

• docs/TECHNICAL.md: the source trees and branches, how to build, the blobs, the partitions, the mini recovery, debugging tips and the gaps before a release.
• docs/BRINGUP.md: the bring-up notes: kernel gaps, graphics, partitions, Wi-Fi, audio, media, performance, code review.
• docs/INSTALL.md: testing on a tablet, and going back to Remix OS.

Repositories:

• this one: docs, manifests/, tools/ and the mini recovery sources (minirecovery/);
• the device tree: android_device_jide_sk1wg (branch lineage-21.0), at device/jide/sk1wg;
• the kernel: android_kernel_jide_sk1wg (branch sk1wg), a fork of TerenceWSK's community CM13 kernel for this tablet;
• frameworks/base: branch sk1wg of android_frameworks_base (the Galaxy Camera's gd1 plus a boot animation fix and the charging animation for the tablet's two connectors).

Related: Galaxy Camera Revived, the sibling project (LineageOS 21 on the Samsung Galaxy Camera). Its fixes for old 3.4 kernels in bionic, system/core, adb, unwinding, the frameworks and the launcher are used here as they are.

Credits

This port stands on the work of many people:

• TerenceWSK: the CyanogenMod 13 kernel and device tree for the SK1WG, the base of our kernel.
• Jide Technology: the published Remix OS kernel source (remixos-kernel, branch jide_sk1w).
• NVIDIA: the open Linux 3.4 kernel for the Tegra 4 macallan reference board.
• LineageOS contributors of the Tegra 4 kernel for the NVIDIA Shield Portable (android_kernel_nvidia_roth, lineage-15.1), where most of our Android 8+ kernel backports come from.
• html6405: the LineageOS 21 trees for Exynos 4412 devices, with kernel backports (getrandom, memfd_create, binder security contexts, timerfd alarms) and the gralloc0 HIDL adapters used here.
• LineageOS-UL ("LineageOS for Ultra Legacy devices"): the Android 14 base patched for old kernels and hardware.
• LineageOS, AOSP and CyanogenMod contributors: among others the Android emulator's audio HAL that ours is built from, and LineageOS's power HAL.
• The XDA users who documented the tablet's fastboot and recovery.

Licences

Part	Licence
Kernel (fork of TerenceWSK's CM13 kernel, NVIDIA Linux 3.4)	GPL-2.0
Device tree (device/jide/sk1wg, including the AOSP-derived audio, health and graphics adapters)	Apache-2.0
Tools (tools/), the mini recovery sources (minirecovery/) and the manifests	Apache-2.0 (text)
Documentation (docs/, this README)	CC BY 4.0 (text)

The licence of each path is declared in REUSE.toml.

Jide's and NVIDIA's proprietary files (firmware, drivers, libraries) are not in these repositories. They are extracted from the official Remix OS firmware when the system is built.

This project is not affiliated with Jide Technology or NVIDIA. "Jide", "Remix" and "Remix OS" are trademarks of their respective owners; "NVIDIA" and "Tegra" are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation.