I Bricked My Cube i9 :( !!!!!!! Don't look in the Bios / flashing menu!

[Anonymous]

Thank you for putting up the thermal mod and opening videos even though you’re no doubt cheesed as hell about the tablet bricking. Those videos will be invaluable, as I will be doing this mod myself the moment it turns up.

To chime in with the others: in the meantime, please let us know if there’s anybody we can contact or anything we can do to assist in any way with the bios issue, or if you’re going to petition cube for a little help for the free advertising for them (I bought mine on the strength of the coverage on this site, for example).

[Chris G]

I doubt they will help me. They don’t answer emails and as soon as they see I’ve opened mine it will be void my warranty, same goes for returning it. I’ll have a look and see if I can solder on some thin wires. But they are so tiny the contacts.

Chris | Admin
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[Keshon83]

Chris G wrote:

I doubt they will help me. They don’t answer emails and as soon as they see I’ve opened mine it will be void my warranty, same goes for returning it. I’ll have a look and see if I can solder on some thin wires. But they are so tiny the contacts.

Be sure to train first on some old hardware if you happen to have one cause judging buy the photo above its really small layout to operate. Don’t want to sound as Captain Obvious here but soldering station (solder with adjustable wattage and really thin pin) is highly recommended.

Can’t  be 100% sure but the idea of using conductive glue (conductive adhesive) sounds promising as you really need to attach wires and not solder out the chip from its place.

[Diego Marzorati]

Chris, have you posted your problem in FB page? For any other sure they’d void warranty but your case is special you’re promoting their products. Many of us have bought because of your work. If you post anything for sure you’ll receive all our support. You lose nothing by trying.

[Bonnom]

Tiny soldering is less hard than you might think! The gold contact points attract the solder and the solder mask(top layer with colors: black,green,red, etc) repels solder.
It might also be usefull to use flux on the contact for better soldering.

There are many good tutorials for SMD soldering on youtube.
This is one video that I like.

 

[Chris G]

Thanks everyone for the tips. I have saved my Cube i9 !!!!!! 😀
Wootever from XDA gave me a great tip using a sponge, yes a sponge haha.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=66188047&postcount=14

But after 2 hours of trying to get a good contact and 1 failed flash. It’s back up and running. Woo hoo! I’ll write it up soon, but I’ve wasted a whole day on this damn thing. And guess what, it fixed my MicroSD card slot so I can now read my 64GB+ cards 😀

Chris | Admin
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[Jason]

That’s great to hear Chris! I bet you feel so relieved about not having a brick now 😉

These manufactures really owe you, as I bet they have had a noticeable increase in sales due to your videos/reviews.

Really looking forward to seeing how the improved i9 compares to your SP4 M3.

[Chris G]

Yes I am, now I don’t have a 500 euro paperweight! Very happy about that.I’ll press on with more info on my heatsink mod and how to get it to perform like a Surface Pro 4

True I am basically promoting their tablets in one way or another and that surely increases their sales. But they still don’t send me review units. I asked Cube for an i9, I’m still waiting for them to send me one! It’s ridiculous. I’ve asked Samsung, Sony, Dell too. Nothing just empty promises.

Huawei just recently told me they would send me a Matebook review unit when they get them, but I highly doubt I’ll get one in the end after all Sony said the same and so did Microsoft…

Just how it is until I have a YouTube channel with over 100k subs or something. It’s all about how big you are on social media or something. It’s BS.

Chris | Admin
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[Anonymous]

Blimey, nice one! Very glad to hear that you got your cube sorted. Must’ve been a relief to get that flash through after I can’t imagine how many hours of swearing and fiddling with tiny pins. Well, I’m just imagining the swearing. I’d be turning the air blue.

But hey, at least that bios fixes the SD card issue! … Uh … Is there actually a way to get that on a tablet without turning it into an elaborate desk ornament?

Anyway, glad it worked out in the end, and very much looking forward to the rest of the reviews / mods / impressions, if only to measure how much buyers’ remorse I should be feeling.

[Keshon83]

Good to hear (that was close phew..)! 🙂

[Chris G]

It was, I really thought I was beat with this one. Hardest tablet yet to recover from a brick, certainly had me pushed to the limit of my flasher/bios skills.

Chris | Admin
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[Anonymous]

Chris G wrote:

Thanks everyone for the tips. I have saved my Cube i9 !!!!!! Wootever from XDA gave me a great tip using a sponge, yes a sponge haha. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=66188047&postcount=14 But after 2 hours of trying to get a good contact and 1 failed flash. It’s back up and running. Woo hoo! I’ll write it up soon, but I’ve wasted a whole day on this damn thing. And guess what, it fixed my MicroSD card slot so I can now read my 64GB+ cards

Awesome…How did you fix your MicroSD Reader, by the way?

If you are asking for review Samples, it would be awesome if you ask for a HP x2 Pavilion tablet 2-1 (12inch, 3:2 screen, Skylake coreM, SSD, Active Stylus Support)
http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/Laptops/hp-pavilion-x2—12-b020nr-(energy-star)

[Chris G]

The bios I flashed must have included the fix (What I was after in the first place)

I guide on flashing the Cube i9 is now here: http://techtablets.com/forum/topic/cube-i9-how-to-flash-and-recover-a-failed-bios-flash-or-bricked-bios/

Nice price if I was in the US I would get that HP instead of the Cube, but here in Spain that HOP would cost about 700 euros and have the keybaord in Spanish of course. (I need and use US/USInt’l layout, like NZ uses)

Chris | Admin
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[scott]

@chris, do you have  the bios file to hand and what did you load the bios update in, usb drive? as my sd card issue is really annoying me atm. Im going to do the cooling mod soon myself once my copper comes.

[Chris G]

I would stay out of the bios. No flashing from there will only brick it. What I did was flash it with a USB programmer, instructions are here: http://techtablets.com/forum/topic/cube-i9-how-to-flash-and-recover-a-failed-bios-flash-or-bricked-bios/ So you’ll just have to wait for a Windows flashable file when Cube releases it. As it stands it’s not a full fix, the speeds seem a little slower than I would expect from the MicroSD slot.

Now I’ve really opened up the performance of this Cube i9 it’s finally working as it should, the copper mod + power limits increase improves performance around 40% to 50% on the GPU and about 8% to 10% on the CPU according to benchmarks.

http://techtablets.com/2016/04/cube-i9-core-m3-heat-sink-mod-power-limits/

Battery life is still around 5-6 hours it hasn’t been affected by increased power limits really in normal use. Gaming it will definitely be a little less due to the increased power consumption of around 2 watts. Battery bar pro is still only detecting 1 of the battery cells so you have to double the estimate it gives you.

Chris | Admin
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