I have bought the Samsung S so will have a go at this sometime. Thank you for all your help 
Update:
I have the Samsung S 8" and spent (wasted?) yesterday configuring it.
The jailbreak (rooting) process is here and it took about half an hour.
That enabled a fix for the ridiculously stupid ban on apps writing to the SD card, using SDfix, which enables Oziexplorer files to be stored on the SD card, as well as many other things.
All that’s left now is a touch screen disable app and an adhoc wifi enable app, and I have not found those yet (well not ones that work on this O/S); both need a rooted device. Adhoc wifi (connecting to my phone) is essential for using it to get wx, file flight plans, etc.
It runs nice and fast and the native PDF reader is really ace. Better than Goodreader IMHO although GR is OK if everything in the PDF is bookmarked.
The S has no 3G (no SIM card slot) but I am quite happy about that since I have way too many PAYG SIMs to manage already, and contract SIMs cost too much to just spread around for intermittent use… The bluetooth is crippled and cannot use my phone for an internet connection – unlike an Iphone or Ipad, both of which do that OK but neither of which does anything else that’s useful over BT.
Edit: there appears to be no way to get any internet connectivity on this device apart from standard infrastructure wifi. Both adhoc wifi and bluetooth tethering have been comprehensively disabled. Even for a rooted device there is no solution simpler than recompiling a load of Java. What a piece of crippled crap. Win8.x does the same, and it looks this is from pressure by US cellular carriers. So this is another device which is useless outside the cockpit unless you find yourself a wifi network and somebody who can give you the password, or carry something like an E585/586 and have yet another SIM card inside that.
There also doesn’t appear to be any straightforward app to disable the touch screen. There is a way to add app(s) to the lock screen which is a different thing.
The Nova desktop manager is great.
I will spend a bit more time trying to get dial-up networking to work… It looks like a standard USB “OTG” cable plus a standard FTDI RS232 cable will do the job. If that works, it will be good enough.
Even for a rooted device there is no solution simpler than recompiling a load of Java. What a piece of crippled crap. Win8.x does the same, and it looks this is from pressure by US cellular carriers.
All Android phones happily share their internet connection over wifi and bluetooth so there can’t be any political aspect to it. I’ve never had any problem with that setup, stopped using 3G tablets years ago due to the sim card mess, added weight, cost etc.
Peter I tether my Android phone and Surface Pro 3 Windows 10 tablet both running wifi or bluetooth all the time. It has never been an issue under Android unlike iOS. Also used to work fine with Nexus 7 and 9 tablets.
All Android phones happily share their internet connection over wifi and bluetooth so there can’t be any political aspect to it
No; it’s the other way round. The Samsung tablet can act as a wifi AP for other clients. What I am trying to do is to use a 3G phone, acting as a wifi AP, as the provider of an internet connection, and the tablet is the client. AFAIK all phones which have this capability do only an “adhoc” mode, not the “infrastructure” mode which a normal wifi AP does, and adhoc wifi has been banned in win8.x and also in Android 4.×. If you don’t believe me, do a google on say “android 4 adhoc wifi” Yes there are solutions, and you are welcome to write me an app which implements them
The commercial drive to block adhoc, or tethering at all, is this: say you get 1000MB/month with your contract, the telco is banking on Mr Average using just say 20% of it. And the only way to use up 1GB on the phone itself is to download movies which is dodgy anyway because you can’t tell how big a hit you have taken until too late. Whereas if the phone can be used as a wifi AP for a tablet or a laptop, the average usage will go way up. This is why the US telcos forced Nokia to block Joikuspot on phones sold in the USA; my 808 is custom flashed to eliminate this restriction.
Peter I tether my Android phone and Surface Pro 3 Windows 10 tablet both running wifi or bluetooth all the time. It has never been an issue under Android unlike iOS. Also used to work fine with Nexus 7 and 9 tablets.
Your Android phone can act as as adhoc wifi AP, no issue there. It’s quite possible that your win10 tablet does connect to adhoc wifi too (slightly surprising since win8 can’t but hey). My win8 tablet can also connect to the phone over bluetooth, so again no issue there.
The Samsung Galaxy S tablet has been hacked to block bluetooth tethering (it’s been removed from the menus which do appear on Android v4 on non-Samsung devices; seems like a special and fairly recent Samsung deal with the phone shops) so that option isn’t open to me either. I have googled on it and there are apps which restore the menu item but they don’t work on this tablet.
IOS devices can connect to adhoc wifi APs. There was a specific IOS version (6.something) which blocked it but later it came back. So IOS has an advantage over Android there
Android has a long way to go to catch up with IOS in terms of how pointlessly crippled the functionality is, but it is getting there
I have always preferred Nexus Android devices because the Android is pure without customisations by Samsung etc. This seems to be a good example of the problem.
No; it’s the other way round. The Samsung tablet can act as a wifi AP for other clients. What I am trying to do is to use a 3G phone, acting as a wifi AP, as the provider of an internet connection, and the tablet is the client.
All my Android phones can create an infrastructure wifi where any other device can logon to and use the phone’s internet connection. I usually prefer the Bluetooth method because the wifi sharing mode makes the Android mobile log out of other wifi networks. It’s a standard Android functionality, been using it for years, currently on Nexus 5.
Well, OK, changing the phone to an Android one may be a solution, but I am not going to do that right now because there aren’t any with a decent camera
Nothing beats the Nokia 808 for that. The Nokia 1020 (also discontinued now) has the same camera but the win8 O/S is totally crippled; it is really like an Iphone in that it does what it does very well and that’s it (Justine has the 1020 and loves it – it’s way more usable than her Iphone4 was, and doesn’t have the issues with showing 5 bars of signal but with no functionality).
Incidentally does anyone make a little battery powered widget which is a wifi router/switch/relay which talks to both adhoc and infrastructure devices? That would do it.
BlueVPN+ might be what you are looking for. Unfortunately there ‘s a bug that prevents it from working properly under Android 4.4. Apparently it’s fixed in 5.0.
There are a few App’s in the Play Store that lock the screen like UnTouch.
Untouch is absolutely brilliant – thank you!
Here are a few comments on Oziexplorer on this tablet, in case somebody finds this thread in the future:
There is no option to load the last map specifically.
There is no option to change the type of pointer, to say “aircraft”.
No independent brightness control (only 50% and 100%).
I have used SDfix successfully to enable saving stuff to the SD card so Ozi now runs fine with all mapdata on the SD card.
There is really no useful indication of whether the GPS fix is live or dead, because the program shows much the same data for e.g. heading and altitude even when the bluetooth GPS dies. I guess the # of SATS is a proxy for that status but it’s not ideal.
I tried every bluetooth GPS app in the google store, eventually finding one that worked (“bluetooth GPS provider”) BUT it works only if you don’t start the app but instead start Ozi and it the evidently starts the GPS app. The GPS app however at that point shows it isn’t started
Then I find that it all works if the bluetooth GPS already has a fix before Ozi is started. If you start Ozi when the GPS doesn’t have a fix, and then the GPS acquires a fix, Ozi never gets a fix. But an interruption to the GPS fix doesn’t break the system, which is just as well otherwise it would be completely useless!
The windows version, which I’ve had for > 10 years on every imaginable platform and used it all over Europe, never had these issues – it just worked and recovered perfectly from any GPS, bluetooth or whatever issue. The Android version looks like a slightly hurried product, perhaps done by a subcontractor who needs to be paid for each bug fix.
I need to block any OS updates on this device, otherwise it could one day stop working. It is rooted so there should be a way. I found one which involves renaming two system files.
