Living with a rugged, cheap Chinese

Android phone, the Nomu S10

Cheap, good outdoor phone, with gigantic, but irreplaceable

battery, waterproof body, very loud speaker. Has no repair

options, starts to fall apart after a year of use, and might

come with a virus preinstalled.

Review summary

Nomu S10 rugged Android smartphone

3 out of 5

Peter Molnar <mail@petermolnar.net>

2018-01-07 11:00 UTC

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Nomu S10 after a few months of regular use in pockets and bags

Disclaimer: I didn't get paid for this entry: I simply liked this phone enough to share

the whys and the fixes for it's problems. It also serves as notes for myself.

Update 2018-04-18: the phone's rubber exteriors started to deteriorate on the

bottom right corner, where it contacts my hand most of the time; some of this is

visible on the first image already, but it gets much worse surprisingly fast. I've found

a glue - namely Loctite Power Flex Super Glue - which holds it, but it's quite ugly

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after the fix. A single year out of a device like this is not very good, but considering

the price, it's not a big surprise. Unfortunately there is no repair kit available in any

form, and I seriously dislike generating a phone per year amount of waste. However,

I still like most of it's aspect very much.

Disclaimer: I didn't get paid for this entry: I simply liked this phone enough to share

the whys and the fixes for it's problems. It also serves as notes for myself.

Update 2018-04-18: the phone's rubber exteriors started to deteriorate on the

bottom right corner, where it contacts my hand most of the time; some of this is

visible on the first image already, but it gets much worse surprisingly fast. I've found

a glue - namely Loctite Power Flex Super Glue - which holds it, but it's quite ugly

after the fix. A single year out of a device like this is not very good, but considering

the price, it's not a big surprise. Unfortunately there is no repair kit available in any

form, and I seriously dislike generating a phone per year amount of waste. However,

I still like most of it's aspect very much.

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How the Nomu S10 found me

About half a year ago we (my wife and me) decided we need to replace our phones -

again. The Galaxy S4 was a sad choice after a Nexus 4 and a Galaxy Nexus, but

those had to be replaced: they were literally falling apart and none of them

supported European LTE bands - 3, 8, 20.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a weak, fragile creature, with weird bugs, a bloated,

locked system, and with a slippery, rounded-everywhere shape that will certainly

land on the tarmac a few times due to this. It has an impressive range of sensors,

but that's it, and I wanted a phone which works reliably and which is a bit more

rugged.

I don't believe in the current trend of bezel-free design and I'm very tired of all-glass,

expensive, overheating, bloated, gargantuan "phones", so I started looking into less-

known brands. Initially into names like Oneplus, Xiaomi and some similar, sort of

established manufacturers, but soon I learnt getting the actually good models in

Europe is quite hard and due to this, nearly none of them covers LTE band 20 - the

one giffgaff[^1], my service provider has access to.

The danger of less known brands is that they can be cheap for very logical reason:

many of them are built cheap. On the bright side, the usually bring a surprising but

good feature: most of the time these phones feature a near-raw AOSP system,

without any bloat, and only minor software modifications.

Not long into my search I found a gem: the Nomu S10[^2] and the Nomu brand in

general. Apart from the S10, there is now the S10 Pro[^3], the S20[^4] and S30[^5]

model. All of them are IP68 - waterproof enough to survive being fully submerged

under water for a little while, rugged, with huge batteries.

The S10 is a relatively basic phone. It lacks NFC, 5GHz WiFi, and any new, shiny

tech - but it's loud, has a very capable 5000mAh battery, and covers more or less

anything that falls under regular use. Yes, it's heavy. It also has a metal frame inside

- some way it resembles a ThinkPad from the old days. It packs 2GB RAM, 16GB

storage, and either expandable with microSD, or it accepts 2 SIMs. The screen is a

HD IPS screen, which I prefer to the OLED screens personally. The 2.4GHz Wifi is

fast and stable and has a better reception than my previous, high-end phones did.

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It also comes with a protective foil by default - actually it comes with 2 layers; after

removing the first, a second is still protecting the display. Also has some version of

Qualcomm Quick Charge which is also supported by the European charger it came

with, which is certainly needed for the monster battery it has.

Though the stock firmware accepted SD cards up to 32GB, for my surprise, one of

the system updates made 64GB possible as well - I don't have any bigger ones, but

I wouldn't be surprised if the upper limit was 256GB.

Overall it has all the features you'd want from a phone that was built to last and be a

companion for rough weather or outdoor activities.

I got a very good phone for the price and it worked well enough that I even used it

without rooting.

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Same Nomu S10, again after a few months of use

PENTAX K-5 II s, 85.0 mm, f/8.0, 1/40 sec, ISO 3200 | HD PENTAX-DA 16-85mm F3.5-5.6 ED

DC WR | CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

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Troubles arise: the Triada malware fiasco

One day my wife came home, telling me that her phone started to act weird: it

randomly shows full screen popups, installs random software, and generally acting

weird.

Knowing the she is quite careful and not installing basically anything on her phone

after a few initial, well established apps, it looked very much like either a hack

through other networks she connects to or something completely out of our control.

Unfortunately it turned out to be the later: there has been reports that a good

amount of similarly cheap Chinese phones got infected with malware - from the

manufacturer[^6]! Interestingly the malware did not manifest on my phone, but the

possibility that it might got me itchy.

Having a little experience in flashing custom ROMs the solution was obvious: I need

to find a malware-free ROM for the Nomu and re-flash them.

The last time I had to dwell deep into Android and flashing was with my beloved

HTC Desire - in 2011 - apparently a lot has changed since, and the malware, Triada,

managed to sit into a part of the system, called Zygote, which is deep enough that

even with root privileges you couldn't get rid of it.

So here is how to get rid of the Triada malware on a Nomu S10 by flashing a

malware free ROM.

The search for a malware-free ROM - the downside of niche phones

When you have a widely bought and known phone there are usually plenty of

custom ROMs floating around for it. This used to be the case for the Nexus 4, the

Galaxy S4, even for the HTC Desire.

This is not the case with the Nomu S10: it's rare, so nobody made a full-on custom

ROM for it. I started looking into forums and threads on the topic and thankfully I

came across a French forum[^7] mentioning something called Archos 50 Saphir

ROM. I was hoping to find some Cyanogenmod LineageOS based ROM, but for my

surprise, Archos is a retailer: they sell Archos branded phones. One of these is what

they call 50 Saphir[^8] - which is a re-branded Nomu S10.

Apparently the S10 had been sold to various "brands" who buy cheap phones, put a

logo and a ROM without malware on them, and sell them for double the price.

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This is the Archos ROM I ended up using:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yk2t2mlv1uch0y7/Archos-50-Saphir-14-OTA.zip?dl=0

You can also get it from needrom.com[^9]. It's 1.1GB, so if you're tight on bandwidth,

don't grab it immediately.

Another option is to get one of the newer, official Nomu ROMs, from their own

site[^10] - the version 1.1.4, uploaded 2017-11-11 seems to be running fine and

malware free for me for the past month:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZXlnlic2z10CSFGoCf7nHygfTWsnFsAq/

I went with this solution, although it's reasonable to be cautious and stick to the

Archos version.

OEM Unlocking - the upside of OEM phones

Note: OEM unlocking can trigger a complete factory reset, deleting anything

on your phone, excluding the microSD card. I'd still suggest removing even

the microSD card and saving everything before starting the process.

Since the S10 has been sold for other brands to be used with their labels, Nomu

allowed these resellers to flash their own operating system. This is good news for

us: it means we can do the same, and rather simply.

There is a process in newer Androids that protects your phone from being

overwritten by a mere USB cable and a laptop which requires a working operating

system. If you don't have one, you won't be able to unlock flashing on your phone,

so first to a factory reset and then follow these steps.

In your running Android:

enable the Developer mode :

go to Settings

enter About phone

tap Build number approximately 6 times

once you have Developer options under Settings , enter it

enable OEM unlocking

For the next stage, you'll need a tool called fastboot . I'm using Debian, which is

a linux distribution, and I have fastboot available from apt (the Debian app

store, one could say) . I have no idea how to install it on Windows, but there are

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1.

2.

3.

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3.

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many tutorial available on the internet, and the commands should work once you

have it. The commands below need to be executed as root user in linux.

Once you have fastboot:

power off your phone

press and hold volume up and the power buttons

you'll be greeted with a little menu, looking like:

Select Boot Mode: [VOLUME_UP to select, VOLUME_DOW is OK.]

[Recovery Mode] <<== [Fastboot Mode] [Normal Mode]

Select Fastboot mode by pressing volume up and press volume down . The

screen will now print a new line:

On your laptop, connect the USB cable and test if you see the device in your laptop:

If you don't see the device, there is something wrong; try to repeat the process

from the beginning of OEM unlocking.

Now enter:

Note: it used to be fastboot oem unlock . Now it's fastboot flashing

unlock . If it doesn't work, try the oem command version.

It will ask for confirmation and you'll have to press the corresponding volume button

- read the instructions on the phone, but volume up should enable to unlock.

Congratulations! You can now install any ROM made for your phone.

Things that might go wrong with this:

to get out of fastboot press and hold the power button for a while

1.

2.

3.

=> FASTBOOT mode...

bashfastboot devices

EEMRTK5PBEJ78DWS fastboot

bashfastboot flashing unlock

•

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if neither fastboot oem unlock nor fastboot flashing unlock does

nothing, do a factory reset, a cache clear, and re-enable OEM unlocking. For

this, you need to boot the recovery option instead of fastboot, the select the

options.

if this didn't work either... well, that's a problem, and I don't have a simple, fast,

or working solution.

Flashing the stock ROM

Using SP Flash Tool (UPDATE 2018-04-20)

I turns out I was unaware of a tool - namely the SP Flash Tool - which is the official

way of flashing ROMs on MediaTek based systems.

When the phone is turned off and connected to a computer via USB, it shows up as

modem (!) device, as ttyACM. The SP Flash tool uses this to flash the ROM, but in

order to do that - even if the flash tool is run by root - needs some tweaking on the

linux side.

In order to get this supported on Debian, some udev rules need to be added:

Run (as root):

Once done add your user to the dialout and uucp groups as:

•

•

bashcat > etc/udev/rules.d/20-mediatek-blacklist.rules <<

EOF

ATTRS{idVendor}=="0e8d", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"

ATTRS{idVendor}=="6000", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"

EOF

cat > etc/udev/rules.d/80-mediatek-usb.rules << EOF

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0e8d",

ATTR{idProduct}=="*"

EOF

systemctl restart udev.service

bashusermod -a -G dialout,uucp YOUR_USERNAME

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Sp Flash tool needs an old version of libpng12, so get that from the Debian

packages, or from the jessie (oldstable) repository:

This should make it possible to flash, using the SP flash tool, which can be

downloaded from spflashtool.com[^11].

Credit due to Miss Montage on needrom.com[^12] for finding these out.

Using fastboot

Originally I tried to flash the stock ROM via the stock recovery, but every single time

I got an error, telling me the zip file is corrupted. After a while I decided to take

another approach.

Once you have the stock ZIP, extract it:

It will create the following files in the nomu_s10_1.1.4 directory:

bashwget http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libp/

libpng/libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb

dpkg -i libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb

rm libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb

bashunzip

NOMU_S10_COMMON_V1.1.4_2017_11_01_FQ5C62WTE1D.XWP.NOMU.M0

.HB.H.SSXSSYDAKLS23.1101.V3.14.zip -d nomu_s10_1.1.4

APDB_MT6735_S01_alps-mp-m0.mp1_W16.47

boot.img

boot-verified.img

BPLGUInfoCustomAppSrcP_MT6735_S00_MOLY_LR9_W1444_MD_LWTG_

MP_V88_P92_1_lwg_n

cache.img

Checksum.ini

lk.bin

lk-verified.bin

logo.bin

logo-verified.bin

md1arm7.img

md1dsp.img

md1rom.img

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The following will render your phone temporarily useless,; you will be without

recovery, left only with a bootloader, for a short period. I seriously recommend

only doing this with a fully charged phone and avoiding any accidental

reboots during the process.

First, wipe the relevant partitions:

Now flash them:

It will take a while, be patient.

Flashing the Archos ROM

Just use the same method as above, but instead of extracting the Nomu zip, extract

the Archos zip.

md3rom.img

MT6737T_Android_scatter.txt

preloader_fq5c62wt_xwp_nomu.bin

preloader.img

recovery.img

recovery-verified.img

secro.img

secro-verified.img

system.img

trustzone.bin

userdata.img

V18S NOMU 软件配置说明.txt

bashfastboot erase system

fastboot erase boot

fastboot erase recovery

fastboot erase cache

bashcd nomu_s10_1.1.4

fastboot flash boot boot.img

fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

fastboot flash cache cache.img

fastboot flash system system.img

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However, unlike the stock ROM, the Archos ROM can be installed via adb

sideload or simply selecting the zip in the dirty booted TWRP recovery

described below. In case you're familiar with custom recovery zip installing then

there's no need for the extract magic, but that method works just fine as well.

[Optional] How to root the Nomu S10 - dirty booting TWRP

recovery

Dirty boot means we don't flash the recovery partition, only load it on the fly from the

laptop and use it temporarily - think about it as a live linux distribution. I found a

TWRP custom recovery which worked very well for me; unfortunately I don't

remember the source, so I've uploaded it to Dropbox:

TWRP 3.0.2 recovery for Nomu S10:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yebkei44w9oq6kh/nomu-s10_twrp-3.0.2.img?dl=0

Once you're in the recovery, you can install whatever you want, including SuperSu:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/semoj6evcio3nyw/SuperSU-v2.82-201705271822.zip?

dl=0

SuperSu is a "systemless root" method, which means instead of touching the syst

em partition, which triggers an alarm with many root detectors, it puts the su binary

into /sbin - which is part of the boot image. It can be simply reverted, should that

be needed.

I didn't have luck installing Magisk. While it worked flawlessly on a LineageOS install

on a Nexus 10, no matter what I tried, it never worked here, but every single attempt

triggered a factory reset. Just use SuperSu. If you do need features Magisk

provides, maybe take a look at the Xposed framework instead, that worked well:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xuqmah3vwh3nsre/xposed-v88.2-sdk23-arm.zip?dl=0

The simplest for these to install is to put them on the microSD card and select them

as zip to be installed from TWRP. I will not cover the process this here, there are

very good howto about TWRP and installing zips.

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Waterproof - as long as you are careful

Not too long ago we spent a few days abroad, next to the sea, and found a tiny pool,

left with water during low tide. The pool had a surprising amount if small fish and a

small amount of coral in it, and, since the S10 is marketed as IP68, we decided to

take a few underwater pictures with it. It's important to say that one of the first things

we did when we got the phones was submerge it in a lake to test the

waterproofness, and there were not issues, but it was just a few seconds.

It's a terrible underwater camera, so don't use it as one. The touchscreen gets mad

and recognizes the water as constant touch, so pushing the camera shutter button is

hard and tricky.

But after finishing taking the shoots it seemed like my wife's phone got a leak

somewhere. It could have been a tiny bit of looseness in the rubber USB cover, or

something completely unrelated, but after a few minutes out of the water it

developed weird errors. The screen showed a lot of vertical lines, fading or altering

the colour "behind" them, the resolution looked like it fell back to 320x240, and

charging worked only sporadically. Apart from this, it was still working, receiving

calls, responsive to touch.

After getting home I returned it to Amazon, who, due to the lack of replacement units

with the original seller, refunded the value (the phone was less, the 6 months old). In

my opinion, and according to the marketing, we did nothing out of ordinary use. We

bought another one.

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Touchscreen quality issues? (it may have been the

only problematic one we got)

After buying the replacement for the defective one the next we received seemed fine

- until you poked the touchscreen around the 'a' character on the keyboard. From

that point, it started acting like the screen was being touched at multiple locations -

would have made a nice stock video for ghost movies.

This was an obvious, immediate return, and we are now with yet another one

without glitches - I hope it stays like that.

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And you're still recommending it?!

Oh, yes.

It's cheap, with very nice features: small, compared to the battery it packs; runs for

days on a single charge even with reasonable use; waterproof enough to survive

being out in the rain for a long while, even submerged (when the flaps a strictly

closed); the features it has all work; it's "hackable" by default (the good way, unlike

the Samsung or HTC phones).

The malware-by-manufacturer is not a unique problem and not strictly a problem of

no-name manufacturers. There were reports that similar issues hit well known

brands, such as Samsung, LG, Asus - at a point, the problem even included some

Nexus 5 phones by Google[^13].

My sole remaining moan with the phone is that it's glued. To take it apart, you'd

need a special machine or a rather precise heat-gun and a steady hand. However,

all the ones with screws, like the Blackview BV6000, are much larger and heavier.

So yes: regardless of the potential malware issue, I'm still recommending this

phone, but do make sure you have a virus-free OS once before you start using it as

your main phone.

Links

https://www.giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/petermolnar2

http://amzn.to/2AioYRp

http://amzn.to/2CCxb9e

http://amzn.to/2CNBf3a

http://amzn.to/2E3E7IK

https://news.drweb.com/news/?i=11390&lng=en

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/200072-trojantriada

http://www.archos.com/gb-en/products/smartphones/saphir/archos_50saphir/

index.html

https://www.getdroidtips.com/stock-rom-archos-50-saphir/

http://www.nomu.hk/s10-rom-download/

https://spflashtool.com/download/SP_Flash_Tool_v5.1744_Linux.zip

https://www.needrom.com/download/how-to-setup-sp-flash-tool-linux-mtk

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/preinstalled-

malware-targets-android-users-of-two-companies/

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2018-01-07 11:00 UTC (2021-12-17 19:21 UTC), CC-BY-4.0, Peter Molnar

(mail@petermolnar.net) , https://petermolnar.net/article/nomu-s10/

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