Car Audio
Beware of fraudulent car Android screens claiming to have 4GB of RAM
The car Android screen market has recently become flooded with fake 4GB screens. These screens will show 4GB of RAM on the about page. But the performance will be very poor compared to actual 4GB or even 2GBs.
Recently we have gotten many chances to check such screens. Many people asked us to check the poor performance of screens installed by other shops. When we go to the ‘about page’ those screens showed it is a 4GB device. But in performance, those were not even close to 2GB RAM screens.
We were shocked by finding that these screens had ‘build.prop’ file modified to fake the specifications on the ‘about page’. So it will show 4GB RAM when customers check. Many shops scam innocent customers by faking 1GB or lower RAM as 4GB.
What is a build.prop file?
build.prop file is a system configuration file in Android devices. This file contains device information, settings, and it defines the system behaviour.
The modifications to build.prop files cannot be identified even by specification testing apps.
How to identify a fake 4GB RAM Android screen?
The simplest and easiest method is to turn on the Google Maps or YouTube app. On real 4GB devices, these apps will load faster. On fake 4GB these apps will stuck on the logo for a few seconds before loading.
Another method is to look for the SOC processor. The most common faked devices in Qatar market are with 8227 and TS7 processors. Both of these cannot handle more than 2GB of RAM. So if the screen’s about page shows 4GB RAM and the processor is 8227 or TS7, then it is definitely a faked device, not a real 4GB.
We opened and checked one of our customer’s fake 4GB screen. Below are the photos.
Image 1.
The image 1 shows device info page. The marking 1 on the image is RAM and marking 2 is SOC processor. Since the processor is 8227 and the RAM is 4GB we can confirm that the device specs are faked. Because the 8227 can only handle a maximum of 2GB RAM.
Image 2.
Image 3.
The images 2 and 3 are the front and back sides of the PCB inside the screen. We have highlighted five items on it. The 4 markings in pink are RAM. It is D9PQL. A single D9PQL has a capacity of 512 MB. That means it is with 2GB RAM.
And marking number 5 shows the 2+32 marking on the label. This label is from SOC manufacturer. That means it has 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal memory.
The videos below are a simple Google Maps load test. It can help to identify screens with low RAM.
Video 1
Video 2
The video 1 is testing the loading time of Google Maps on the 4GB RAM faked screen. And the video 2 is showing the same test on a real quad-core 4GB RAM screen (on an octa-core device, it will load faster).
Many sellers are deceiving their customers by selling these types of specification faked screens. I hope customers can escape from this by doing the simple load tests shown above.
