Help My new phone: GT-S7272C

[j4nd3r53n]

I've been to China and bought a new phone - my first smartphone, and it seems to be quite good: Samsung GT-S7272C. There is a couple of things, though:

1. I can't get it to run Google Play Store; as soon as it starts, it seems to get shut down. I have googled it and tried the usual tricks (clear cache and data, factory reset), but no luck. Something actively kills that one, all other apps just work. Is this a known issue? And can something be done - does anybody know what happens, how to debug it etc? ADB and the android toolkit work fine.

2. GPS doesn't seem to work - it has bee activated, but apps don't pick up any positions. Is the GPS chip just plain broken? How do I find out?

3. It seems to be tied in with Sogou and other China centric providers - I don't mind as such, but it is not useful to my daily life, and one gets a sneaking suspicion that somewhere in all that lies the cause for Google Store not working. Is there way to uninstall it - and the two apps from Virgin that I am not going to use, which don't let me remove them?

4. The final question: I can't really find much about the phone online - it seems to be an 'Ace 3'; if you know, could you tell me, please?

 

[mikedt]

It is the Chinese version of the Ace 3. No Google in China, as you've discovered, and it has a bunch of Chinese stuff instead. To install Google, it has to be rooted, custom recovery, Odin, etc. Not too much info about that phone here on AF, http://androidforums.com/forums/ace-3-all-things-root.2516/
...possibly more on XDA Devs.

GPS should work, however if it's only got Chinese GPS apps, like Baidu or AutoNavi, they only work and have information for China, nowhere else. AutoNavi actually crashes if it finds itself outside of the PRC. It's like, this is impossible, does not compute, division by zero. Other GPS apps like Open Street Map, Sygic, Waze, TomTom, etc, should work on it OK.

 

[daviunderradar]

I've been to China and bought a new phone - my first smartphone, and it seems to be quite good: Samsung GT-S7272C. There is a couple of things, though:

1. I can't get it to run Google Play Store; as soon as it starts, it seems to get shut down. I have googled it and tried the usual tricks (clear cache and data, factory reset), but no luck. Something actively kills that one, all other apps just work. Is this a known issue? And can something be done - does anybody know what happens, how to debug it etc? ADB and the android toolkit work fine.

2. GPS doesn't seem to work - it has bee activated, but apps don't pick up any positions. Is the GPS chip just plain broken? How do I find out?

3. It seems to be tied in with Sogou and other China centric providers - I don't mind as such, but it is not useful to my daily life, and one gets a sneaking suspicion that somewhere in all that lies the cause for Google Store not working. Is there way to uninstall it - and the two apps from Virgin that I am not going to use, which don't let me remove them?

4. The final question: I can't really find much about the phone online - it seems to be an 'Ace 3'; if you know, could you tell me, please?

As@mikedt said, The best way to solve all of your problems is to root your phone, install google service package and use VPN to get google service in China. Some internet companies will cooperate with China Mobile, China Unicom or China telecom to plant their Apps in the phone, which are not allowed to remove. But if you root your phone, it will make it. However, you'd better turn to a experienced man to help you root your phone. It may turn to be a brick. As you said you that this is your first smartphone, you may don't know how to do it.
This guide may help:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2548856
Good luck! ;-)

 

[funkylogik]

Careful, that guide doesn't seem to include the gt-s7272(c) and I'm not sure if that's a hardware difference or just software. I'd find that out first

 

[j4nd3r53n]

Hi guys, thx for your advice. Sorry for not replying for a long time, I have been away, erm, somewhere eastward of UK

Google as such is not a big deal for me; I haven't actually found much there that I think I need, although the GPS apps could be useful, at least on a bigger device. But I really want to be able to develop my own apps, and I think I want root access for that, when that becomes possible. I have lived inside Linux for many years, so NDK and C++ are probably much more natural to me than developing to a Java framework.

I actually got GPS to say something with an app that simply queries GPS and reports the current position, but it was adware and it took something like 5 min to return anything; I hope this isn't typical?