News

Android Head-Unit faking its hardware specifications

16th February 2021, 18:29 by Chirag Moro

Most probably a lot of users have fallen for this scam. I am not sure what to do next.

geekyengineer recently shared this with other BHPians.

I own a 2013 Chevrolet Sail. About a year back going with the trend, I upgraded the head unit on my car with a Android Head Unit. The unit was procured from Foxfire (Delhi based) and I was promised that I will be sent the 2GB RAM & 16GB Internal memory unit. The unit shows the same configuration under system settings along with Android version as 8.1Go. I opted for higher RAM since I knew that android slows down with version upgrades having experienced the same in case of android based mobile phone.

The unit is working well and honestly, I don't have any issues with the unit until now, except for the fact that at times the lag is too much and also I like the maps to be minimized instead of taking the whole screen space.

So I started looking up on the internet and also on XDA forum. This is when I came across a thread which basically talks about a fact that:

The units have only 1GB Ram but on the system setting interface of the unit, they fake it as 2GB.
Also all these units are running on Android 6 which is re-christened as higher versions again by fudging some system setting files.

The method to verify the same is that you need to download an app called CPU-Z and then it reads the hardware level specifications of your device. The API level is shown as 23 (indicated Android 6.0) and CPU speed is 1.13GHz. I can discount the CPU speed considering that it may be under clocked but RAM is a clear case of Chinese cheating us.

Shout out to the forum members who have an Android head unit to check their system and confirm if it shows correct RAM and CPU speed as claimed by the seller.

P.S.: Its been more than an year that I bought the unit from the seller and at the time of selling, he had clearly indicated that he will help in case of issues but didn't provide any warranty on the unit.

Here's what praveesh4u had to say on the matter:

I just realized this today and reached this thread through a Google search on "foxfire head unit cheating".
I have been on the lookout for a head unit upgrade for my 2018 Honda Amaze and approached the Honda dealership for the same. They informed me that they are currently providing FoxFire head units with 1-year warranty. Earlier, at the time I bought my car, they were providing Blaupunkt head units. One of my major concerns regarding the head unit upgrade was whether it would affect the car's warranty in any manner. The Honda dealership assured me that there won't be any issue with the car's warranty if I get the head unit installed from them. They quoted Rs. 26,000 for FoxFire model FF002 with 16GB ROM and 2GB RAM. As per their website, the HU has Android 9.1, 1080p screen resolution, and a 1.8Ghz quad-core processor.
Specs reported by the UI:
I got the HU installed on January 27th and it looked okay. The system info option on the UI claimed the promised features. The display was not the crispest, to say the least, but then I thought it could be due to the low pixel density. I didn't get much time to fiddle with the HU in the following days as I was busy. Today, someone from the Kerala Honda Amaze group asked me to share a video with the feature walk-through of the HU so that he can decide whether to purchase the HU or not. So, just for the sake of shooting the video, I installed CPU-Z and was quite shocked to see the details reported by CPU-Z. The CPU was 1.12 Ghz quad core processor, the RAM was just 1GB and the display was 1024x600 pixels with a pixel density of 159dpi. Confused, I installed Devie Info HW to re-check the specs. It reported the same specs as what CPU-Z had reported, and in addition reported one more thing - Android version was 8.1 as opposed to 9.1 claimed by the HU UI. To be precise, the android version was reported as 8.1(fake 9.1). So I decided to check the details further. Even in the Android device info, the Android version was marked as 9.1 and they even had the animation corresponding to Android Pie. Also, when I checked the RAM details after enabling the developer options, it showed 1 GB as RAM.
CPU-Z Specs:
Device info specs:
Device info RAM:
Android RAM:
So, In summary, FoxFire is selling low spec Android HUs as high spec HUs by editing the details in the UI. I am sure that this is not the case with just me or the OP. Most probably a lot of users have fallen for this scam. I am not sure what to do next.