A500 - Essentially broken w/ ICS, Play Store not working

bwallsdeep

I have recently attempted using my dad's old A500 (which he hasn't used in years since getting an iPad). Since he couldn't remember the lock screen pin, he performed a factory reset from recovery.

 

INITIAL CONDITIONS:

• Still stock, not rooted
• Android v. 4.0.3
• Google Play v. 3.4.7

The tablet starts up fine, stock apps work fine for the most part, but the Google Play Store refuses to work. What happens upon opening the app is:

• "Android Market is upgrading to Google Play" -> select Continue
• Loads for a while, then prompts acceptance or decliniation of terms of service.
  • Clicking accept always leads to "Unfortunately, Google Play Store has stopped"
  • Declining gives the obvious result (closing Play Store).

Proposed solutions to this problem (given by other threads) include doing a factory reset (done twice), clearing the cache (nope), clearing the app data (nada), or uninstalling updates (no option to do so). Nothing worked.

 

Curious as to whether this could be fixed with a system update, I attempted to perform a system update, to which I get the message "Network coverage is currently poor, get better coverage to continue homie". I guess this is either because:

• Acer pulled their ICS support for the device
• My device is already at the furthest extent of updatability.

Either way, I can't seem to fix these problems. I would rather not have to manually install the apk's for apps that I want, but to do so I guess I would have to downgrade back to honeycomb. But in order to do this, I have to root the device (which is against my father's wishes).

 

TL;DR:

• Play store won't open at all after accepting terms of use.
• Some other apps don't fully work (ex. YouTube - opens and searches, videos don't load, redirection to update from app leads to first problem)
• I'm guessing this is due to the botched release of ICS on the A500.
• Would rather not resort to manual APK installs / rooting the device.
• Any suggestions?

IronFly

you can try to reflash 4.03 image:

http://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/3851;-;A500

click on OS tab and choose the correct image, must match your build version or image number.

 

the poor signal message, it's a wrong string description, the correct one is: old Acer FOTA servers was taken down and no more available.

IronFly

you can try to reflash 4.03 image:

http://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/3851;-;A500

click on OS tab and choose the correct image, must match your build version or image number.

 

the poor signal message, it's a wrong string description, the correct one is: old Acer FOTA servers was taken down and no more available.

bwallsdeep

Thanks, I singled out the update necessary and have found an older thread that explains how to go about updating.
Is it entirely necessary to store the update.zip on a secondary storage card, or can I safely/successfully update by storing the file on the internal storage?

IronFly

microSD only.

maguizouine

Hey... How do I know what image to download... I really don't know much about this stuff but I have the exact same problem. I really appreciate the help