Is it worth reinstalling the firmware?

[squarepegger]

So I bought a cheap Chinese 8GB S1 MP3 Player that looks like this:
Click for photo of what I bought

Windows Explorer reports it has 7.70 GB of memory, where 1 GB = 1073741824 bytes (1024x1024x1024). It has an FM receiver but no camera. (Instead of the Camera icon shown in the photo, I have a Recorder icon.) The goofy firmware replacement program reports this:

Device Name: S1 Mp3 Player
Productor: (sic) Wilson Co. Ltd.
Vender ID: (sic) 10d6
Product ID: 1101
Version: 9.0.52

The so-called user manual is done in tiny type and is difficult to understand. The Help file for the firmware update program is difficult to understand and I haven't figured out how to plug the player in so that it is recognized by the firmware update program (yes I tried holding down the Menu button).

The firmware I have on a mini-CD is the file nofm BO-25002-V003H-L12.fw in a folder named BO-25002. The nofm in the firmware file name bothers me because there is a working FM radio in the loopy thing.

The touch screen is slow and awfully flaky (I'm using a good PDA stylus and have run Calibrate). The player randomly stops playing at the end of some song even though there are more songs left in the folder it's supposed to play all of. (This happens when the player is locked.)

I'm not impressed with the thing. I have read elsewhere that people tried to upgrade the firmware and ended up bricking players like this. Any discussion about whether it is worth risking an attempt to replace the firmware would be welcomed. If anyone wants to suggest someplace where I should upload the entire 159MB mini-CD that came with the thing, I'll entertain doing so at my 100Kbps upload speed.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Actions chipset with a touchscreen. Wow, they even bothered to do that??? The Actions chipsets are notorious for being very slow and rather buggy, it's not the touchscreen that responds poorly it's the processor itself.

Anyway, DO NOT UPGRADE THE FIRMWARE. Just don't.

[makd511]

send it back is the only option, updating firmeware wont help, will make it worse, these are made so cheaply now i am not urprised in the least that you are having problems, send it back, or if it as on ebay the claim and force the seller to do something about it

[lolita]

Upload the firmware to the site, so others with the same player can recover it.

I'm impressed. Actions solution does not officially support touch screen.

Open it up and post images of the inside, so we can see what CPU it uses, the flash, and the board ID. At the least, tell us what setup -> firmware version reports.

It might not be really 8GB though, which may explain the problems.