The MagicX Mini Zero 28 brings us a good amount of A133P power in a small package. You can harness that power with the OS and firmware experience you prefer by installing any of the below-listed options (this article will be updated as additional CFW is released).
Table of Contents
MagicX Mini Zero 28 Specs
- Display: 2.8-inch, IPS
- Resolution: 640 x 480
- Processor: Allwinner A133P
- GPU: PowerVR GE8300
- RAM: 2GB DDR4
- Storage: 2x microSD Cards
- Battery: 2,900mAh
- Colors: Purple, Black, Glacier Blue
- Dimensions: 130 x 64 x 19mm
- Weight: 129 grams
What You’ll Need
- MagicX Mini Zero 28 Handheld
- Windows/Mac/Linux PC
- 1-2 microSD cards of at least 16GB
- A microSD card reader
- 7-zip or WinRAR to unpack any downloads
- Image writing software appropriate for your firmware of choice
- Balena Etcher – Image writing software available for all major Desktop OS’
- SDDiskTool – Chinese Rockchip writing tool for Windows. Some installs of GammaOS may require this software depending on your PC operating environment. *Use download links with caution or find a mirror from a source you trust
- Win32DiskImager – An open-source option designed for Windows, but there are many ports.
- MintStick/USB Image Writer – Image writing software that comes baked-in with many popular Linux OS distros.
USB Image Writer is a great option in Linux Mint or Ubuntu OS
Firmware Options
There are currently three different firmware with official support for the Mini Zero 28, but given the community’s familiarity with its components, that number should continue to increase as time goes on, and more people get their hands on the device.
Stock
The stock experience
The default option is of course to keep the stock operating system. The Mini Zero 28 ships with a custom Android 10 image and the Dawn launcher frontend. Dawn is described as “a retro frontend that heavily references Daijisho look and feel” and if you’ve ever used Daijisho on another Android device you will immediately be familiar with the stock option on the Mini Zero 28.
I think the stock setup actually lends itself to the device quite well, and this is certainly a step up from many of the lesser packed-in offerings out there. If you’re not a fan of the stock image, or can’t deal with having to use the sticks as a mouse to navigate some things on occasion, fear not, as there are several other options.
If you’d like a clean image of the stock OS, Dawn Launcher, or a native Android build with ADB and Root access, you can find them on the MagicX-Breeze GitHub.
MinUI
MinUI installation
Everyone’s favorite minimalist CFW is already here and accounted for on the Mini Zero 28. It was Ban’s choice for the console in his device review.
- Per the installation readme: “MinUI is meant to be used with Moss installed on the SD card that goes into the left slot (labeled TF1/INT).” Download and flash the latest version: MinUI GitHub.
- MagicX does not offer any type of official Linux images for the device, so in order to install MinUI, we will first need to install Moss. Moss Zero28 is a custom-designed Tina Linux firmware for the Mini Zero 28 that can be installed on the left TF1 card slot, with MinUI and games going into the second.
“MinUI. That’s the entire sentence. In case you weren’t aware, MinUI is an incredibly minimalistic operating system that has been developed over the years to work on a bunch of devices. Just a couple of weeks ago, initial support for the Mini 28 was provided, and the setup is as simple as flashing Moss to the OS SD card and putting your ROMs, saves, BIOS, minui.zip, and MagicX file onto the second SD card. It’s really as simple as that.”
- Extract the .img file from the MOSS-zero28-20250111-0.img.zip (or whichever supported version you have chosen) to a folder of your choice on a PC.
- Write the Moss-Zero28.img file to a microSD card using software such as Balena Etcher or Win32DiskImager.
Select the .img file, SD card destination, and write.
- Remove the written Moss SD card from the PC and insert it in the left SD slot of the Mini Zero 28.
- Open the downloaded MinUI-20250126-1-base.zip package, and extract the MinUI.zip file inside along with the MagicX directory to the root of a clean SD card.
- Extract the contents of the MinUI-20250126-1-extras.zip package to the root directory of the SD card where you just put the files in the previous step.
- The final unpacked SD card should now look as it does below.
Your MinUI SD card should look like this prior to going into the device.
- Remove the SD card from the PC and insert it into the right-side TF2 slot on the Mini Zero 28 device. You should now see a message that MinUI is installing.
Remove the SD card in TF2 and load your personal Bios and ROMs on the device. Enjoy!
GammaOS
Daijisho running in GammaOS on the Mini Zero 28
- If you’d like to take a look at this beta build in action on the device, you can see Gamma’s GammaOS Core on the AllWinner A133P / MagicX Mini Zero 28 showcase
- Prior to installing a new OS, make sure that all cards are out of the TF1/TF2 slots.
- Download the firmware image from the GammaOS Pateron. Check the GammaOS GitHub for more information.
- Insert a microSD card into your PC
- Open the SDDiskTool software and select your SD card under “Choose removable disk”
- Under “Choose Function Mode” select SD Boot
- Under “Choose Firmware” click the Firmware button and navigate to the directory where you downloaded the GammaOS image
- Hit “Create”
- Let the image write, then remove it from your PC and insert it into the TF1 slot on the left side of the device.
- Follow on-screen instructions and allow the GammaOS install procedure to complete.
- Once GammaOS has been installed you can insert an additional SD card into the TF2 slot to be formatted as Android removable storage. Load your BIOS and ROMs and get gaming!
Software
Custom MinUI Packs (Paks)
These custom file “paks” allow MinUI users to install additional emulators and introduce more functions such as TATE mode.
- DOOM
- FBNEO
- MEDNGP
- NDS
- P8-NATIVE
- SNES9X
Themes
While Dawn Launcher is a fork of Daijisho, we still have the ability to use different themes, but the installation process is slightly different. Currently, there aren’t very many third-party themes available for Dawn, but Retrofilm is one that you can download and use now. And it’s pretty darn easy to install it on your MagicX Mini Zero 28:
- Replace the existing
ThemeColor.jsonlocated atThis PC\QUAD-CORE A133 aw4\Internal shared storage\Android\data\magicx.mini.m\files\Config\json\
Retrofilm Theme for Dawn Launcher
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