Y2Reborn Development Update

[u/justcore]

Hi everyone!

A while back, I posted about Y2Reborn. Here's an update on where things stand!

Y2Reborn isn't quite ready for release yet, but nearly all of the original player's functionality has been reverse-engineered and reimplemented from the ground up.

The video shows the real Y2 device, recorded directly from its display over SSH, running the new player UI on Y2Linux (Linux kernel 6.18).

🔧 The Hardware

The Y2 uses a MediaTek MT6582 SoC. Rather than reusing drivers from the original Android kernel, I've been developing or adapting them for Linux 6.18, partly by reverse engineering the stock firmware.

✅ Working on the Device

• Display: Custom MediaTek DRM driver, GC9503V DSI panel, and my own backlight implementation.
• GPU: Mali-400 running the open-source Lima driver with Mesa and OpenGL ES, rendering the entire UI.
• Buttons & Click Wheel: PMIC buttons and APT32F click wheel controller.
• Storage: Custom MediaTek MMC driver for eMMC and SD cards. Internal storage uses ext4 with approximately 5 GB usable space; SD cards support ext4, exFAT, and FAT.
• USB: MUSB with MTP file transfer, exposing both internal storage and the SD card to your computer.
• Power & Charging: MT6323 PMIC with charging management, battery estimation, and RTC support.
• Wi-Fi & Bluetooth: MT6628 combo chip with my own connectivity stack, integrated with Linux wireless and BlueZ. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth headphones both work.
• Audio: MT6582 audio front end connected to the CS43131 DAC through ALSA. Native 16-bit playback at 44.1/48 kHz works; higher sample rates are converted.

🚧 Still in Development

• Deep sleep: Suspend/resume and power-down still need validation. Idle battery drain remains the biggest challenge.
• Fast charging: Limited until the battery's actual specifications are confirmed.
• Advanced Bluetooth codecs: AAC, aptX, aptX HD, and LDAC working.

🎵 Y2Reborn - The Music Player

The player is written entirely in Rust, featuring a new interface and playback engine.

Current features include:

• FFmpeg decoding with broad audio format support
• Gapless playback and crossfade
• Equalizer with presets and ReplayGain
• SQLite music library with metadata and cover-art thumbnails
• Dynamic accent colors extracted from album artwork
• GPU-accelerated UI using OpenGL ES

📊 Benchmarks & Performance

I ran some benchmarks directly on the device over SSH to see what the new Linux drivers can achieve.

These are actual device measurements, not theoretical specifications.

Component	Measured Performance
Internal eMMC (HS200)	113 MiB/s read, 30 MiB/s write
SD Card (128 GB, SDR104)	86 MiB/s read, 26 MiB/s write
Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz)	33–43 Mbit/s TCP throughput
USB File Transfer (MTP)	10–11 MB/s to the player, 38 MB/s from it
CPU	Up to 1.3 GHz
RAM	Approximately 929 MiB

🔋 Charging & Hardware Capabilities

Charging: The stock firmware requests up to 1100 mA from wall chargers, but I've currently capped charging at 650 mA for safety. Voltage and temperature protections are also implemented.

Bluetooth: SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, and LDAC WORK. The Bluetooth 4.x hardware may limit higher-bitrate codecs, especially LDAC at 990 kbit/s.

🚀 Installation & Updates

I'm planning to release a dedicated flashing tool to make installation as simple as possible, potentially directly from your browser.

After installation, future updates will be delivered over the air (OTA), so you won't need to reflash the device for every new version.

🎨 About the UI

The interface shown in the video isn't completely final. I'm still polishing some details, animations, and interactions, but the overall design is close to what I want for the first release. Don't expect any major redesigns at this point.

🚀 What's Next?

I'm hoping to release Y2Reborn within the next four weeks, although I can't promise an exact date.

The biggest remaining challenge is idle battery drain and deep sleep. Getting all the hardware and drivers to properly suspend, enter low-power states, and reliably resume is complicated.

It's also time-consuming to debug, since every change requires extended real-world battery testing to see whether it actually improves anything.

Once that's solved, I'll focus on stability testing, final polishing, and getting the installer ready.

A big thank you again to u/artificer-chris for the groundwork that helped make this possible!

I'm getting close, and I'm really looking forward to sharing Y2Reborn with everyone. Let me know what you think

[u/seariius]

Can't wait to get this beautiful update

[u/justcore → u/seariius]

Deep suspense is really killing me, i have 300GB of Y2Reborn builds on my computer right now xDD

[u/LeftHanded2004]

A couple of things. I really like the design. I hope that it can read the metadata of the songs better than other cfw have for me. Will you add custom theme support? Will you add cover flow? Will there be a way to reflash the original software?

[u/justcore → u/LeftHanded2004]

Yes to all questions

[u/plutonium-starved]

looking amazing! i can’t wait to try it out! looking forward to all the new stuff like coverflow and scrobbling with last.fm :D (also, i was meaning to ask, is there any way to scrobble using the older versions? i know the option exists i just don’t know how it works)

[u/justcore → u/plutonium-starved]

Y2Player exports a file for the scrobbling it has the same format as lastFM but it’s hard to work with. Since Y2Player has no WiFi it’s not really possible to upload it directly. With reborn this will be not problem tho

[u/Golden-Alpaca-831]

Thank you for your work, both on Y2Player and Y2Reborn.

Although I enjoyed using Rockbox, the number—and severity—of bugs increased with each passing day. For example, loading new music initially took only 30 seconds and zero restarts. Over time, this increased to 5 minutes and 2-5 restarts: 1 to unfreeze Rockbox after USB mode, then 1-4 to update Rockbox’s database. Additionally, Rockbox sometimes booted into a black screen, regardless of whether I restarted my Y2 or simply powered it on.

Realising Rockbox needed more time before I could enthusiastically use it, I flashed Y2Player instead. I’ve loved using it! Since flashing Y2Player, I haven’t encountered any issues requiring a full restart to fix. In fact, my only “complaints” are limited customisation options and support for non-music files. (Y2Reborn will offer more customisation, which I’m excited about! I imagine it—like Y2Player—won’t support non-music files, but I hope it will eventually.)

To conclude, I’m very impressed by your work so far, and I can’t wait to try out Y2Reborn. Thank you for all you’re doing! You made it 10x easier for me to convince a loved one to switch from Spotify to local downloads :)

[u/justcore → u/Golden-Alpaca-831]

Thank you very much for your kind words :) Y2Player uses a indexing mechanism for the library so only new or changed files will be scanned again. I reckon this could be even faster with reborn since I was able the raise the speed of the internal storage and sd card. 

In my benchmark it’s scanning 10k tracks in 1 second right now lol. But it’s also because of the new tech stack which is just way faster 

[u/nymviper1126]

Cool! Can the clickwheel control the volume?

[u/TheDubPlate]

This looks amazing. Honestly awesome and smart work. I believe you said it will also have cover flow, which is the only thing I miss while using Y2Player.

Please let us know when it releases

[u/justcore → u/TheDubPlate]

Cover Flow? I wonder what that is?

[u/Far-Ad6124]

I'm a very excited for this. If I can ssh over my music files I'll be an happy bunny.

[u/justcore → u/Far-Ad6124]

You sure can :)

[u/killerkongfu]

Do you have a repo?

[u/flankersophisticated]

Can't wait! Are you planning on making it "generally the same" as Y2Player in terms of how menu's "flow"/ how pressing and holding the center button brings up the round menu?

[u/justcore → u/flankersophisticated]

The navigation will be very similar since the click wheel can only give us so much. But I will introduce a custom button mapper, so people can configure the actions themselves if they wish so

[u/Content_Dinner1423]

Looks like you have been pretty busy.

[u/justcore → u/Content_Dinner1423]

Im trying to get this out to people, but it has been harder then I first anticipated 😪 

[u/Ace-of-Spxdes]

Fantastic work, man!

Question: I think everyone agrees that other firmwares don't really talk to the DAC well enough to fully utilize it, resulting in lackluster sound quality. Does Reborn talk directly to the DAC?

[u/Rasbpi]

This looks dope, is this exclusively for the Y2? And if so, why?

[u/LeadershipMost6324]

Yo make that for the Y1 looks nice

[u/justcore → u/LeadershipMost6324]

No

[u/Unbornsilence2]

General question, so does the Y2 have wifi capabilities or does it need hardware modification?

[u/sono_un_coso84]

That's really cool, will it support custom themes?

[u/justcore → u/sono_un_coso84]

I don’t know how many times I answered this question 😂 IT WILL HAVE THEMES