Battery hot swap and external charger

[God Ginrai]

Doing the same as on Pandora it gives more battery life.

 No offence, but this sounds like a typical marketing phrase. My Pandora does the same as Pandora and already here. Why do I need another system?

I'm talking about battery life for typical usage for a system. Of course typical usage of Pyra will be more computationally intensive because it allows it and in mobile space we didn't reach 'good enough' stage especially for games

Oh, so you don't plan to emulate N64, PSP, or anything before that? And you don't plan to use LibreOffice and listen to MP3s or FLACs?

It's not marketing speak. The simple fact of the matter is that the only things that will make your battery drain faster on the Pyra are when you are pushing your hardware. Which you are not going to do as often as everything else you would do on the device. It would only happen for games and emulators that have high system requirements, which I doubt those are the only things you will do on the device.

-God Ginrai

 

[Askarus]

Doing the same as on Pandora it gives more battery life.

 
No offence, but this sounds like a typical marketing phrase. My Pandora does the same as Pandora and already here. Why do I need another system?


I'm talking about battery life for typical usage for a system. Of course typical usage of Pyra will be more computationally intensive because it allows it and in mobile space we didn't reach 'good enough' stage especially for games

Oh, so you don't plan to emulate N64, PSP, or anything before that? And you don't plan to use LibreOffice and listen to MP3s or FLACs?


It's not marketing speak. The simple fact of the matter is that the only things that will make your battery drain faster on the Pyra are when you are pushing your hardware. Which you are not going to do as often as everything else you would do on the device. It would only happen for games and emulators that have high system requirements, which I doubt those are the only things you will do on the device.

-God Ginrai

Right.

Stuff like Firefox or Libreoffice might need more CPU load than the Pandora can offer for some seconds during startup.

But then they can run with less battery life.

Also PSX and other emulators that run well on Pandora won't need more power than on the Pandora but less.

 

[CrazyIvan]

It's not like emulators (especially for 'newer' systems like PSX and n64) could'n t be enhanced with more computing power (image processing comes to mind). And it's not like web browsing is currently super-fast.

If you want extended discussion we can do it in another thread ad not derail this.

And 'it works for me so it'll work for anyone everywhere' argument is always invalid

 

[God Ginrai]

And 'it works for me so it'll work for anyone everywhere' argument is always invalid

Then wouldn't that invalidate your own claims that the Pyra will have less battery life? Since on average, most users will be using it for the less intensive operations that the Pandora can already handle.

-God Ginrai

 

[_wb_]

Doing the same as on Pandora it gives more battery life.

No offence, but this sounds like a typical marketing phrase. My Pandora does the same as Pandora and already here. Why do I need another system?

I'm talking about battery life for typical usage for a system. Of course typical usage of Pyra will be more computationally intensive because it allows it and in mobile space we didn't reach 'good enough' stage especially for games

I don't really play games on my Pandora. I code games and other stuff on it, I do web browsing, email and irc, draw stuff gimp and dia, view movies and pictures, type meeting reports in LibreOffice, ssh into my work PC, etc.

I expect all of these tasks to use less battery on the Pyra. The wifi module should be more recent so it should consume far less power. The cpu will be more efficient, so doing e.g. one compilation job will take less time and less mAh -- especially because I usually keep the display etc on while compiling stuff, so if it takes less time, it's also more efficient because of that. The display will be bigger but according to ED it uses about the same power as the Pandora display. There will be more RAM but it might very well use less power anyway.

Yes, the Pandora can already do everything or nearly everything I want. I still want the Pyra, because a faster CPU is always nice, more RAM is always nice, a bigger screen is always nice, an improved keyboard is nice, extra shoulder buttons are nice (shoulder buttons are essential for efficient handheld thumb typing), better nubs are nice, faster SD controllers are nice, USB 3.0 is nice, 3G internet is nice, a GPS for when I'm lost is nice, faster and more reliable wifi is nice, digital video out is nice, and so on.

Being able to play more demanding games is not really on my list of desiderata.

 

[_jr_]

Well, if compilation is - let's assume - twice as fast, will you still do the same number of compilations per day? Depends on your coding style, but I suspect that several people will start to use known hogs like eclipse for the tasks they previously did with an editor alone or on their desktops.


And N64 emulation - which was explicitly mentioned - will definitely use more computing power on the pyra because it isn't full speed on the pandora. Not to speak of hi res mod packs wich aren't feasible on the pandora.


These are still the same use case as far as I'm concerned. How this effects power usage is anybodies guess, but boldly claiming larger battery life seems premature.

 

[God Ginrai]

Well, if compilation is - let's assume - twice as fast, will you still do the same number of compilations per day? Depends on your coding style, but I suspect that several people will start to use known hogs like eclipse for the tasks they previously did with an editor alone or on their desktops.

Yea, but how many of the people who got the system for games are likely to compile? Even if _wb_ possibly increased his compile rate, it does not mean that the average user's battery life usage increased.

And N64 emulation - which was explicitly mentioned - will definitely use more computing power on the pyra because it isn't full speed on the pandora. Not to speak of hi res mod packs wich aren't feasible on the pandora.

Your Pandora must have some problems, then. Because I've got a lot of N64 games running fullspeed on mine. Now certainly, not all of them do. Therefore, the number of fullspeed N64 games will increase, but that doesn't mean that games that are already fullspeed will become more expensive. Also, you can't assume that everyone who uses the N64 emulator will use HiRes tex packs. The only games I've ever used them for were OoT and Smash Bros.

These are still the same use case as far as I'm concerned. How this effects power usage is anybodies guess, but boldly claiming larger battery life seems premature.

We never "boldy claimed larger battery life". We've been saying that there is nothing to support the claim that the Pyra will have less battery life.

-God Ginrai

 

[Grench]

1.  True hot swap requires two batteries.  We'll only have one.

You can buy as many as you like, right now, here

Irrelevant. True hot swap requires at least two batteries connected to the device at the same time. We'll have only ONE battery connected at a time.

There are a variety of tricks to get around this. Suspend to NAND/disk, carrying a small battery on-board to hold the RAM during a swap - which requires software/hardware support, using non-volitile RAM (good luck).

The base reality is that unless we're going to ditch the big rectangular Pandora battery and use two small square batteries that can each run the unit - while the other is getting swapped - then it's just an exercise in silly.

No, you're not going to piggy back it onto the case. It would still require circuitry and software support for a 2nd battery.

 

[CrazyIvan]

Finally the discussion is back on track, thank you.

Irrelevant. True hot swap requires at least two batteries connected to the device at the same time. We'll have only ONE battery connected at a time.

How would you know?

That's why i'd like to know neo900 implementation and if it requires software support or some tricks like putting the phone in low-power mode.

If we're talking about hardware independent solution then of course it requires two batteries (by battery I mean some device that can provide power for a certain amount of time, not some of its implementations). It can be a symmetric or non-symmetric setup and we're (most certainly in my opinion) talking about the latter here (big main battery+backup battery large enough to provide power for a specified amount of time in worst case scenario or under some specified easy to archeive conditions that won't break any running tasks after main battery swap process is finished). Why do you suggest that symmetric setup is the only software agnostic way is beyond me.