Release Hotfix 5 - RC2. Last one before going final

[craigix]

I've been away for some time (playing with my new Archos 101), so this may be a silly question: Wasn't HF4 supposed to be the last one before a new firmware?


And is work still being done on power management? I find it a bit embarrassing that I can put the Archos 101 in deep sleep and make the battery last for weeks, while the Pandora dies in less than a day on standby.


Or is Android that much better? :blink:

You could just turn the Pandora off for 6 weeks? It only takes, what, 40-50 seconds to boot up?

 

[notaz]

[ 421.560546] bq27x00-battery 3-0055: error reading voltage


[ 432.974121] bq27x00-battery 3-0055: error reading relative State-of-Charge


[ 432.981842] bq27x00-battery 3-0055: error reading register 16


[ 432.987640] power_supply bq27500-0: driver failed to report `time_to_empty_now' property

Looks like a hardware issue to me, bad soldering of battery gauge i2c lines.

 

[richiz]

I've been away for some time (playing with my new Archos 101), so this may be a silly question: Wasn't HF4 supposed to be the last one before a new firmware?


And is work still being done on power management? I find it a bit embarrassing that I can put the Archos 101 in deep sleep and make the battery last for weeks, while the Pandora dies in less than a day on standby.


Or is Android that much better? :blink:

You could just turn the Pandora off for 6 weeks? It only takes, what, 40-50 seconds to boot up?

Except with my PSP I could sleep, leave in bathroom and when I go in for a poop play a few mins of Mario. So 50 seconds is quite a lot.


It'd definately be impressive if it could achieve PSP standby times. You would rarely turn the whole thing off then.

 

[DavidBowman]

I've been away for some time (playing with my new Archos 101), so this may be a silly question: Wasn't HF4 supposed to be the last one before a new firmware?


And is work still being done on power management? I find it a bit embarrassing that I can put the Archos 101 in deep sleep and make the battery last for weeks, while the Pandora dies in less than a day on standby.


Or is Android that much better? :blink:

Android has the benefit from having a huge development community and millions of devices, not to mention Google's money.


We don't, but we'll get there. Slowly but surely.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Except with my PSP I could sleep, leave in bathroom and when I go in for a poop play a few mins of Mario. So 50 seconds is quite a lot.


It'd definately be impressive if it could achieve PSP standby times. You would rarely turn the whole thing off then.

Just wait for suspend to ram feature.


The actual sleep mode leaves the system on. ie you can work with ssh or vnc on it.

 

[ZXDunny]

I've been away for some time (playing with my new Archos 101), so this may be a silly question: Wasn't HF4 supposed to be the last one before a new firmware?


And is work still being done on power management? I find it a bit embarrassing that I can put the Archos 101 in deep sleep and make the battery last for weeks, while the Pandora dies in less than a day on standby.


Or is Android that much better? :blink:

You could just turn the Pandora off for 6 weeks? It only takes, what, 40-50 seconds to boot up?

Which is an absolute age, especially for a handheld that you just want to whip out for a casual gaming session. Hell, my Win7 laptop starts in 45 seconds.


Left the Panda in "power sucking mode" last night (one flick of the switch to the right) and the battery was down to 15% - from a 100% charge - the following day. I do turn the panda off (using the "log out/shut down" option from xfce) most times, as you're right that the battery usage is much better. However, the clock effectively stops while it's off which is a minor niggle.


D.

 

[EvilDragon]

Which is an absolute age, especially for a handheld that you just want to whip out for a casual gaming session. Hell, my Win7 laptop starts in 45 seconds.

Well, my Pandora boots into MiniMenu in about 25 - 30 seconds... my WinMobile smartphone boots about 1 minute

Left the Panda in "power sucking mode" last night (one flick of the switch to the right) and the battery was down to 15% - from a 100% charge - the following day. I do turn the panda off (using the "log out/shut down" option from xfce) most times, as you're right that the battery usage is much better. However, the clock effectively stops while it's off which is a minor niggle.

The clock stops? I turn off my unit regularly, my clock never stopped... unless the battery is empty.

 

[Elanzer]

I've been away for some time (playing with my new Archos 101), so this may be a silly question: Wasn't HF4 supposed to be the last one before a new firmware?


And is work still being done on power management? I find it a bit embarrassing that I can put the Archos 101 in deep sleep and make the battery last for weeks, while the Pandora dies in less than a day on standby.


Or is Android that much better? :blink:

This has more to do with the fact that the pandora is using a full functional desktop OS while Android is a smartphone OS, which is designed around "freezing" applications to allow the CPU to turn off entirely, as much as possible. These ARM CPUs can be turned off entirely, idling at 0mhz, and a smartphone OS as well as it's devkits are built around it.


Power management on the Pandora can improve, but it will never really reach Android level for idle, but actual runtime will be much higher if both are watching movies or gaming nonstop. Suspend to RAM will be significant though.

 

[ZXDunny]

Which is an absolute age, especially for a handheld that you just want to whip out for a casual gaming session. Hell, my Win7 laptop starts in 45 seconds.

Well, my Pandora boots into MiniMenu in about 25 - 30 seconds... my WinMobile smartphone boots about 1 minute

Heh, didn't think of that - Minimenu is broken now (themes no longer work, and the annoying delay between moving the highlight and it deciding there's no info to display on the right is too annoying, because the theme won't let me remove the info-panel, and the default theme looks awful), so I've been booting into XFCE for quite a while now! Still, not gonna use minimenu.

Left the Panda in "power sucking mode" last night (one flick of the switch to the right) and the battery was down to 15% - from a 100% charge - the following day. I do turn the panda off (using the "log out/shut down" option from xfce) most times, as you're right that the battery usage is much better. However, the clock effectively stops while it's off which is a minor niggle.

The clock stops? I turn off my unit regularly, my clock never stopped... unless the battery is empty.

Yep. Turned the Pandora "off" for 2 days, and the clock is behind by two days. This was using XFCE (HF5 beta 2 btw - not installing any more HF5 betas until you PND up the final version, 'cos they overwrite all my settings and delete my wifi keys), press Pandora button, move up to "Log Out", choose "Shut down", close lid when all the lights go out...


Come back after a while and the RTC is way off. Not a big problem - what's the point of having a clock anyway?


D.

 

[Eridger]

...This was using XFCE (HF5 beta 2 btw...

You're using a beta version of an as-yet-unreleased HotFix, making this bug report irrelevant.

 

[singler]

...This was using XFCE (HF5 beta 2 btw...

You're using a beta version of an as-yet-unreleased HotFix, making this bug report irrelevant.

bug report on newest public beta is relevant, if no one will report bugs, how will they get fixed?

 

[CapcomSuicide]

What I don't understand in this discussion is that people have a concept that a mini computer wouldn't draw charge in sleep mode. It is NOT a console, it is a fully fledged mini-computer, of course it will use power in sleep mode.


The following are my observations:


- The battery holds charge VERY well when in "Off" mode, better than my laptop (ThinPad X200)


- The battery use in "Sleep" mode is very reasonable, better than my laptop.


- The battery life under load is absolutly amazing, lasting longer than my Laptop, iPhone 4 and HD2 combined under use!


- The boot time is fantasic, similar to my HTPC with SSD.


The only change that I think could be nice, is some kind of fancy software so I can charge the Pandora with a "Deep sleep" mode, but this is a minor niggle.


So basically everything about boot time/battery life is world class. The only issue as far as I can see, is I've never had a device "Turn on" when charging before. Not exactly a deal breaker, but just a bit alien for a gadget nerd like myself.


/CS

 

[ZXDunny]

- The battery holds charge VERY well when in "Off" mode, better than my laptop (ThinPad X200)

Not here. Turn off the Pandora, and I'll be at 50% battery in about 3 days. My laptop will go for more than a week (tried and tested).

- The battery use in "Sleep" mode is very reasonable, better than my laptop.

Definitely not - When asleep, the Pandora will completely drain the battery in about a day and a half. When the laptop is asleep, it will go for about two days before the lights go out.

- The battery life under load is absolutly amazing, lasting longer than my Laptop, iPhone 4 and HD2 combined under use!


- The boot time is fantasic, similar to my HTPC with SSD.

Agreed.


D.

 

[ivanovic]

Left the Panda in "power sucking mode" last night (one flick of the switch to the right) and the battery was down to 15% - from a 100% charge - the following day. I do turn the panda off (using the "log out/shut down" option from xfce) most times, as you're right that the battery usage is much better. However, the clock effectively stops while it's off which is a minor niggle.

The clock stops? I turn off my unit regularly, my clock never stopped... unless the battery is empty.

Yep. Turned the Pandora "off" for 2 days, and the clock is behind by two days. This was using XFCE (HF5 beta 2 btw - not installing any more HF5 betas until you PND up the final version, 'cos they overwrite all my settings and delete my wifi keys), press Pandora button, move up to "Log Out", choose "Shut down", close lid when all the lights go out...


Come back after a while and the RTC is way off. Not a big problem - what's the point of having a clock anyway?

From what I heard so far what you see seems to hint to the battery in your device not being aligned correctly. Some things that point to a not correctly aligned battery include, but are not limited to, the RTC not working correctly in "off" state, extreme loss of battery power in "off" state as well as loading only working to some percentage (that is != complete, something like a little above 80%), the pandora turning itself off when shaking it. Yeah, not all the things do always happen when the battery is misaligned, but can often be observed together. The reason for this are normal differences in production. Some batteries are a tiny little bit smaller than others, stuff like this.


So now how to fix your issues:


Open the battery lid, remove the battery, reinsert it making sure that there is *good* contact. You might want to consider to put some paper behind the battery where the contacts are (not sure if this really helps, but it might). Afterwards retest.

 

[richiz]

Ed do you think we will get suspend to ram?

 

[jottt]

If you want faster boot, use the OC-feature . Powerboost makes little Pandi fly!


From flicking the switch to fully loaded XFCE (autologin).


56 seconds @ 500 MHz


41 seconds @ 1050 Mhz


15 seconds in both cases until the loading screen of Angström, so loads of time seem to be wasted by the bootloader alone. The OS itself is pretty quick.


Still, a real sleepmode is the way to go (but I am certain that will happen sooner or later)

 

[EvilDragon]

Ed do you think we will get suspend to ram?

If someone wants to check and patch all drivers so that they support it, it sure is possible.

 

[richiz]

Ace that'd be a killer feature

 

[DoubleDash]

Ace that'd be a killer feature

Yes, it certainly would be.


But given the differing and complex nature of drivers, and available expertise for changing and testing, it's not likely to happen any time soon.


Would love to be proven wrong

 

[skeezix]

Which is an absolute age, especially for a handheld that you just want to whip out for a casual gaming session. Hell, my Win7 laptop starts in 45 seconds.

Well, my Pandora boots into MiniMenu in about 25 - 30 seconds... my WinMobile smartphone boots about 1 minute

Heh, didn't think of that - Minimenu is broken now (themes no longer work, and the annoying delay between moving the highlight and it deciding there's no info to display on the right is too annoying, because the theme won't let me remove the info-panel, and the default theme looks awful), so I've been booting into XFCE for quite a while now! Still, not gonna use minimenu.

Left the Panda in "power sucking mode" last night (one flick of the switch to the right) and the battery was down to 15% - from a 100% charge - the following day. I do turn the panda off (using the "log out/shut down" option from xfce) most times, as you're right that the battery usage is much better. However, the clock effectively stops while it's off which is a minor niggle.

The clock stops? I turn off my unit regularly, my clock never stopped... unless the battery is empty.

Yep. Turned the Pandora "off" for 2 days, and the clock is behind by two days. This was using XFCE (HF5 beta 2 btw - not installing any more HF5 betas until you PND up the final version, 'cos they overwrite all my settings and delete my wifi keys), press Pandora button, move up to "Log Out", choose "Shut down", close lid when all the lights go out...


Come back after a while and the RTC is way off. Not a big problem - what's the point of having a clock anyway?


D.

The theme can be fixed by the themer -- its copy/pasting in a few lines to their mmskin.conf file to tell mmenu where to place things when in wide-mode; all other skin changes have defaults so old skins work, but that wide-mode feature needs a skin update. Its not mmenu's fault .. just ask the skinner to update. (the skin defines the font swize, the grid size, the column/row locations, the icon size, that sort of thing. mmenu doesn't know wide to make things magicly.)


Certainly themes work fine, you just don't get one new feature; you don't lose anything, for sure. Plus all the new mmenu features.. so not sure how you're complaining, you've not lost anything


But nothing wrong with xfce, of course, I just take issue with the above ill-logic


jeff

FWIW, the battery seems to be an issue for ZXDunny --


I can leave mine off for a week or two, and pick it up, and it'll have lost a couple %age only of battery .. I can literally top it up to 95%, and come back 2 weeks later, and it'll be 93% or the like. No drain at all hardly while _off_.


But I think there has been some bugs deep inside where sometimes theres still a draw while 'off' (its not really fully off?), that some folks have hit.


jeff