Release Hotfix 6 Final released!

[sukhi2011]

Yes there is option at the end,i didn't notice that. Thanks for that.


Is it safe to use midori.

 

[sukhi2011]

Ok everything is back to normal and screen blanking issue is solved.


PanDebian messed my firmware up and i had reinstall it again,has anyone used this program and caused any problems.

 

[igboo]

FWIW Wizstan, my pandora shuts itself down at %12 without warning. Just off it goes.

Does it initiate the shutdown sequence and close everything cleanly, or does it just die as if the battery runs out?

I'm pretty sure it just dies as if the battery runs out. I do find stuff still mounted in utmp. I'll let it run down again tonight and double check.

 

[Prometheus]

I don't know if this is relevant to the battery discussion or not, but I was able to run mine down completely while I was on vacation - I had the lid shut the whole time, and it read 0% when I plugged the charger in.


Is it possible for the lid being shut to make a difference to that?

 

[DaMummy]

the panora always reads 0% when you plug it in after the battery "dies". the problem we're having here, is that the pandora thinks the batery is dead at as high as 15% charge. im sure theres still juie in battery, as it really seems like charge lasts shorter right now, and the 15% seems about right, but the power saving script seems messed up, and the pandora goes into critical shutdown mode when its supposed to just warn of low battery. and at times when this shutdown happens, it goes into lower power mode while counting down to go into shut down. so right after it goes into low power, or maybe even just shut down the screen, you can still turn it on with the power switch, and watch the time counting down to perform a system shutdown

 

[DaMummy]

like just now, my pandora shut down with 17% battery left, i turned it back on, see how long it lasts with this 17%

 

[WizardStan]

So last night I ran the battery down to 21% and once again it initiated the shut down. I cancelled but it shut down anyway. So it happens consistently.


What was different this time is that I actually turned it back on this time to investigate further. Plugged it in so it wouldn't shut itself down again and waited: it took a minute before it actually powered on! "How strange" thought I.


When it finally came to the desktop, the battery gauge read 1%.


So now my problem is not the problem I thought it was. It isn't that it shut down at 21%, it's that it emergency shut down because the battery was completely empty (as shown by the minute it took to pre-charge above the minimum voltage) but still showed 21%. I watched it charge for a little while until it reached 3%, assumed it wasn't going to do anything magic (like suddenly jump back to 20% again) and just went to bed. Fully charged again come the morning. Has anyone else noticed this behavior?


This was a replacement Pandora so I don't know how it behaved prior to HotFix 6. I may have to get a copy of HF5 and just experiment with that.

 

[Prometheus]

@DM - I know. The reason I mentioned it was precisely because whatever the default warning settings are on a fresh Hotfix 6 install, my Pandora didn't think the battery was dead at the percentages you guys are mentioning.

 

[FRZ]

What I notice is that in minimenu, you won't know the battery does not change unless you switch screens back and forth. If you keep it on one screen for example at 45% batteries it will continue reading 45% battery even if the device is low and about to shut off. That doesn't happened though in XFCE. I did a complete flash of HF6 still no wifi light. I can however, change the speed now without the error I was getting before. Another issue I have is some PNDs won't work now. Not sure if that has to do the firmware. Like I can't run Keepnote anymore. it just wont start. I was using for a while now it won't start.

 

[Prometheus]

^ In the case of such issues with PNDs, you should try removing the appdata entry for the ones that you're having problems with (remember to back up preferences or files you want to keep that are in the appdata directories, though!). Some others have reported the same with Hotfix 6, and have said that this fixed it for them.


If that fails, checking for an updated PND is the next step to take.

 

[igboo]

So last night I ran the battery down to 21% and once again it initiated the shut down.

Is 21% where the system is supposed alert you to the battery state? I don't think I've ever seen a warning. My pandora just shuts off.


I haven't had a chance to run my pandora down while I could watch... I only got to 55% last night. Tonight willbethe night though.

 

[DaMummy]

in normal cases, like HF5 and below, the default was that battery would be considered "Low" at 10% and you would get a warning, and 5% would be "Critical" state and it would commence a shut down procedure. but something in hf6 isnt playing nice, and pandora likes to go into critical mode even around 20%

 

[Prometheus]

Can anyone encountering it try it with the lid shut, please? I'd love to know if it was just me not getting the bizarre warning/shut-down behaviour, or not.

 

[WizardStan]

Something very suspicious. It did the same again, shut down at 21%. I plugged it in, waited a minute for it to pre-charge, and when it came up it read 1% as it did last time. This time, instead of leaving it to simply charge as normal, I unplugged the charger and immediately plugged it back in again; in just a few seconds it suddenly started showing 21%. I left it to charge, and it charged as normal as if it really had started at 21%, until it reached 30% and I was convinced it wasn't going to do anything else weird.


The bq chip supplies these percentages directly, the driver hasn't changed in over a year, there is no reason for it to be behaving any differently now than it did 6 months ago. I'm going to experiment now with my backup battery, see if that acts a little more normal.


edit: I'll add that to my list of experiments, Prometheus, though if it's shutting down at 21% and never even reaching the critical 10 and 5% marks I don't think it'll help at all

 

[Prometheus]

Fair point.


But still, I am curious as to whether the lid thing has any effect or not. :lol:

 

[WizardStan]

Did the exact same thing with my backup battery. This time I was outputting the contents of the bq chips capacity and voltage_now data files. Capacity was 21%, voltage_now read about 3.0 volts. That is almost certainly not right. Despite reading that it had about 2 hours of play time left, it had rapidly dropped from 3.3 volts down to 3.0 volts. As soon as it crossed the 3.0V level, displaying 2.99ish Volts, the capacity hit 0, exactly as it should have been. Why it was reading 21% at 3.0 volts is a mystery to me. I'm going to have to look at the driver.


So I plugged it in, it booted back up, reading 1% and charging. voltage_now said 3.5 volts. Not entirely unexpected for it to be higher, the charger itself will artificially inflate the voltage while plugged in. So I unplugged the charger. Voltage_now dropped to 3.3 volts and the capacity suddenly became 21% again. It's been discharging now for nearly 15 minutes. Capacity reads 20%, voltage_now reads 3.1 (getting close...) and time to empty says 3 hours. The time to empty has dropped steadily, about 1 minute per minute, so it's making stable calculations based on something. Voltage has been dropping rapidly though, going from 3.3 to 3.1 in 15 minutes, and now, less than 5 minutes after that, it hit 2.9, capacity turned into 0, and the whole thing shut down again. This is really weird. No one else has experienced anything similar to this? I wonder if there is actually a problem with the bq chip in this Pandora performing false calculations. I'm going to have to actually time my usage from 100%. Maybe it just needs to be recalibrated.

 

[DaMummy]

as said, ive been experiencing the exact same thing the whole time ive been on hf6 for the past week

 

[WizardStan]

You did indeed. Sorry, I guess I misunderstood or something.


You didn't mention what happened after you started it up again after it shut down at that 17% though. Did it come back and survive for some time after? Or, like mine, did it report a completely flat battery and need to be charged?


edit: Ok, Hotfix 5 installed. I'm now running at 900mhz, 100% CPU usage, backlight on full, wifi on and power save off. Let's see what happens when the battery runs down.... in 7 hours.


edit: Did the same thing on Hotfix 5. Gave me 4.5 hours from 80% with full brightness, wifi, and 100% CPU usage at 900Mhz, even though it initially reported 6 hours when I started the experiment. Guess I should try Hotfix 4 now.


edit: Even HF4, which I know worked perfectly on my old Pandora, is doing the exact same thing. I can only conclude there's a problem with my bq chip somehow not reporting correct voltages. Or rather, predicting correct voltages but not correct capacity with respect to those voltages. I'll have to try going from a full charge to nothing tomorrow and see if it's time prediction is in any way accurate.

 

[Lobo]

For what it's worth, I've noticed my Pandora has also begun acting strangely since HF6. It is impossible for me to charge to 100% or even 90%: usually at around 85% it decides the battery is full and stops charging(minimenu and xfce). I went straight from HF4 to HF6 BTW.


I didn't give it much thought because I thought the battery might not be making correct contact, since if I take it out and put it back in Lo! it suddenly starts reporting 95% or more. But after a shutdown, it suddenly deducts 10% or more from the total available.

 

[Writing Ronin]

For what it's worth, I've noticed my Pandora has also begun acting strangely since HF6. It is impossible for me to charge to 100% or even 90%: usually at around 85% it decides the battery is full and stops charging(minimenu and xfce). I went straight from HF4 to HF6 BTW.


I didn't give it much thought because I thought the battery might not be making correct contact, since if I take it out and put it back in Lo! it suddenly starts reporting 95% or more. But after a shutdown, it suddenly deducts 10% or more from the total available.

Mine's been a bit erratic as well, since HF6 - although I'm still running an earlier version of it, so I thought it may have been that. Sounds like it's may be a general HF6 glitch?