Most Wanted Firmware Features

[chris_r]

So what are everyone's most wanted firmware features in future firmware upgrades? Put them down in order of importance to you

1. Remove the interlacing from the lcd and scan it properly
2. Reduce power consumption. Im sure the tv-out chip is being run constantly and someone measured it as using 200mA. So if this is running constantly and was disabled could potentially double the battery life. But this is only if the tv-out chip is actually running constantly at the moment.
3. Reduce boot time. i think the kernel itself only takes a few seconds to boot but there are loads of scripts running at boot time. To reduce this, a fully loaded ram hibernate file could probably be stored so that instead of having to run the scripts it could just load the hibernate file on boot.
4. Battery indicator led. Im not overly sure how difficult this would be to implement.
5. Hibernate/standby mode on low battery. When the battery is low the gp2x could save the current ram into a hibernate file again(somehow implemented alongside the fast boot) so that when the gp2x does run out of battery, you can simply replace the batteries and restart from pretty much the same place you left of
6. A kernel module for the mmsp2 usb host on the ext port. Once this was implemented i think all we would have to do would be to wire up the usb host on the ext port to a usb socket and we could finally have our portable console with tv-out and external controllers a closer reality.
7. Change various /dev parts so that they dont write to the nand. eg. Bookmark.dat would not take up spaceat al so would be perfectly fine to store on the sd.
8. Proper support for stereo sound.
9. A more advanced text reader that can detect spaces in words so it doesnt break words over 2 lines and doesnt write bookmark.dat to the nand. And supports more file formats like rtf.
10. More file formats for the movie player. This is not overly important to me seeing as I like to encode everything in divx format anyway, but it would be nice to have support for more formats

 

[craigix]

1.3.0 does improve the battery life. But I don't think its ever going to go over 5 hours if you want max speed from it.

 

[OMars]

How about animated icons and background music! I have been talking about that a lot!

 

[chris_r]

1.3.0 does improve the battery life. But I don't think its ever going to go over 5 hours if you want max speed from it.

​

Wow inside knowledge Do you know what else is being change in 1.3.0 or any future firmwares?

 

[taras]

- Configurable text reader. User-selectable colours, font etc.
- At least the option to view the boot sequence output instead of the plain booting screen, or some kind of status indicator.
- That's about it...

 

[judge0]

A soft keyboard linked to gpm, so things like vi will be usable without a serial cable . . .

 

[whiskthecat]

Everything you said chris and

1.Brightness/contrast adjust on pictures and the screen itself.
2.Better file explorer (rename,move,size,etc.)
3.Automatic clock speed adjustment (low speed on menus,music,pics, High speed on apps/games)
4.Built in pdf (yea right :rolleyes: )

 

[Radek]

For me (the most important):
- fixing the interlacing issue
- adding the DaveC's biasing modes for a stick
- adding hardware support for SDL and surface scaling
- adding support for ext2/3 filesystem
- some kind of process management?
- support for external peripherals like keyboard and mouse via ext port
- more video codecs (just for convenience as reencoding to xvid isn't hard)

 

[fomit]

A progress bar for firmware and software updates. I always get a little nervous flashing and this might alleviate some of the nerves.

A faster boot as well. If there are useless scripts being run, don't run them. If the GP2X is writing to the NAND every boot when it is not necessary to do so, get it to stop doing that. This last paragraph are both things that GPH should have understood about Linux prior to release.

 

[bmilleker]

The only thing that really bugs me is the interlacing video.

Every time i start the 2x i run cpu-lcd tweaker. I would die without it .

 

[Wolfspirit]

I think screen brightness adjustment would be very cool.

 

[Jarska333]

But I wonder, what causes the screen to flicken worse, when an MP3 is playing? Not all the way from start, but after 2 seconds, horrible flicker. What happens during those crucial moments, tomorrow, in "60 minutes".

 

[whiskthecat]

But I wonder, what causes the screen to flicken worse, when an MP3 is playing? Not all the way from start, but after 2 seconds, horrible flicker. What happens during those crucial moments, tomorrow, in "60 minutes".

​

But now Andy Rooney with his latest idiotic rant. :lol:

 

[dennis20014]

As of now three things

- more video formats compatible
- better e-reader
- fix the scan lines

 

[bmilleker]

I would like a better looking menu. Something like the psp has maybe. I like the look of it.

 

[SolidSnake]

since its linux, cant they just implement an APM kernel module?(advanced power management)

 

[CoinOp]

- Configurable text reader. User-selectable colours, font etc.

​

And PLEASE a decent word wrap!

Xvid is high on my list as well.

Gapless playback for the audio player (read ogg)! Really, most of the stuff I listen to is live. Contrary to most, I do use it on occasion to listen to music. I have a 1g card dedicated to it actually. Nothing breaks the groove more then the 1 second pauses between tracks. Especially when the band segues into something .... (crossing fingers)

 

[Firefox]

Fast boot!

It's a pocket games console, not a workstation! You want to be able to click it on and have a quick play on something whenever you feel like it.

 

[sand_man]

But it does support XviD :s

 

[CoinOp]

But it does support XviD :s

​

Tell you what, encode a movie in Divx and then again in Xvid. Watch them both and tell me that Xvid is "supported". :angry:

If no one else is having this problem then I apologize for my brash comment. My experience with Xvid is that it looks like utter excrement on the GP2X. Divx has nice and smooth frame rates, whilst xvid admittedly plays, it is nearly unwatchable because of the choppiness.