The Epic Android Thread - Page 371 - maemo.org

Capt'n Corrupt | # 3701 | 2011-06-15, 14:15 | Report

Originally Posted by H3llb0und View Post

I still don't have the keyboard dock, so I could not test USB devices yet.
But so far this is the best device I have bought, the dock will only make it better.

I am now in the process of gathering info (reading XDA forums) about
rooting > installing PRIME! v1.4 ROM > installing Clemsyn-Blades Overclocking kernel to at least 1.4GHz

That's awesome!

I must say, the Eee Pad Transformer is a contender. If I were looking for a 10"er it would be a close call between the Galaxy Tab and the Transformer. If I needed a keyboard dock, the transformer would win hands down.

What do you like most about the device?

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H3llb0und | # 3702 | 2011-06-15, 15:03 | Report

Originally Posted by Capt'n Corrupt View Post

That's awesome!

I must say, the Eee Pad Transformer is a contender. If I were looking for a 10"er it would be a close call between the Galaxy Tab and the Transformer. If I needed a keyboard dock, the transformer would win hands down.

What do you like most about the device?

Everything!
Honeycomb is not perfect, but is IMO the best tablet OS available right now. And it will only get better.
And on XDA forums, everything gets better sooner or later even if the stock OS doesn't do something that well

Lying in bed and being able to browse THE FULL WEB, not the Apple version of the web.

Lying in bed and being able to fully control my desktop with sounds and all, just with a couple of clicks using splashtop (comes pre-installed).

My only minor complaints:
(minor, because for the price.. there is really nothing better out there)

I have minor light bleed on the right side of the screen, only really noticeable while booting up.
Very common thing with these IPS screens it seems.

I also have the common problem with the TF of having the left speaker volume way lower than the right speaker, that can be fixed by changing some parameters in a system file... but I need to be rooted first.
Not a big deal as I use it with hearbuds anyway.

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Capt'n Corrupt | # 3703 | 2011-06-15, 15:48 | Report

This is the first feature of iOS that genuinely I wish were on Android.

Wireless mirroring of the display:
BLOG/VIDEO: http://bendodson.com/weblog/2011/06/...games-console/

This was one of the features unveiled at WWDC and is very compelling one.

It basically throws the scene on the tablet to an external screen with AppleTV attached. I suspect that its using a DSP to compress the framebuffer and then sends the compressed stream to the AppleTV. Modern SoCs are capable of real-time video encode, especially with a stream as small as 1024x768. The speed loss would be negligible with such a setup, and make good use of a secondary core compression logic and WiFi streaming could be run in a separate thread.

This is far superior to DLNA's implementation and can be exposed as an API for more than just basic mirroring, and potentially throw to more than one display!

What's more, this can be done in reverse to produce an onLive like display for other devices in the home if inputs/outputs are a modular stream. For example, If available this would allow me the full capability of my linux server tucked away on my tablet or Eee pad transformer -- assuming of course my IA32 hardware could compress a framebuffer efficiently

. Additionally, if compression is high enough, it could provide a far superior VNC like experience on the road, with minimal setup.

I hope Google is taking note of this feature. With VP8 maturing as a robust and open codec, an open protocol can be developed to do precisely this in an open and easy to implement way, and would be a boon to the platform.

I would love to see this feature on Android, Linux, GoogleTV and a host of other devices.

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Slocan | # 3704 | 2011-06-15, 16:14 | Report

I love my Transformer so much. The hardware is awesome, works a treat. My use is to replace the main computer in the living room (getting rid of wires because of baby starting crawling very soon), which it is perfect for. The keyboard dock makes it usable to write longer emails/documents when needed, and it's undocked most of the time for couch surfing, and couch gaming.
And it has accepted any peripherals I've thrown at it (mouse, camera, SD card...)

Originally Posted by H3llb0und View Post

Honeycomb is not perfect,

I'll have to agree with that. This is my first Android device, but coming from a Linux/Maemo/Symbian, it's kinda weird to adjust to the multitasking (where is the exit button?!?). Another thing I'm missing is printing from the browser, looks like there is only 1 app for my printer to print photos only.

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Capt'n Corrupt | # 3705 | 2011-06-15, 16:27 | Report

Originally Posted by Slocan View Post

I'll have to agree with that. This is my first Android device, but coming from a Linux/Maemo/Symbian, it's kinda weird to adjust to the multitasking (where is the exit button?!?). Another thing I'm missing is printing from the browser, looks like there is only 1 app for my printer to print photos only.

Heheh... Android was explicitly designed to do away with the idea of an exit button. In fact application starting/stopping was designed to be transparent, almost as if the app is in a constant state of running.

Printing is an interesting problem, and I think that Google's cloud-print is an effort to simplify and centralize the notion of printing, though I have no idea how effective this strategy is. Printing on any platform I've used has been messy, so I'm glad for some innovation on this front.

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Capt'n Corrupt | # 3706 | 2011-06-15, 16:34 | Report

Use your Transformer as a phone:

http://www.xda-developers.com/androi...-a-free-phone/

I haven't read the article. I wonder if SIP is the saviour...

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Slocan | # 3707 | 2011-06-15, 16:47 | Report

Originally Posted by Capt'n Corrupt View Post

Heheh... Android was explicitly designed to do away with the idea of an exit button. In fact application starting/stopping was designed to be transparent, almost as if the app is in a constant state of running.

Most of the times, it's fine, but sometimes, I'd like to give priority to which app it closes. For example when playing a game, and then quickly going to check emails, or a website, I'd like to be sure that the game won't close up (haven't done too many experiments, but seems like sometimes it exits, sometimes it doesn't...). To really exit a program, you have to press the "back" button, so if you're 10 directories down in the file explorer, you have to press it 11 times. Not that big a deal, it's just a different way of doing things, but not sure it's in the right direction.

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yorkey | # 3708 | 2011-06-15, 16:50 | Report

Originally Posted by danramos View Post

I would LOVE to have plugged in a buttload of USB devices to see what works and doesn't work (mouse, keyboard, joysticks, printers, another Android phone, a USB ethernet port dongle, global thermonuclear weapons, etc.)

Ive tried the following my my keyboard dock...

Mouse : works even the wireless dongle one I tried works
keyboard : works was a cheap one I tried though so no extra buttons
MiFi : powered but cant see the "CD" drive with the software on or the micro SD slot
USB Flash Drives : not found one that doesnt work yet tried 4 of various ages
USB Hard drive: only got one and it usually needs power from two USB ports. But it works fine as well!

When I remember Ill try the USB DVD drive Ive got.

Only tricky thing to remember if the right mouse button is "Back" not menu!

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Capt'n Corrupt | # 3709 | 2011-06-15, 17:07 | Report

Originally Posted by Slocan View Post

Most of the times, it's fine, but sometimes, I'd like to give priority to which app it closes. For example when playing a game, and then quickly going to check emails, or a website, I'd like to be sure that the game won't close up (haven't done too many experiments, but seems like sometimes it exits, sometimes it doesn't...). To really exit a program, you have to press the "back" button, so if you're 10 directories down in the file explorer, you have to press it 11 times. Not that big a deal, it's just a different way of doing things, but not sure it's in the right direction.

Very interesting...

The idea of persistence is something that the developer should bake into his/her app when focus is removed from the application via the Android activity event system. I believe the system automatically handles state saving if the OS needs the memory from the used App. I could be wrong about this.

It is possible to have the application reject these events and run wholly in the background as well, at the peril of being de-allocated should the system run out of memory. This is much more similar to a TL (Traditional Linux) implementation. Again, I could be wrong about this

.

I suspect that these problems are more due to improper handling by the developer, than the actual system, though I could be wrong.

In your very well atriculated case, I agree that the VERY explicit TL method of task management eliminates this issue altogether.

EDIT: Here is an article on Android multitasking for those that are interested:
http://android-developers.blogspot.c...droid-way.html

From The Article:

Originally Posted by

If a user later returns to an application that's been killed, Android needs a way to re-launch it in the same state as it was last seen, to preserve the "all applications are running all of the time" experience. This is done by keeping track of the parts of the application the user is aware of (the Activities), and re-starting them with information about the last state they were seen in. This last state is generated each time the user leaves that part of the application, not when it is killed, so that the kernel can later freely kill it without depending on the application to respond correctly at that point.

In some ways, Android's process management can be seen as a form of swap space: application processes represent a certain amount of in-use memory; when memory is low, some processes can be killed (swapped out); when those processes are needed again, they can be re-started from their last saved state (swapped in)

It seems that with correct use of Activities, Android apps don't need to worry about de-allocation, as the system takes care of this automatically.

Since games are written using JNI (Java Native Interface), I have serious doubts that they are capable of taking advantage of this state saving, though I could be wrong about this as well!

Last edited by Capt'n Corrupt; 2011-06-15 at 17:19.

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danramos | # 3710 | 2011-06-15, 20:32 | Report

Originally Posted by yorkey View Post

Ive tried the following my my keyboard dock...

Mouse : works even the wireless dongle one I tried works
keyboard : works was a cheap one I tried though so no extra buttons
MiFi : powered but cant see the "CD" drive with the software on or the micro SD slot
USB Flash Drives : not found one that doesnt work yet tried 4 of various ages
USB Hard drive: only got one and it usually needs power from two USB ports. But it works fine as well!

When I remember Ill try the USB DVD drive Ive got.

Only tricky thing to remember if the right mouse button is "Back" not menu!

Ooooh... THAT's one I'll be interested in seeing! DVD's! WHOO! I wonder if it can be made to boot OS's off of DVD's?

I wonder if a USB hub will affect it in any negative way? So much stuff I'd want to do with it.

Originally Posted by geneven View Post

Because it was mentioned here by danramos (curse you!), I recently became interested in the Entourage Edge PE or whatever it's called, the two-screened (eink and non eink) device and I bought one. The company went out of business almost the next day and a few days later closed their site. So the problem became how to communicate any more. We converged on the Mobilread site and at least we can talk to other losers there. That would be another option if this site closed, though I would prefer a low-censorship site, and whoever runs that one seems like a quick to stomp on forbidden commentary sort.

Oh God! Yeah! That was a one-day Woot deal! So it's as dead as a Maemo already?? Incredible... I was considering one of those. How hackable has it turned out? I remember reading that it was rooted and potentially pretty hackable. It so, it'd still be a worthwhile thing to buy dead manufacturer or not. I agree, though, I'd prefer a low-censorship site. I wonder if XDA would open up a forum for it if there were enough requests?

Originally Posted by Capt'n Corrupt View Post

That's awesome!

I must say, the Eee Pad Transformer is a contender. If I were looking for a 10"er it would be a close call between the Galaxy Tab and the Transformer. If I needed a keyboard dock, the transformer would win hands down.

What do you like most about the device?

If I didn't already have a Dell Mini and a Galaxy Tab, I would have DEFINITELY gotten one by now. On the other hand, that 10" size is just a smidge too big for portability. I can't stress that enough--clearly I can't say it enough times, too.

I love it otherwise. I would STILL get it if I knew that I could run a native Debian on it. Make it happen, Asus!

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