Posted in Uncategorized by Rohan Shravan on June 25, 2011
Greetings Everyone!
First an announcement:
Beansoft is a young, innovative software company. It’s main purpose is to make applications which optimizes the usability of mobile phones and tablets. Their goal is to meet the individual needs and wishes of as many customers as possible.
Last year, Beansoft launched a phone and tablet keyboard with a revolutionary new layout; a split keyboard which makes typing much easier on tablets and phones. By listening to its users Thumb Keyboard was further improved, leading to a complete, multifunctional and very flexible keyboard. Beansofts successful keyboard concept has rapidly become the example for other software and hardware companies and is becoming a new standard for the tablet.
Today Notion Ink is proud to announce its collaboration with Beansoft to release a Notion Ink Adam SE Thumb Keyboard. All users who upgrade their devices to next version will be able to use the trial version of the Thumb Keyboard.
Now some news on the sales:
We are opening sales now for our Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Russian customers. There will be one extra step for the Russians, since it is really complicated to ship anything to Russia. We would like to know what your preferred shipment mode is, and then calculate and inform you the time required to ship the products (The 2 widest parts in Russia are 5000 miles apart!) before you can click on the button “buy”.
Operations at Australian and German Service Centers have begun. Germany will also look after other European Countries from now on.
Indian customs fared better this time by releasing products faster. (If you have any issue in tracking your shipment, please write to support immediately).
Now let’s take a look at our new boot screen:
Honestly, the HC work is heavily inspired and built upon what the folks at TabletRoms have done. You will also find elements of BeastRom. What we know is that Honeycomb will not be released to the public. There is some work required before they can share it, and that is going to happen only when Ice-Cream Sandwich is out.
This means, that like theirs, even our work is in beta. What you will get is a fast and stable OS, and you should be able to enjoy all the apps. On Conclave, along with the image, we will also upload simple tips so that you can run your devices faster. However, those who want to enjoy pure GPS and the Camera, will have to be a little patient.
If you compare any Android tablet out there (doesn’t matter quad-core or even hexa-core if it exists) with the rival iPad, specially when you move stuff on the home screen (icons on iPad and widgets on HC), you will always find HC lagging. As the number of elements increase, or if you come back to the home screen after running even moderately memory intensive applications, you can see the shutters/lags in the movement. We have tried to delve deeper to understand why this happens, and it looks like as long as Garbage Collectors exists, this is going to be an issue (not touching the controversial topic of using the GPU for the UI). Garbage Collector’s can take anywhere between 7-500ms to do its work. We are expecting at-least 20 frames per second which means, you can loose upto 10 frames when we move things. This was one of the reason you could see the lag in the Eden UI Panels.
Today I hate Android (for its conflicting free nature) as much as I love it (again for its conflicting free nature). But if you have seen documentaries like Objectified you’d know that designing a good product involves doing extremely large number of simple things the right way, or simply put, in the details. Lets consider a case where you want to buy a DSLR. You would probably do a search for say “Canon vs Nikon”. However, in the tablet world today, there exist no 2 right comparisons, with one company or product leading everyone else combined. This must be changed. We are on it, we know what to do, but we also know that its going to be an extremely tough and brutal fight. We thank you for your support and hope that you enjoy this wonderful journey with us.
Funny that Notion Ink is finally saying what I have known for years. Garbage Collection (GC) causes latency issues, and latency matters to the user. 500 ms of GC is already unacceptable. 7 seconds is horrid. The current Dalivk GC is not appropriate for a tablet. The best Java GC I know of is made by http://www.atego.com/products/aonix-perc-ultra/ where they have spent tons of time and money getting GC right for these sorts of devices. There is a reason that iPhone does not use the objective-c garbage collection technology and this is it. Apple knows this and got it right. Google? Not so much.
why not go for meego,its open source and the community is very good and aslo since nokia showed their harmattan concept i am sure you can port your UI to meego,and because its not using any vm over the linux kernel the performance would be very good too.
but i dont think we’d be able to experience the nvidia monster if you do it but still seems a much better OS than android
Its been a long time since i posted anything here….
But that doesnt mean i stopped following it
I really appreciate everything Rohan and his team has managed to do
There were some occasions where i found Adam to lag behind others but with better software updates its working quite well now.
I am currently off to home on a vacation and with my HDMI cable, watching movies and playing games has been a delight.
I wish Adam has a better and superior screen in its next version, something like the super clear LCDs.
I have Samsung Wave II and i am really amazed by the in-built video player it has. Though it plays only avi, mkv, divx, mp4 and 3gp files, the most promising feature i found was its ability to play hi-def Blu-ray ripped videos without any lag which any player on android isnt capable of!!!
Also i really hope HC to work smooth. Lagging graphics doesnt look good even though you have the best software.
Getting ready for the update….Cheers!!
Yes Philip, it’s even later in Auckland, New Zealand. No updates at 7pm. But at 7.20 it’s streaming right in. Updates are great, however, being a layman I don’t expect miracles. I mean I can’t much work done without a keyboard dock. (I guess I have the world’s most expensive e-reader). As Shritosh said, the display has to be better, and no amount of software can do that. Right now, the saving grace, if you can call it that, is privacy, for even someone hugging you cannot see what you are seeing because of the limited viewing angles.
Today, I read a killer review of the Asus Transformer on My Next Thing. But all things aside, I like Rohan’s aggro and desire to take on Ping Guo (hehe showing off my limited Mandarin). It’s quite amazing what such a small team has achieved. Adam 2 has to come soon.
my impression is, that you started the Adam project to create a product, which was going to inspire its users, while the giants were still sleeping.
You tried very, very hard and you made incredible progress.
But now your headstart is gone and the giants are using their size stake out their claims, while they deliver products of vastly superior quality (I now also have an Asus Transformer with keyboard that I simply bought walking into a shop!).
You won’t be able to survive by making a commodity item: Inspiration, guts, talented and relatively cheap manpower alone won’t suffice.
But since that market of smart, mobile devices with the power of a ’80 super computer, a ’90 graphics workstation and a ’00 gamer’s desktop is *huge*, you can still aim at providing the best and only open platform for all these inspired enthusiasts out there, who want to use Adam (and it’s future brothers and sisters) to do things, the giants cannot or do not want to support.
The tablet is replacing the PC, but the PC isn’t a single thing. I believe it to be a multiverse of use cases and Adam may be the platform best suited to cover a large range of those.
Technically, the first thing I believe you should aim for is the ability to *multi-boot*.
We should be able to go forth and back between, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honey Comb, Ice Cream or even Ubuntu/GNOME QnX whatever by either choosing at boot time, or by putting in a different µSD card or even a USB stick.
Today switching from one to another is hours of work, even with Titanium Backup etc. And since none of the environment supports all my typical use cases and since it’s now more clear than ever that HC won’t be feature complete on the Adam, being able to make a quick choice at boot time is the minimum required to make the Adam useful. And by the time Ice cream is out, the Tegra 2 will be outdated.
Multi-boot is a great enabler for the Adam as the universal niche platform. Making the Adam modular (e.g. Tegra 3 MB replacement or the ability to swap the display with a high-res PQ or Liquivista panel, USB Ethernet and general device control) would add life, diversity and inspiration to the platform.
So Rohan, please stop reading, get to work on multi-boot!
(Got it done? Ok, so here is the rest of the story…)
I use HC 3.1 on my Transformer, I’ve HC14 on the Adam and went back to Eden-X with Launcher EX because I really wanted 3G network and GPS back. I use Gingerbread today on my Galaxy phone with TouchWiz, having faithfully followed the path from Eclair and Froyo. With only 384MB of RAM left after boot, I’m afraid my Galaxy S1 won’t make the transition to Ice Cream ever. I had this wonderful SPB 3D shell on it, which gives quite a bit of GPU assisted eye candy, but leaves little room for apps on top of the launcher.
So when it comes to the UI, I don’t really care that much about Android 2 vs 3: I can live with both, as long as the applications can mange the screen real estate properly (unfortunately many seem to only look at the major version). The Tegra 2 games don’t seem to care one way or another: They just use the OS as boot strap loader.
What’s more important are things like battery efficiency, device support and the ability to support my use cases.
The I really want Adam to deliver 16 hours of continuous e-reader use, while it should last at least for a week on stand-by.
Problems: The extra mono resolution isn’t used and turning into reflective mode doesn’t seem to add hours or days of use to a battery charge. It also eats through a fully charged battery in less than 24 hours while in stand-by, only. Air-plane mode, or not.
So display and battery are perhaps the most important: I really went for the PQ, because of the 3000×600 monochrome resolution and the extremely low energy consumption. I wanted a perfect e-book reader, that could also do many other things. I really want Adam to deliver 16 hours of continuous e-reader use, while it should last at least for a week on stand-by.
Problems: The extra mono resolution isn’t used and turning into reflective mode doesn’t seem to add hours or days of use to a battery charge. It also eats through a fully charged battery in less than 24 hours while in stand-by, only. Air-plane mode, or not.
The camera, on the other hand, has never impressed me and I tire easily filming with tablets. Extensive video conferencing might change that, but for me it’s not that hot at the moment.
GPS is difficult to judge: I won’t use Adam for navigation, but I do like using it for orientation, planning etc. If I could use my mobile phones sensor remotely just I use it on the Transformer for 3G tethering, loosing GPS with HC would be less of an issue. I could probably live best with having to switch the OS on the fly.
USB and HDMI: USB as storage interface works well enough. But there are two important stationary (rather than mobile) use cases that I want to be supported perfectly via these interfaces, and oddly enough they have nothing to do with the PQ display or with battery life
Desktop replacement and multi-media player:
For desktop replacement, I spend hours in front of the Adams, so I plug keyboard, mouse and an external big screen as well as the power supply. Perhaps a dock would be nice in the future, fewer plugs and a stable position of the Adam between the keyboard and the big screen would be nice.
The adam’s touch screen could add as an additional screen (active screen and touch pad, mouse only for big screen) or as a touch pad for the big screen (touch pad enabled, but scaled to big screen, screen off). Screen mirror isn’t an attractive desktop replacement scenario and already supported.
What I disliked with HC there is, that I can’t really have the full physical screen. What may turn out to be tricky with both versions of Android is full support of all mouse keys and wheels, as well as special keys and USB pass through. I also have no idea, how easy it will be for Citrix to support HDX with hardware accelleration (or whether CPU power might suffice). It’s both sad and irritating that Splashtop remote seems to be easier to use for playing video on the tablet than pass-through media.
For surfing, mailing and some productivity apps, the Adam on its own might go a long way, but I really want it to support Citrix/RDP/Nomachine NX/VNC perfectly so I can keep my desktop completely free of anything that produces heat, noise or has moving parts (apart from myself). Ethernet support either directly or via USB would really help cutting down on latencies and WIFI overcrowding.
At the moment I am having huge problems getting anything useful from the HDMI connector. I don’t have a native HDMI screen, only DVI screens reaching from 1920×1200 to 1280×1024 (and 1680×1050 in between). I can’t get anything but a 1024×600 mirror on any of them and apart from resolution underuse I am having funny effects with mouse cursors being scaled wrong on the big screen (need to look at the Adam to point and click correctly).
When it comes to multi-media all Androids are currently a huge disappointment.
Whether that’s a problem with the OS, the applications or both is difficult to tell for me. And I don’t quite know, how it would best be cured.
From what I understand Android delivers a multi-media base, as does Nvidia for the Tegra. And then there are applications like the Mobo Player, which fix quite a few problems, but at the CPU level, without GPU support.
I have plenty of problems regarding file containers. MP3 files that won’t play on any Android devices, while that have been running for ages on MP3 players, DVD players, PCs, Symbian phones and everything else. After months of on and off searching I found tags indicating a WAV format in the MP3 header to be the problem that only Android had. With AVIs, MP4, M4V, MKV etc. again there is tons of different problems and then codec and performance issues beyond that.
While Google is to be applauded for trying to provide the richest functional base, deficits in that base make it very difficult to make it work
With Android 2.x development effectively stopping and Android 3.x reduced to hacking Tegra cousins I simply don’t know, which way to lean. Again, the ability to multi-boot very different ROMs may help and I don’t mind to plug the multi-media USB root into the Adam, when I hook it up to external power, the big screen and the stereo for watching a movie.
When I look at what Archos (a very interesting French company pushing the multi-media angle of Android) is doing, it’s quite clear that supporting 1920x1080p at high profiles may require a little more CPU power than the Tegra 2 can deliver at 1 GHz (they use a dual core TI OMAP @ 1.5GHz, put perhaps no GPU accelleration). But overclocking Tegra’s seems to be more of a battery than a reliability issue, so either that or some a native GPU accellerated app could do the job, but require to implement all file container handling at the application level.
I have never looked deeply, but from the comments I keep seeing, this whole business of multi-media and graphics stack in Android and lacking GPU accelleration interfaces is a big problem, that will take longer to sort out, than it takes to push new hardware generations out the door. So while we have all that wonderful GPU power, everybody resorts to plain old CPU power, because that’s the only thing that works and is soon to be had in abundance (quad cores in summer, octo-cores in winter, 80 cores in 2014?).
Since CIFS/SMB hacks seem to be common place, all the current issues of MP4 (and others) being “streamable” or having to be “cached”(copied over) would go away. And while I never had the patience to wait for “caching” to complete, I still fail to see how it would fit a 10GB file into a FAT32 file system.
Have you folks who are looking to buy a different brand looked at the Toshiba Thrive — 3.1, full usb and sd, plus removable battery. Only thing missing for me is pixel q. I plan to take a good look at it.
Looks like Notion Ink is going thru some tough situations with all the Honeycomb mess….looks like we wanted to suck honey, but got stuck in the comb without getting any honey.
The new boot screen looks cool, but I dont understand the value add. I liked the simple black& white adam loading screen better…less clutter.
Not an encouraging sentence in the post when the USP of the device was the GPS. “However, those who want to enjoy pure GPS and the Camera, will have to be a little patient.”
well, with 2 machines, I’m still holding my guns. Getting tempted to root, but still have not done it, waiting for the new ROM update from you guys!
@bikramdas: I am in the same boat: tempted to root, but still have not done it.
Expecting guide-lines from NI on how to get the most out of their device in a secure way.
So what your saying is this a hacked version of HoneyComb, with most of the functionality not working, thrown together by some hackers after some contest on tablet roms. Rather than the official version which lot of the other tablets are offering right out of the box.
well to be honest, if i spend lots of my hard earned money on a tablet, i want the OS to be proper from day one, not jump through hoops of fire trying to install hacked stuff and then on top of that having to hunt down apps that I want. That too HC with features not working. What about 3.1 3.2 updates and will icecream actually come. The way I see it this is a way Google is unfragmenting it’s fragmentation problem with android and unifying everything with quality products. I guess ill have to go in for the Samsung or the Transformer. Especially if I plan on being a serious app/game developer in the future for honeycomb.
well i completely understand your frustration but i say just make the best of it and wait or buy into another tablet…im looking into some others but to be honest im enjoying this experience of watching the Adam grow…while others are not as optimistic but i do understand some people are just tired of waiting
Can we buy the app after the trial period through the android market?
Please allow access to the forum to people who don’t use facebook
Any news about genesis?
love the way you are posting now…as it used to be few months ago..in between you just seem to be lost somewhere..:) honestly google stand on HC or on android is really frustrating … not only for coming up company like NI but also for users … i remember once you said in your post future computing will merge into having only browser ..so how about NI THINKING seriously on these line..
also seriously is it possible too port LINUX on ADAM …any hint ….:D
Thanks for the update, I too have grown tired of Android. Not only is the performance sub par but the quality of apps is quite bad. It looks like nvidia is working on linux again and I request that Notion Ink look into Ubuntu with the new Untiy interface. I remember when the adam was being being introduced there was talk about ubuntu. Just want to put it out there.
Love getting your updates NI. Keep up the good fight and being open about issues and the community will be happy to support you guys! Looking forward to the 27th!
“those who want to enjoy pure GPS and the Camera” …This gives hope that GPS and the Camera (two of the big spec embarrassments) will finally work well.
@levpius: so nice to see that for you a glass is never half empty, it is always half full
Nevertheless, I do agree with you. Rohan’s remark seems to indicate that the hardware is ok, it is just the software that needs to (and can) be improved
Funny that Notion Ink is finally saying what I have known for years. Garbage Collection (GC) causes latency issues, and latency matters to the user. 500 ms of GC is already unacceptable. 7 seconds is horrid. The current Dalivk GC is not appropriate for a tablet. The best Java GC I know of is made by http://www.atego.com/products/aonix-perc-ultra/ where they have spent tons of time and money getting GC right for these sorts of devices. There is a reason that iPhone does not use the objective-c garbage collection technology and this is it. Apple knows this and got it right. Google? Not so much.
why not go for meego,its open source and the community is very good and aslo since nokia showed their harmattan concept i am sure you can port your UI to meego,and because its not using any vm over the linux kernel the performance would be very good too.
but i dont think we’d be able to experience the nvidia monster if you do it but still seems a much better OS than android
really cool
Cool, nothing changed here. Only positive post are show, negative are delete !
no news on HC update yet…?? its 27th Rohan.. i wanna hear about it..whats going on??
Its been a long time since i posted anything here….
But that doesnt mean i stopped following it
I really appreciate everything Rohan and his team has managed to do
There were some occasions where i found Adam to lag behind others but with better software updates its working quite well now.
I am currently off to home on a vacation and with my HDMI cable, watching movies and playing games has been a delight.
I wish Adam has a better and superior screen in its next version, something like the super clear LCDs.
I have Samsung Wave II and i am really amazed by the in-built video player it has. Though it plays only avi, mkv, divx, mp4 and 3gp files, the most promising feature i found was its ability to play hi-def Blu-ray ripped videos without any lag which any player on android isnt capable of!!!
Also i really hope HC to work smooth. Lagging graphics doesnt look good even though you have the best software.
Getting ready for the update….Cheers!!
Anyone know what the SE stands for in “Notion Ink Adam SE Thumb Keyboard”?
Standard Edition would be my guess
Maybe Special Edition?
Thought it meant Second Edition, Windows 98 Second Edition before the Full or Final Edition of Windows 98.
SE = Special Edition
Umm *cough* Rohan?
Its the 27th over here in Australia.
In fact, its already the afternoon.
Waitin for some of that sweet sweet honeycomb.
going by pat release …. the release happens after 6pm IST .
Yes Philip, it’s even later in Auckland, New Zealand. No updates at 7pm. But at 7.20 it’s streaming right in. Updates are great, however, being a layman I don’t expect miracles. I mean I can’t much work done without a keyboard dock. (I guess I have the world’s most expensive e-reader). As Shritosh said, the display has to be better, and no amount of software can do that. Right now, the saving grace, if you can call it that, is privacy, for even someone hugging you cannot see what you are seeing because of the limited viewing angles.
Today, I read a killer review of the Asus Transformer on My Next Thing. But all things aside, I like Rohan’s aggro and desire to take on Ping Guo (hehe showing off my limited Mandarin). It’s quite amazing what such a small team has achieved. Adam 2 has to come soon.
Rats! That was some other update! So I’ll have to wait until tomorrow then.
Any idea what time the update will be up?
Rohan,
my impression is, that you started the Adam project to create a product, which was going to inspire its users, while the giants were still sleeping.
You tried very, very hard and you made incredible progress.
But now your headstart is gone and the giants are using their size stake out their claims, while they deliver products of vastly superior quality (I now also have an Asus Transformer with keyboard that I simply bought walking into a shop!).
You won’t be able to survive by making a commodity item: Inspiration, guts, talented and relatively cheap manpower alone won’t suffice.
But since that market of smart, mobile devices with the power of a ’80 super computer, a ’90 graphics workstation and a ’00 gamer’s desktop is *huge*, you can still aim at providing the best and only open platform for all these inspired enthusiasts out there, who want to use Adam (and it’s future brothers and sisters) to do things, the giants cannot or do not want to support.
The tablet is replacing the PC, but the PC isn’t a single thing. I believe it to be a multiverse of use cases and Adam may be the platform best suited to cover a large range of those.
Technically, the first thing I believe you should aim for is the ability to *multi-boot*.
We should be able to go forth and back between, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honey Comb, Ice Cream or even Ubuntu/GNOME QnX whatever by either choosing at boot time, or by putting in a different µSD card or even a USB stick.
Today switching from one to another is hours of work, even with Titanium Backup etc. And since none of the environment supports all my typical use cases and since it’s now more clear than ever that HC won’t be feature complete on the Adam, being able to make a quick choice at boot time is the minimum required to make the Adam useful. And by the time Ice cream is out, the Tegra 2 will be outdated.
Multi-boot is a great enabler for the Adam as the universal niche platform. Making the Adam modular (e.g. Tegra 3 MB replacement or the ability to swap the display with a high-res PQ or Liquivista panel, USB Ethernet and general device control) would add life, diversity and inspiration to the platform.
So Rohan, please stop reading, get to work on multi-boot!
(Got it done? Ok, so here is the rest of the story…)
I use HC 3.1 on my Transformer, I’ve HC14 on the Adam and went back to Eden-X with Launcher EX because I really wanted 3G network and GPS back. I use Gingerbread today on my Galaxy phone with TouchWiz, having faithfully followed the path from Eclair and Froyo. With only 384MB of RAM left after boot, I’m afraid my Galaxy S1 won’t make the transition to Ice Cream ever. I had this wonderful SPB 3D shell on it, which gives quite a bit of GPU assisted eye candy, but leaves little room for apps on top of the launcher.
So when it comes to the UI, I don’t really care that much about Android 2 vs 3: I can live with both, as long as the applications can mange the screen real estate properly (unfortunately many seem to only look at the major version). The Tegra 2 games don’t seem to care one way or another: They just use the OS as boot strap loader.
What’s more important are things like battery efficiency, device support and the ability to support my use cases.
The I really want Adam to deliver 16 hours of continuous e-reader use, while it should last at least for a week on stand-by.
Problems: The extra mono resolution isn’t used and turning into reflective mode doesn’t seem to add hours or days of use to a battery charge. It also eats through a fully charged battery in less than 24 hours while in stand-by, only. Air-plane mode, or not.
So display and battery are perhaps the most important: I really went for the PQ, because of the 3000×600 monochrome resolution and the extremely low energy consumption. I wanted a perfect e-book reader, that could also do many other things. I really want Adam to deliver 16 hours of continuous e-reader use, while it should last at least for a week on stand-by.
Problems: The extra mono resolution isn’t used and turning into reflective mode doesn’t seem to add hours or days of use to a battery charge. It also eats through a fully charged battery in less than 24 hours while in stand-by, only. Air-plane mode, or not.
The camera, on the other hand, has never impressed me and I tire easily filming with tablets. Extensive video conferencing might change that, but for me it’s not that hot at the moment.
GPS is difficult to judge: I won’t use Adam for navigation, but I do like using it for orientation, planning etc. If I could use my mobile phones sensor remotely just I use it on the Transformer for 3G tethering, loosing GPS with HC would be less of an issue. I could probably live best with having to switch the OS on the fly.
USB and HDMI: USB as storage interface works well enough. But there are two important stationary (rather than mobile) use cases that I want to be supported perfectly via these interfaces, and oddly enough they have nothing to do with the PQ display or with battery life
Desktop replacement and multi-media player:
For desktop replacement, I spend hours in front of the Adams, so I plug keyboard, mouse and an external big screen as well as the power supply. Perhaps a dock would be nice in the future, fewer plugs and a stable position of the Adam between the keyboard and the big screen would be nice.
The adam’s touch screen could add as an additional screen (active screen and touch pad, mouse only for big screen) or as a touch pad for the big screen (touch pad enabled, but scaled to big screen, screen off). Screen mirror isn’t an attractive desktop replacement scenario and already supported.
What I disliked with HC there is, that I can’t really have the full physical screen. What may turn out to be tricky with both versions of Android is full support of all mouse keys and wheels, as well as special keys and USB pass through. I also have no idea, how easy it will be for Citrix to support HDX with hardware accelleration (or whether CPU power might suffice). It’s both sad and irritating that Splashtop remote seems to be easier to use for playing video on the tablet than pass-through media.
For surfing, mailing and some productivity apps, the Adam on its own might go a long way, but I really want it to support Citrix/RDP/Nomachine NX/VNC perfectly so I can keep my desktop completely free of anything that produces heat, noise or has moving parts (apart from myself). Ethernet support either directly or via USB would really help cutting down on latencies and WIFI overcrowding.
At the moment I am having huge problems getting anything useful from the HDMI connector. I don’t have a native HDMI screen, only DVI screens reaching from 1920×1200 to 1280×1024 (and 1680×1050 in between). I can’t get anything but a 1024×600 mirror on any of them and apart from resolution underuse I am having funny effects with mouse cursors being scaled wrong on the big screen (need to look at the Adam to point and click correctly).
When it comes to multi-media all Androids are currently a huge disappointment.
Whether that’s a problem with the OS, the applications or both is difficult to tell for me. And I don’t quite know, how it would best be cured.
From what I understand Android delivers a multi-media base, as does Nvidia for the Tegra. And then there are applications like the Mobo Player, which fix quite a few problems, but at the CPU level, without GPU support.
I have plenty of problems regarding file containers. MP3 files that won’t play on any Android devices, while that have been running for ages on MP3 players, DVD players, PCs, Symbian phones and everything else. After months of on and off searching I found tags indicating a WAV format in the MP3 header to be the problem that only Android had. With AVIs, MP4, M4V, MKV etc. again there is tons of different problems and then codec and performance issues beyond that.
While Google is to be applauded for trying to provide the richest functional base, deficits in that base make it very difficult to make it work
With Android 2.x development effectively stopping and Android 3.x reduced to hacking Tegra cousins I simply don’t know, which way to lean. Again, the ability to multi-boot very different ROMs may help and I don’t mind to plug the multi-media USB root into the Adam, when I hook it up to external power, the big screen and the stereo for watching a movie.
When I look at what Archos (a very interesting French company pushing the multi-media angle of Android) is doing, it’s quite clear that supporting 1920x1080p at high profiles may require a little more CPU power than the Tegra 2 can deliver at 1 GHz (they use a dual core TI OMAP @ 1.5GHz, put perhaps no GPU accelleration). But overclocking Tegra’s seems to be more of a battery than a reliability issue, so either that or some a native GPU accellerated app could do the job, but require to implement all file container handling at the application level.
I have never looked deeply, but from the comments I keep seeing, this whole business of multi-media and graphics stack in Android and lacking GPU accelleration interfaces is a big problem, that will take longer to sort out, than it takes to push new hardware generations out the door. So while we have all that wonderful GPU power, everybody resorts to plain old CPU power, because that’s the only thing that works and is soon to be had in abundance (quad cores in summer, octo-cores in winter, 80 cores in 2014?).
Since CIFS/SMB hacks seem to be common place, all the current issues of MP4 (and others) being “streamable” or having to be “cached”(copied over) would go away. And while I never had the patience to wait for “caching” to complete, I still fail to see how it would fit a 10GB file into a FAT32 file system.
@abufrejoval: thanks for the comprehensive, thoughtful, overview.
Any good news on June 30 about ebooks?
Have you folks who are looking to buy a different brand looked at the Toshiba Thrive — 3.1, full usb and sd, plus removable battery. Only thing missing for me is pixel q. I plan to take a good look at it.
I think a lot of people are being to hard on Rohan.
Google is the one who changed the game,He seems to be doing his best to get around them.
@tafilad: I think so as well. However it is difficult to see the realization of a dream postponed, so we expect miracles from the IIT-brains
Looks like Notion Ink is going thru some tough situations with all the Honeycomb mess….looks like we wanted to suck honey, but got stuck in the comb without getting any honey.
The new boot screen looks cool, but I dont understand the value add. I liked the simple black& white adam loading screen better…less clutter.
Not an encouraging sentence in the post when the USP of the device was the GPS. “However, those who want to enjoy pure GPS and the Camera, will have to be a little patient.”
well, with 2 machines, I’m still holding my guns. Getting tempted to root, but still have not done it, waiting for the new ROM update from you guys!
@bikramdas: I am in the same boat: tempted to root, but still have not done it.
Expecting guide-lines from NI on how to get the most out of their device in a secure way.
So what your saying is this a hacked version of HoneyComb, with most of the functionality not working, thrown together by some hackers after some contest on tablet roms. Rather than the official version which lot of the other tablets are offering right out of the box.
Well since you seem to have a better idea besides buying another tablet please let us know
although i do agree that they shouldnt have tried to copy HC and just went with something else
well what do you expect them to do?
sorry for the double post pc turned off lol
well to be honest, if i spend lots of my hard earned money on a tablet, i want the OS to be proper from day one, not jump through hoops of fire trying to install hacked stuff and then on top of that having to hunt down apps that I want. That too HC with features not working. What about 3.1 3.2 updates and will icecream actually come. The way I see it this is a way Google is unfragmenting it’s fragmentation problem with android and unifying everything with quality products. I guess ill have to go in for the Samsung or the Transformer. Especially if I plan on being a serious app/game developer in the future for honeycomb.
well i completely understand your frustration but i say just make the best of it and wait or buy into another tablet…im looking into some others but to be honest im enjoying this experience of watching the Adam grow…while others are not as optimistic but i do understand some people are just tired of waiting
With HC being a beta, I think I’ll stick with Eden 1.5. I just wish I could OTA upgrade from my 300511 to 080611.
@Rohan
Can you answer the question to the problem we’re having?
So what happens if we get the OTA update to HC beta without having 080611 installed?
Does the HC update include the 080611 portion of the code?
How many adam owners still have 300511 and are told we have the latest update?
Someone suggested l download the 080611 from Conclave which l have done but have not installed it.
Can we buy the app after the trial period through the android market?
Please allow access to the forum to people who don’t use facebook
Any news about genesis?
@luis: +1 on the forum. That would also move some of the comments and questions from the blog to the forum where they can be better dealt with.
Genesis??? Wasn’t that something from before Adam was created
?
Nice update Rohan. Deeply appreciate your work.
New boot screen is super cool!
love the way you are posting now…as it used to be few months ago..in between you just seem to be lost somewhere..:) honestly google stand on HC or on android is really frustrating … not only for coming up company like NI but also for users … i remember once you said in your post future computing will merge into having only browser ..so how about NI THINKING seriously on these line..
also seriously is it possible too port LINUX on ADAM …any hint ….:D
Chrome OS is out recently. It can replace a netbook but not a full fledged apps (at least not in the next yr or so)
appreciate the honesty rohan and the boot screen looks super…what about service centers in india though??…do we just barge into the Bangalore office
Thanks for the update, I too have grown tired of Android. Not only is the performance sub par but the quality of apps is quite bad. It looks like nvidia is working on linux again and I request that Notion Ink look into Ubuntu with the new Untiy interface. I remember when the adam was being being introduced there was talk about ubuntu. Just want to put it out there.
Love getting your updates NI. Keep up the good fight and being open about issues and the community will be happy to support you guys! Looking forward to the 27th!
“those who want to enjoy pure GPS and the Camera” …This gives hope that GPS and the Camera (two of the big spec embarrassments) will finally work well.
@levpius: so nice to see that for you a glass is never half empty, it is always half full
Nevertheless, I do agree with you. Rohan’s remark seems to indicate that the hardware is ok, it is just the software that needs to (and can) be improved