Develop Bugs

Blue Angel vs Alpine

Hi,
I'm looking for a stable PPC Phone and have narrowed my choices down to the XDA IIi (Alpine) and IIs (Blue Angel).
I'm currently leaning towards the XDA IIs as it seems to have a stronger user base, has an inbuilt keyboard and almost all the features of the IIi - the IIi's 1.3MP camera is a non issue for me, IIi's BT 1.2 is only a revised implementation to prevent inteference with Wi-Fi networks, both have 128MB RAM, ROM size is irrelevant taking into account the prices of 2GB SD cards today. The 520Mhz (IIi/Alpine) vs 400Mhz (IIs/Blue Angel) clock speeds is the only disconcerting factor - I've read reviews that vouch this difference is not noticeable in general usage of the device, but can affect gaming/video playback.
I need some reassurance if the XDA IIs' PXA263 400Mhz CPU can adequately handle video playback of networked video files over Wi-Fi with TCPMP -- not re-encoded files, but High quality 1500Kbps 6xx * 4xx resolution XVIDs with AC3/MP3 audio. According to this link on TCPMP's webpage - http://blogs.shintak.info/articles/11359.aspx - Blue Angel devices don't seem very capable at handling very high quality XVID/DIVXs...?
If anyone is currently using the IIs/PDA2K and TCPMP with HQ XVID/DIVX please share your experiences as this feature is particularly important to me. In fact the large 3.5" screen size on the IIi/IIs is the only reason that I'm not considering the newer Atom/Prophet/Wizard platforms!!
Thanks,
Vin

For a small amount of money i have over-clocked my XDAIIi to 663Mhz using XCPUscalar, very nice! It's about 30% faster, I use very high quality AVI files. I would assume you can do the same for the IIs but not quite the 663, 30% on 400Mhz maybe?

The IIs will over clock upto a maximum of 472MHz using the XCPUscaler, the big benefit in using this application (to me) is when on auto scale with CPU load, quite often it will slow the unit down reducing the battery power and therefore extending the battery usage, not many applications need full power all the time.
As for the inbuilt keyboard, I tried it for a couple of days then gave up - buttons too small to be of practical use IMHO.
Never tried video over a wifi connection but the device will quite easily play back video from the memory card - Mike

mikealder said:
The IIs will over clock upto a maximum of 472MHz using the XCPUscaler
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
really? mine is running fine @ 597mhz

great, so the IIs can be overclocked for gaming/video playback!
but have you actually tried to watch a high resolution, 1000+kbps DIVX/XVID file over a WiFi connection? I really need to know if this is possible, because if i have to manually copy videos to the SDcard and/or re-encode videos then I'm better served by my PSP with its 4.2inch screen!
And if wireless/hassle free movie watching if taken out of the equation, i'm not going to buy a IIi/IIs today - i'd rather get a Eten M600 (Atom clone) or the HTC Wizard (imate K-Jam/XDA Mini S)...

mikealder said:
The IIs will over clock upto a maximum of 472MHz using the XCPUscaler, the big benefit in using this application (to me) is when on auto scale with CPU load, quite often it will slow the unit down reducing the battery power and therefore extending the battery usage, not many applications need full power all the time.
As for the inbuilt keyboard, I tried it for a couple of days then gave up - buttons too small to be of practical use IMHO.
Never tried video over a wifi connection but the device will quite easily play back video from the memory card - Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have overclocked mine to 600+ mhz.

Lumia 900 Review Thread

Rate the phone 1-5 on-
Battery Life
Speed
Performence
Build quality
Overall
And tell pros and cons

Battery Life - 4
Speed -5
Performance - 4.5
Build quality - 6
Overall - 4.5

jallenashley: Same here. Ditto
Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

Battery Life 4
Speed 5
Performence 5
Build quality 4
Overall 4.5
Battery Life - I gave this a four even though the phone is perfect for my needs and it does something I couldn't get out of any android phone, battery life that is proportionate to my usage... e.g. light usage = long life vs heavy usage = short life - this operation makes sense to me yet any android phone I had seemed to start like this but shortly afterward (even after a reset and removal of "unneeded" apps) it would never be the same. So I gave it a four because it could always be better .
Speed - this is a five for me but it's all relative to the OS, much why I think it's pointless to compare hardware specs of WP to Android/iOS, this same phone with Android on it would suck.
Build Quality - Overall I'm satisfied with the build quality, there are little tiny things that are way to small to pick on especially when you factor in the price, can't be beat.
Overall - if you aren't someone to get caught up in raw numbers but instead actual functionality and it's reaction to real world usage you can't go wrong with the Lumia 900. I will say, however, that I think in order to fully appreciate what Microsoft is attempting with their OS you really need to give yourself over to their ecosystem.
I have long been riding the Google train and the only thing I didn't give up was the mail mainly because I have wayyy wayyy way to much connected to it, but I did move to Live services where I could to get the most seamless experience.
A lot of people will be unwilling to give a seamless Microsoft ecosystem experience a chance but it's a very nice, the calendar, twitter/facebook integration, unified mailbox & contacts, local scout, skydrive, office, games, music (Zune Pass ftw) and one of my favorite unhyped aspects... Podcasts!!
As an HTC&Android pair fanboy, (I'll admit it), I always loved the functionality of Sense but I hated the space it used up on my brand new hardware and I hated how it slowed down the phone after I've added my own personal app collection into the mix... with WP Microsoft has somehow managed to add in all of my favorite HTC Sense functionality and absolutely zero of the slowness.
Ok enough praise and onto my cons list...
1) I love and hate it, single volume control for the whole phone. The funniest part about this is I hated volume control on Android... too many options and half the time when listening music with headphones and I'd get a call, unplug my phones, talk and then hang up and then BOOM music on full blast through the speakphone ... not the best thing a the work environment.
2) No Pure silent mode, not vibrate only... nothing... no noise (I need this Microsoft!)
3) Calender functionality is lacking, I don't like having to resort to using live.calendar.com on my home pc to input a tricking re-occuring scheduled item on my calendar... the one on my phone should have all the pulldown options for re-occuring schedules. Although I will mention that this is the only thing I've found I have to use a home pc for.
4) No custom wallpaper (non-lockscreen), this isn't a biggie for me but would be nice to have the option, I know that black is better for AMOLED screens but that should be a choice I can make (they do allow pure white afterall).
Sorry for the long post, hope this was an entertaining/good read for some/all... I know some of this blurs the line of actual phone and the OS on the phone, but I think some of the things Nokia could've helped with.

xyexz said:
.
2) No Pure silent mode, not vibrate only... nothing... no noise (I need this Microsoft!)
QUOTE]
If you turn off Vibrate in teh settings, the option will not be available when touch the Volume button then touch ring. Instead of Vibrate, it will say, Silent.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Good to know, thanks!

EclipzeRemix said:
Rate the phone 1-5 on-
Battery Life
Speed
Performence
Build quality
Overall
And tell pros and cons
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery Life - 4/5
Speed - 4/5
Performance - 5/5
Build quality -4.5/5
Overall - 4.5/5
Good overall phone. Can tell its single core once in a while (came from a Tegra2 device), but overall very responsive, GREAT GREAT GREAT camera & screen, great OS, a few bugs here & there. Oh and the battery life was much better than my Atrix 4G.

What would you change in Blue Angel?

I think that "our" HTC Blue Angel is a great device, but you know-nothing is perfect
Type maximum three thing you would like to change
A bit bigger resolution (many websites are too big, you need to scroll much)
CPU compatible with ARMv6 or newer, with hardware FPU
More powerful battery (I only have 1490mAh, bigger are very expensive&rare in Poland, so I don't know how long it last on bigger battery)

Apart from what you said, a camera with higher resolution would be good. Battery is great enough for me already.

camera and 3g

The nand chip for more internal storage

miki100 said:
I think that "our" HTC Blue Angel is a great device, but you know-nothing is perfect
Type maximum three thing you would like to change
A bit bigger resolution (many websites are too big, you need to scroll much)
CPU compatible with ARMv6 or newer, with hardware FPU
More powerful battery (I only have 1490mAh, bigger are very expensive&rare in Poland, so I don't know how long it last on bigger battery)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I use a 2600 mAh battery. It's a bit bigger than oem but the performance is amazing. I paied around 10€.
greez

Undervolting & Overclocking and its effects

This a copy of a post from a chip designer, Vikas Mishra, of some 14 years, who has posted this on the Dorimanx xda thread but his statements apply to all kernels.
I think, with his credentials, it is well worth reading this as it explains why u/v'ing and o/c'ing are not necessarily good things and also why one person may, or may not, find a particular kernel/settings are good/bad for their phone/chip...
"Hello people.
Let me introduce myself - my name is Vikas Mishra and I am a chip designer by profession. .
I have worked on critical parts of design of TI OMAP4, OMAP5, Nvidia Tegra 3 etc and have been doing this for the last 14 years.
Of late - I have seen a lot of folks posting BUGS about undervolting of the GPU/CPU.
I think I can explain what are the possible issues with undervolting/overclocking in a laymans language.
It is a little long winded but I think the length is needed for providing the appropriate context.
* What is inside your Cellphone
Your cellphone is an amazing device. It is a full fledged computer
that fits into your pocket. They have all the standard components
that a computer has - except that they are all usually soldered on
the motherboard directly and are not meant to be user-servicable.
The chief components inside your cellphone are
1. Application Processor (AP)- this is the heart of a modern
cellphone. These are manufactured by many companies - the main
ones are Qualcomm, Nvidia, Samsung and Apple. The other not so
well known ones are made by Texas Instruments, ST Ericsson,
Marvell and Broadcom.
A modern AP has logic to control the camera and process the image
that it generates, to do video encoding (video recording) and
video decoding (movie watching), Audio processor etc. in addition
to the well known CPU and GPU.
2. Power Management Controller - This is the chip that is
responsible for generating and regulating the voltages that are
used by all the components on the board.
3. DRAM - not very different from the DRAM found on a PC (except
that it is lower voltage)
4. Flash - for storage
5. Touchscreen controller
6. Logic for microphone, speaker
7. Battery
One of the most complex piece of circuitry on the phone is the AP
and the power management controller.
* Circuit Basics
A modern AP has millions of circuit units called (Flip
Flops). These flip flops have two parameters associated with them
called Setup time and Hold time. More details on what a flip flop
can be found on the wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics) . This is a
nice bit of bedside reading if you are interested.
A setup time roughly indicates what frequency you can run a design
or an AP at before it becomes unstable.
A hold time roughly indicates the maximum voltage till which a
design is stable.
A fully technical analysis of what is involved in these timing
parameters requires a degree in electrical engineering but in broad
terms the problem is described below.
Chip designers diligently ensure that all of the millions of the
flip flops in a chip meet the setup and hold time across a broad
range of voltages and silicon parameters. They do a pessimistic
analysis to ensure that a chip will run reliably across a wide
range of voltage/frequency combinations.
However, contrary to the popular belief, chips vary widely in their
silicon parameters. Even chips on a the same wafer and different
flip-flops within the same chip can have widely different silicon
parameters. This is why what works on one particular chip will not
work on the other chip.
Your silicon manufacturer provides a range of voltages and
frequencies across which the device can work reliably. The phone
manufacturer will further narrow down the range depending on the
other components they choose within the phone board.
* How does voltage affect the design
Reducing voltage makes the design slower and increasing voltage
makes the design faster.
So can I keep on increasing the voltage for ever and make the
circuit faster and faster. The answer is no - a point will come when
the circuit will become unreliable. This becomes unreliable because
the "hold time" of one or more of the flops will start
violating.
As you reduce the voltage of the design, the circuit will start
becoming slower. However typically it will continue to work till at
apoint it starts failing - this failure occurs due to violation of
"setup time" of one or more flops in the design.
So what happens when the setup time or the hold time of a design
fails - the answer is that it is unpredictable. Meaning suddenly if
you ask the processor what is the value of 2+2, the answer it will
provide could be unreliable - in some cases it could be 3, in some
cases it could be 4 in some cases it could be -2349783297 (a random number).
I am of course oversimplifying but I hope you get the picture.
* How does undervolting affect your phone processor
The reason undervolting is so appealing to people because they
thing that undervolting will save power and improve battery
life. While this is true in theory, in practice there is a caveat.
It will reduce the power of the chip, but the power consumed by the
phone as a whole will not improve. In some cases in fact it can
deteriorate. Let me explain.
The most power hungry part in the phone is not the AP - it is the
LCD screen. All of these screens consume a ton of power. So even
though your AP is now consuming lesser power, the overall impact to
the phone as a whole is not that much.
If you accompany undervolting with a frequency reduction (which you
should), the total time taken for doing a web page rendering (for
example) would increase. During this time the screen is on and it
has more than compensated for the power that you saved in the
AP.
You could of course come up with examples where this wouldn't
happen - but on a whole, IMHO, you should leave the voltage of the
AP/GPU/CPU to the guys who know the system best - the guys who
designed the chip and people who manufactured it.
* How does overvolting/overclocking affect your phone processor
If you want that last drop of performance from your phone and you
over clock it, at a point some of the design flops will start
violating the hold time and the design will stop working reliably.
Again, in some anecdotal cases this would work - but this is not a
reliable means/mode of working. Just because your friend's or your
first cousin's girlfriend's phone works - doesn't mean yours will
work as well.
* What are the user observable impacts of undervolting/overclocking?
It is hard to say - simply because there are so many of flops in
the design.
In some cases - you wouldn't see anything wrong with the phone
until one day you do. In some cases it will result in a SOD
immediately. In some cases it will result in your phone not waking
up reliably.
IMHO the risks of issues with undervolting/overclocking far
outweighthe potential gains you may get out of it. Usually there
is no lasting damage to the phone/AP if you overlock/undervolt but
it is possible to do it. For example, You run the phone at such a
high frequency that the chip temperature becomes more than what it
was designed for and the Silicon just fails.
So "Just say No" . Don't overclock or undervolt your phone -
leave it to the guys who really understand what they are doing.
>>≥>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I'm curious on what you guys think about all of this.
As for me I currently have a need for undervolting with heat issues. So I'll just take this with a grain of salt.
AT&T SGS3 Marble White
Team AoCP 4.6 The Collective ROM
Medical Marijuana Supporter

Dude knows what he's talking about. However...
Most of what he wrote pertains mostly to the extreme ends of the OC/UV spectrum. I didn't see much that suggested that light OC/UV has any potential risk, and it shouldn't: phone processors are generally underclocked to start with for battery, stability, or reliability reasons; processors voltages are selected with a certain tolerance for material defects that require higher voltage. For the most part, practical limits and common sense keep us from undervolting a processor until it won't boot, or overclocking until the battery explodes.
The post is definitely worth reading and should be enlightening for many readers. It should be taken with a grain of salt though: IIRC our processors are supposed to run stably at 1.7GHz @ 1050mV (I have no idea where my citation for this went, so consider it to be completely made up ), but we don't run them like that.
He glossed over an interesting point: underclocking and/or running a conservative governor might draw more power by keeping the screen on while execution is happening. It's an interesting consideration that would have countered his other points if fully explored. I see a lot of people posting that their 2.1GHz overclock still manages to get great battery life, and I can't help but wonder whether having the extra grunt when needed is working to their advantage. I'm totally off-topic though, so I'll shut up.

His priorities are all off. He is looking at it as a hardware engineer and not a user. All we are worried about is extra performance, enough stability that we can't tell the odd hiccup from all the software bugs we hit, and long life from the hardware. If my CPU makes a bug in a game, its not the end of the world, if it starts to irritate me I can reduce the clocks a bit. He makes it out as though it is an inevitability, that is not true. It is also not a degrading situation. It does not hurt the hardware to make an error and once you are past the maximum stable speed for your voltage they produce them at random with the frequency depending on how far past the limit you are. Also, the ideal overclock produces ZERO errors and only reduces chip life span in sofar as it is able to do more work over a shorter period of time. Most chips have quite a bit of headroom even at the stock voltage before they start producing any errors at all. My phone has been running for months at 1.9ghz, if there have been any errors they were indiscernible from software errors. My desktop has been running at a 60% overclock for 3 year, when tested it can run for days at full load without any errors.
As for overheating the chip, a little common sense goes a long way there and its going to be pretty hard to do without a poor hardware design or increased voltages. Personally I limit my cell phone overclocking to the highest speeds I can achieve without increasing the stock voltage because I have no way to monitor the temperature and do not know if there are thermal protections built in.

Moto Z2 Play - Processor Quality?

Hey everyone, i am thinking to buy this phone later this month, but recently a friend told me that its processor it's not so good and it's kind of slow. All the other features the phone has are good for me, but i am bit skeptical for the processor. Any thoughts about it? Ty in advance

It's not slow. Comparing to top-range chipsets, it has a little underclock, emmc memory (instead of ufs) and ddr3 ram (instead of ddr4). So is a bit slower opening apps, but we are talking about milliseconds. Gaming is fine. Anyway if you can wait 1/2 months in early june the z3 play will be realeased with the next gen of processors and probably a 18:9 screen.

Ty mate

It's working great, no slowdowns nor "hiccups" for me.
It feels a little bit "slower" when compared to Moto X4, but it's subtle feeling.
In general, very smooth experience overall.

You can look up the speed rating but from memory it is about as fast as the sd808. I'm not much of a gamer but everything my kids have made me play seemed fine. For regular use I don't notice anything laggy.

First of all thnx everyone for the answers. I am not a gamer either, at least on the phone. I am more concerned about the daily workload, like Emails, Facebook, Browsing, GPS, Viber and phone itself via BT and also its interesting the moto mods like the extra charging cover, the wireless charger, the speaker and maybe the camera or the projector. I really like also the fact that it supports 2 Sim cards and a dedicated SD card. I have found some Amazon eu deals around to 250 euro and I just asked here to have a 2nd opinion

Thnx everyone for the answers once again. I decided to buy it, I am bit concerned how easy will be to root it but we will see