i to i Blog from iRex about issues

[cjp]

Here's a press release from iRex on their blog addressing a few of the issues DR1000S users have brought to their attention.

I have one thought though - if they are acknowledging that the battery life is about 30% less than they anticipated and most of us are only getting 3 1/2 - 5 hours at best, (which their tech people confirmed to me was 'normal' for now), how does this coincide with their product page which says (Still!) "The chargeable built in Lithium Ion battery has sufficient power to last for days." ?? Just a thought ...

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http://i-to-i.irexnet.com/category/software/


iRex official statement about recent issues
October 21st, 2008 | Category: Community, Services, Software, iLiad, iRex DR1000, iRex Technologies
Dear Customer,

Over the last weeks there have been some issues related to the iRex shop, the iRex iLiad and iRex Digital Reader 1000. We apologize for the fact that we have been limited in our response so far and we understand and accept the criticism of not having addressed you properly, which has been an omission from our side.

Let us start by looking at the different issues and how we intend to solve them:

Since the introduction of the iRex Digital Reader 1000 we have received a huge amount of visits and orders at the iRex shop. The back-end system was not prepared to deal with such unexpected large volume. One of the known issues that you might have seen was that the status of the order was not correctly updated. This also affected our ability to initiate shipments. Once it became clear that our system was unable to handle the volume, we have initiated the necessary actions to solve this situation. These improvements are currently being implemented and we expect from next week onward to ship all orders in accordance with the dates indicated on the shop product page.

In addition to the large volume of website visits we also received a huge volume of e-mails at shop@irextechnologies.com with inquiries about the product, orders and shipping status. This number even grew higher as a result of the above issues. With only limited capacity for the shop operations and, at the same time, solving the above issues, we were not able to respond to all e-mails within an appropriate time. We apologize for this and within the next week we aim to respond to all e-mail inquiries within one business day.

We have identified a battery firmware problem with the DR1000S that is causing battery life to be at least 30% less than expected and even causing a charging issue in some cases. We like to state that there is nothing wrong with your product and the firmware issue will be solved with a software update. We are currently testing the solution and we expect to announce a release date for the software update by the end of this week.

In line with our tradition of introducing ongoing enhancements, we will released our first software update for the DR1000S yesterday. This software release will solve a number of issues that have been identified since the introduction of the DR1000s. In the coming weeks and months we will continue to provide additional software updates.

A number of customers have expressed their concern about the future of the iLiad. We like to emphasize that the iLiad products will remain in production and we commit ourselves to continue to support the iLiad platform including future service and maintenance updates. We will continue to actively support third party development projects both by our partners and the community. To that end we will release all the iLiad source codes later this week.

In the coming weeks and months we will strive for a continuous engagement by means of active and open communication and providing ongoing product enhancements. We are committed to remain your trusted party in proving the world’s most innovative digital reading solutions.

Thank you!

Hans Brons
CEO
iRex Technologies


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More (better ) clarification
A post from Shaggy on iRex forum "the 30% increase they're talking about does not include the future software update that will introduce power management features (standby mode, sleep mode, etc)"

[dpwe]

Isn't this a big disappointment? No real extenuating circumstances, no tangible promises of how things are getting better (any bets on whether we actually see a release date for the firmware upgrade this week, whether that date is in the near future, and whether they actually make that date?), no actual numbers of how many have shipped, how many in stock, etc. If it's just a problem with fulfilling orders, why have redistributors like ereaderoutfitters not been resupplied? Seems like it would be easy to ship them a couple of cartons, and offload some of the problems with customer service to these eager helpers.

And what does this 30% refer to? Is this all they're hoping to gain back with proper power management? 130% of 5 h is.. 6.5 h. woo hoo.

DAn.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by dpwe

And what does this 30% refer to?

Karel quoted an 8 hr battery life (Karel details plans for Power Mangement) and this seems almost consistent with a 30% firmware problem (8/1.3 = 6.1 hrs). I am not convinced that 7-8 hrs under light load is enough, but its better than 5-6 hrs. If they would just swap the 1300 mAh battery for a 2000 mAh unit this would become ~12 hrs which is much more acceptable (particularly when save to RAM is added). If they had started with a 2000 mAh battery, the 30% firmware bug would have been much less painful too.

[cjp]

But where did Karel come up with 8 hours when iRex said, and still says "days?" The 'days' part is what we all purchased the DR1000S under, not Karel's after-I-return-from-holiday, oops-what-a-mess-we-have fiasco.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by cjp

But where did Karel come up with 8 hours when iRex said, and still says "days?"

Karel says here:

In the current software version 1.0, we have only implemented very limited power management. While the iRex Digital Reader has a hardware architecture that is capable of utilizing a number of advanced power management functionalities including a suspend-to-RAM (standby mode) and suspend-to-Flash (hibernate mode). Once these are implemented the battery life will effectively be several days.

Although the following data is not 100% correct, it should give you a good view on what to expect of the battery life, so please do not pin me down on this data.

The iRex Digital Reader has a battery of 1300 mA (milliampere) and with software version 1.0 the reader consume about 150 mA per hour, resulting in about 8 hours of battery life. With suspend-to-RAM or standby mode, which we will introduce in a next software update, the reader will go into standby mode after x seconds. While in standby mode the power consumption will scale back to less than 50 mA. Good for about 24 hours of standby time.

In addition to the standby mode we will also be looking to introduce a sleep mode or suspend-to-Flash. This means that if the reader is not being used for x minutes it will go into sleep mode. While in sleep mode the power consumption is reduced to about 1 mA. To 'wake up' the reader from hibernate takes about 10 seconds.

Suspend and sleep are useful additions, which (if implemented) will virtually eliminate the real problem with the iLiad that the boot time was a disincentive to turning the device off and to reading in short stretches. However, they don't effect battery life when actually using the device for reading. I think 10 hrs is the minimum reading time that a reading device should provide. Note that LCD-based dedicated readers provide 10-20 hr battery life, see LCD E-Book Reader Matrix.

[Mr. Goodbar]

It's good to see iRex executive management acknowledge the issues and clearly state they will correct them. I didn't expect full details, but acknowledgement is a good first step. The confirmation of iLiad source code release is also great.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by cjp

But where did Karel come up with 8 hours when iRex said, and still says "days?"

I see the "days" reference now. From iRex's DR features page:

The chargeable built in Lithium Ion battery has sufficient power to last for days.

This is simply wrong.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I see the "days" reference now. From iRex's DR features page: This is simply wrong.

The battery will last for days, as long as you don't turn the reader on. This is marketing.

[LazyScot]

I have a colleague who descibes a marketing figure as one which the marketing department guarantee will never be exceeded. (As in 108Mbps WiFi and 24Mbps broadband.)

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I see the "days" reference now. From iRex's DR features page:

This is simply wrong.

Nope; its just a marketing figure.

That said, it feels like they ought to be able to get near that figure if they implemented proper PM, dropped into sleep mode as soon as a page was displayed, turned off the touch stuff, etc. In many cases, my mark-space ratio of needing the device to do any processing (no DR, but an iLiad) is between 1:10 and 1:100 and upwards.

Though a 2000mAh battery would make a lot more sense (especially, as has been already noted) for the WiFi/Bluetooth models.

(Incidentally, I've always heard that Bluetooth is meant to be notably more power efficient than WiFi -- can anyone back that up?)

[Shaggy]

Just to clarify, the 30% increase to 8 hours that iRex is talking about is NOT the final solution to battery life. The DR runs right now with basically no power management features. In addition to that, there is a bug in the software that is causing a loss of an additional 30%.

The fix they are talking about in the blog will fix the software bug so that when the device is running constantly at full speed, it will improve the battery life from 5 hours to 8 hours (or somewhere around there). This makes sense as well based on reports from some retailers who said that they had gotten 8 hours of battery life with a "beta" version of the software. It sounds like a software bug made it into the final release that was missed during testing.

After they fix this software bug, they are still going to release a future update that will implement the power management functionality. That is when you will see a dramatic improvement in the battery life.

wallcraft, I think what you're missing is that with the power management functionality, the DR will go into suspend mode in between page turns during normal usage.

[Matthijs]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Just to clarify, the 30% increase to 8 hours that iRex is talking about is NOT the final solution to battery life. The DR runs right now with basically no power management features. In addition to that, there is a bug in the software that is causing a loss of an additional 30%.

The fix they are talking about in the blog will fix the software bug so that when the device is running constantly at full speed, it will improve the battery life from 5 hours to 8 hours (or somewhere around there). This makes sense as well based on reports from some retailers who said that they had gotten 8 hours of battery life with a "beta" version of the software. It sounds like a software bug made it into the final release that was missed during testing.

After they fix this software bug, they are still going to release a future update that will implement the power management functionality. That is when you will see a dramatic improvement in the battery life.

wallcraft, I think what you're missing is that with the power management functionality, the DR will go into suspend mode in between page turns during normal usage.

Exactly. The 8 hours is without the future PM improvements.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I think what you're missing is that with the power management functionality, the DR will go into suspend mode in between page turns during normal usage.

If this is the case, then 12 hours or more in normal use is certainly within reach (26 hours would then be the, never to be reached, upper limit in normal use, based on 50 mA per hour in suspend mode). I don't care how they get longer battery life if it is transparent to the reader, but I know bigger batteries work and I am less sure that software upgrades will do the trick.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

If this is the case, then 12 hours or more in normal use is certainly within reach (26 hours would then be the, never to be reached, upper limit in normal use, based on 50 mA per hour in suspend mode). I don't care how they get longer battery life if it is transparent to the reader, but I know bigger batteries work and I am less sure that software upgrades will do the trick.

Yeah, 24 hours or so would theoretically be the max with suspend mode, if you spent the entire time in suspend. I think the estimates they're giving of "days" is assuming that at least some of that time is spent in sleep mode. IE, you're not going to get continuous use around the clock for days, but then most people probably will want to sleep for at least some of that time themselves.