Smart Q7 Tablet

[celtica96]

I don't know how many folks are using a 32GB SDHC card with their SmartQ device but I thought I would give one a try.... (I can't resist pushing the Q7 to its limits.)

Using the 32GB card to upgrade the Q7 to the v4 firmware works fine. It also builds the soft.img file without a problem.

However, I couldn't get it to load my custom desktop background.

I found the solution here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=835678.

Apparently, the problem is a speed issue and it may be related to the amount of time it takes the Q7 to search through the 32GB SDHC card to find files. It's a Class 6 card though....

What are other people's experiences?

[Suwat]

Apparently, the problem is a speed issue and it may be related to the amount of time it takes the Q7 to search through the 32GB SDHC card to find files. It's a Class 6 card though....

What are other people's experiences?

I also got the same problem when I used a custom wallpaper after using GDebi to install comix. Newly installed app and icons would not show up on the panel (task bar) if I used application launcher. It took me almost a day experimenting to find out what's wrong. I don't think it has anything to do with the speed of the SD card. It's apparently related to the sequence modules were loaded up when q7 booted. It seemed q7 mounted soft.img to /mnt/loop later than when the desktop manager was excuted. So I checked /mnt/loop to see what's inside. They were "bin", "include", "lib", "lost+found" and "share". Every file, I created in a directory with the same name under root, would show up in those directories under /mnt/loop. So I avoided those directories and put my wallpaper under other directories and it showed up fine.
Anyway, is there a way to move an application, installed under GDebi, from the SD card to the inside flash of Q7? Or do I have to uninstall it, take out the SD card and reinstall to force the app inside q7? My problem is that I have several SD cards containing e-books and comics. Comix was installed on one SD. If I changed to a new SD card, comix wouldn't be there anymore. I can copy soft.img to every card but it seems absurd. Any idea?

[celtica96]

Originally Posted by Suwat

Anyway, is there a way to move an application, installed under GDebi, from the SD card to the inside flash of Q7? Or do I have to uninstall it, take out the SD card and reinstall to force the app inside q7? My problem is that I have several SD cards containing e-books and comics. Comix was installed on one SD. If I changed to a new SD card, comix wouldn't be there anymore. I can copy soft.img to every card but it seems absurd. Any idea?

I agree that you will have to either 1) force a reinstall of "package_name" using GDebi w/o the SD/SDHC installed, or 2) copy the soft.img to every SD/SDHC card from which you want to use it.

There are at least a couple of problems with the first option. Even w/o the SD/SDHC card installed, the package database on the Q7 will think that "package_name" is still installed if it was previously installed on the SD/SDHC card. You will need to to do a "sudo aptitude purge package_name" in evilvte. Once this is done, you can reinstall "package_name" using GDebi, "sudo apt-get install package_name", or "sudo aptitude install package_name" and I would urge you to use one of the "sudo" options. Another problem is simply storage space. There isn't too much NANDFlash to work with and using the above approach for every package that you want loaded on the Q7 will quickly eat it up.

Theoretically, we could develop a 3rd option which would be a customized firmware with our own mix of programs, icons, wallpaper, etc. but I don't have either the necessary knowledge of the Q7 or the Linux skill to do that.

I have tried to address the storage space problem on the Q7 by purging some existing applications and deleting files. They reappear when the SDHC card is removed and the Q7 rebooted. I assume this has something to do with the v4 firmware but it's still surprising to see the default wallpaper reappear after it has been deleted from its directory.

Do you have any idea how to address this?

[Curumo]

Hi everybody
This is my first post on this nice forum of yours.

I heard rumours from Q7 owners that Ubuntu running quite slow...Have anybody tryed Mer already? yeah,it still looks raw,but I will definetely give it a shot once I get my Smart from China.
Mer should run much faster.

[Frankr]

Houndx stated " WinCE v2 is finally out for the Q7
http://www.smartdevices.com.cn/suppo...09/03-769.html"

Is this version in English?

[markr]

Originally Posted by Curumo

I heard rumours from Q7 owners that Ubuntu running quite slow...Have anybody tryed Mer already? yeah,it still looks raw,but I will definetely give it a shot once I get my Smart from China.
Mer should run much faster.

My personal opinion is that the stock OS has been unfairly maligned. I'm currently quad-booting the stock OS, the latest version of Mer, WinCE and Android, and I think the stock OS is clearly the best at the present stage.

Mer may end up being better, but keep in mind that the actual apps running under Mer are exactly the same apps as are running under the stock OS (they come from the arm Ubuntu builds, albeit a slightly newer version) so while the menus may end up a bit quicker, all the apps will run at the same speed (which is fine if you're a bit careful about what apps you install and don't install anything too heavy). Meanwhile you currently give up on a lot of conveinience with Mer (like the ability to adjust the backlight, or shutdown/suspend without going to the commandline).

It's definitely worth trying these things out, and the ease of dual-booting makes it simple, but I keep going back to the default OS.

For what it's worth I thought winCE was a waste of the money I paid for the license, but I seem to be alone here, there are certainly plenty of people putting in a lot of effort to make it useable. Maybe I'm just not interested in paying for the apps that will make it useable when they are freely available under linux.

[Curumo]

Thank you for the info,very interesting!
What about Android?

[markr]

I think android is very promising. The current image doesn't have the app store which means you're limited to the (very few) apps on that image, presumably that will change soon. It also assumes you want to download and install things to a memory card, but since I'm running it off the memory card it doesn't think I have one, so you can't just download apps and install them that way. I've only played with it briefly though, I'm sure those two things can be sorted pretty easily.

A slightly bigger problem is that all the phones that use android use a capacitive touch screen while the Q7 has a resistive touch screen. Possibly because of that the touch screen seems more finicky under android than other other OSs.

Something else worth mentioning when I praise the stock OS is that I've used linux on the desktop pretty extensively, so I probably don't see flaws that people who haven't used linux might see. For example I would far prefer to use apt to install apps than download them off websites, but some people see that as an advantage for wince.

[Curumo]

for me apt is better too,though nowdays I use mostly windows and mac.
my main concern is app speed, hate to wait hours for pdf or browser loading

[Nation.A.List]

Originally Posted by markr

My personal opinion is that the stock OS has been unfairly maligned. I'm currently quad-booting the stock OS, the latest version of Mer, WinCE and Android, and I think the stock OS is clearly the best at the present stage.

Here here, I totally agree It seems some people are very quick to jump over the fence and try the 'greener' grass rather than spend time trying to tune the Std OS.

Originally Posted by markr

Mer may end up being better, but keep in mind that the actual apps running under Mer are exactly the same apps as are running under the stock OS (they come from the arm Ubuntu builds, albeit a slightly newer version) so while the menus may end up a bit quicker, all the apps will run at the same speed (which is fine if you're a bit careful about what apps you install and don't install anything too heavy). Meanwhile you currently give up on a lot of conveinience with Mer (like the ability to adjust the backlight, or shutdown/suspend without going to the commandline).

Again I agree. Mer may be the best OS in the long term for the Q5 & Q7

Originally Posted by markr

It's definitely worth trying these things out, and the ease of dual-booting makes it simple, but I keep going back to the default OS.

Agrees again!

Originally Posted by markr

For what it's worth I thought winCE was a waste of the money I paid for the license, but I seem to be alone here, there are certainly plenty of people putting in a lot of effort to make it useable. Maybe I'm just not interested in paying for the apps that will make it useable when they are freely available under linux.

Here is where I disagree slightly (well I didn't have to pay for mine ) There probably is some freeware out there for WinCE, I'm hoping it's just proving harder to find

[celtica96]

Go to http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Documentation/Screenshots and check out how Mer looks on the SmartDevices Q5 and Q7.

Can you tell which pictures I took using the Q5 versus the Q7?

Mer looks identical on both platforms but I did find one difference in performance.

My Q5 does not remember its WPA2 password after a reboot while my Q7 does.

However, my Q5 has a clock issue and that may be the problem.

[alilxmas]

Never knew their was a limit to the size of a five via bluetooth, seems this one stops about 65 mb after that it said that the resources are low, even thou its d/l to a sd card which has 30gb of space.

[jshzh]

Originally Posted by heron61

What PDF reader works for WinCE. I've heard that the Adobe Reader won't install.

I have got my Q7 for a few days. I use Foxit Reader for PDF under WinCE, it is very fast to open and turn pages. The free version is good. I am not sure if we pay Foxit will add annotation and bookmark functions to it.

I use iSilo 5.07 to read txt files under CE. That is perfect because I can annotate the text and copy a word with the stylus.With the free Mdict (Lingoes won't install), it is easy to look up words in more than 700 dictionaries of different languages. And you can make your own dictionary if you can find the data files online or somewhere. Unlike other ebook softwares, the interface of iSilo is simple and modest, and it won't break lines in a strange way.

I haven't manage to get wifi and bluetooth work under WinCE but they work well under Linux. MSN and emails work well too. Browsing webpages is not slow. FBreader under Linux is good. Over all WinCE is way faster. Yes, there are always free applications online as long as you look for them hard :-)

As to battery life, it lasts about 8 hours. The charger I got in the box is for 220-240V but it works well at 110V and takes the same amount of time to charge it.

The Youtube video said the touchscreen doesn't work accurately. That is not true. When you turn the device on, you are asked to calibrate the screen first. After 5 clicks following the instruction, the screen works perfectly

The only thing I found annoying while reading is the green light on the left of the screen so I put a sticker on it to block the glare.

So far I am happy with Q7 not only for the price but also for the flexibility. For instance, add whatever dictionaries you want if you use it mostly for reading, and many other applications. Better than Sony or Kindle in this case. It doesn't look like ink on paper but I guess our eyes get tired after reading long time on paper too. Hard to compare because I don't have kindle or Sony. In terms of reading outdoors, I don't think that is good for the eyes even on real paper. At least my eyes cannot stand the strong light outside.

[Nation.A.List]

@jshzh Thanks for the mini review/feedback re your Q7, glad your are enjoying it. Which version of WinCE do you have, and has it been 'Englishized' ? I have both Bluetooth & WiFi working with my WinCE, what problems have you encountered?

[jshzh]

Originally Posted by Nation.A.List

@jshzh Thanks for the mini review/feedback re your Q7, glad your are enjoying it. Which version of WinCE do you have, and has it been 'Englishized' ? I have both Bluetooth & WiFi working with my WinCE, what problems have you encountered?

Thank you for asking, Nation.A.List.
I have WinCE 2.0. The default menu language is Chinese. I checked out the language setting, no other options are available, to my surprise. My problem with Wifi is the signals (mine and my neighbours') are there but it stays at "scanning" mine, never connects to it. It seemed to connect to one of my neighbour's wireless (no password) but never to mine. I think maybe it is because I didn't configure it correctly. Do I need to authorize Q7 from my laptop where I set up the router? I use exactly the same settings, including password, as in my laptop, which is using cable now.

As to bluetooth, I added my laptop to CE but the only icon I can see on Q7 is BTPAN1 under net connections. I don't know where the interface is. On my laptop I can see "blueZ PANU service on WinCE, connected" and "Personal Ad-hoc network on WinCE" (green, connected). For my cellphone, I use "OBEX file transfer" to open the directories and transfer files back and forth but for Q7, when I click "OBEX", it tells me "service not found".

BTW, I use Window XP on my laptop