New Icarus 7.8 inch 300ppi Android e-reader

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by jscris

It installs and seems to work fine, although I did have it lock up a couple times. I'm still having glitches with this device, so no telling whether it was koreader or the Illumina that caused the freezes. I would like to use it if it volume control pages turns (bluetooth and usbotg) were supported, but I don't think they are.

The volume control buttons on my Galaxy S7 Active, turn the page in KOReader v2015.11-1326. I don't think there is any Bluetooth support in KOReader, but it might make a good "plug-in", for anyone wanting to add one. For now it would only be for the Android version, probably.

Luck;
Ken

[jscris]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

The volume control buttons on my Galaxy S7 Active, turn the page in KOReader v2015.11-1326. I don't think there is any Bluetooth support in KOReader, but it might make a good "plug-in", for anyone wanting to add one. For now it would only be for the Android version, probably.

Luck;
Ken

I did try both usbotg and bluetooth volume control up/down for turning pages and neither worked. But as I say, this device has some behavior problems.

[sherlyregan]

I also tried taking notes with the A2 mode on and the cursor moves almost as fast as in a PC.

[jscris]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

The volume control buttons on my Galaxy S7 Active, turn the page in KOReader v2015.11-1326. I don't think there is any Bluetooth support in KOReader, but it might make a good "plug-in", for anyone wanting to add one. For now it would only be for the Android version, probably.

Luck;
Ken

Used koreader for about an hour last night. Had one time when it stopped responding after device had gone to sleep and was awakened, but other than that it worked great. Would love it if bluetooth support for volume control page turns were possible.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by jscris

Used koreader for about an hour last night. Had one time when it stopped responding after device had gone to sleep and was awakened, but other than that it worked great. Would love it if bluetooth support for volume control page turns were possible.

The team at the Github project could use some help from some with Android programing experience. If you were to post a Feature Request at github such Blutooth support, for devices that have the hardware and firmware, might be developed.

Luck;
Ken

[jscris]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

The team at the Github project could use some help from some with Android programing experience. If you were to post a Feature Request at github such Blutooth support, for devices that have the hardware and firmware, might be developed.

Luck;
Ken

Did. Thanks.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by sherlyregan

I also tried taking notes with the A2 mode on and the cursor moves almost as fast as in a PC.

Sorry using what to type? I tried the embedded app, Kingsoft Office (version 5.12) and its successor, WPS Office, and I did not see much responsiveness. In fact, I was disappointed by the scarce speed.

[mdp]

The Icarus has four cores while most Onyx devices are single core, but the Icarus seems to use three times as much CPU. I would say that the user experience is consistent with that - not much faster, not as fast as it should be.

Do you see the same anomalous CPU use?

[colibris79]

Originally Posted by mdp

Sorry using what to type? I tried the embedded app, Kingsoft Office (version 5.12) and its successor, WPS Office, and I did not see much responsiveness. In fact, I was disappointed by the scarce speed.

I just used the app Notepad that came already installed. For me was fine

[guest]

Originally Posted by mdp

The Icarus has four cores while most Onyx devices are single core, but the Icarus seems to use three times as much CPU. I would say that the user experience is consistent with that - not much faster, not as fast as it should be.

Do you see the same anomalous CPU use?

No (but I did remove lots of system apps):

shell@android:/ $ top -n 1 -m 5
User 0%, System 0%, IOW 0%, IRQ 0%
User 3 + Nice 0 + Sys 4 + Idle 920 + IOW 0 + IRQ 0 + SIRQ 0 = 927
PID PR CPU% S #THR VSS RSS PCY UID Name
2548 0 0% R 1 1192K 500K shell top
351 3 0% S 74 731668K 39272K fg system system_server
2474 0 0% S 1 0K 0K root kworker/u:5
60 0 0% S 1 0K 0K root file-storage
2258 0 0% S 1 0K 0K root kworker/0:2

And there is a constant small usage of the CPU, which affects the battery:

shell@android:/ $ dumpsys cpuinfo
Load: 2.01 / 2.02 / 1.52
CPU usage from 68199ms to 8198ms ago:
1.1% 349/system_server: 0.8% user + 0.3% kernel / faults: 102 minor
0.8% 629/com.android.settings: 0.6% user + 0.1% kernel / faults: 449 minor

I don't think that number of cores matters a lot. Most likely every reader app uses exactly one core. And background processes shouldn't be doing very much.

[nrseife]

I tried installing a few note apps that support handwriting (using finger or with a special capacitive stylus with small active tip that I bough a while ago, such as the Slim Pro; I cannot find my model anymore on Amazon). Anyways, I noticed that the screen repsonse time is quite slow when drawing - I got a lot better results with my good old Nook Simple Touch, not sure why (the CPU etc is all much more advanced in the 7.8in Icarus)....I do not think it is not the screen refresh rate, but I suspect they minimized the scanning of the screen (whether and where one touches the screen) to reduce power consumption? Would be great to change that to be able to put down quick notes once in a while.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by guest

No (but I did remove lots of system apps):

shell@android:/ $ top -n 1 -m 5
[...]
And there is a constant small usage of the CPU, which affects the battery:

shell@android:/ $ dumpsys cpuinfo
Load: 2.01 / 2.02 / 1.52

[...]
I don't think that number of cores matters a lot. Most likely every reader app uses exactly one core. And background processes shouldn't be doing very much.

Interesting.

The first question would be: which system apps did you remove?

And: you only have those few lines as "CPU usage"? My list is huge (comparatively).

That load of 2 that you are having, should represent a load that becomes a queue after the value of 4 (in our case). I am seeing values above 3 in my latest `dumpsys cpuinfo`... Even if your foreground application uses only limited itself to one core, it better not use too much of that residual core. But what I am after is not data crunching from the tablet, but responsiveness.

As a matter of fact, the "idle" percentages of `top` are more reassuring (and I cannot match them with the load values) - but I see some misbehaviour.

Now if I can interest you on this:
if you tried an iterated command such as

i=0 ; while [ $(($i)) -le 100 ] ; do  date ; top -n 1 -m 1 -d 5 ; done

, you could use it on a `adb shell` and to my experience it would run as expected;
but if you used it on the tablet itself, in a terminal, if would after a while show huge delays, that are broken by some random interrupt or by you tapping on the screen:

05:49 --> Start. A series of 5s delayed blocks are printed after this 
05:54
05:59
06:04
06:09
...	-> all 5s delays
07:06
07:11
07:16
08:19 --> start of much longer delays
09:22 --> awaken by touch
09:29 --> now closer
10:33 --> now longer...
10:38
11:41
12:44
13:48
13:53
14:24 --> awaken after auto screen lock
14:29
14:36
15:40
16:19 --> awaken by touch
16:24 --> now closer
17:27 --> now longer...

One of the problems I am experiencing is: the device seems to fall asleep like a narcoleptic. When you are "flipping pages" interleaving long breaks, you may not notice it, but if you are using an interactive application - such as, you are typing on a BlueTooth keyboard - after a little while you can bang all you want on the keyboard but the screen will remain frozen. Touch on the screen, and your past bangs will be rendered in a burst.

I need the device to work on interactive applications: I need the way and the option to inhibit that it falls asleep.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by nrseife

I tried installing a few note apps that support handwriting [...] screen repsonse time is quite slow when drawing - I got a lot better results with my good old Nook Simple Touch

Same experience. I used Graffiti on much slower devices, it is unusable on this one.

Interestingly, also screen refresh can unexpectedly come at a very slow frame rate. Do some screen mirroring, seconds will pass between one update and another (e.g. move the mouse), while on much slower devices the update is fluid instead of "every once in a while".

[mdp]

Originally Posted by colibris79

I just used the app Notepad that came already installed. For me was fine

BlueTooth keyboard, or other? As written, mine freezes as I am typing, and restarts rendering what was typed only "after tapping on the screen".

[colibris79]

Originally Posted by mdp

BlueTooth keyboard, or other? As written, mine freezes as I am typing, and restarts rendering what was typed only "after tapping on the screen".

Weird . I was using bluetooth keyboard. Mine was writing fine (I just wrote a couple of lines though)