Why no Android?

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by Defenderland

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=253

as vague as possible
no item by item confirmation
no date

I do not need to contact Onyx to know that "they are working on it"
I am not saying that they might not work on everything listed on the wiki page, all I am saying is that you have no precise confirmation for anything on that list. Till you have it all is speculation and you can not blame Beryl for not trusting that. From this perspective your confidence that "this or that is WIP is unfounded

[Defenderland]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

as vague as possible
no item by item confirmation
no date

I do not need to contact Onyx to know that "they are working on it"
I am not saying that they might not work on everything listed on the wiki page, all I am saying is that you have no precise confirmation for anything on that list. Till you have it all is speculation and you can not blame Beryl for not trusting that. From this perspective your confidence that "this or that is WIP is unfounded

The question was explicitly about the yellow marked items. And their status was explicitly confirmed as WIP. If the WIKI-WIP-list is not explicit enough for you, you can write one on your own consisting only of the yellow items.

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by Defenderland

The question was explicitly about the yellow marked items. And their status was explicitly confirmed as WIP.

Confirmed by who and where?
I do not see Booxtor's name on the contributors list

[Mono]

I think, it is not so important if it is confirmed or not. More important is, if it will be done and when.

Some of those things are a few hours of programming. But it might require quite a time for testing, changing manual, etc. It is better to have tested firmware later than buggy one right now.

Beryl might be right, I might be right. We'll see... We can wait or do it ourselves. M92 was released say 3,5 months ago. Since then there were about 4 updates of firmware. Onyx works on it and there is nothing strange on the fact, they use freelancers. I work for much, much bigger companies as a freelancer....

[Defenderland]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

Confirmed by who and where?
I do not see Booxtor's name on the contributors list

Read the link and stop trolling.

[kamizase]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

good bye Android on 10", RIP.

No, not really, there is hope. Since Barnes & Noble started doing Android based devices from the beginning and Sony probably will stick with it too, if any of those companies will ever produce an 10" ereader, it will almost certainly be Android based. Because they are already doing that and it would be completly pointless to make the switch.. What I am saying though it that you can be 99.9% certain access to the market will remain locked and you will have to wait till somebody roots the device. Not a problem for the few of you computer savvy power users, but for the wide audience? Anyhow, you can keep your fingers crossed for them.

Furthermore, you can also hope for a new brand to appear and deliver a 10" reader. If they start from scratch, they will have the opportunity to choose the OS, maybe they decide to go with Android, seeing how things have evolved. When Onyx did start designing their first reader, the newest Android available was version 1.5 at best. If they had a crystal ball back then to see the future, maybe they would go with it........

Since you seem to have knowledge about hardware here is one last question: what would be the main challenge when implementing an eInk monitor?

"seem" is the keyword here. But since I've been wondering too, I think it's the cost and marketing. THe 10" Pearl screen costs around 200$ to replace if you brake it. It's really expensive. What would a decent monitor be, 20"? How much would that cost? Once you factor all the materials in, research and development, wages for your engeneers, finally some margins to keep the business running, I am afraid you would end up with a price around 1000$ or higher. How do you sell a black and white sluggish small screen for over 1000$?? Till the technology becomes really cheap and widespread, so economies of scale can do their job, I don't see a chance for an e-ink monitor. And I am not seeing this technology becoming really cheap and widespread any time soon.

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

Android on E-ink maybe a pipedream, but so are the crippled Linuxes as well with their dismal performance.

I am not sure if you realise, but Android is also a cripplied Linux, based on the same 2.6 Kernel the Onyx firmware is based, and all other Linux based readers too. Do you have any bechmarks suggesting Android would not provide "dismal performance" or some arguments why it would work faster on the same hardware, running the same but modified kernel at it's core, to support your claims? That's what I thought.

And for the hundreth time: who wants to run ALL apps on a e-ink device?
We need only SOME apps - actualy between 5 and 10 ...

And who is going to decide which 10 of thousands of apps to choose to be available? One person likes XYZreader, the other ABCreader, how do you prevent yourself from getting flooded with emails asking why didn't you choose this app over that app, or "your device suxorz cuz Angry Birds doesn't run" and other similar nonsense? By making sure you can run ALL of them. Can you guarantee that? No, then you disable the market app. Or why did B&N and Sony do that?

And when you disable the market app, then what exactly is the appeal of Android, over pure Linux. Are any of the great apps open source, so you can "borrow" them into your firmware? You still have to make sure you provide the basic functionality. How is this different to doing it on custom firmware?

Or maybe just deliver a naked device, hoping the users will root them, loose support and be happy with them? Sure, you will sell a few to some geeks, but will it keep your company afloat?

Originally Posted by tuxor

Again: If you want to convince anybody in this whole world with programming abilities to port Android to the Boox series of devices you need to name real _reasons_. Not only stuff like "would be cool to have android", "there is this certain app I'd like to have".

Exactly.

It would have to be really good reasons too, so a company can either spend the money on making their programmers switch to an unknown system and spend the time to learn it, or to fire them all and hire new ones. For the sake of achieving what?

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

Some people post like crazy in the first two weeks they use their reader, only to be never heard of again.

Has it ever crossed your mind, that people might be busy reading books on their devices, rather than participate on forum ramblings? That they rather just happily continue reading, rather than try to find holes to complain about?

If not then let me inform you in advance, that when I get my own 10" reader (don't know when yet), I will be definitely disappearing for longer from here, because I will be busy reading. Not necessarly because I will be unhappy with the device. Btw: Unhappy people would rather come back to look for fixes to their problems/alternative readers. But apparently that didn't cross your mind either....

[BruceMcF]

Originally Posted by Defenderland

For what? That you can demand e-mails afterwards?

There are more kinds of notes than notes in a specific article ~ there are notes on a set of articles ~ like, "infant industry rent seeking in disguise? Jones95 says no, Smith07 says yes."

However, of all the capabilities mentioned, this seems like one that could be developed from Linux up using whatever existing support library functions are available ... while getting at an Android that exists on an Android ereader that, for example, does not expose its built-in web browser and can support a range of existing Android apps of use makes eminent sense, what that is doing is leveraging the effort that the maker already put into porting Android to that device.

It would make more sense to port an already functioning Linux text editor that has been identified as a suitable one for porting (out of the hundreds of open source Linux graphic text editors out there) to the Linux on the M92 than to try to port all of Android to the M92 in order to obtain two or three apps.

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by kamizase

If not then let me inform you in advance, that when I get my own 10" reader (don't know when yet), I will be definitely disappearing for longer from here, because I will be busy reading. Not necessarly because I will be unhappy with the device. Btw: Unhappy people would rather come back to look for fixes to their problems/alternative readers. But apparently that didn't cross your mind either....

Well, wiseguy, happy reading then - this at least will give you the chance to talk from experience.
And we all know that you will not post anymore because you are so busy reading - not because you want to avoid being called foolish ...

[Defenderland]

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

And we all know that you will not post anymore because you are so busy reading - not because you want to avoid being called foolish ...

You have bought a PB903 AND a M92 and now you are complaining all the time about missing features although you knew, when you had bought them, that they are not implemented.

[kamizase]

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

bla bla

Now I understand. You felt foolish after buying your M92 and sending it back and now you want to talk everybody else into feeling foolish for buying the device. That clear's up some things...

And since you didn't address that point, can I infer that you actualy didn't know Android was Linux based too?

==============

In the meantime, something interesting happened. The Android market got merged with three other services and got renamed into Google Play:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/...-all-your.html

While the new name carries an expectation that a generic ereader device will not be able to fulfill, there is an open opportunity. Google Play now includes eBooks. And there is also a music store. So you could market a device being able to handle those two elements and maybe part of the app market too, if you are able to identify the apps that will or won't run on the device.

This something Sony might attempt to do. But an even better situation would be if Google decided to produce their own e-reader.

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by kamizase

Now I understand. You felt foolish after buying your M92 and sending it back and now you want to talk everybody else into feeling foolish for buying the device. That clear's up some things...

[/url]

I recommend you polish your logic capabilties.
Obviously I felt actually clever I got rid of it.
If you had read my post, you would have noticed that my only intention was to offer clarifications as to the actual performance. I always said if people wanted only to read, the device was ok.
That was before all the reports of hardware problems.
There seems to be also a growing crowd that wants to experiment with self developed programs.

As far as this Android thing goes: I started this discussion as a simple question. It could have been easily answered by Onyx or their mediator.

That Android is based on Linux is well known - but what do you want to tell me?
Why are people running to root their readers?

Anyway, if you have followed the various threads you can notice a lot of completely irrational optimism/enthusiasm even by only potential buyers, frequent posts - only to become (very)silent after a short time.

[kodomo]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

Confirmed by who and where?
I do not see Booxtor's name on the contributors list

Cool down

The list was originally assembled by me browsing through a series of threads I found (like the SDK info, the software list, etc...), and by now other people contributed as well (at least to the wishlist).
I'd be happy if folks would start adding their contributions to the other pages as well... it would make it a lot easier to keep an overview over e.g., the available software hacks (and it's slowly getting over my head to archive everything ).

Booxtor is maintaining the status information ( https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=229 ).
But whoever bothered trying: One can edit the Wiki without wiki account (in which case it registers the IP).

[PF4Mobile]

I am calmer than you believe
I just like to verify apparently unsupported statements like the one above
So far nobody could say it is official that they are working on the features marked there as "under development" to say so

[MatthiasR.]

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

Anyway, if you have followed the various threads you can notice a lot of completely irrational optimism/enthusiasm even by only potential buyers, frequent posts - only to become (very)silent after a short time.

Dear Beryll Snyder, why do you keep repeating over and over again that enthusiastic people (as me) become "(very) silent after a short time"?
It seems you are always trying to imply that those people (as me) are unhappy with the device?! It's totally the other way around! I am still very happy with purchasing the M92, it's a great tool and I use it every day.

Of course, neither of us knows why other users aren't active anymore. So can we please agree on arguing about eminent user experience posted in this forum?

[kodomo]

Originally Posted by kamizase

In the meantime, something interesting happened. The Android market got merged with three other services and got renamed into Google Play:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/...-all-your.html

While the new name carries an expectation that a generic ereader device will not be able to fulfill, there is an open opportunity. Google Play now includes eBooks. And there is also a music store. So you could market a device being able to handle those two elements and maybe part of the app market too, if you are able to identify the apps that will or won't run on the device.

This something Sony might attempt to do. But an even better situation would be if Google decided to produce their own e-reader.

Actually - all mentioned issues aside that are rendering an android port to the M92 unattractive... this is one additional reason I'm not too unhappy about the M92 running a regular linux.
I'm not particularly fond of Google's privacy policy (though it's quite a funny document if you bother reading it *g*), which you'll have a hard time going around using Android.

Just my 2ct - cheers!