Firmware Update Kindle firmware 5.12.1

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

There will always be a premium line and it'll probably include... you guessed it, buttons! Even Kobo has seen the light in this regard. And B&N with their Nook. Enough people want buttons and larger screens so that those are not going to disappear.

I never predict. It's too embarrassing.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I don't know how Kinde implemented this, but SLC has rated life of over 100,000 cycles, even over 1,000,000 was being advertised back in 2008. a 1 or 2 GB SLC cache would more than cover what Kindle needs to suspend for years.

Um.. the Oasis 1 only *has* 4GiB. The OS partition doesn't have a whole gig to spare for hibernation, and it certainly doesn't hibernate to the FAT userdata partition.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Probably posted while the synapses weren’t firing up properly.

Besides, that hypothesis was made back when I only had descriptions of the Oasis to go by. After I got the PW4 and had actual experience with deep sleep and NAND performance, I highly doubt it works like hibernate on PCs. The PW4 had way more battery drain during deep sleep on, wifi on than with deep sleep off, wifi off.

SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK has mostly solved my battery woes when leaving wifi on but honestly, I just don’t notice any difference with deep sleep (apart from waking up taking longer).

Fair enough.

I suspect the worst case for "deep sleep" would be frequent short reading sessions during the day separated by at least 30 minutes and the best case one reading session per day. Whether it helps anyone depends where their usage falls between the two. The worst case could well hammer the battery.

I still think the most likely mechanism for "deep sleep" is hibernation. If anyone has a more plausible alternative, let's hear it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NullNix

No device with a lithium-ion battery has a state in which the battery does not slowly drain when it is not used, both from self-discharge and because the battery circuit is required by contract to always be powered or they won't license you the patents to let you build one.

But more generally... modern machines' power architecture is far more complex than you seem to think. They have a wide variety of power states in which different components on the motherboard are at different power levels: the machine typically knows the levels available, the clock frequency (if applicable) each level implies and any appropriate dividers, the amount of power they save, the dependency graph between the various power-variable components (so you don't turn something off that something else that hasn't been turned off needs to have powered on) and the state transition cost (both in power and time). There is no single 'sleep mode'. There is a ferociously complicated and endlessly oscillating mesh of changing power states. With appropriate debugging tools, it can be hypnotic to watch the state transitions, particularly if some components are being reawoken on overlapping but distinct regular schedules: you get moire patterns and everything.

It is likely that significant parts of the system are unpowered even when you think the thing is in use (the most obvious part being much of the e-ink display). It is also likely that significant parts are powered even when you think it is "turned off". You can't tell just by looking at it, and you certainly can't tell by looking at the incredibly unreliable meter which is battery percentage (a proxy for battery voltage). The operating system on an embedded platform like this one will have a good idea, but it might not be too willing to tell you. (On larger systems, even the operating system is probably too far up the stack to tell just what power state various parts of the system are in.)

The question is not "is it turned completely off?". The question is "*which components* are powered down?". Unfortunately the RAM is one of the most power-hungry non-solid-state classes of components out there, and also one of the hardest to turn off or even turn down. I vaguely wonder if sleep mode saves some power here by shuffling everything into one RAM bank and turning off the other one to save power, but given the degree of change this would require to the Linux kernel, I really, really doubt it ("ferociously hard" doesn't even *begin* to describe it). It just seems like it would be a nice thing to do (but they're almost certainly not doing it).

(If the Sony isn't running Linux, it's possible it was running an embedded OS that allowed faster boot and/or possibly a RAM compacting scheme that allowed it to shuffle literally *everything* out of much of the RAM and shut it down. But I have even less idea if that might be true.)

Even if the battery is not 100% turned off, it lasts a lot longer then a Reader in sleep.

Sony used Linux before moving to Android for the T series. Sony had a feature where if you didn't use it for 3-days, it would shut off and preserve the battery. It worked very well.

Amazon's way of doing it is to not allow shitdown so the battery doesn't last as long and they can sell more Kindles when people need to buy a new one since the one they are using no longer keeps a charge well enough much sooner then it should. So if you buya Kindle for a backup, you have to remember to keep charging it and eventually, you can kill off the battery before you get to use it. It's a very poor way to sell more Kindles. It's a scam (IMHO).

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I still think the most likely mechanism for "deep sleep" is hibernation. If anyone has a more plausible alternative, let's hear it.

I dunno. The technological limitations (particularly in terms of NAND size, longevity and performance) makes hibernate seem pretty unlikely to me.

Perhaps the chipset just goes into a deeper sleep state hence the name.

https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/applicat...te/AN12001.pdf

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

I dunno. The technological limitations (particularly in terms of NAND size, longevity and performance) makes hibernate seem pretty unlikely to me.

Perhaps the chipset just goes into a deeper sleep state hence the name.

https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/applicat...te/AN12001.pdf

Thanks.

What they call "Deep Sleep" (and also suspend), I consider suspend. If this is what the Oasis 2 lowest power mode is, then it is not close to being a substitute for jailbreak and shutdown.

Would you consider waking up a couple of your backup latest model basic Kindles, noting battery level, turning one off, letting the other go into deep sleep, and checking battery levels again a couple of weeks later?

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Would you consider waking up a couple of your backup latest model basic Kindles, noting battery level, turning one off, letting the other go into deep sleep, and checking battery levels again a couple of weeks later?

Sorry. Just checked and unfortunately, since my backups are all unregistered they don't have Advanced Options > Power Saver (deep sleep).

Given these devices were idle for weeks (left to index after library update and forgot to shutdown after) and wake up from sleep was practically instantaneous, I'm inclined to think registration is a prerequisite for deep sleep.

I do have a lone registered PW4 but I forgot it in the office. I'll do a 4-way test when I get it back in my hands:

• PW4: unregistered, shutdown
• PW4: unregistered, airplane mode on
• PW4: unregistered, airplane mode off
• PW4: registered, airplane mode off, deep sleep (given I need wifi for WhisperSync, this is its normal idle state)

Maybe even add a PW3 into the mix.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Sorry. Just checked and unfortunately, since my backups are all unregistered they don't have Advanced Options > Power Saver (deep sleep).

Given these devices were idle for weeks (left to index after library update and forgot to shutdown after) and wake up from sleep was practically instantaneous, I'm inclined to think registration is a prerequisite for deep sleep.

I do have a lone registered PW4 but I forgot it in the office. I'll do a 4-way test when I get it back in my hands:

• PW4: unregistered, shutdown
• PW4: unregistered, airplane mode on
• PW4: unregistered, airplane mode off
• PW4: registered, airplane mode off, deep sleep (given I need wifi for WhisperSync, this is its normal idle state)

Maybe even add a PW3 into the mix.

That's quite a project to sign up for, but it won't compare shutdown to deep sleep in airplane mode. Maybe I will remember try it on my KOA2 the next time I'm away from home for multiple days.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

That's quite a project to sign up for, but it won't compare shutdown to deep sleep in airplane mode.

Lol, not really. I have enough spare Kindles to run a simultaneous test so it just needs to be setup once, put in a drawer and then I just have to check on them after 3-4 weeks.

Alas, I only have one registered PW4 and I'm not interested registering any of my spares. Since I never remember to put the WhisperSync'd devices on airplane mode when I set them down, I'm opting to test deep sleep with wireless on than a test with wireless off.

On my Kobos, I have them setup to automatically power off after 24 hours idle. I do wish there was a similar option on Kindles.

[DeKuns]

I wonder with the firmware 5.12.1, do PW4 or KT4 able to play .mp3 by placing .mp3 files in "audible" directory? I am interested in Librivox audiobooks. Those are .mp3 and not .aax audible format.

[Quoth]

Or indeed PW3, it does speak books (no better than DXG and worse interface) with microUSBtoGO to USB A host adaptor and generic USB sound stick.

[locksoft]

Edit: Please forget what I’ve wrote. I’ve just found the solution (order by collection).

Guys, I need your help.

My Kindle Voyager updated during night and I’ve lost all my books. No idea why but they were all unavailable. I reset the Kindle and re-added them all with Calibre.

Now I need to manually organize them but I can’t find my old view setting, that was Collections + books.

I explain it better: I have several collections where I organize books (science fiction, fantasy, etc.).

In the old view, when I copied a book on the kindle, I could see it in the “root”, among collections. Now I apparently cannot set the view that way. I can have “books”, that shows me books and collections, but books in collections are shown in the root too. Or I can choose “collections” but all books that are not in a collection are hidden.
This way I can’t find the non-collection ones to add them to a collection.

Any way to solve this issue? Thanks.

[rashkae]

My unregistered Oasis 2 has very little power drain when left idle.. It can go for months and still be full. The Unregisered PW4, however, even though it still needs a few seconds to wake up if left in sleep long enough, does drain battery when left alone. These two devices just don't behave the same.