Improving user experience

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Please check the discussion page

Contents

Overview

Like Wolfgang said in http://n2.nabble.com/Weekly-Engineering-News-41-2008-td1336450.html , Openmoko assembled a team to focus on improving the user experience. The focus and coverage of this group is:

  • We improve the current stack instead of creating new features.
  • Prefer stuffs which could be brought over to gta03 instead of gta02/om2008 specific.
  • Won't work on om2007 stack. Won't do hardware.
  • May cooperate with Paroli, FSO or system team but we're not them.
  • Will work on Qtopia but with lower priority.

ToDO

Here is the current draft and it will be updated frequently.

  • call quality +1
    • echo (in testing #1267)
    • volume (alsa-state?)
  • Reduce boot time (#69,#1722)
  • Optimize the touch screen driver on freerunner for finger usage.(in testing #2031)
  • A generic python loader to enhance the start up time of python scripts.
  • qtopia
    • bugfix
    • program startup speed
    • response time
  • network
    • scripts: resolv.conf, etc.
      • default nameserver OpenDNS added.

Evaluating

  • Reliably make and receive phone calls and SMS messages (John: That's included in qtopia bugfix + fso)
  • suspend/resume
    • resume reliably (#1884,#1991)
    • take a screenshot before suspend. display it on screen first thing on resume.
    • do not suspend when usb connected, qtopia indexing, etc.
  • qtopia
    • change the button order of "end call" or "ans call"
    • put speaker button on the dialer app
  • peripherals
  • devices (command line improvement first)
    • GPRS
    • bluetooth
    • wifi userspace
  • misc
    • opkg: faster algorithm

Other Wish list

See Wish list from community


Weekly update 20/10 2008

Now for the status update this week:

Tick merged the qtopia echo patch (#1267), it works, no echo but the audio sounds a little bit less 'vivid' (not sure if this is the right word). He is now working on the touch screen usage, see http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002712.html


Olv and Erin is working on reducing boot time. Currently it's reduced from 2:35 (Om2008.9) to around 1:40. One minute less in one week, and Olv just got back from hospital last Monday. We will merge this into OE once we get it organized properly.


Jeremy is working together with kernel guy (aka Matt Hsu) to look into the possible improvement, namely take a screenshot and show it first during resume. It's a common technique in mobile phone.


Julian is working on the python loader. He is new to python but he got very good helps here in the office such as Guillaume, etc. He still got some distro work to finish so it's going to take a while before he can work full time on this.


Currently we have a major blocker #2071. It can be solved by update EFL, but no icons will show up in illume. This seems to be a different bug, but we are having an evas-native related issue on the build server so the EFL packages are not updated correctly in downloads.openmoko.org. This prevents people from confirming it and fire another bug.


EFL ABI changed along with the svn rev increment last week, so Installer and Locations won't work without rebuilding. Although people already got reassigned, but nobody will give Om2008 love except us and holger, so we will fix the issues above and update testing repo soon.

Weekly update 1/11 2008

Dear community,

On the organization chart we were called 'optimization' team so I put this in the subject, even though my ideal name would be something like 'Keroro' [1].

Olv and Erin provided an experimental fastboot images for the interested to try: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002950.html

Jeremy reported his status: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002882.html

Julian is still struggling with oprofile, python, etc. etc. along with distro tasks. With nobody offically assigned to distro team this seems never end.

Check out tick's work to the touch screen: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002822.html It's commited as abe8f448547d1bd69ac2963e07e2657f27b79691 and should be available in testing repo after next autobuild.

The illume issue (#2082) is partially solved now. It requires quite some black magic in the theme and config files to make the icons show up again. Thanks for raster's help on this. read more about this in: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-October/034881.html

After seeing these cute icons, we found out only qtopia and sudoku work as usual. Other applications such as installer, locations are fully dead (#2098, #2099), while settings is half dead (#2097). Tick fixed 2098 and 2099 in openmoko.git commit 6725b90d5c9d844da196485beca7d9e82f8ce68c

This efl update from oe.dev upstream really scared us, so the current plan is to stop following efl svn until another efl snapshot/release.

The alsa state file is a real trouble. Since the audio quality actually differs on different versions of FR, it's hard to create one state file that suits all. We will keep working on it.

Weekly update 7, Nov 2008

Hi community,

A brief summary of what the optimization team did last week:

Erin worked on qtopia to improve the network registering time.

Qtopia 4.3.2: camp network about 26~36 sec and it would display 'No Network' on screen before that.

Qt extended 4.4.2: 40 sec from qpe main() to Ready [black screen first, home screen 20 sec]

Qtopia 4.3.2 + X11 [17 + 52 sec before, 52 sec -12 -20 = 30 sec, by applying two patches] http://git.openmoko.org/?p=qtopia.git;a=commit;h=9f0eb58ab7cca96e90bd49845d23b10ecf7ba664 http://git.openmoko.org/?p=qtopia.git;a=commit;h=9c8c832f77f4f24adc5ad17f5031016ce8562a34

FSO: 10-20 sec Google Android: 20 sec

Olv tried to replace u-boot by qi along with various improvements to bring down the boot time to illume (without qtopia) to about 30 secs. qi does not support dfu-util so only do this if you know what you're doing. He dived into a lot of code reading to see if there are further possibilities.

Jeremy looked into the two issues about suspend/resume that we may fix in userspace. One is #1991, here is his update:

As I inspected, qpe and apmd opens /dev/apm_bios right now, and I found two possible scenarios for this issue as below:

1) in qpe, we need to wait for the reply of prepare_suspend for the modem. in this case, we may need to wait for a period +of time that exceed 30 seconds, and we don't know how long it could be, waitfing for the response from modem.

2) It goes to blank, but then ompower doesn't get any request for doing suspend. I doubt in some case, illume doesn't set +the suspend_delay timer.

for 1), I will go to check what does that mean by the AT commands we emit before executing "apm --suspend".

for 2), I will debug illume for a while.

Another one #1347 is about after the resume, it goes to suspend immediately. For this one, it's because screensaver timeouts right after the resume. We can fix this by invoking "xset s off" before going +to sleep, and reset it after the resume. Though I am looking into the possbilities of enabling apm in xglamo and checking the apm_bios driver code to see if we can fix this in xglamo.

BTW, Matt has patches to solve ticket #1884. It works. Matt is arranging them and he is going to update some information about it.

Julian wrote an initial version of python loader. It imports various modules first, listens on dbus and forks on demand to execfile. This brought down the load time of pyefl-sudoko from 2.59s to 1.38, a 46% improvement, and om-settings from 3.99 to 1.60, 59% improvement. There was already a daemon in Om2008 just for the sake of loading om-settings (and it cleverly sleeps for 4 seconds before starting up, make the booting even slower), we take it out to get the 3.99 number.

It is just a start, there are many issues left regarding the python loader and we will keep working on it. Once the code is in a better shape Julian will put it into our svn/git.

Tick mainly worked on the upgrade path this week (#2109).


Weekly update 14,July

We're heading toward the next release of Om2008 now. The current bug list could be obtained by custom query keyword 'Om2008.11' on docs.openmoko.org. Our team will work on some of the tickets, smooth out minor issues so the testing team could have time to test and hopefully release before the end of this month.


To be more specific, we are working on the following tickets:

  1. 69 speed up system initialization: Olv will merge his improvement
into testing repo next week.
  1. 1489 sometimes volume is too low during a call: Tick will implement a
volume control in qtopia dialer.
  1. 2031 scroll list implementation: Tick will improve etk_scroll_list to
fit our designer's idea.
  1. 2113 suspend time come up right after you change the time: Jeremy
will look into this.


Other then that: Erin will keep looking into qtopia. Julian needs to study more about the python loader.

Personal tools

Please check the discussion page

Overview

Like Wolfgang said in http://n2.nabble.com/Weekly-Engineering-News-41-2008-td1336450.html , Openmoko assembled a team to focus on improving the user experience. The focus and coverage of this group is:

  • We improve the current stack instead of creating new features.
  • Prefer stuffs which could be brought over to gta03 instead of gta02/om2008 specific.
  • Won't work on om2007 stack. Won't do hardware.
  • May cooperate with Paroli, FSO or system team but we're not them.
  • Will work on Qtopia but with lower priority.

ToDO

Here is the current draft and it will be updated frequently.

  • call quality +1
    • echo (in testing #1267)
    • volume (alsa-state?)
  • Reduce boot time (#69,#1722)
  • Optimize the touch screen driver on freerunner for finger usage.(in testing #2031)
  • A generic python loader to enhance the start up time of python scripts.
  • qtopia
    • bugfix
    • program startup speed
    • response time
  • network
    • scripts: resolv.conf, etc.
      • default nameserver OpenDNS added.

Evaluating

  • Reliably make and receive phone calls and SMS messages (John: That's included in qtopia bugfix + fso)
  • suspend/resume
    • resume reliably (#1884,#1991)
    • take a screenshot before suspend. display it on screen first thing on resume.
    • do not suspend when usb connected, qtopia indexing, etc.
  • qtopia
    • change the button order of "end call" or "ans call"
    • put speaker button on the dialer app
  • peripherals
  • devices (command line improvement first)
    • GPRS
    • bluetooth
    • wifi userspace
  • misc
    • opkg: faster algorithm

Other Wish list

See Wish list from community


Weekly update 20/10 2008

Now for the status update this week:

Tick merged the qtopia echo patch (#1267), it works, no echo but the audio sounds a little bit less 'vivid' (not sure if this is the right word). He is now working on the touch screen usage, see http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002712.html


Olv and Erin is working on reducing boot time. Currently it's reduced from 2:35 (Om2008.9) to around 1:40. One minute less in one week, and Olv just got back from hospital last Monday. We will merge this into OE once we get it organized properly.


Jeremy is working together with kernel guy (aka Matt Hsu) to look into the possible improvement, namely take a screenshot and show it first during resume. It's a common technique in mobile phone.


Julian is working on the python loader. He is new to python but he got very good helps here in the office such as Guillaume, etc. He still got some distro work to finish so it's going to take a while before he can work full time on this.


Currently we have a major blocker #2071. It can be solved by update EFL, but no icons will show up in illume. This seems to be a different bug, but we are having an evas-native related issue on the build server so the EFL packages are not updated correctly in downloads.openmoko.org. This prevents people from confirming it and fire another bug.


EFL ABI changed along with the svn rev increment last week, so Installer and Locations won't work without rebuilding. Although people already got reassigned, but nobody will give Om2008 love except us and holger, so we will fix the issues above and update testing repo soon.

Weekly update 1/11 2008

Dear community,

On the organization chart we were called 'optimization' team so I put this in the subject, even though my ideal name would be something like 'Keroro' [1].

Olv and Erin provided an experimental fastboot images for the interested to try: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002950.html

Jeremy reported his status: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002882.html

Julian is still struggling with oprofile, python, etc. etc. along with distro tasks. With nobody offically assigned to distro team this seems never end.

Check out tick's work to the touch screen: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/002822.html It's commited as abe8f448547d1bd69ac2963e07e2657f27b79691 and should be available in testing repo after next autobuild.

The illume issue (#2082) is partially solved now. It requires quite some black magic in the theme and config files to make the icons show up again. Thanks for raster's help on this. read more about this in: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-October/034881.html

After seeing these cute icons, we found out only qtopia and sudoku work as usual. Other applications such as installer, locations are fully dead (#2098, #2099), while settings is half dead (#2097). Tick fixed 2098 and 2099 in openmoko.git commit 6725b90d5c9d844da196485beca7d9e82f8ce68c

This efl update from oe.dev upstream really scared us, so the current plan is to stop following efl svn until another efl snapshot/release.

The alsa state file is a real trouble. Since the audio quality actually differs on different versions of FR, it's hard to create one state file that suits all. We will keep working on it.

Weekly update 7, Nov 2008

Hi community,

A brief summary of what the optimization team did last week:

Erin worked on qtopia to improve the network registering time.

Qtopia 4.3.2: camp network about 26~36 sec and it would display 'No Network' on screen before that.

Qt extended 4.4.2: 40 sec from qpe main() to Ready [black screen first, home screen 20 sec]

Qtopia 4.3.2 + X11 [17 + 52 sec before, 52 sec -12 -20 = 30 sec, by applying two patches] http://git.openmoko.org/?p=qtopia.git;a=commit;h=9f0eb58ab7cca96e90bd49845d23b10ecf7ba664 http://git.openmoko.org/?p=qtopia.git;a=commit;h=9c8c832f77f4f24adc5ad17f5031016ce8562a34

FSO: 10-20 sec Google Android: 20 sec

Olv tried to replace u-boot by qi along with various improvements to bring down the boot time to illume (without qtopia) to about 30 secs. qi does not support dfu-util so only do this if you know what you're doing. He dived into a lot of code reading to see if there are further possibilities.

Jeremy looked into the two issues about suspend/resume that we may fix in userspace. One is #1991, here is his update:

As I inspected, qpe and apmd opens /dev/apm_bios right now, and I found two possible scenarios for this issue as below:

1) in qpe, we need to wait for the reply of prepare_suspend for the modem. in this case, we may need to wait for a period +of time that exceed 30 seconds, and we don't know how long it could be, waitfing for the response from modem.

2) It goes to blank, but then ompower doesn't get any request for doing suspend. I doubt in some case, illume doesn't set +the suspend_delay timer.

for 1), I will go to check what does that mean by the AT commands we emit before executing "apm --suspend".

for 2), I will debug illume for a while.

Another one #1347 is about after the resume, it goes to suspend immediately. For this one, it's because screensaver timeouts right after the resume. We can fix this by invoking "xset s off" before going +to sleep, and reset it after the resume. Though I am looking into the possbilities of enabling apm in xglamo and checking the apm_bios driver code to see if we can fix this in xglamo.

BTW, Matt has patches to solve ticket #1884. It works. Matt is arranging them and he is going to update some information about it.

Julian wrote an initial version of python loader. It imports various modules first, listens on dbus and forks on demand to execfile. This brought down the load time of pyefl-sudoko from 2.59s to 1.38, a 46% improvement, and om-settings from 3.99 to 1.60, 59% improvement. There was already a daemon in Om2008 just for the sake of loading om-settings (and it cleverly sleeps for 4 seconds before starting up, make the booting even slower), we take it out to get the 3.99 number.

It is just a start, there are many issues left regarding the python loader and we will keep working on it. Once the code is in a better shape Julian will put it into our svn/git.

Tick mainly worked on the upgrade path this week (#2109).


Weekly update 14,July

We're heading toward the next release of Om2008 now. The current bug list could be obtained by custom query keyword 'Om2008.11' on docs.openmoko.org. Our team will work on some of the tickets, smooth out minor issues so the testing team could have time to test and hopefully release before the end of this month.


To be more specific, we are working on the following tickets:

  1. 69 speed up system initialization: Olv will merge his improvement
into testing repo next week.
  1. 1489 sometimes volume is too low during a call: Tick will implement a
volume control in qtopia dialer.
  1. 2031 scroll list implementation: Tick will improve etk_scroll_list to
fit our designer's idea.
  1. 2113 suspend time come up right after you change the time: Jeremy
will look into this.


Other then that: Erin will keep looking into qtopia. Julian needs to study more about the python loader.