So first of all, this is an idea in it's baby stages. I want input, and if people think it will work. So here's my idea:
I don't know how many of you have seen the build specs of ICS, but I know one guy that couldn't compile for lack of RAM, and he had 12Gb. So what I'm thinking, is for kernel developers, have a community server.
Specs:
4x 2(HT)x 2.66+ GHz processor,
24Gb of RAM,
2Tb of HDD space,
Gigabit connection.
I am looking for developers interested. You would have to show me some of your work, and it will cost some. I am looking at renting it for six months or a year, so depending on how many people are interested will depend on price. Let me know your ideas, if you think it will work, if you're interested, etc.
Related
Hey everyone
So my situation, I was fortunate to earn a free ipad wifi/3g 16gb from a sales contest at work, well Ive played with the thing for a few weeks and I have to say apple blows. Anyways gunna sell it on ebay, looking like I can get about $450 for it.
I then want to take the money and buy an android tablet, i really want a honeycomb one, but I know they are very expensive as they are just coming out.
So I thought to myself why couldn't I just buy a tablet that comes with Froyo, and then root it, and flash a custom honeycomb rom once a developer ports it over to my device..? It would save me alot of cash/waiting
So a few questions about that
1. Any hardware concerns or min specs that I should look for to make sure it can run honeycomb?
2. Is there alot of developers out there making custom roms for tablets? I havent seen much on here..? Is there another site that is tablet specific?
3. If the I can get those questions answered what tablet would you recomend?
I only need wifi, dont need 3g, I would like something a little smaller than the ipad, price range is $450 or less, and the use will just be for web browsing, playing games, etc...
Thanks!!!
A question for the community: I'm in the market for a tablet, and have taken my sweet time for the last 3 months looking for the best one to buy. I've done my fair share of research and now i'm asking you: Should I buy the ASUS Transformer Prime with the dock, od should i wait for samsung/htc/moto/lenovo/acer... next-gen tablet? My fear is you see, that I'll buy The Prime, and that it won't be supported by some software develeopers, and left out in the cold with some apps, or not on par with the next-gen 2012 tablets. I want the best hardware specs, possible future windows 8 compatibility, preferably tegra device, and don't mind waiting for a few more months since this would be my first tablet. NO IOS/IPad talk please. Any reasonable advice is more than welcome, and thank you all in advance!
Hello there,
I am a user of another Harmony tablet, the Advent Vega. As I suspected, ViewSonic has adopted the same stance as other Harmony tablet sellers: simce nVidia has no longer the initiative of providing new drivers, all development for our purchased tabs comes to a halt. The small vendors (Advent, POV, ViewSonic) have no own means of providing further ROMs and support, while the bigger brands (Toshiba) which could actually do something of the sort, are already bringing new tablets to the market and forsaking the old models.
Nevertheless, I know, as you all do, that the Harmony tablets CAN run Honeycomb. They have good enough specs to run it, and the main reason why they don't do it now is because of absurd market cycles.
Therefore, my idea is to have all Harmony chipset users unite for a big bounty seeking a team of developers who can create drivers for nvidia Harmony devices on Honeycomb. As it is a cross-device matter, we could even call attention to this iasue and publish this bounty on the XDA homepage. We know already that no commercial house will bring about any new ROM with said drivers. And I think I'm not alone if I say that I don't want my device to be forsaken after just 7 months in the market.
I think we need something like this if we don't want our tabs to turn into obsolete junk, which is what the big companies would like to make us think they are. The XDA community has injected a new breath of life into many devices long forgotten by their makers. I hope this macro-bounty idea can do the same for ours.
What are your thoughts on this?
EDIT:: Sorry for the misleading title, I just used ARMV7 to separate phones which would be useless to me, as they are generally unsupported by many applications, although ARMV7 is not a specific requirement to me.
EDIT2:: The price range has been updated to £150 max.
Hi I'm new to the forums, but I wanted to know if you guys could help me out.
I'm looking to purchase a decent device (at least 1ghz processor, decent RAM, preferably at least 4inch screen) for under £130.
It can be in used condition, this frees up the criteria also.
So far I've checked out the Nexus S (£120-150 used) the Galaxy S (£90-110) and the Desire HD (£100-120), but I'm having trouble finding out which is the best choice.
The phone should also have an active community so I can install the latest CM or stable ROM, and be viably supported in future. Also I would like to know which phones are the most easy to port to, modify, etc. Along with any other important aspects I should take into consideration.
Looking for suggestions, please!
TL;DR: Need good device for under £130 used, active community, long-term, other important factors.
Thank you very much!
Please use the sticky in this section for all phone decision questions, thanks. Thread closed.
Hello
I thought up of a intresting idea here and I want everyone to bare with me as it may have been suggested.
Now I know there are alot of talented developers onhere but how about hardware engineers? If we have hardware engineers, I think XDA could produce a (mainly technically and oriented towards a XDA audience) phone using Kickstarter. For me, this idea is based off Ouya; The Android gaming console. That project raised 8 million dollars and is being preordered at 99 dollars. A XDA phone would be a lot more expensive (as there is no way in hell it would raise 8 million and the phone has touchscreen) but would just be so complete. I imagine XDA completly wanting every single function inside the phone.
The only catch would be that this is a phone "as-is". Meaning the only tech support you get is from the forums and there is no quality control to make sure all batches are 100%. Think of it as those chinese knockoffs but with a real good site/forum behind it.
What do you guys think?
I cant believe that noone is even remotely intrested in this....
Compared to Ouya, designing a smartphone is way more complicated process -> you need to spend more resources on development -> price goes up -> you'll end up with product much more expensive than high end phones.
Also Ouya is let's say "universal". In case of smathphone you have to make choices between different screen sizes, battery life vs dimensions/weight etc. In the end, you won't be able to satisfy everyone needs. So, even though there are a lot of great projects funded by Kickstarter, I think this one wouldn't be successful, but that's just my opinion.
qubas said:
Compared to Ouya, designing a smartphone is way more complicated process -> you need to spend more resources on development -> price goes up -> you'll end up with product much more expensive than high end phones.
Also Ouya is let's say "universal". In case of smathphone you have to make choices between different screen sizes, battery life vs dimensions/weight etc. In the end, you won't be able to satisfy everyone needs. So, even though there are a lot of great projects funded by Kickstarter, I think this one wouldn't be successful, but that's just my opinion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I disagree with some of your first points. I think indeed its more complicated and expensive but, if there is enough demand and preorders, I dont think the product will end up being more expensive than a high end phone (granted around with a S3 and/or a iPhone, the initial batches)
Obviously the choice would be made by the majority of the XDA memberbase; Priotories, 3.7 vs 4.3 screens, battery size, etc would be decided by its memberbase. This would take time of course Im not saying lets just do it and in a month have the phone: No. A ideal poll: "Choose: 3.7 with 2500mAh or 4.3 with 1800mAh" And thats it. And we see what the majority of XDA members perfer (since we cannot have both, for realistic and budget proposes).
I think what XDA should do is research it first: Research is free as it is putting polls on websites and listening to feedback. If there is not enough feedback, thats it; Nothing spent except time. Now if there is enough intresting, well........
Another thing that would be intresting (and also dividing costs) is to work with the Cyanogenmod team. They are argueably the biggest ROM making team currently and would really help out on the software side.
XDA should at least try it.....If it fails, hey thats it....
Like I mentioned I am surprised there isnt even a min of intrest in this at all........
The main problem is getting agreement as to what will be built. Another forum I'm on is wanting to do a project like this but it is a much smaller community so it will be far easier to get a consensus. If this isn't done correctly it could end up getting drawn out forever with nothing ever coming of it.
in china you can buy an MTK "package" for peanuts and put up your brand of phones in days, without basically any work other than designing the shell - and they are pretty sweet phones, 6577 onew are nice and 6589 are nearing top-class phones at bargaining price.
I dont think you can trumph that without huge resources.
It's not as easy as picking out a cpu, a gpu, storage rom etc. and just connecting them to a board. You're going to end up with a piece of crap because no two people can agree on the same things in a forum. This has never been done, and for good reason. Let's leave the hardware up to the billion dollar companies who know what they're doing, not some kid who runs a vBulletin forum and has eclipse installed on his ubuntu computer.
All the engineers on xda live far away from each other, so every developer needs to get a protype and that is going to be expensive as hell
Sent from my LT22i using xda app-developers app
NixZero said:
in china you can buy an MTK "package" for peanuts and put up your brand of phones in days, without basically any work other than designing the shell - and they are pretty sweet phones, 6577 onew are nice and 6589 are nearing top-class phones at bargaining price.
I dont think you can trumph that without huge resources.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A search would have told you that this has already been talked about before.
As for the post above. If it was to happen it would not be with parts from china. If anything came of it we would use a trusted sources. While the the budget parts are cheap. With tech you get what you pay for. A good phone is not cheap and a cheap phone is no good.
As for working with CM. That is not out of the question but I don't think we would use anything more then pure AOSP code. CM edits too much for it to be the base.
Wayne Tech S-III
Yeah I have to agree. Xda phone is not a good idea.
Something that represents xda would be great like the cases they did with cruzerlite.
Edit: I don't know if you can kick start software stuff but how about xda software that its compatible with alot of android phones. This way the site still gets traffic from different Samsung and Motorola,etc users and only true fans can run it. Since android runs off Linux maybe someone can make XdaMod that runs off the new Ubuntu. Only thing is that these devs would need to be very generous because no one would pay for a ROM.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
lukyjay said:
It's not as easy as picking out a cpu, a gpu, storage rom etc. and just connecting them to a board. You're going to end up with a piece of crap because no two people can agree on the same things in a forum. This has never been done, and for good reason. Let's leave the hardware up to the billion dollar companies who know what they're doing, not some kid who runs a vBulletin forum and has eclipse installed on his ubuntu computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once again, a poll would be made and the mayority would choose. Its not about two or three people deciding.
zelendel said:
A search would have told you that this has already been talked about before.
As for the post above. If it was to happen it would not be with parts from china. If anything came of it we would use a trusted sources. While the the budget parts are cheap. With tech you get what you pay for. A good phone is not cheap and a cheap phone is no good.
As for working with CM. That is not out of the question but I don't think we would use anything more then pure AOSP code. CM edits too much for it to be the base.
Wayne Tech S-III
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if it has been talked about and working with CM is not out of the question, why not just make a actual thread and front page about it and see how much intrest it generates? Maybe there is a market for it...
If there isnt intent, its obvious that we will never see even if it generates intrest.
Just my 2c - In order to satisfy all the people you would need a line of products
Some like big screens, some not.
Some require hardware keyboards, some not.
Some like huge internal memory, some not.
Some like powerful quad processors, some not.
Some like bigger battery traded for bigger phone, some not.
Compromise would be unappealing to majority.
No excuses now:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2666
Hi all
MY QUESTION
How much work is it to get Ubuntu working on a cheap tablet, (in terms of weeks and stress/reliability)? I'm about to spend a year writing tablet software that needs cheap hardware. If I find a capable Android tablet going cheap, is it reasonable to consider getting Ubuntu working on it, instead of restricting myself to the Android OS to use cheap tablets? Would Ubuntu C++ apps still kill performance? (Ubuntu will save me lots of development in other ways.)
ALL comments pleease, however brief and knee-jerk.
BACKGROUND (all feedback gratefully received)
I'm at the design stage of a project to use tablets to improve education in poor countries. Extremely briefly, the tablets will use elements of social media to enable children to collaborate remotely and asynchronously on projects, and game aspects to get the kids excited, who have probably spent the day working on the fields, and to welcome kids with special needs. The system will enable education to continue in complex emergencies, such as droughts and conflicts. Currently most kids drop out after grade one as the education they're offered is so poor. Tablets can support teachers and enable kids to get more out of their classroom and homework time.
The system needs some clever back-end engineering to operate a local social network if there is no internet connection. (I'm thinking something like NodeJS acting as both a p2p client and a server.) It also needs to run on cheap devices, if it is to be adopted by third world Ministries of Education.
I am currently torn between Android and Ubuntu for tablets. Android will presumably be the cheapest platform for the foreseeable future - tablets now go for as little as $40 wholesale. However Ubuntu for tablets now offers the ability to bring a proper IT education to these children, as they can learn office software, desktop OS, etc. Ubuntu also provides source code I can customize, eg, GCompris, Tux4kids, KDE and Epoptes. I can see Ubuntu on other tablets here, but it seems the Nexus 7 is the cheapest tablet I can currently get Ubuntu on and performance is still an issue. Is that fair to say?
I can write everything using C++ and OpenGL to squeeze as much as possible out of every processor cycle. I have been a developer for 15 years, but am pretty ignorant when it comes to hardware/OS level.
My alternative is using something like Titanium and Unity, (I don't think HTML5 will perform well enough), so I have a bit more platform flexibility, at the price of having to develop everything from scratch, and using technologies for the back-end stuff that aren't as ideal, (such as Android Java and/or Titanium JS). But perhaps that keeps more options open for me?
My feeling is I should go for Ubuntu, but the price needs to reliably reach considerably below $100 to become a nationwide system in a poor country.
Obviously any comments or thoughts on any aspect very gratefully received. Don't restrict your comments to my question - I want all your wisdom!
Huge thanks for reading all this and any contributions
Chris
Re-post
perhaps you would get more of a response if you made this a bit shorter, and re-posted on ubuntu.stackexchange.com, android.stackexchange.com, and programmers.stackexchange.com
Also, perhaps a little off topic, but have you considered using coffeescript? :cyclops:
Thought it might be a stackoverflow question, this forum is amazing for tablet OS dev though. As ever I blather on too much...people have complained in the past.
All three? Wouldn't that be bad netiquette?
That's kind of a tricky question because technology is always evolving and prices fluctuate so much that in a year you might be able to get a device for half the price. I'm not knowledgeable about the new Ubuntu options but if your gut says go Ubuntu, than do it.
Thanks, I'd love to say gut instinct served me well, and I'm all for intuition, but I wouldn't trust it enough to dedicate 6 months of development on its hunch. However these replies and the act of writing the question has crystallized my view a little so I now have more targeted questions.
found this excellent guide on the hassles of porting an OS to a new device...
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/Linux-For-Devices-Articles/Porting-Android-to-a-new-device/
and this
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...droid-kernel-porting-from-one-device-to-other
So looks like a month, best case, with expert developers and a device well-known for being hackable. So to port ubuntu to a $40 device, I'm thinking three+ months, plenty of risk, and much pain.
Some other interesting posts:
A little gritty detail on porting kernels: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...droid-kernel-porting-from-one-device-to-other
A tutorial on building (compiling, not developing) a kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2110842
The best post I found on porting ROMS: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1941239
Porting modules from within kernels: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1751966
Porting cyogenmod, (a ROM, not a Mod, as anyone on this forum probably knows): http://forum.cyanogenmod.org/topic/15492-general-cyanogenmod-porting-discussion/
A new kernel developer: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2173411
A vocab for noobs like me: http://www.talkandroid.com/guides/beginner/android-rom-and-rooting-dictionary-for-beginners/
I was wrong. Ubuntu Touch is based on the CyanogenMod kernel, which is widely ported.
From Canonical's FAQ on the bits of CyanogenMod used: "The kernel and a few low level drivers for network, video, audio and some other hardware features are taken, all the higher level parts have been taken out. On top of this the whole Ubuntu is started in an chroot environment." ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/FAQ#How_is_Ubuntu_Touch_connected_to_Android.3F)
As a result it has already been ported to about 40 devices, and porting to a further 30 is work in progress, listed here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices
CyanogenMod officially supports 172 devices, and unofficially supports another 59.
Officially supported devices: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Devices
Unofficially supported devices: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Unofficial_Ports