20 replies to this topic

[Snowy6]

Seeing that we are still getting new nightly builds for CM9 (well more like weekly) does this mean CM9 is not been worked on for the Blade?

I'm not asking if it is going to happen soon, or even when. Just is it going to happen at all.

[triggerftu]

the device clearly has the capabilities for running cm9 so there's a chance unless otherwise stated that the blade will be supported. all one can do is wait and see.

[Jinxxed]

triggerftu, on 28 June 2012 - 11:42 AM, said:

the device clearly has the capabilities for running cm9 so there's a chance unless otherwise stated that the blade will be supported. all one can do is wait and see.

Whether it can be supported depends on available drivers rather than the "capabilities" of the device.

Since Qualcomm has stated that they won't produce an OMX IL for the msm7227 chipset (which is what the Blade uses) HW video support is not going to happen.

If you can live without that i don't see any problems with using one of the many unofficial ports, you can find them all on modaco.

[triggerftu]

Jinxxed, on 30 June 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

Whether it can be supported depends on available drivers rather than the "capabilities" of the device.

Since Qualcomm has stated that they won't produce an OMX IL for the msm7227 chipset (which is what the Blade uses) HW video support is not going to happen.

If you can live without that i don't see any problems with using one of the many unofficial ports, you can find them all on modaco.

drivers for HW acceleration are not everything. and to top it off there are always work around's and the motodroid 1, viewsonic Gtab, and multiple other devices wouldn't even be on a GB rom.

[Jinxxed]

triggerftu, on 02 July 2012 - 09:15 PM, said:

drivers for HW acceleration are not everything. and to top it off there are always work around's and the motodroid 1, viewsonic Gtab, and multiple other devices wouldn't even be on a GB rom.

This isn't something that can be "worked around" it's proprietary code that is needed for video hw acceleration and there is no way around it. Ask any dev.

It isn't comparable with hacking framework or compiling already available code. There is no code at all, it's proprietary, not open source and QC says that it will not be released.

[triggerftu]

Jinxxed, on 06 July 2012 - 10:02 AM, said:

This isn't something that can be "worked around" it's proprietary code that is needed for video hw acceleration and there is no way around it. Ask any dev.

It isn't comparable with hacking framework or compiling already available code. There is no code at all, it's proprietary, not open source and QC says that it will not be released.

And i will say it again. it doesn't need HW acceleration. there's no need for it. and dev will tell you that the device as nice as a N1 knock off it is it has very little capabilities. just because ics brings native HW acceleration doesn't actually mean that all devices need it. ics can run fine w/o it on the ZTE blade. that's my point right there it will run fine with out it meaning it doesn't really NEED IT.

[Jinxxed]

triggerftu, on 07 July 2012 - 11:27 AM, said:

And i will say it again. it doesn't need HW acceleration. there's no need for it. and dev will tell you that the device as nice as a N1 knock off it is it has very little capabilities. just because ics brings native HW acceleration doesn't actually mean that all devices need it. ics can run fine w/o it on the ZTE blade. that's my point right there it will run fine with out it meaning it doesn't really NEED IT.

I don't think you understand what OMX does, of course it's not needed to run ICS (the HW accel for ICS itself already works just fine) but it IS needed to get HW acceleration for video and without that things like Youtube HQ or any HQ video will be extremely laggy. I am not debating you here, i'm just trying to explain why official support is extremely unlikely to happen.

The unofficial CM9/AOSP/AOKP versions such as KonstaKANG, Burstlams AOKP remix or tilal's CFX all work fine except for HW video acceleration/panorama mode/fm radio so you can always use that if you don't care those things.

[Snowy6]

Jinxxed, on 07 July 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

I don't think you understand what OMX does, of course it's not needed to run ICS (the HW accel for ICS itself already works just fine) but it IS needed to get HW acceleration for video and without that things like Youtube HQ or any HQ video will be extremely laggy. I am not debating you here, i'm just trying to explain why official support is extremely unlikely to happen.

The unofficial CM9/AOSP/AOKP versions such as KonstaKANG, Burstlams AOKP remix or tilal's CFX all work fine except for HW video acceleration/panorama mode/fm radio so you can always use that if you don't care those things.

True I do not know what it does, maybe if I did I would write my own . Sadly while I can use a computer ( and program a bit) the level of programming needed to do these ROMs is a bit above me. CM 7.2 works fine for my blade  and for that I give thanks.

You state "HW acceleration for video and without that things like Youtube HQ or any HQ video will be extremely laggy" does that mean that it can do a "normal res" version acceptably, hmm I may give KonstaKANG ROm a try and see how I get along. I know last time I tried the camera did not work at all if it just the panorama mode that is not working then that is OK. Never used the fm radio on my phone

[Jinxxed]

Snowy6, on 07 July 2012 - 02:42 PM, said:

True I do not know what it does, maybe if I did I would write my own . Sadly while I can use a computer ( and program a bit) the level of programming needed to do these ROMs is a bit above me. CM 7.2 works fine for my blade  and for that I give thanks.

You state "HW acceleration for video and without that things like Youtube HQ or any HQ video will be extremely laggy" does that mean that it can do a "normal res" version acceptably, hmm I may give KonstaKANG ROm a try and see how I get along. I know last time I tried the camera did not work at all if it just the panorama mode that is not working then that is OK. Never used the fm radio on my phone

Yeah, low res video works fine, since SW decoding is fast enough for that.

KonstaT said:

Known bugs: (same list as every other ICS ROM for Blade)

Video hardware decoding because of missing ARMv6 OMX - no Youtube HQ
Panorama mode and camera effects in stock camera app
FM radio
Native wifi tethering - use an external app
Camcorder videos can't be played via gallery - use an external app
Occasional blank screen in gmail app (and facebook?)

My personal recommendations for tethering and video is "WiFi Tether" and "MX Player" (with the armv6vfl codec) from play shop.

Edited by Jinxxed, 07 July 2012 - 03:13 PM.

[triggerftu]

Jinxxed, on 07 July 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

I don't think you understand what OMX does, of course it's not needed to run ICS (the HW accel for ICS itself already works just fine) but it IS needed to get HW acceleration for video and without that things like Youtube HQ or any HQ video will be extremely laggy. I am not debating you here, i'm just trying to explain why official support is extremely unlikely to happen.

The unofficial CM9/AOSP/AOKP versions such as KonstaKANG, Burstlams AOKP remix or tilal's CFX all work fine except for HW video acceleration/panorama mode/fm radio so you can always use that if you don't care those things.

I understand this and yes i do know what OMX does. but really who is going to watch an HD youtube video something that works beyond that of 480p something that's screen hardly even supports it. i'm not trying to cause a problem i'm just making sure we are on the same page.

[Jinxxed]

triggerftu, on 07 July 2012 - 08:54 PM, said:

I understand this and yes i do know what OMX does. but really who is going to watch an HD youtube video something that works beyond that of 480p something that's screen hardly even supports it. i'm not trying to cause a problem i'm just making sure we are on the same page.

The screens native resolution is 800x480 but you can't watch 480p either without hardware support, you can't even watch youtubes HQ which is 360p, you're stuck with 240p which is half of the resolution you can play video with in GB (GB supports much higher resolutions than that but anything above 480p is useless for obvious reasons).

Unfortunately that also means that youtube audio is stuck at 22.1Khz 64kbps which is just horrible for anything but speech.

As i said, if you're fine with video at half the resolution your phone supports then ICS is fine but CM9 official for the Blade is extremely unlikely because of it.

[Spam]

Well, for me Youtube dont work at all with WIFI on and i miss FM Radio, HQ and panorama i can live without that.

[Jinxxed]

Spam, on 09 July 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

Well, for me Youtube dont work at all with WIFI on and i miss FM Radio, HQ and panorama i can live without that.

Youtube stopped working after the last update but you can find a working version (3.5.5) in KonstaT's thread over at modaco.

They'll probably fix it with the next youtube update though, FM Radio is less likely to happen anytime soon.

[Spam]

Jinxxed, on 09 July 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:

Youtube stopped working after the last update but you can find a working version (3.5.5) in KonstaT's thread over at modaco.

They'll probably fix it with the next youtube update though, FM Radio is less likely to happen anytime soon.

Thx for the tip, btw its a problem with all ICSs roms or only crash on ZTE Blade devices?

[gronann]

Jinxxed, on 30 June 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

Since Qualcomm has stated that they won't produce an OMX IL for the msm7227 chipset (which is what the Blade uses) HW video support is not going to happen.

Out of curiousity: how much work would it take for Qualcomm to produce an OMX? Is it very costly and time consuming or do they have some other reason for not doing it? Is there any chance that a attempts to sway them to do it might succeed? Either through email, twitter and so on or by raising funds to donate to them for producing an OMX? (It should be clear from the questions that I'm a complete noob on these matters.)

Edited by gronann, 10 July 2012 - 08:45 AM.

[Jinxxed]

Spam, on 09 July 2012 - 10:26 PM, said:

Thx for the tip, btw its a problem with all ICSs roms or only crash on ZTE Blade devices?

Not sure, it tries to open /sys/classes/net/usb0/ifindex which doesn't exist, i don't know why youtube would bother about that though.

[Jinxxed]

gronann, on 10 July 2012 - 08:44 AM, said:

Out of curiousity: how much work would it take for Qualcomm to produce an OMX? Is it very costly and time consuming or do they have some other reason for not doing it? Is there any chance that a attempts to sway them to do it might succeed? Either through email, twitter and so on or by raising funds to donate to them for producing an OMX? (It should be clear from the questions that I'm a complete noob on these matters.)

According to their twitter account and the thread on their forum about it the OMX IL cannot be compiled for armv6.

If you ask me that's not true at all (there is one for the msm7227a and the difference between the two isn't all that big, just a new instruction set, it's the same hardware), they just don't want to add support for an older chipset, they want you to invest in a newer one.

Since they won't release it and it's proprietary code we're stuck.

This also means no Jelly Bean/4.1/CM10 for armv6 phones (like the blade) since it requires OMX IL for all graphics (that's why it's so fast).

[gronann]

Jinxxed, on 10 July 2012 - 03:16 PM, said:

Since they won't release it and it's proprietary code we're stuck.
This also means no Jelly Bean/4.1/CM10 for armv6 phones (like the blade) since it requires OMX IL for all graphics (that's why it's so fast).

That sucks. I found the forum thread at Q here and signed the petition.
https://developer.qu...tion-qdsp/13248
I urge anyone else reading this to do the same. That posts links a twitter post from Qualcomm saying they're looking into it. I hope that is not management speech for "no way".
https://twitter.com/...517592228630531

[gronann]

Ah forget about that twitter message. I now read the part of the petition thread you likely talked about.

A Qualcomm representative posted:

Quote

Re: Petition: Release OpenMax codecs for arm v6 OMX IL libs ...
19 Jun 2012, 04:16 pm
#31 (Top)
In a previous forum post, we indicated that we would look into this request and, unfortunately we are not able to support video codecs for ARMv6 OMX IL libs for Qualcomm's QDSP5 on MSM7x27. The architecture of MSM7x27 cannot support OpenMax video codecs for ARMv6 OMX IL on QDSP5 running on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).

We appreciate the feedback and will continually monitor this thread.

And this reply has gone unanswered by Qualcomm:

Quote

20 Jun 2012, 09:26 am
#34 (Top)
As an microelectronics engineer, I hardly believe that. According to your specs, you have lots of chips with the same Hexagon QDSP5 digital signal processor. So, you should have working source for it, because many of them are able to run ICS. Especially MSM7227A, which has just the same hardware as MSM7227, but updated ARM core. Everything looks like you just forces us to upgrade. But no one who was buying a device in the mid-2011 had expected it's EOL in the 2012.

It was clear from the start, that we wouldn't get official supported libs. But may be you are still able to provide us with unsupported "as is" solution, just for enthusiasts. Yes, we understand that ARM6 core is slower and we won't be able to play 1080p full hd videos. But now we just can't play/encode anything. What's the problem with msm7x27 support? Strong dependencies on 3.0 linux kernel? If you say msm7x27 had reached the end of it's lifecycle, why not to release source code to let us fix it by ourselves?

We were inspired by release of Adreno 200 drivers. It was greatly appreciated. But seems like you've just gave us the false hope of your support for your products. Attention of 16.000+ people is just wasted. Thanks Qualcomm, I think I would avoid your hardware as much as possible from now on.

Shameful stuff. They don't even dignify us with an answer to those relevant questions. Makes you kind of think Qualcomm is all about the $$$ and don't care if devices reach end of life less than a year after sale because of Qualcomm. We need intel to shake things up on the handheld hardware front.

[Jinxxed]

gronann, on 12 July 2012 - 08:35 AM, said:

Ah forget about that twitter message. I now read the part of the petition thread you likely talked about.

A Qualcomm representative posted:


And this reply has gone unanswered by Qualcomm:


Shameful stuff. They don't even dignify us with an answer to those relevant questions. Makes you kind of think Qualcomm is all about the $$$ and don't care if devices reach end of life less than a year after sale because of Qualcomm. We need intel to shake things up on the handheld hardware front.

There are people buying Blades even today, the gen3 version is still for sale in Sweden. (not to mention several of other phones like the Huawei sonic and some of Samsung's phones)

I had been looking at a new phone but since it's got a QC chipset i won't be buying it, who knows how long they will support it.

I already have a Nokia Lumia 800 which is a nice phone but i just can't stand the WP OS (got one for €120, i'm gong to sell it and buy a decent android phone instead).

Edited by Jinxxed, 12 July 2012 - 02:17 PM.