SmartQ Devices v5

Android 2.1 v5

smartqv5 — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 04:04:00 +0000

Yes, it is true!
click here for the real link
When will we get to see this release for the US market?
Answer to that is, probably never. It does seem like a user mod and thus not approved
by SmartQ Devices. If it does get approved somehow or the company thinks we need
to have a more stable Android on the device we will see it maybe. Of course to become
a full fledged member over at the user forum the link goes to, you need to know
Chinese in oder to actually become a real member. So as far as being able to download
any of the content etc, not possible for the American or other country user that
cannot speak/read a lick of Chinese. Of course there is a video link over at the
smartqmid forum

If there is any better updates out there I will do my best to track it down and post em here.

Android no not R2D2 … Google’s Droid

smartqv5 — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:11:51 +0000

After some time now with the v5 I find myself using more and more of Android over WinCE and Ubuntu. It seems that Android even with its glaring glitches and the v5′s clicky button glitches still better for most of the day to day uses of a portable MID. The web browser is finger friendly and most to all apps are as well. Ok what is up with clicky buttons? When in Android or other OS, the buttons at the top of the v5 seem to stick and can cause many frustrations trying to figure out what the #$%^ is going on with the v5. Took me a while to figure out that the buttons get stuck, as they seem to look ok on the top they are not at all ok. The worst button for me is the left button (+ symbol).

Here is the some big news, no not the HDMI yet, but maybe it works with tv-out as well? Mplayer app for the Android is far, far, far greater and better at rendering and playing almost anything you throw at it. A few containers I have not yet tested are rmvb and … a few others, mkv does not seem to work with stock video player either. Which is ok, cause I have Ubuntu and WinCE to play mkv files. I do hope that the hdmi cable does come soon so I can report on what its like from another user perspective.

Battery life, well this is such a picky one for me. There are good moments and then bad moments. One day I can use it for a few hours maybe another day almost the whole day without having to charge it. Straight video playing has also been mixed. I am not sure if this is due to a bad unit or the battery? From what I can tell about the v5 and battery life is its wacky! While good for most of the time, the short time spans make me wonder what’s going on. The other thing is the v5 can become rather warm and/or hot while holding for a long period of time. I’ve never burned myself but it can get very warm or hot to the touch on the back and front side. The sides remain ok. I did get my case for the v5 and it works great so I can hold the v5 and not feel like my hand is getting warm or hot. Not sure again if this is the battery or the cpu causing the heat. When I am able to get this over to my cousin so he can take a look at things, I won’t be able to report much on this topic other than what I have covered already.

If you feel that there is an error with anything written please feel free to comment or email me. Thanks

Android (lost charge over time w/o wifi)

smartqv5 — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:33:22 +0000

Internet experience has been quite enjoyable. Battery: I started around 8pm with a fully charged battery. I sat down with my family to watch American idol from DVR. As they watched I did a little light surfing. I went to a few websites, google news, tvrage and a few others. I looked at battery life and it was above 90% I then pushed the power button and screen goes off. Not sure if this is standby/sleep mode or what. As I do not own any other Android device. I came back to the v5 around 2 hours later and it dropped to 75% and then turned off the wifi and pushed the power button again. Came back to the unit in another 2 hours and this time it was 50% battery power. So even with the wifi turned off I got the same result, -25% for each 2 hours that passed. This would explain why when I wake up the v5 is drained of all power. Over the next few days I will be testing video playback with screen set to 100% brightness and audio set to at least half or more volume. All this will be done in Android and results will be posted back to this post at the top of the post. If you are interested in wanting to know more about something else battery related let me know. I cannot test the battery but might be able to talk to a cousin and have him test out the voltage when fully charged etc. That all depends on his time schedule, could be a few weeks from now or a couple months. I would like to get the battery results done though fully, half way etc. Stay tuned to this blog for updates from time to time.

note: this is a great little device with full 1080p hdmi out. However there is a real lack of material being posted about it. So I want to get as much possibly posted and reported to everyone that I can. If you are able to do battery voltage testing before I can, I would like to hear back and also post the results of what you were able to get. Many thanks to those who have put in a lot of time helping others out wherever possible.

Old news but new to me

smartqv5 — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:18:20 +0000

It’s new because I had not been following the SmartQ devices. Since owning one, of course I am getting more into finding out what I can. Seeing what this little device is capable of doing. I know that the N800 had hit a wall not having the most promised 3D drivers (now they do!) Ok, back to the SmartQ. Over here at Alone in the light, Roberto was able to get Kubuntu running with KDE and Gnome desktops. Impressive. Would be interesting to see what it would be like with the newer v5 and v7. Seeing as the ram has double and is faster. My guess would be that it’s still on the slower side, but hey this is a MID without an Cortex proc. and doing quite well for what it’s labeled to do.

SmartQ v5 battery life

smartqv5 — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:11:59 +0000

For the most part battery life is great. I have had not problems surfing the internet from time to time through the day. The big issue for me is what I have seen with my Dingoo (another linux based device) the next day I can pick the device up and no battery power left. It would have been great to have had this unit come with a standby feature such as, Nokia N800. This is the same type of device, MID. It’s small enough to fit into the pocket, surf the web, etc. The biggest issue and drawback so far is the overnight battery drain. I am not impressed with that at all. Maybe there is one, but I have not yet found a standby feature. If someone does know of how to do it in any or all of the OS’s please feel free to email me. I will also update this post and correct any error of overnight drain/standby modes etc.

SmartQ and Flash Support

smartqv5 — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:52:53 +0000

Right out of the box SmartQ v5 has no real Flash support. So going to a website such as, youtube is out of the question. After reading and reading and trying out what other people have posted to the seemingly few and slim user forums, over at this link here [SmartQMID] you can get fairly good Flash support with Windows CE. Amazingly it is far better than that of Ubuntu. As for now with the Android it is still in question how to get it to stream/play. I did test this out with my v5 from the link provided and it works pretty good. Do not forget to turn off the taskbar from being above all screens. You can do this by going to the Start (windows) icon at the lower left of the screen and selecting Settings -> Taskbar and Start Menu. Make sure to un-check, Always on top. After this run Skyfire (which is another browser with flash support) it is provided from the link at SmartQMID. Run and enjoy some youtube

Useful Shortcuts

smartqv5 — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:54:29 +0000

Shortcuts

update the package lists

# apt-get update

update the available package lists

# dselect update

upgrade all installed packages

# apt-get upgrade

installs package

# apt-get install pkg

uninstall package

# apt-get remove pkg

show all installed and removed packages

dpkg -l

show install status of package

dpkg -l pkg

show all packages that match pattern

dpkg -S pattern

list packages that contain string

dpkg

list files in package

dpkg -L pkg

show status of package

dpkg -s pkg

show details of package

dpkg -p pkg

list relevant packages

apt-cache search string

install package from a deb file

# dpkg -i file.deb

purge package (and config?)

# dpkg -P pkg

re-run the configure for a package

# dpkg-reconfigure pkg

get the source

# apt-get source pkg

config build-deps for source and install as needed

# apt-get build-dep

install package from specific release

# apt-get -t release install pkg

prevent name from running at bootup

# update-rc.d -f name remove

upgrade the distribution

# apt-get dist-upgrade

SmartQ v5

smartqv5 — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:02:31 +0000

My first impressions of the SmartQ v5.

—— A little more about OS’s ——
2010/02/21

After playing around with the v5 a little more. I do like Android a little better. Though there are still some very big glaring bugs to be worked out. Not sure if this is just Android in general or what? From a casual user perspective, Android is rather lame and not worth the effort to ever use it. I do like some of the games I was able to get installed on it, that and Sudoku rocks! very finger friendly Sudoku. Not even Ubuntu has a good finger friendly version like it. I know that WM6 has some good ones out there, but thats not on this device hehe

Ubuntu is by far the best OS for the v5. Runs nice, can easily multitask without too much hassle, Android cannot do that as far as I can tell. WinCE is good but very bare-bones system. If it were to get the silverlight and such like the A81 has gotten, that might impress me to try and use WinCE more. Would be nice if you could then stream Netflicks with HDMI output? (be pretty awesome) I have tried a couple installs with apt-get and most have done ok. I have run into some segmentation faults, etc. One of the nicer features to have is on a portable device such as the v5 is PIM’s. GPE-calendar is one of those that installed ok, with a few crashes from time to time while trying to set up appointments in the calendar.

So far the experince of the v5 is getting better. I cannot wait for my HDMI cable to come from DX, oh well. I also bought a GPS case for the v5. Once that arrives this week, I will get pictures posted. Took me a while to find one that looked good enough and which would hold the device’s size. Bought it for less than $7 USD. I am happy about that. As I progress more with using the v5 I will try and keep it posted here. I also want to start to form a better area for showing step by step procedures on stuff, by pictures and videos. I know I am someone that learns that way. Sure I am not the only one in the boat like it

—— The quick skinny ——
2010/02/20

Metal body/casing [ No ] it’s all plastic and it feels like it too.
Screen [ Bright, fluid, can view at all angles which is good for GPS use ]
Able to view outside in the sun [ Yes and No ] (needs shading to see good)
Stylus [ it stinks! it too it's plastic and can break easy ]
Android upgrade 3.0 [ Nice but quite buggy, did fix other bugs ]
Ubuntu upgrade [ Good, but has a problem with .mkv files ]
WinCE not upgraded [ Plays .mkv files very smoothly, no image viewer built-in ]

Internet WEP experience [ WPA not tested ]
Droid [Good, quite buggy and unstable for 95% of the time ]
Ubuntu [Better than Droid, flash support, tabs, bookmarks, etc] thanks for the correction
I was partly correct, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CDCRmXoBEQ as 1KeNnY1KeNnY1
shows it is possible with Midori and Gnash.
WinCE [Have not yet tried but able to connect]

PDF Viewing:
WinCE [Not tested]
Ubuntu [Good but sluggish at times, slow to render with larger files with images]
Android [Good experience better with loading larger pdf files and images,has a lot of good
viewing features, able to scroll nicely with finger swipes,bugs, bugs, and glitches!]

HDMI [ not tested, still need a mini hdmi cable or converter ]

Overall experience was good. Not great for Droid, WinCE has some drawbacks but not too many, Ubuntu is stable and is pretty good. VLC has a few niggles to work out with .mkv files. For what the device is labeled as, it is good. It does what its supposed to do. Would I recommend this to John Doe? No, as it still is more of a hacker/mod type MID. If someone is looking for a good MID I would consider probably sending them the way of the A81 or an iPod touch/phone Gen 3 of course Maybe an N800/N810 from Nokia if they are looking for something cheap off of craigslist or ebay. I will have more to say as time goes by so check back, I might even have a video up sometime this coming week but I will have more pictures soon. Updates for Android v3 and Ubuntu v5.4 come from the Chinese website and thus have embedded Chinese even choosing Engrish does not take care of 100%. So let’s hope that Smartqdevices.com come out with English versions that fully support English as the main language.

Here are some photos: