Android-x86 Honeycomb 3.2 for Acer1825 series – Beta 2
By Christopher, December 19, 2011
[Beta 3 available: http://www.ceh-photo.de/blog/?p=430]
After some positive feedback on beta 1 release of Honeycomb-x86 for Acer1825 series convertible laptops I spend some time (too much time I think ;-)) on improving it.
So now the second release (beta 2) is available:
[dm]7[/dm]
Changes:
In general everything mentioned in the former post for beta 1 is still right, expect following changes and additions:
- I have improved the accelerometer-hal driver for the auto-rotation with a detection of the current mode of the device –> detects laptop-mode and tablet-mode and mirrors one of the accelerometer axises dependent on it. The Acer1825 sends special key-commands if you flip from laptop to tablet mode and vice versa. I detect these events inside the driver, but one tiny problem is, that I could not detect the current mode if you do not change the mode, so default mode after boot-up is laptop-mode, if you boot-up in tablet-mode you need to switch the mode one time.
- Ethernet is working now. If you want to use Ethernet you may need to deactivate and activate it on the first use. I could improve and integrate some patch from Henry from the android-x86 discussion group. More information for developers: https://groups.google.com/group/android-x86/browse_thread/thread/30fa23d81cddfab1
- HDPI option is removed from boot menu
- Fixed display-timeout option “never” so could be used now
- Removed apps: Google Books, Open device and some simple, non-touch demo games
- Removed Facebook app because integrated version was not at state of play and has some problems, if you want facebook you could get it from market.
More important tips and information:
- The accelerometer axises are located in the base body of the device and not inside the display part, so playing labyrinth games (or similar things) is possible and makes a lot of fun, but you need to do such things in tablet-mode!
- You could disable the blinking red frame borders with the app: dev-tools->Development Settings->DropDown Selection on StrictMode visual indicator:off
- Because some user asks about using a device partition as sd-card please check: following site for further information: http://www.android-x86.org/documents/sdcardhowto
New known problems:
- Location detection with wifi do not work.
- Some users reported that they have sometimes problems with loosing wifi settings and connection or problems with connceting to some AP(deactivate and activate it if you run in such problems) –> I could not recognize such behavior on my device
[…] [Beta 2 available: http://www.ceh-photo.de/blog/?p=417%5D […]
Chris…took the liberty of linking to your build
on my site…will remove it if you disapprove…
dick
cannot download when click link
Just tested and download is working, please try again, maybe the server was down.
Hi Dick,
Would you mind giving me a link to your site with the link to this build… ^^ 😉
Hey chac,
he has already provided it: http://tabletsx86.org/
but a link does not be available at this moment.
I know about his site but didn’t find out the link to the iso or this page, the reason I asked… 😉
I also agree the link should be done to the whole page and not only to the build.
Christopher
main page is tabletsx86.org
link is x86-generic Builds ISO..then the link to
your page…NOT DOWNLOAD..!!
thanks
Hey dick,
I have no problem with linking but please do not link directly to iso-download, link to the whole post, because I want that the users read the information and tips about every build and so on.
Best regards
Thank for your work.
I hope you will find a solution to correct the sleep mode bug.
Wow Danke!!
Thanks for the generous donation Chibis!! I hope you enjoy the new build!
Any changes in Battery behaviour in 2nd beta?
In the first beta (which I still have) the battery state is not updating.
In the settings it is written “no information about battery state” or thomething like that.
I’ve not test new beta yet, probably will try this evening.
By the way, I also observe some issues with wifi connection. After switching on the pc the wifi connection is not done automatically,
So I go to the WiFi settings delete the settings for my network, turn wifi off and on an then connect to my network as to the new one, after this it works up to the next shutdown.
What kind of encription you are using for connection? (WPA etc.)
Hi,
I have not changed anything regarding battery behavior. Mmh I do not have any issues with wifi on my Acer. If Iboot up into Android it connects automatically, its better working as in Ubuntu. I have a old Netgear Router with 11g Wlan (running OpenWrt) and encryption is WPA2 PSK like mentioned above.
“WPA2 PSK”
I’ll try on my FritzBox also
Do you have also battery working normally? or it is common issue (not only my bad luck)
No that seems to be a common problem but I have not done futher investigation on it.
is some solution for migration from beta1 to beta2 exists?
at least some backup software?
Mmh nothing special you should try some apps from market…on my smartphone I use Titanium Backup, but I have not tested it on the Acer, you could try it.
to replace beta1 with beta2 is it necessary to format partition again (and loose everything) or just install without formatting is enough?
You do not need to format, because ever y build uses its own directory. So you could install several android-x86 on one partition, but you need to reconfigure your new installation ,but that should not be a difficult task or what do you think?
[…] […]
Hi,
i’m still not able to install this build to my acer 1825ptz on a windows ntfs partition. it seems the install process can not mount this ntfs partition(that is what grub says). on the other side ALL official builds even the new ics 4.0 asus build work this way. i could use the asus build but the multitouch feature doesnot work well – like a huge touchpad. that’s why i would prefer your build but not able to install it to my windows partition. i’m able to install it to a usb hard drive or sdcard formatted with fat32 but i don’t like it this way :-(. how did you get the touchscreen working?
thx …
Hmm I will do some investigation on this topic. Maybe some kernel modules missing…
Hello,
First of all, I want to congrat you, very nice job 🙂
I’ve been trying your beta2 and I’ve found some issues:
– Lots of applications crashes, well, I guess this is problem of android x86 itself
– Battery level doesn’t refresh
Hope this could help, i’ll keep testing. Again, great job 😀
The applications crashes might be due to the applications developers who decided to hard code them for ARM processors, or due of some old versions or due to the misunderstanding of Android SDK rules…
I also have 2 Android Tablets (SGT 7″ and Asus Transformer) and have sometime the same problems.
Could you please write down which apps are not working for you, I will try to collect the information.
Thank you so much for your efforts! I’m going to donate for a little beer soon. 😉
I’ll also try the new version soon, as I am currently using the version 1.
Wi-Fi issues: it sometimes takes a long time after booting to connect to Wi-Fi. Tested on dlink and Fritz box router. My open wrt router crashes when I connect to it,
Turning Wi-Fi off and on makes no difference.
Is there some way I can use flash?!
Thanks again!
About your Wifi issue, this might be a problem with your router, or try to change the channel of your box…
About Flash, you can forget about it as Adobe is stopping the development of Flash and will never release a x86 version !!! Unless Intel ask him “gently” with tons of beer… lol 😉
I`m writing from my acer 1825 with second beta.
great Job!
Very much things work fine.
In my multiboot installation I had to change the name to acer1000s in grub. If someone else have the issue.
and I have the same wlan problems like tim using tp-link with ddwrt
but special thanks also from me
Are you using WPA2-PSK encryption? If not try it!
Yes I use WPA2-PSK.
I googled a bit and the problem seems to appear only with this intel wlan-card and my tp-link router.
The problem also accures with archlinux on acer1825ptz. With ubuntu it seems to work better. Maybe because of the driver version of intel-card.
Soweit das es alle verstehen können. Der eigentliche bug ist ja hier in der router firmware. Der dürfte sich von keiner wlan-karte abschießen lassen.
Aber danke für deine erneute Antwort
Grüße
Hmm for everybody with wifi-problems I am very puzzled about it because I do not have such problems. Wifi is working perfect for me(better than in Ubuntu), don’t know how to solve it without these problems.
The battery problem is already focused, but not yet solved, seems to be a general android problems on several devices.
Thank you for your great job! I have an acer 1825, installed your iso on an sd card and most things work fine e.g. touchscreen, sound, wlan, accelerometer. I’m very impressed! Scrolling, Zooming and the fonts are so smooth in comparison to windows 7 😉
I played around and I recognized that it isn’t possible to control the display brightness. The display is always very bright. Also the microphone (at least the build-in one) doesn’t work. May be you have an idea according to these problems. Unfortunately many apps seems not to be available for x86 e.g. Skype. But this is another issue.
I hope that you continue your great work! Thank you and a happy new year!
PS: Wouldn’t it a good idea to publish your code / iso on android-x86.org in order to benifit of the community?
Thanks for your feedback heckie.
I am glad to know that you like my build.
Display brightness is not working from Android-Menu, but the function keys (Fn+Left/RightArrow) should work. Strictly speaking its working on my device (1825PT).
MMh the problems with microphone could not solved by me, because my build in microphone is not working in general (its broken).
The problem with some apps is that they could include some native code for arm devices and in that case are not running on x86. I think it would be helpful to collect working and non working apps. So please let me know which apps are working for you and which not. I am already active at android-x86.org(see google groups), I think if my build has done some next steps I will try to contribute it to the main branch.
“… function keys (Fn+Left/RightArrow) should work. Strictly speaking its working on my device (1825PT)”
is there any way to change brightness in tablet mode?? f.e. reassign “P” button to cycle the brightness?
summarising issues I have:
I still have an issue with WIFI reconnect after startup… with new router from dlink also 🙁
No battery state update…
No “normal” sleep mode…
any chances to manage at least some of these points?
Is it possible to add USB host also?
Frohes Neues Jahr!
Hello and happy new year,
I have fixed the battery status problem and implemented a well working display backlight driver, so you will be able to use android brightness settings.
–> Will be vailable in next beta release
Suspend is in progress dont know if I could fix it.
USB host should be available in ICS and maybe honeycomb. I need to do some research about that, because I dont know more details.
The P-button is a quite strange thing. my device resets (Yours also?) if I press it in android and also in grub and the general device boot up. But it does not react as a reset button in windows and ubuntu, I never found out, what is necessary to disable reseting….
“my device resets (Yours also?)”
Yes this is exactly what it do…
awaiting for next beta !
Thanks in advance 🙂
Chris,
I have an AAO 110 ZG5 with eGalax usb touchscreen. Tried your ISO but won’t get past the boot in MDPI and VESA mode. It stops booting right after it detected an Acer laptop and displays the android # prompt. Then the screen is wiped with just a blinking hyphen in the top left corner.
A pity, you did some nice work on improving the existing builds.
Happy New Year.
Best, Mike
Hey Mike,
its no surprise that my build do not work on your machine because it is very different from the acer1825 series: different cpu, different chipset, different touchscreen….you should try another release from android-x86.org
Best regards
Chris
Hello Chis,
I run android-x86 v3.2rc2 fairly successfully. No touchscreen though and no orientation shift of the touchpad within portrait apps. I think development of Honeycomb came more or less to a halt now everybody focuses on 4.0. Will have to wait till there is a full grown version of that. Thanks anyway for your efforts.
Best,
Mike
I am quite confused about your post! Sounds for me like you are using some offical build from android-x86.org and not my build??
Hello Christopher,
look at his previous post, he doesn’t own our 1825, it’s a aao 110 with an egalaxy touchscreen, not a cando and a completely other out of the box hardware.
Your port is great, many thanks to you and arobase.
Do you plan to port ics? Should be nice to see it also on our acer.
Vielen Dank nochmal euch beiden. Läuft soweit recht stabil, auch wenn ich inzwischen ein Android Tablet habe, bzw. eigentlich das HP Touchpad aber halt mit CM7 drauf. Beobachte eure Fortschritte trotzdem gerne weiter und testen auch jede neue Version. Klasse Arbeit!
gruss und alles gute für das neue Jahr
perpe
Hey perpe,
danke für dein Feedback. Ja ICS werde ich mir irgend wann mal anschauen, aber momentan wirkt die Sache auf mich noch sehr instabil (siehe Beiträge in der Android-x86 Google Group).
P.S. Hatte auch versucht billig ein HP Touchpad zu bekommen. Hatte aber leider kein Glück damals! 😉
Hi perpe,
Sorry but I missed your post and I’m happy to see you here again.
Thanks again for your encouragement and your contribution with the swivel detection mechanism for the 1825ptz in the Ubuntu forum.
Happy New Year to you too.
Chris, can you relay the message to him just in case he don’t read this post ? Thx
Tried boot from USB on Acer 1820PT. Detected right model on Boot, but black screen. No interface at all.
Hello Andrea thanks for your reply,
you are the only one (I got to know) who is trying my build with the 1820.
I think I found the problem for your problems. Is it correct that your 1820 only has a display resolution of 1024×600? I had assumed its the same resoultion as on the 1825 which has 1366 x 768. I will change that for my next build if you could confirm that.
regards christopher
The 1820 has the same hardware as the 1825 and same display resolution, except the resistive touchscreen (eGalax I think)…
😉
Sure? It seems like you could get both!
Read here:
http://portatiles.net/acer-aspire-1820ptz/
Yes, I’m sure !!! You can also have both display resoution with the 1825 under Windows 7 or Linux, just need to switch it with the display manager ! LOL
About your link :
Pantalla
11.6″ HD 1366 x 768 (WXGA) pixel resolution, high-brightness (200-nit) LED-backlit TFT LCD with integrated multi-touch screen, supporting finger touch and pen input
11.6″ SD 1024 x 600 (WSVGA) pixel resolution, high-brightness (200-nit) LED-backlit TFT LCD with integrated multi-touch screen, supporting finger touch and pen input
Convertible design with screen image auto rotation
16.7 million colours
16:9 aspect ratio
You could even use 800×600 or 640×480 display resolution if you have very bad eyes… ^^ 😉
Again : the sole difference between 1820 and 1825 is the resistive touchscreen for the former laptop.
This resistive touchscreen have been treated in my froyo beta 3 target, but never got a feedback, then multitouch driver has changed many times from kernel version to another…
Checkout the Android-x86 forum.
Hey Christopher,
After reading your blog, i really want to try on this. I downloaded your iso(beta1 and beta2), formatted 8gb usb drive using fat32, tried few different live USB software to extract using windows(i not using linux), but it hangs everytime i boot it. it hang straight after acer logo. Do you have any idea whats goes wrong?
Hello Roti,
hmm strange issue! It has nothing to do with my build because you already hang up before booting.
First I suggest you using unitbootin for preparing the bootable usb device in windows.
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
If it does not work out of the box try it after you have formated the usb device with HP formating tool with FAT32.
http://www.chip.de/downloads/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool_23418669.html
Moreover you could disable the Acer boot logo in BIOS, so you will see what is the problem during boot.
Hope I could help!
Hey Chris,
After sometime, i had figure out its because of the USB stick! i changed another USB stick and it works fine! Now i would like to install as it doesnt save the changes.
I tried to install it into another USB pendrive. formatted in ext3, and create fake SD, but it couldnt boot. Its stated boot partition is not available(with the live USB stick unplug). I couldnt follow your another article about installation as i m not using any linux system. is there anyway to solve this?
thanks in advance!
additional info to add in:
1. I tried both install grub or without, still the same
2. i formatted the ext3 using the live USB stick
3. when i boot up together with live USB stick and installed together with the installed android stick, it will boot live USB, but it still doesnt save changes.
4. When i boot only installed USB stick, it stated no boot partition found.
Remove all partitions of your usb stick. Create one new bootable partition and format it with ext3 and install android-x86 including grub. After that you should be able to select this stick as boot device and changes will be saved.
If you install android and boot another live stick it will no be recognized the installed partition –> should be clear!
Thanks Chris. Its working now! Just to report something i had notice 🙂
1. Sometime it doesnt boot and it stops forever(installed in USB stick), but sometimes it does, not sure why.
2. Did other user encounter youtube video cannot be play under facebook or browser?
Anyway, this is really great. Its a whole new experience using 1825ptz now!
Hi, installed and works fine on Aspire 1420P but touch screen works as mouse, rather than as touchscreen. If i scroll left on screen with pen, it moves the pointer left but as a mouse does. Help please?
If you have a Ubuntu distro installed on your laptop, can you send him the Hal info and dmesg files to Chris so he can check. Otherwise lend him your laptop so it be easier for him to test. lol 😉
We have already managed this in email conversation. Its also possible to get that info in commandline of android. The 1820 touchscreen will be fully supported in next build. I think I will release it next days. Need to check and test some last things.
Hi Chris, I wouldn’t mind testing for you as I am quite enjoying Android even without touchscreen working properly, and have a bit of experience in beta testing.
I know you can get the informations from command line with Android, but it will be more reliable with Linux/Ubuntu. As the weird thing is that the 1420 has exactly (theorically) the same HW than the 1820 except a lower CPU and Jordan has the display and partial functional touchscreen while Andrea only got a black screen display ?!?!?!
Hopefully you can debug these things… ^^
Looks good, but the microphone is not recognized.
ICS binaries are out on android-x86.
ICS is missing too many features and is still too buggy to be usable yet !!!
Better wait for some months before we can use it on x86 devices…
Moreover I think from users point of view he will not benefit so much from ics in contrast to honeycomb,. But feel free to do the job. I could profide you my configuration. Let me know.
As I said ICS is not yet usable, so why would I work on a non reliable system. lol 😉
The main differences between ICS and Honeycomb is that you may be able to use ICS for 1825ptz as a “phone” while this is quite impossible with Honeycomb (no dialer and missing libraries) (Internet data & SMS only with HC)…
Sorry arobase my post was a bit unclear.
I only wanted to agree to your opinion.
“The feel free to do the job” was applied to adminou.
Are you all able to run flash or install flash?
Its generally not possible to use flash on android-x86 because it exists no flash version for android supporting x86 architecture. Moreover it will never be such a version because Adobe dropped support for mobile flash.
Is it because it doesn’t support flash tats y a lot of software and games not compatible?
If the apps or games use flash, then yes this is the problem. But not so many of them do use flash.
So you can forget Live TV or some other Flash TV apps. About games, as stated above, unless you use online games (mostly develop with Flash), the others are created for specific architectures such as Qualcomm or Tegra(2) ARM proc, so again not compatible with x86.
Most of the time, they are also incompatible with one another : games for Tegra2 won’t work with Qualcomm devices and vice versa… ^^
Great explanation. Thanks!
Hey,
thanks for this fine working OS 🙂
But I have one Problem, the gyro-sensor doesn’t work.
When I fully flipp back the display and turn it a few degrees to the right direction, ” ** ” is added to googles searchbar. The display rotate by 90 degrees but it doesn’t react by holding the notebook in an other direction.
Gyro-sensor supporting games doesn’t working either.
Was mir noch einfallen würde (aber ich weiß nicht ob das möglich ist) : Bei einer Installation auf SD-Karte oder USB-Stick wäre es ja sinnvoll die Festplatte komplett abzuschalten, da sie ja von android in diesem Fall garnicht benötigt wird, dann wäre keine bewegenden Teile mehr im Laptop und der Akku würd auch noch länger halten.
Gruß, Nils
I can’t help you with the Gyro-sensor as I don’t have physically a 1825ptz anymore, but what I have notices is that with some apps, they don’t behave or installed correctly (a developers issue).
What you have to do is to erase the the apps data and uninstall them. Then, untick the automatic rotation feature in the Display Settings. Install the apps again, run them until they first display in landscape mode. Then exist. After that, you can select automatic rotation.
BUT you must be aware that some apps or games ONLY WORK in Landcape mode !!!
For the last part in german, for what I understood from your request I guess this might be hard : not impossible but hard though… 😉
Not sure if this is Chris’ priorities… ^^
[…] http://www.ceh-photo.de/blog/?p=417 […]
beta 3 is out now:
http://www.ceh-photo.de/blog/?p=430
[…] […]