[ROM] [eclair] Finnish Fillyjonk RLS5 [2011-01-05]

[Guest Arr Too]

Sixth attempt (with the modified boot.img): off for 8 hours. Battery %age stats now: Cell standby 71%, Wi-Fi 14%, Phone idle 14% (Display now dropped off the list). Battery remaining: 18%. Wifi was disconnected, and it reconnected fine!

I'm now going to charge it up a bit and then flash the old boot.img, so we can compare. But so far I'm very impressed!

Edited December 14, 2010 by Arr Too

[Guest oh!dougal]

@kallt_kaffee

Have you noticed my posting above according to which you can't disable data service on your ROM?

Not a problem for me.

If I "un-tick" Mobile Network, it does not seem to reconnect (by itself) for me.

I cleared data and cache before flashing.

[Guest oh!dougal]

Sixth attempt (with the modified boot.img): off for 8 hours. ... Wifi was disconnected, and it reconnected fine!

I'm now going to charge it up a bit and then flash the old boot.img, so we can compare. But so far I'm very impressed!

Reconnection doesn't seem to be a phone issue relating to the length of time the phone has been asleep --- EXCEPT as to how the sleep time relates to the time that you have set in your router for the DHCP lease time.

FF is nicely battery-economical - and that battery gauge should be standard issue.

However, FF's methodology of turning off the wifi and reinitialising (after starting up) EVERY time it wakes (making for a 20/30 second wait before wifi is usable) is becoming very tedious indeed.

The alternate driver (linked above) was disappointing for me. Not giving particularly good reconnections, and somehow whacking my battery.

Can I just 'lift' the /system/wifi folder from HH and drop it into FF, to see how that goes, or are there other dependencies elsewhere that must also be dealt with?

[Guest Arr Too]

Reconnection doesn't seem to be a phone issue relating to the length of time the phone has been asleep --- EXCEPT as to how the sleep time relates to the time that you have set in your router for the DHCP lease time.

I was just trying to reproduce the bug according to the recipe that seemed to reliably cause it (for me) on other ROMs, and on FFJ RLS1 for that matter. Although my first attempts with the standard RLS2 boot.img has been good after a 1 hour sleep too.

As we don't know exactly what's causing this issue it's hard to say what might influence it. Certainly, different routers (and router settings) could be one major factor, but after testing lots of different ROMs it also feels to me like once the Android system gets into this bad state (with a broken wifi connection) it is more likely to remain in it (and fail to connect more often). So this could easily be the calm before the storm. If I eventually manage to get what I'm currently running [the RLS2 boot.img version] to break then it'll be interesting to see what happens when the boot.img is replaced with the modified one. Of course, if I don't get to that stage then I'll be very happy!

[Guest oh!dougal]

...

Can I just 'lift' the /system/wifi folder from HH and drop it into FF, to see how that goes, or are there other dependencies elsewhere that must also be dealt with?

Well, I just did it.

Copy/Paste the folder in the zips (Astro File Manager is WONDERFUL - and a prime candidate for the rom in place of filer).

And the WiFi seems to work, fuss free. (Cleared Data and Cache with Clockwork.)

Reconnection is immediate.

No reconnection trouble thus far, but Blade WiFi Fix seemed to work nicely with the HH driver, only being needed very occasionally (as opposed to kicking in every time for me with straight FF2).

Edited December 14, 2010 by oh!dougal

[Guest oh!dougal]

... As we don't know exactly what's causing this issue it's hard to say what might influence it. ...

There are at least two things that might be the same, or not.

Reconnection with a few routers is near impossible. (Netgear DG834 v5 notably -- but my v3 is pretty compatible)

There's a more common symptom of occasional reconnection stalling.

This often hangs at "obtaining IP Address" - indicating that it has failed during the DHCP process. (And this would have to be affected by the DHCP lease time, being the difference between picking up an established lease or getting a new one.)

Another stall, that I had with FF after removing BWF, involved my network being reported as "not in range" and so connection was seemingly not even being attempted.

To me the random intermittantness of these troubles "smell" like issues with timing during the process of negotiation with the router -- and your own observation (confirming mine) that reconnection success is varied by whatever else the phone is thinking about (or being distracted by) reinforces this suspicion.

Edited December 14, 2010 by oh!dougal

[Guest Arr Too]

Whenever I've had an issue with a failed reconnection my router is listed as "Connection unsuccessful -- touch to retry". From that message you wonder why Android hasn't bothered retrying, although maybe it has and it's just exhausted a retry limit? My router is a Netgear DG834G, but it's an earlier one (v2 -- running the latest stock firmware).

On fairly stock ROMs (with few apps installed) I've not had the wifi problem until I turned on notifications in an app, then after that it was pretty much constant (after a reasonably long sleep). And then turning off the notifications didn't revert the system back to an unbroken one.

[Guest oh!dougal]

...

On fairly stock ROMs (with few apps installed) I've not had the wifi problem until I turned on notifications in an app, then after that it was pretty much constant (after a reasonably long sleep). And then turning off the notifications didn't revert the system back to an unbroken one.

Yes, there's some critical timing somewhere that gets out of tolerance when the software load increases, but that's for discussion elsewhere.

The thing here is that the HH wifi folder works when transplanted into FF2.

And the wifi reconnection is much snappier - faster than I can unlock the screen, instead of an approx 20 sec wait.

AND it gives me pretty reliable reconnection.

Recommended!

[Guest Arr Too]

The thing here is that the HH wifi folder works when transplanted into FF2.

OK, I'll be giving that a go later! (Now wondering why we're not using HH if we're having to transplant so many bits from it! Have they really messed up the Finnish ROM, or is the hardware so different?)

So, back to the results with the standard FFJ RLS2 boot.img: couple of long sleeps and it's woken and reconnected fine, so no change from the modified boot.img (but seemingly a big change [for the better!] from RLS1, for me at least). But the battery stats are different: Cell standby 32%, Wi-Fi 32%, Phone idle 29%, Display 5%. Initially (after a smal recharge) the remaining power was 44%, then after a sleep it went up to 47% [!! -- can't really trust these power remaining figures too much then!], and the last time (after about 2hrs) it was at 43%.

What sort of usage figures are good, then? The modified boot.img version seems to be attributing less power (proportionally) to the Wi-Fi and Phone Idle, with most of it on Cell Standby. Whereas the normal boot.img has it shared fairly equally across them.

[Guest Arr Too]

Yay! (Sort of.) My system running the standard FFJ RLS2 boot.img has now got broken wifi! That took just 3 attempts. The battery %age usage stats are similar to the last run (33%/33%/30%/4%), with remaining down to 42%.

I'm now going to reflash the modified boot.img. If that holds up as well as it did before then I'll try slotting in the HH wifi stuff as well.

[Guest Arr Too]

Modified boot.img continues to be great at reconnecting on my setup. It's done 5 long sleeps fine, so now I'll try the HH wifi and see if that's faster and just as robust.

So, current result (for me): the setup in RLS2 boot.img does end up with broken wifi, and that in the modified boot.img so far has not (after many more attempts than were needed to break the RLS2 one).

[Guest oh!dougal]

...

The thing here is that the HH wifi folder works when transplanted into FF2.

And the wifi reconnection is much snappier - faster than I can unlock the screen, instead of an approx 20 sec wait.

AND it gives me pretty reliable reconnection.

Recommended!

Hasn't yet failed to reconnect all by itself. At least a couple of dozen wakes today.

This (stock FF2 + HH wifi folder) works very nicely for me.

And with BWF in reserve (in case it were ever needed), I think its fine.

[Guest strumluff]

Can this stuff then be merged into a 2.2 rom so we can have it fixed with our shiny Froyo roms? :)

[Guest Arr Too]

OK, not sure I understand this, but (so far) with the FFJ RLS2 + HH wifi + modified boot.img I've got quick wifi connects (as promised by oh!dougal) and no bad ones (yet). But the battery %age usage stats have swapped over to those I was getting from the unmodified FFJ RLS2 setup (Cell Standy 33%, Wi-Fi 33%, Phone idle 32%). Is that what anyone would expect?

[Guest Arr Too]

Morning wakeup was fine, and the %age usage stats are the same (evenly shared). I'm going to try the FFJ RLS2 boot.img with the HH wifi now to see if that breaks (and what the %age usage stats might randomly change to!).

[Guest Arr Too]

That was quick! The FFJ RLS2 boot.img version with HH wifi has broken on my phone after the second sleep (with the normal [for my setup] "Connection unsuccessful -- touch to retry"). The battery %age used stats remained at equally shared among the 3 main participants (which is different from the modified FFJ boot.img without HH wifi...).

So, the conclusion is that (for me) the modified boot.img does work much better, and so far I've been unable to break the wifi running it (YAY!!!!). With the normal FFJ RLS2 wifi (/system/wifi) the connection always seems to be visibly restarted on wakeup (even if it was a short sleep and still indicated as connected), but using the HH wifi libraries (i.e. the whole of /system/wifi) gives a seemingly uninterrupted wifi connection. The %age battery usage across Cell Standby/Wi-Fi/Phone idle is shared evenly when using the HH wifi, but skewed massively to Cell Standby with the normal FFJ RLS2 wifi.

[Guest kallt_kaffe]

That was quick! The FFJ RLS2 boot.img version with HH wifi has broken on my phone after the second sleep (with the normal [for my setup] "Connection unsuccessful -- touch to retry"). The battery %age used stats remained at equally shared among the 3 main participants (which is different from the modified FFJ boot.img without HH wifi...).

So, the conclusion is that (for me) the modified boot.img does work much better, and so far I've been unable to break the wifi running it (YAY!!!!). With the normal FFJ RLS2 wifi (/system/wifi) the connection always seems to be visibly restarted on wakeup (even if it was a short sleep and still indicated as connected), but using the HH wifi libraries (i.e. the whole of /system/wifi) gives a seemingly uninterrupted wifi connection. The %age battery usage across Cell Standby/Wi-Fi/Phone idle is shared evenly when using the HH wifi, but skewed massively to Cell Standby with the normal FFJ RLS2 wifi.

Interesting. The files that differs between hungarian and finnish ROM in /system/wifi are ar6000.ko and athwlan.bin.z77. So you mean using the HH driver and firmware with the changed sleep settings so far has been a 100% success?

[Guest rjm2k]

Interesting. The files that differs between hungarian and finnish ROM in /system/wifi are ar6000.ko and athwlan.bin.z77. So you mean using the HH driver and firmware with the changed sleep settings so far has been a 100% success?

Sounds good!

[Guest steve1221]

Can anyone comment on how accurate the battery level indicator is on this rom?

I flashed last night and put the phone on change all night. This morning is setup pictures for family contacts and the battery level went from 100% to 97%, fair enough.

I then left it for an hour and when I checked it the battery was reading 100% again ??

I'm not complaining if it can recharge itself... but it seems a little odd ?

[Guest Arr Too]

So you mean using the HH driver and firmware with the changed sleep settings so far has been a 100% success?

Yes, with and without the HH wifi driver, but that driver seems to offer a better experience in terms of the connection being available immediately after unlocking the screen. The other combinations with the normal boot.img failed. It's possible that I will get a failure at some point with the modified boot.img, but it's success rate is extremely high (for my setup, at least).

Not sure about battery usage, though.

[Guest kallt_kaffe]

Yes, with and without the HH wifi driver, but that driver seems to offer a better experience in terms of the connection being available immediately after unlocking the screen. The other combinations with the normal boot.img failed. It's possible that I will get a failure at some point with the modified boot.img, but it's success rate is extremely high (for my setup, at least).

Not sure about battery usage, though.

I'm going to try this setup myself now for a few days.

[Guest oh!dougal]

Interesting. The files that differs between hungarian and finnish ROM in /system/wifi are ar6000.ko and athwlan.bin.z77. So you mean using the HH driver and firmware with the changed sleep settings so far has been a 100% success?

Using stock FF2 + HH compass file + HH wifi folder, I've had zero reconnection fails in over 24 hours ... and pretty damn quick reconnection.

[Guest gambieter]

Using stock FF2 + HH compass file + HH wifi folder, I've had zero reconnection fails in over 24 hours ... and pretty damn quick reconnection.

Does this sound like an RLS3???

:)

[Guest gusthy]

Can anyone comment on how accurate the battery level indicator is on this rom?

I flashed last night and put the phone on change all night. This morning is setup pictures for family contacts and the battery level went from 100% to 97%, fair enough.

I then left it for an hour and when I checked it the battery was reading 100% again ??

I'm not complaining if it can recharge itself... but it seems a little odd ?

It is rather usual with Blade, btw with most of the Android phones.

What is more funny, it is typical that when starting to charge the phone, battery level starts to decrease, my guess is that it is because of device starts to warm up, which makes the batt level estimation algorithm to work stupid.

[Guest kallt_kaffe]

Using stock FF2 + HH compass file + HH wifi folder, I've had zero reconnection fails in over 24 hours ... and pretty damn quick reconnection.

Do you still have the bladewififix installed also? I removed it and while I didn't exactly get the "Failed to connect" it does see one of my saved networks but doesn't reconnect automaticly and I had to manually connect.