Messages

1

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Storing a Gemini?

« on: February 10, 2020, 11:30:15 am »

The best for Li-ion battery storage is to keep it at 50% of charge. Definitelly not fully charged or discharged. So if you want the best for Gemini, discharge the battery to 50%, disassemble it and physically disconnect the battery  

2

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / A list of all the hardware/software issues reported so far

« on: February 09, 2020, 09:40:50 am »

It is very unlikely to find a higher capacity battery. I mean real capacity. Anyway Gemini contains 3,85V 4220 mAh battery with aproximate dimensions 3mm x 61mm x 135mm. It seems to have a special connector so in case of generic replacement some soldering skills will be needed. I suppose same battery is in Cosmo as well, but I am not opening it yet.

So far I found some 3060130 batteries which would fit in Gemini but 3.7V only (maximum charging voltage 4.2V) while the one in Gemini is rated to 3,85V (4.4V) which gives it higher capacity.

3

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / A list of all the hardware/software issues reported so far

« on: February 06, 2020, 03:42:31 am »

You can measure the dimensions of the battery and then search for it specifying the size. For example (small) battery with dimension 4mm x 20mm x 20 mm will have marking 402020 or 042020. Also you can try to search for specific capacity and then narrow it by dimensions.

4

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Front Cover LED lights - turn off

« on: February 04, 2020, 11:56:10 am »

I find the blinking LED lights while playing media to be very distracting and wondering if anyone has figured out how to turn them off?

I consider it extremely annoying especially in dark, but sometimes they will not go ON even with closed lid and playing media. So far I did not find a way how to replicate it.

5

Gemini PDA - Hardware / Gemini won’t charge

« on: February 04, 2020, 11:35:31 am »

I have not used the Gemini that much over the past few months and let the battery sit uncharged. Once I did hear it try to turn on while plugged in but it didn’t. I can’t even get it to turn on while plugged in. I can try a different charger and see if that helps. I did have another charger from Planet Computers but that didn’t make a difference. The weird thing is I reached out to support a week ago and have not heard back.

Try what I wrote above. If the battery is deeply discharged then the phone (any phone using li-ion battery) will not turn ON even when plugged in. Just keep the Gemini on the charger (left USB), for many hours. Most likely it will come to life. Also a good thing here would be an "USB doctor", it will tell you if the USB device is actually consuming any power from USB.

Quick usb charger will not make any difference here.

As a last resort if above does not help is to remove battery and charge it externally, but this needs to be done by someone who knows how to do it.

6

Gemini PDA - Hardware / Gemini won’t charge

« on: January 31, 2020, 12:23:51 pm »

Are you sure that the battery is dead? It could be only deeply discharged, it could also be some other problem. If it is deeply discharged then usually keeping it plugged in for few hours will resolve it.

7

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / bad touchscreen sensitivity

« on: January 27, 2020, 03:21:07 pm »

Thanks for trying. Yes I have no doubt that most of Cosmo communicators will be OK, just bad luck (or lack of QC) for me and few others. I already reported this to Planet. If they ever respond is another thing.

8

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Removing apps with titanium backup problem

« on: January 27, 2020, 02:59:47 pm »

Yep, removing system apps with file manager in TWRP works, I just de-googled the Cosmo.

OK . Thank you so much.
Did you install twrp on a recovery partition or in a separate partition ( I think it is not  possible  ) ? ( If you have already  repartitioned the cosmo ).
I think I will have to remove twrp in order to install debian, when it is available. ( Restore the original recovery image : There is an option to install another OS. ).
I am not an expert.
What about adb shell in recovery mode ?


Thank you again.

I placed TWRP in the recovery partition replacing original recovery. On Gemini I had TWRP, Sailfish and Android, but of course you will need to repartition once installing debian, so you will also reinstall recovery. But you will be able to chose either original or TWRP.
I do not know if adb shell in recovery mode would work to remove system apps, in theory it should. But TWRP is so useful tool that I would not hesitate to install it anyway

9

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Removing apps with titanium backup problem

« on: January 27, 2020, 08:03:51 am »

Yep, removing system apps with file manager in TWRP works, I just de-googled the Cosmo.

10

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Removing apps with titanium backup problem

« on: January 27, 2020, 04:51:18 am »

Same here (with all system apps), and I do not have solution yet.

I tried it also from terminal, "mount -o rw,remount /", delete the apps, reboot, apps are back  

then I tried from adb shell "setenforce 0", remount system rw, delete app, reboot, apps are back again


There is some sort of protection mechanism. I think deleting them from some externally running system must work, so probably if I run TWRP, mount the system partition and delete them, this must work.

11

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / bad touchscreen sensitivity

« on: January 26, 2020, 07:24:44 am »

I have problem with touchscreen not properly registering touches when Cosmo sits on the table and I do not hold it in my hands or touch the backside of screen at the same time. This results in not scrolling at all, selecting links instead of scrolling, not registering response to on screen dialogs, etc.

To see the magnitude of the issue I installed a paint program and tried to paint vertical lines from top to bottom. The worst is always right side of the screen. See attached screenshot, yes there should have been lines, no dots. And in one case no line or dots at all. I can produce many of these with similar result.

I believe others have this problem as well, mistakenly thinking that it is actually android lagging. Also some people mentioned this on Indiegogo.

Can someone else please try the same? Important is to not touch Cosmo anywhere else at the same time, only paint on touchscreen.

And at last - my Gemini does not have this problem at all.

I already looked if touchscreen sensitivity can be adjusted somehow, but did not find any.

12

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Missing firmware updates

« on: January 26, 2020, 05:46:10 am »

For those impatient (like me), you can manually update to V19. This is short overview how to do it under windows:

You need proper USB drivers (search for google usb drivers, or mediatek 1.0.8 drivers)

You need sp flash tool from here, as an alternative you can use fastboot method, but I prefer Sp flash tool. Sp flash tool provided by PC for Gemini will not work, it is too old.

You need full images for flashing from thread here

You need scatter file from same thread here
Important: do not use any other scatter file, but the one from this link.

You have to manually tell to sp flash tool where are the images located, especially boot (depends if you want original or rooted one, but rooting requires additional steps before you can flash rooted image)

The setting of Sp flash tool I used is attached as a screenshot to this topic. (as I see it now, I am not sure about lk.img, I think I did not flash it. I think it is kernel and that's surely still the same)

If you ever updated Gemini before, the procedure is in fact the same apart telling SP flash tool which images to use, if you are not failiar with it and you don't know how to use SP flash tool, please study related support page about Gemini flashing here

As a precaution you may also want to do some backups, at least NVRAM, for the proper address range you can look in the scatter file. What I did, I simply used readout function of SP flash tool for range from 0x0 to 0x11B000000 (this is where the CACHE partition starts, so this covers all "system" partitions, but no user data)

That's it.

Edit: corrected the screenshot of SP flash tool

13

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Rooting the Cosmo Communicator

« on: January 25, 2020, 12:47:34 pm »

Well.... I tried the same under OS X, and there fastboot worked, I have now unlocked Cosmo, ready to be rooted.

14

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Rooting the Cosmo Communicator

« on: January 25, 2020, 12:36:17 pm »

Any suggestion what else to try if my Cosmo is not recognised by fastboot?

- I succesfully flashed V19 using SP flash tool (was stuck at v16)
- I enabled USB debugging and OEM unlocking
- I ran "adb reboot bootloader"
- Cosmo rebooted to fastboot mode

Win10 recognises Cosmo in fastboot mode, I can see it in the devices. I installed google usb drivers and also tried MTK 1.0.8. drivers mentioned in previous posts (I think they are actually same)

I tried to assign it all three options one by one (ADB, bootloader and ADB combo). Still nothing, fastboot says <waiting for device>. If I reboot cosmo to recovery instead, it is at least recognised by adb, but this does not help.

15

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Missing firmware updates

« on: January 24, 2020, 03:15:27 am »

You can try download V16 manually and after manual update some people reported that OTA worked again. V16 is here https://flare02.iofota.com/EASTAEON_FTPRO16...91209104700.zip download it, rename to Updatepackage.zip, place to root of your internal storage and select Local update in the update app.

For me it worked only partially though. I am now on V16 but OTA still does not work.