Messages

241

Gemini PDA - Android / com.mediatek.ims.ImsApp has stopped

« on: June 20, 2018, 06:02:01 pm »

Have you tried disabling LTE?  (I've seen that recommended for other reasons.)  Settings -> More... -> Mobile networks -> Enhanced 4G LTE Mode.

242

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

« on: June 20, 2018, 05:54:25 pm »

this is not a fault, it's because the Gemini has an LCD display and their fundamental principle of operation is by using polarised light!

Yes, but the LCD's polarisation has the wrong orientation.

It's clearly intended for a portrait-style phone, as when held that way up it's perfectly compatible with polarised sunglasses (which are all polarised in the same plane, to cancel out reflections off horizontal surfaces).  But it fails big-time when used in landscape orientation, as used in the Gemini (as that's when the display's plane of polarisation is perpendicular to that of the sunglasses, almost completely blocking the screen).

Either the factory economised by reusing a screen originally intended for use in portrait orientation, or they didn't realise the problem.  Either way, the plane of polarisation is wrong for the orientation it's intended to be used in.

243

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Single (ish) device?

« on: June 20, 2018, 05:43:06 pm »

My main home machine remains my Mac.  (Actually a MacBook Pro that mostly lives in a dock.)

But my Gemini has replaced my dumbphone, and my iPod Classic, and is well on its way to replacing my Psion 5mx.  Which, considering how much I used those gadgets, especially the Psion, is saying a huge amount!

The two main things I still use my Psion for are its Agenda (I'm waiting to see whether Planet's app will be a suitable replacement), and as a reader for the CIX conferencing system (for which I co-wrote a dedicated application; there's a web front-end but it doesn't work so well on the small screen, and I'll probably have to write a new app for it, but that'll take months.)

And when I went on holiday a few weeks ago, I took neither my Mac nor my Psion -- the Gemini was my only gadget.  I was very happy to be browsing the web (including this site!) while travelling down the motorway in a coach!  It saw a lot of other usage, too.

But main machine?  No.  It's not up to editing video or encoding it with Handbrake, developing software using IntelliJ, recording music with Cubase and software synths, or many of the other things I use my Mac for.  And without an HDMI cable, even web browsing and email is too painful to do much of on the small screen.

OTOH, my Gemini is always with me, and so it beats my Mac on several other scores!

244

Gemini PDA - Android / SD card being recognised?

« on: June 20, 2018, 05:30:25 pm »

This is probably a wider issue than just VLC.

Android's whole use of filesystem is taking a while to get my head round.  As far as I can tell, most of the filesystem is off-limits; there's a 'shared' directory in the internal memory, which each app gets a subdirectory in, and can usually see only that private directory, but you can give it permission to see the rest of the shared directory.  The SD card is even less visible; a few apps (mostly video players, music players, and file managers) can see it, but most other apps can't see it at all.  However, most apps can read a file if it was sent from another app (e.g. a file manager), though they may not be able to write to it, and won't know where it is in the filesystem.  And if you have root, you can do more stuff, but only if you know where it is...

Or something vaguely like that!  (Please correct me on any of that...)

Many apps don't use files at all -- or at least, pretend not to.  Some include some form of file selector, while others can only use files opened from a link or file manager.  Each seems to have a different combination of directories it can see.  A few can open multiple files at one (e.g. Jota+ in tabs).

The whole thing seems a confusing nightmare!  Apps having to roll their own file selectors, and their own ways of opening multiple files (or managing multiple instances)...  Isn't the OS supposed to handle all that sort of stuff???

245

Gemini PDA - Android / Hotkeys for App Launching?

« on: June 20, 2018, 05:20:04 pm »

I don't have an answer to this, but I too am keen to know -- it's a question I've already been asking!

On my Psion, I had a load of system-wide shortcuts set up, mostly using Ctrl+Fn modifiers (as nothing else used those together): Ctrl+Fn+W went to my (very old) snapshot of Wikipedia, Ctrl+Fn+F went to FreeCell, &c &c.

(For a long while I used a program called ExtraBars to do this; later on, I wrote my own Hotkeys program which was more limited but much smaller and faster -- I'd have made it public if anyone else had still been using a Psion by then...)

Of course, key shortcuts are much less discoverable, and harder to set up, than standard Android methods, but they do have two major advantages for power users.  First, they're single-step: almost all other methods involve multiple taps/swipes/keypresses, but you can press a combination of keys in one go.  And second, they're modeless: all other methods will vary depending whether you're already on the home screen (especially if an app is running whole-screen and needs a special way to go to the home screen), which page is showing, &c &c, while a key shortcut is always the same and can be used without even looking at the screen.  As a result, key shortcuts are much faster in use and much more transparent -- you don't even need to interrupt your train of thought, and can easily flip-flop between two apps or zip directly to one.

In fact, I was wondering whether to suggest that to Planet as an enhancement to the AppBar, which is useful and cute but pretty limited.  I think it'd be a vastly more powerful tool if supported three extra things:

• Files (and other home-screen shortcuts) as well as apps.
• Sublists/menus/drawers that open vertically up the screen and give you a further list of items.
• Key shortcuts to items.

In lieu of that, Automate is the only app I've heard of which looks like it might do key shortcuts.  Its blurb lists keypresses among the vast list of building blocks, but I don't know whether they'd do what we want, nor how efficient or easy to configure it might be.

246

Gemini PDA - Android / Android Screen Icons

« on: June 20, 2018, 02:28:04 pm »

What other advantages does Nova have over Launcher3, if any?  And how different is it to set up and use?

247

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Do you turn the display off before shutting the case?

« on: June 19, 2018, 10:58:32 am »

I always just close it.  (Only turned it off when it'll be sitting on the desk unused for a while.)  In a month's use, I don't think that's caused any problems at all.

248

Gemini PDA - Hardware / iPhone earphones

« on: June 18, 2018, 08:59:43 am »

The jack plug with the 'extra' connection (i.e. tip, two bands, and collar) is for the mic and buttons.  (Traditional earphones only have tip, one band, and collar.)

Most earphones seem to come in two models: one for Apple stuff, and one for Samsung and everything else — so I assumed that Apple uses those connections differently from everything else.

I guessed that the Gemini is of the latter type, and got a cheap pair that were advertised to work with Samsung.  They seem to work fine with my Gemini while it's open: the volume up/down buttons work; the middle button works as play/pause, while pressing it twice or three times in succession acts as track forward/rewind, and holding it down activates the Voice Assistant.

(The buttons are ignored while the Gemini's closed; I'm hoping that's a firmware issue they will fix.)

If your iPhone-compatible earphones work just as well, then either the Gemini's clever enough to distinguish them, or there's less difference than I suspected!

249

Gemini PDA - Android / Gemini MassStorage App?

« on: June 18, 2018, 04:28:21 am »

The timestamp problem might happen due to different time resolution of Linux and MAC file systems

I doubt it -- SCP (the standard file transfer program that runs over SSH) seems highly unlikely to be filesystem-specific.

And I've seen other reports of problems with file timestamps on Android (though I haven't seen a decent explanation yet).

250

Gemini PDA - Hardware / µSD card seems stuck

« on: June 17, 2018, 05:22:17 pm »

It was a couple of weeks ago, but IIRC I managed to slip something small by the contact end of the SD, and push it out from that end (rather than pulling it out the normal way).

251

Gemini PDA - Android / Termux

« on: June 17, 2018, 05:20:46 pm »

I went the hosts-file route so that my Gemini is still protected when I'm out and about, not only when I'm connected to my home network.

(I did the same on my MacBook Pro -- though there I have 700K entries in my hosts file, enough that Mac OS X was grinding to a halt, so I installed dnsmasq locally, and set localhost as the DNS server.  Anyone know how large the Android's hosts file can get before it starts to have a significant impact?)

252

Gemini PDA - Android / Brightness keys

« on: June 17, 2018, 04:21:40 pm »

My Moto G5 allows me to change the brightness when adaptive brightness is on.

How does that work?  Is the brightness adjustment applied ‘on top of’ the automatic value from then on?  Or does it revert to the automatic value after a certain time, or if the ambient light level changes, or what?

I can't see a reasonable way that could behave without risking other issues.

253

Gemini PDA - Android / Termux

« on: June 17, 2018, 11:55:28 am »

I was getting stuck with this as well but then I discovered  'tsu' - https://github.com/cswl/tsu/blob/master/README.md

Ooh, that's worth knowing!  Many thanks.

254

Gemini PDA - Android / Termux

« on: June 17, 2018, 07:05:07 am »

Can you not just edit /system/etc/hosts? You'll need to remount system rw to make the change, assuming you have rooted your device that is.

That's what I did.

You need to have flashed it with rooted Android.  Then you:

Code: [Select]

su rootand:

Code: [Select]

mount -o rw,remount /systemAfter that you can change /system/etc/hosts.  When done:

Code: [Select]

mount -o ro,remount /systemto make it read-only again.

But I have a related issue.  If I, as root, write a file, then my normal user can't read it — even if I add world read/write/execute permission, and/or set the file's owner and group to my normal user.

I hit this when editing the hosts file; the root user can't run vim, so I tried to copy the existing file somewhere my normal user could see and edit it.  But I couldn't find any way other than catting it to the screen and copy-and-pasting from there…

There's clearly something about the way file permissions are set up in Android that I don't understand!

I also don't understand why I can't write files to my SD card (/storage/8048014E3/) from Termux…

255

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / What am I doing wrong?

« on: June 15, 2018, 03:26:37 pm »

Yes, I think it's fairly standard for a rejected call to divert to voicemail.  (If you have voicemail, of course.)

It'll depend on your mobile provider (and how they've set up your account), as it's handled on their end; I think the Gemini just signals ‘call rejected’.