8.1 observations

[graynada]

Thought after a couple of days use I'd drop my thoughts on 8.1 into a thread for others to add to add detect common themes.

Biggest concern I would say is that battery life has diminished noticeably.  Completely unexpected but on 7.1.1 I am on at about 30-40% at the end of the day, 8.1 15% has been the best so far and that was on a day I used it much less than normal.

Slightly frustrating that the Plant apps are now hard wired in so you can only disable.  I preferred the evenly spaced icons on the app bar to the bunched left/scrollable version we have now.  I would disable app bar but I use the force rotate (must work out how to achieve this and map the Planet key to do it   )

There are some nuances that come with Android 8.1 I find irritating like 'app x is using battery' nice idea but I want to be able to swipe it away rather than have to disable it.

[Mithren Ithil]

There are some nuances that come with Android 8.1 I find irritating like 'app x is using battery' nice idea but I want to be able to swipe it away rather than have to disable it.

How to disable this please?  So far I have gotten as far as swiping right and I can see cog but it disappears before I can do anything.

<EDIT>
Bleh my google fu failed me when I was looking into this yesterday.  I found an article about how to disable it.
</EDIT>

[Steve Goodey]

I would disable app bar but I use the force rotate (must work out how to achieve this and map the Planet key to do it   )

New shortcut of FN+Shift+R now forces rotate.

Steve

[graynada]

I would disable app bar but I use the force rotate (must work out how to achieve this and map the Planet key to do it   )

New shortcut of FN+Shift+R now forces rotate.

Steve

Ah yes of course, but a 2 handed operation practically so I might still give it a go

[Isurus65]

I would disable app bar but I use the force rotate (must work out how to achieve this and map the Planet key to do it   )

New shortcut of FN+Shift+R now forces rotate.

Steve

Ah yes of course, but a 2 handed operation practically so I might still give it a go

Useful to know this shortcut, especially when autorotate does not work anymore even when enabled in Settings. Is that just me or do others face the same issue?

Also, what happened to Miravision? Does it mean all those supposed video enhancements have disappeared?

[bloblo]

Has anyone tried HDMI + external peripherals, and observed that

1. every app/window transition animation rotates the picture sideways for the duration of the animation, making for a very jerky and blinky experience on a big screen

2. (usb) mouse scrolling in any list is very broken in all native Android toolkit apps including the system settings, and causes random jumps in all directions, mouse clicks clicking stuff that clearly isn't under the cursor?

Because I'm seeing these things on 8.1 and never had them on 7, so that is a bit frustrating! I've even seen mouse clicks not work on some toggles of native toolkit apps at all, and I needed to reach out and tap so it's pretty bad

[Daniel W]

So far, I've observed this:

• Most of the the weird keyboard behaviors, appears NOT to have changed. Right Shift + Backspace still doesn't Delete. Typing an FN symbol and then pressing Tab, still toggles Caps Lock, etc.
• The physical keyboard works, including localized keys, but FN+Sym or Fn+emoji consistently crashes the Gemini keyboard app. Home and End finally seems to work in my text editor of choice, though.
• DuraSpeed is disabled and just says "No DuraSpeed support in the device", offering to uninstall its software. Not sure if it was ever useful, but it seemed to improve my battery life a bit when on.
• My device serial number (Settings > System > About phone > Status) is back to 01234567890ABCDEF. Oh, well.
• The patch level is now December 2018, which is an improvement, but still pretty far behind. I hope patch updates will resume once the most glaring Oreo issues are solved.
• App icon labels are gone from the landscape home screen, but that's a Google thing as far as I understand things. I can live with that.
• Since the MiraVision settings are gone, the BluLight defender is no more. That's a bummer, since it could actually remove (a little) blue, rather than add red, as Twilight etc. are forced to do.
• Using the OpelSL ES Audio API in the DAW app Caustic, now seems to use about as little CPU as the regular AudioTrack API, but still with a bit lower latency.

[bloblo]

Regarding what I wrote:

Has anyone tried HDMI + external peripherals, and observed that

1. every app/window transition animation rotates the picture sideways for the duration of the animation, making for a very jerky and blinky experience on a big screen

2. (usb) mouse scrolling in any list is very broken in all native Android toolkit apps including the system settings, and causes random jumps in all directions, mouse clicks clicking stuff that clearly isn't under the cursor?

I just got an e-mail back from planet computers' support confirming both of these are known issues and they're looking into it, and expecting to release an update fixing it very soon. So fingers crossed for all of us using HDMI with usb peripherals who may run into this!

Since the 8.1 update fixed a very annoying compatibility issue with the Razer USB-C audio adapter leading to annoying artifacts and even audio dropouts later it's still worth it for me, even though I use HDMI a lot

The patch level is now December 2018, which is an improvement, but still pretty far behind. I hope patch updates will resume once the most glaring Oreo issues are solved.

That is the only other thing I really hope they fix, although I haven't asked support about that one. But yeah, a patch level update for security would be very nice indeed

[RJL]

OTA stopped in the middle of the download, so rather than faff about with that, I did a manual update. Followed instructions and it worked.

Boringly, there doesn't seem to be much difference of substance. Settings menus are a bit different, but doesn't seem to be much that I want to do different. Thinking about removing the android navigation icons and just using keys to navigate. But I've got so used to the icons being there (which I originally hated), that I am a bit lost without them.

Google Maps persistently crashed on start up with the previous Android, but it now seems to work fine with 8.1.

• The physical keyboard works, including localized keys, but FN+Sym or Fn+emoji consistently crashes the Gemini keyboard app. Home and End finally seems to work in my text editor of choice, though.

Oh yay! You are right, HOME, END, PG UP and PG DN, finally seem to work!

Also, FN+Sym and FN+emoji crashes for me too. No great loss as I only invoke those menus accidentally, but would be nice to get this patched.

• My device serial number (Settings > System > About phone > Status) is back to 01234567890ABCDEF. Oh, well.

Snap!

[bloblo]

Boringly, there doesn't seem to be much difference of substance.

Picture in picture can make an INSANE difference if you use it for productivity, and you're the kind of person that does tasks where some visual distraction & entertainment is useful. You can now use e.g. a spreadsheet, or coding environment, over the entire screen while having a small tiny video continue to play and move it wherever you like. I really love that feature!

But yeah, other than that I haven't found anything significant either. Some more control over notifications, but it's not having a huge impact on how I use them, and USB-C audio is less buggy (but that's not really a "visible" change in workflow)

[novaldex]

• My device serial number (Settings > System > About phone > Status) is back to 01234567890ABCDEF. Oh, well.

Snap!

Hey, me too! Not seen that before. I wonder if anyone still has their original serial number being reported?

[Dixit]

Same here. And the "bedrijfstijd" (operational time) is 2h55 min, as if it were a brand new phone (it isn't...).
I did not even know this was possible. I guessed that the serial was somewhat hard coded somewhere in a chip.

Battery dropped 12% in those 2h55. Hmmm... that could be a challenge. The Gemini ran 2 to 3 days on a charge - I wouldn't like it if charging becomes a daily activity.

My wife has a Huawei with Android Oreo (since she purchased the phone 1 1/2 years ago). That one needs a daily charge.
Is Oreo an energy guzzler ?

[RJL]

• My device serial number (Settings > System > About phone > Status) is back to 01234567890ABCDEF. Oh, well.

Snap!

Hey, me too! Not seen that before. I wonder if anyone still has their original serial number being reported?

It was like this originally, when I first got my Gemini (I was in first 1000).

But a previous patch fixed this so that it displayed a real (looking) serial number. However, 8.1 seems to have reverted to the original behaviour.

[greguu]

My observations so far:

- Google Maps/Drive work fine compared to Android 7 where it would crash.
- Oreo allows better DPI settings. I currently run at 531 dp smallest width (developer options) and it still shows the navigator bar.
- Battery Life is ok for me. I use black/dark themes where I can and run 2 days on minimal use with 50% battery used. Seems to be same as before, but I need to do more testing.
- Some apps indeed start in portrait and then rotate to landscape, but most apps I use work fine.
- Hangouts still does not like landscape and even in portrait it sucks, almost unusable.
- Notifications can be disabled and adjusted, once done all good. Google it.
- No change in speed/performance, but the animations seem to be more smooth (swipe)
- Missing titles on home screen icons. No drama at all, I like it.
- Bluetooth: Tested headphones and mouse and all seem to work. On first connect the mouse was jumpy, but settled down once re-connected.
- Backing up the device to Google Drive from Android 7 seems to work, but you can not restore it once on Oreo as the firmware does not offer you a prompt to do so on first boot. This is bad.

Installation/Upgrade methods:

- did OTA manually via ota.zip and it went fine.
- did manual flash via Flash Tool and it went fine. (This seems to have been a more clean way of updating in my opinion)
- created custom scatter file and flashed Oreo and Kali Linux with custom partitions -> flashed fine, but it would only boot into the main boot (Android). Planet Computers still need to release a multi boot LK (Litte Kernel) for this to work..hopefully very soon.

[novaldex]

• My device serial number (Settings > System > About phone > Status) is back to 01234567890ABCDEF. Oh, well.

Snap!

Hey, me too! Not seen that before. I wonder if anyone still has their original serial number being reported?

It was like this originally, when I first got my Gemini (I was in first 1000).

But a previous patch fixed this so that it displayed a real (looking) serial number. However, 8.1 seems to have reverted to the original behaviour.

Had cause to reflash back to 7.1.1 (see my other thread about the microphone here).

Found that my serial number appeared to be real (i've not confirmed it is, but it's not a simple string). So perhaps the 8.1 update simply cannot read it & suppresses it to a default value.