Rockbox as an Application (Android, WebOS etc.)

[saratoga]

Congratulation to Rockbox Android port developer. Rockbox work on my first Android device Samsung Galaxy 5, including the database builder! This is the best thing since I bought my phone. Working on Rockbox Motorola EZX port has stopped long time ago, maybe now I have an area to contribute 

Good to hear from you.  Of course we'd love to see you get back into rockbox development

I read all the thread but could not understand: about the iphone/ipdo touch.............is there any hope of an app in the future?

The basic work to run rockbox as an application is mostly done now thanks to kugel.  If someone wants to port to the iphone, they can.  Until then, stick with Android.

[blackhawk]

@saratoga
Thank you for your warm welcome.

@kugel, all
Today I try to build Rockbox Android port on top of Cygwin environment, the "make" and "make zip" command completed successfully but the "make apk" failed. Looks like Java for Windows is less friendly with Cygwin. I just had a little time playing with "cygpath -wp" command, then switched to apache ant, successful! I tried Rockbox on Samsung Galaxy 5, now the D-pad, menu, and back buttons was function but freeze when trying to update the database with message:

* PANIC *
Stkov tagcache

I hope this information is useful for Rockbox Android port developer. Thank you.

[JdGordon]

that stkov is a known issue. the database needs to be told to not scan the entire filesystem (or maybe better, we hook android sqlite up instead of tagcache).

[blackhawk]

The apk from kugel not have this stkov tagcache problem (at least on Galaxy 5). I will try to set Rockbox to scan /sdcard only.

Just compiled Rockbox 320x240. With a modified layout and manifest xml, now I have Rockbox in landscape mode! Android smart enough to remapping screen and button orientation. Not tested on real device yet but Android 2.2 emulator

[dip]

On the Samsung Galaxy S the svn version from yesterday does not have the stkov tagcache problem anymore but when building the database rockbox simply freezes after reading about 87000 files (music files are only some hundreds on the device). I have then to kill rockbox in order to be able to run it again.

The database seems to be built "somehow" but not finished. When I try to browse by database after having killed rockbox each track is listed eight times.

Browsing by file structure is no problem.

Since I reported the stkov tagcache problem the first time, I have now rooted my phone. I don't know wheter this is the reason that the problem has changed or if some changes in rockbox source code are the reason that the stkov tagcache problem is no longer present (but has been replace by another problem).

[saratoga]

Has anyone tried a battery bench on Android yet?  I'm curious if things like codec optimization have a big impact on battery life or not.  Comparing a fast codec like flac to a slow one like AAC or APE might be neat. 

[JdGordon]

the recent lwn article says 18h on the nexus one in airplane mode. batt benching on android is going to be painful, apart from no one really wanting to drain their phones battery (so having no phone the next morning) it really needs a 2nd one without rockbox running also to compare, and then it depends on which kernel you are using also

[saratoga]

If it turns out that optimization matters, theres tremendous room for improvement in most codecs.  Lots of stuff that was slow and ugly on armv4 or armv5 now can be made quite fast using NEON.  MP3 in particular is great candidate.  I think we could probably get close to 2x as fast by rewriting the various ASM blocks for armv7. 

[JdGordon]

cool, I think  kugel said mp3 is the worst performer now anyway, but can that be done in a way that we can keep distributing one build per screen size?

[saratoga]

cool, I think  kugel said mp3 is the worst performer now anyway, but can that be done in a way that we can keep distributing one build per screen size?

Sure, but the best way to do that is up to you guys to decide.  I'd be ok with exposing the ARM ISA version via the codec API and selecting which ASM to run at runtime FWIW.   

[gorman]

Is porting to iOS doable? Doesn't it clash with any of Apple's "intelligent" limitations?

[JdGordon]

no reason it oculdnt be ported and run on jailbroken iOS...

also, saratoga found this link which some might find interesting... http://www.treo8.com/bbs/thread-169671-1-1.html it appears to be rockbox sim built for webOS, if someone knows chinese it would be great to get in contact with that developer

[gorman]

no reason it oculdnt be ported and run on jailbroken iOS...

Hmmm, I was actually interested in understanding whether it would be possible to release it as a free app, with jailbreaking not needed. Seeing as VLC did it, I was wondering...

One might even dump completely the iTunes library (emptying it of everything) and load all the music under Rockbox.

[JdGordon]

you mean onto the apple appstore? It would almost certainly be rejected so why would anyone waste their time? And also I was under the impression it is a very grey area allowing GPL code to be distributed on the appstore. Also it needs someone to actually do the port, I don't know of any devs with such a pathetic excuse for a phone

[LambdaCalculus]

It doesn't necessarily need to be an iPhone. The iPad and iPod Touch, as well as the 6th gen nano, all now run iOS (as Apple calls it now).

A Rockbox app for iOS will run on all 4 devices, but also may depend on what version of iOS it's running.