Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

Boot to Gecko/Rockbox customisation?

(1/3) > >>

alsaf:
Having had a bit of spare cash, I decided to upgrade to a low-end android phone. While I can't fault the developers for an impressive system, it suffers from the Achilles heel that affects fairly advanced mobile devices which is painfully low battery life (which isn't ideal when you depend on mobile phones for emergencies and dumb-phones have nearly 5 times the battery life).

While it is something that is bearable where I turn off most features to extend battery life and constantly recharge, I have been looking to see if there are alternatives and I came upon Boot to Gecko and it made me think if could be possible to use with Rockbox, which I have on an old DAP that I use occasionally.

To give a bit of an overview from what I understand of Boot to Gecko (B2G),  it is going to be an OS framework consisting of a stripped down Android kernel with a User Interface consisting of the Gecko engine used in Mozilla Firefox. On this framework  apps consisting of HTML5/JavaScript/CSS will be used, which I believe Android is going to move to with its App development model. Full details of this are on it's webpage:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G

While this project is in a very early stage, from my understandings of conversations about it, while it aims to be a 'truer' open-source environment than Android is, another one is to create a standard so that HTML can be used more easily as a User Interface framework.

Although it is being aimed as a mobile phone framework, it can also be customised to be used on tablets and I can't see why it can't be transferred to the desktop. It got me thinking, could it be customised to be used a DAP type firmware like Rockbox? The reasoning behind this is say that when B2G is in a workable state and could improve battery life, I could use a customised version of B2G/Rockbox (maybe in dual boot, if that is possible in mobile phone devices) so my mobile phone becomes a DAP. While I appreciate a Rockbox app is being developed for the Android, it still suffers the same as other apps that the underlying Android system uses battery draining services that can't be customised.

Again, I appreciate that B2G is in a very early stage, will take a very long time to get to a mature stage and of course is more efficient than Android, I would be grateful if anybody had any thoughts on this?

   

saratoga:
Assuming that platform has apps, then yes you could in theory port rockbox as an application to it.

alsaf:

--- Quote from: saratoga on August 31, 2011, 06:57:27 PM ---Assuming that platform has apps, then yes you could in theory port rockbox as an application to it.

--- End quote ---

Thought I'd re-write the quick reply that I posted before I went to work this morning.

I am suggesting the possibility of a traditional Rockbox port to Android albeit with a HTML  rendering engine/JavaScript interpreter rather than as an app. Although I mentioned that the motivation should be extending the battery life and adding Gecko would needlessly consume battery power, it is required to foster an active app development community similar to Android and Iphone. As I previously mentioned, I believe Android is moving to HTML5 apps.

The stumbling block however is to either use a stripped down Android os or to modify Rockbox firmware for a mobile device. The question that needs to be considered is whether Linux is too demanding for low-end android phones in terms of power drain and whether all it's features will actually be used by the punter in the street. Another one is the effort it would take to port the low level stuff of Rockbox to  Android.

I haven't looked further into this and just looking for thoughts from the Rockbox community.

Llorean:
Why would Android have an HTML rendering engine? Rockbox isn't about apps, or fostering an app community. It's about being a solid music player.

saratoga:

--- Quote from: alsaf on September 01, 2011, 02:41:58 AM ---I am suggesting the possibility of a traditional Rockbox port to Android albeit with a HTML  rendering engine/JavaScript interpreter rather than as an app.
--- End quote ---

Then no, thats not going to work.  Rockbox doesn't support or use HTML/javascript/networking/phone/etc.


--- Quote from: alsaf on September 01, 2011, 02:41:58 AM ---Although I mentioned that the motivation should be extending the battery life and adding Gecko would needlessly consume battery power, it is required to foster an active app development community similar to Android and Iphone. As I previously mentioned, I believe Android is moving to HTML5 apps.

The stumbling block however is to either use a stripped down Android os or to modify Rockbox firmware for a mobile device. The question that needs to be considered is whether Linux is too demanding for low-end android phones in terms of power drain and whether all it's features will actually be used by the punter in the street. Another one is the effort it would take to port the low level stuff of Rockbox to  Android.
--- End quote ---

If you port rockbox to a phone as its firmware, then it basically becomes a simple music player like any other rockbox device.  I would not expect this to improve battery life beyond what you'd save by disabling all the phone radio, graphics hardware and other functions that wouldn't work in rockbox.  It seems to me if you want to make a phone into a portable music player to save power, you'd have a much easier time just hacking up your Android ROM to disable the phone and graphics hardware.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page