Official statement from Archos on the current Froyo firmware

[Tdouble]

Taken from http://www.jbmm.fr written by CAJL (one of the original beta testers)

Written by CAJL December 3, 2010 - 15:28 -

Thank you to R & D Archos for this shipment!

CPU:
We have set the ARM cortex A8 CPU to a maximum of 800MHz by default in order to optimize the battery life. All Archos products are using frequency scaling as a means to prolong battery life (eg when listening to MP3, CPU speed goes down to 300MHz). Archos products are all using frequency scaling as a Means to prolonged battery life (eg When listening to MP3, CPU speed goes down to 300MHz). 1GHz is currently used for certain tasks like Internet browsing.

We are achieving approximately the same performance between eclair 1.0.84 and froyo 2.0.54 firmwares using Quadrant benchmarking software.

Note that there is an issue with Quadrant benchmarking software on our current firmware resulting in a false result regarding CPU speed evaluation. It has been fixed internally and we reach now a score of more than 1300 for the Archos43it.

Wi-Fi:
We have identified 2 issues with Wi-Fi:
i) Problem: it is impossible to connect on access points using channels above 11. Workaround: configure the access point to use another channel. Problem already solved internally and will be published in a firmware update very soon.

ii) Problem: on some devices wifi gets stuck sometimes with WPA2/AES encryption. Workaround: use a different encryption mode on the access point if possible. We are working with our chipset provider to find a solution.

Flash:
We have a specific flash plugin configuration that enables hardware acceleration for optimized video decoding that cannot be made public until Adobe certification is completed. All benchmarks currently conducted with other flash plugins will result in poor performance that will not reflect our platform capability.

So at work and we expect an update soon

[cajl]

thanks i write the same post..

[stevel]

Awesome news on Adobe Flash, can't wait to get that update. WiFi problem ii I may have. Last night for some reason both my 101IT and 5IT lost their WiFi connections and couldn't reconnect even though other devices were working fine. I wonder if this is related to the problem Archos has found? Anyway, I had to reboot the router before they could reconnect. Thanks for posting this good news!

[czesiu]

1GHz IS Currently Used For certain tasks like Internet browsing.

hah, I wonder if that really works...

also, sorry, but we want 1Ghz in all apps...

[Tdouble, please remove double sentences in your post]

[and no luck... my router has only AES or TKIP+AES settings]

[digibucc]

the irony abounds

good news on flash, i was not happy with the performance i was getting.

[Tdouble]

[Tdouble, please remove double sentences in your post]

just noticed sorry

[czesiu]

cajl, could you ask if they plan to return to normal CPU scaling in next release?

[balmelli]

"We Have Set The ARM Cortex A8 CPU to a maximum of 800MHz by default in order to optimize the Battery life.
All Archos products are using frequency scaling as a means to prolong battery life"

OK, if the CPU uses a scaling method, why fix to 800MHz the maximum ?

I means, if the device needs some performance, just use the maximum 1GHz.
When it's in idle or at a low CPU load, scale the frequency down (300 MHZ ?).
This is exactly what Intel/AMD do with there CPU.

Other things, I'm happy with the current battery life (2.1), why do you want to increase it ?

Sorry but I don't understand ...

Anyway, to solve the issue, just insert a settings where I can choose the max/min freq, that would be a solution.

[gottahavit]

Agreed. I really appreciate the update. I suspected there would be better flash coming. HOWEVER we do need 1ghz for all apps. im typIng at 800mhz right now and it intolerable

[stevel]

Regarding CPU speed, something definitely seems wrong. Archos says that internet browsing is using 1GHz but my A5IT consistently loads sites faster than my A101IT. What about the JVM, is it running at 1GHz? Are all processes related to the browser running at 1GHz??? I really don't like Archos defining which tasks get to run at a faster CPU rate. I would think that the CPU would be smart enough to throttle down when running light loads on its own but I don't know enough about ARM architecture to know. Or is Archos just defining a max speed for tasks and the CPU can scale down if needed. Rather than Archos deciding what us users want, they should offer a utility that lets us users have control of CPU speed settings.

[fvbounty]

Regarding CPU speed, something definitely seems wrong. Archos says that internet browsing is using 1GHz but my A5IT consistently loads sites faster than my A101IT. What about the JVM, is it running at 1GHz? Are all processes related to the browser running at 1GHz??? I really don't like Archos defining which tasks get to run at a faster CPU rate. I would think that the CPU would be smart enough to throttle down when running light loads on its own but I don't know enough about ARM architecture to know. Or is Archos just defining a max speed for tasks and the CPU can scale down if needed. Rather than Archos deciding what us users want, they should offer a utility that lets us users have control of CPU speed settings.

That's is exactly what Intel does it allows you to turnoff Speedstep in the bios and run at full speed all the time!

[digibucc]

devices aren't designed for people who know what they want, they are designed to be easy to use.
having a battery die must rank higher to most average consumers than a page loading slower than their old device. not all, but obviously enough for them to make that decision.

i think it sucks, and they should give us the choice. but either way there will be perm root soon enough and then we can just give ourselves the choice - fine by me.

[weedahoe]

With battery life being as excellent as it is, I dont see why the CPU should be scaled down to 800. Selling it listed as a 1ghz but restricting it to 800 just seems wrong at so many levels.

[gottahavit]

If anything battery life is worse with this version so obviously this ploy failed please give us back the speed you advertised

[knownspace]

With battery life being as excellent as it is, I dont see why the CPU should be scaled down to 800. Selling it listed as a 1ghz but restricting it to 800 just seems wrong at so many levels.

Seriously. A 20% underclock of the advertised CPU speed is an absolute joke.

[gondel]

Taken from http://www.jbmm.fr written by CAJL (one of the original beta testers)
[...]
CPU:
We have set the ARM cortex A8 CPU to a maximum of 800MHz by default in order to optimize the battery life. All Archos products are using frequency scaling as a means to prolong battery life (eg when listening to MP3, CPU speed goes down to 300MHz). Archos products are all using frequency scaling as a Means to prolonged battery life (eg When listening to MP3, CPU speed goes down to 300MHz). 1GHz is currently used for certain tasks like Internet browsing.
[...]

Should the device be throttled if charging ? Charging / running from battery information should be available to the code which decides about speed.

[gondel]

Taken from http://www.jbmm.fr written by CAJL (one of the original beta testers)
[...]
Wi-Fi:
We have identified 2 issues with Wi-Fi:
[...]
ii) Problem: on some devices wifi gets stuck sometimes with WPA2/AES encryption. Workaround: use a different encryption mode on the access point if possible. We are working with our chipset provider to find a solution.
[...]

In a cafe with internet access, "Could I please have an espresso and could you please change the encryption on your WLAN ?"

[ptesone]

Always prefer performance that battery life. They need o create a user setting for use a smart processor or NOT.

[spawn]

CPU:
We have set the ARM cortex A8 CPU to a maximum of 800MHz by default in order to optimize the battery life. All Archos products are using frequency scaling as a means to prolong battery life (eg when listening to MP3, CPU speed goes down to 300MHz). Archos products are all using frequency scaling as a Means to prolonged battery life (eg When listening to MP3, CPU speed goes down to 300MHz). 1GHz is currently used for certain tasks like Internet browsing.

We are achieving approximately the same performance between eclair 1.0.84 and froyo 2.0.54 firmwares using Quadrant benchmarking software.

Note that there is an issue with Quadrant benchmarking software on our current firmware resulting in a false result regarding CPU speed evaluation. It has been fixed internally and we reach now a score of more than 1300 for the Archos43it.

Thats not acceptable at all

The product specs which were the basis for my buying descision stated a 1ghz ARM cortex A8 CPU - not one that suddenly gets underclocked to 800mhz by the manufacturer when an upgrade to froyo which are expected to increase performance of the device are released. And my experience with many Android devices as well as with the speed of the Archos both at 800mhz and when clocked to the correct 1ghz are that the Archos devices moves from almost unusable to acceptable.

Furthermore you did not ask your customers in advance if they would agree to you crippling their allready purchased devices to an almost unusable state only to enable you to advertise better battery life - if battery life are not acceptable to you as is, then you made a poor design judgement and should have desided on a better battery.

I do not want better battery life on the expense of games not being able to play (try running Fruit Nija, unplayable on the Archos but perfectly smooth on my Desire running same CPU specs) or videos not being able to play properly, I did not buy an ereader only with long battery life, I bought a full Android device and I want the performance which was advertised when I bought the device. Using CPU scaling is fine, noone is asking for a constant 1ghz speed and no other devices does that either - but we demand that the scaling as in other devices is set to "on demand" ranging from 300mhz-1ghz like the CPU were designed for.

Alternatively add an option under settings to allow the user to set their own scaling options, or give us root so we may use setcpu/cputuner or similar to handle it ourselves.

EDIT: Quadrant working, but H264 decoding in the test taking far to long. Im hoping this is what you are refering to as a bug fixed internally

Sorry to be so head on - but I was certain that the underclocking was a result of an honest mistake, a bug which would be fixed soon, and that would have been completely ok - but learning now that you deliberately desided to cripple the device I purchased to a state less than advertized and barely usable is schocking.

I expect a corrective firmware release very soon.

Wi-Fi:
We have identified 2 issues with Wi-Fi:

ii) Problem: on some devices wifi gets stuck sometimes with WPA2/AES encryption. Workaround: use a different encryption mode on the access point if possible. We are working with our chipset provider to find a solution.

Thats an understatement. In fact the device are currently unable to maintain a connection to ANY WPA2/AES encrypted acces points for more than seconds when the connection has traffic, and almost any attempt at downloading files more than a few hundred kb's result in the WiFi connection to crash and a manual reconnect needed. Im looking forward to a fix from your chipset provider.

Flash:
We have a specific flash plugin configuration that enables hardware acceleration for optimized video decoding that cannot be made public until Adobe certification is completed. All benchmarks currently conducted with other flash plugins will result in poor performance that will not reflect our platform capability.

So at work and we expect an update soon

Glad to hear that.

Finally, when working on optimisations, I would like to remind you to also look into memory management in two areas.
Again based on a bad design judgement on selecting only 256mb ram and only 512mb rom leaving only 231mb for appstorage.

Firstly the low amount of ram are causing a very negative effect on the device performance. I have constant lag issues, even when just using the device for simple things. Compared to my other Android devices the Archos crawls like a turtle whenever the memory gets low, which it does constantly and the OS then having to use CPU ressources to clear up memory (effecting performance). If you have done anything on the device first, then even a simple rotation of the device from landscape to portrait cause a 5 sec pause before the icons on the homescreen are refreshed and shows. And then another couple of seconds before the device respond to touch inputs. My Desire never lags nomatter what I do on it. Something really needs to be optimized here on the Archos.

Secondly the appstorage, 231mb are simply not enough on an Android device - the whole purpose of an Android device is to install various applications to tailor the needs of the user. We need you to assign a partition on the internal flash of 1-2gb for app storage.

Quoting your own words on the product webpage:

Your own world of AndroidÔäó applications
Play the latest 3D games with the OpenGL 3D graphic acceleration, check news and social networks plus add hundreds more applications via the AppsLib store

No, we cannot install hundreds of applications, because of the memory issue
No, we cannot play the latest 3D games, because 1. you now crippled the CPU speed to 800mhz, 2. you (apparently) didnt design the device with enough ram to ensure a fluid android experience.

Thanks for reading.

[weedahoe]

^^^ I agree and like the way you thnk