new firmware 2.3.20 - report bugs here

[lbhocky19]

i thought the boot loop only happened in deep sleep.
had it in regular standby yesterday afternoon at 65 pct. went to play with it this morning and it's dead. of course my charger is at home. wonderful!

[deet]

I contacted Archos support via email regarding the audio app problems my A32 has been having since this firmware was installed. They replied yesterday and simply blamed the other apps, saying I needed to contact those developers. That's fine and dandy normally but when at least three different apps all break on the day I install their firmware, I tend to think it's their firmware. Three apps that I have not updated in months. Three apps that worked just fine for months prior to the new firmware.

Would it have killed them to say, "Thanks, we'll look into it"...or "Can you send in a log, maybe you're right"?

Can you reproduce the problem after a reset with no third party apps installed? If so then you have a case, if not then they are right. If you have not tried this then maybe you should do so.

[downlinx]

as this firmware has not gone OTA yet, i have to think they are aware of the issues and are not going to release OTA until it is fixed, what do you guys think?

[viking]

I got it OTA a long, long time ago. They roll ota out gradually to different regions. But I think you may be right, and I suspect they know many of these issues based on a lot of power users they have in France itself. I am finding more unpleasant quirks, and am hoping they update soon.

[JohnnyP]

Spoke to Archos this am. They said they will no longer be doing OTA because of danger of error. I asked if I could use Dropbox
for updating but they didn't know. I went ahead and used Dropbox to download new firmware (couldn't find my usb wire). Download does not start automatically but went into Dropbox folder and clicked on file. Update proceeded without incident. Looks good so far -
Flixter now works for playing trailers.

[skapig]

Would have liked a fix to the sleep bug, but no issues to report.

[Ate_Bit]

Well I was an early adopter of the A70 and I have installed every FW update released to date. This is the 1st FW that has given me problems. I have been happy with each of the previous versions, but I do have issues after this one. I even did a "Full reinitialization" after this one. I have seen the "white screen" when coming out of sleep (occasionally locking up in this state.) I see a lot of FC's that I never experienced before, and as a result of that I find myself rebooting the device much more often. I haven't been able to get iheartradio to work since the update, but I haven't dug too deeply into that one yet.

I still love the device, just hoping they resolve some of these issues.

[m_writer]

Has anyone confirmed that the battery really is draining faster or not yet? The battery indicator may drop faster than before but does the battery really last for shorter amounts of time or does it still last as long as it did before. I know my Archos would show 100% charge for a long time before it would start to drop, so maybe they tried to fix the battery indicator to show more accurately. . . .

There is a problem with this idea. Every time you charge and discharge an Li-Ion or LiPo battery the next charge cycle will be slightly less. It was worse with early Li-Ion batteries, but it is still true with LiPo. So if you tested your battery when you first bought your tablet, and you test it a month later, the charge will be less, even if you do not change the software. It is going to be just about impossible to tell if this is a problem and the problem is caused by the new software.

Also, regarding the devices not charging to 100%. Maybe Archos decided to implement something like my Samsung Netbook has. It has a battery life extender, where it only charges the battery to 80%. This is supposed to increase the life of the battery so you wont need to replace it as often. Though I think it is mainly to increase the life of batteries in netbooks that are plugged in most of the time and they offer an option to disable it if you want to charge to 100%. . . .

Interesting. I never heard about that before.

Anyway, after the upgrade, I think my battery was charging up to around 95% - 97%. I was not documenting it. My normal operating practice is to use it plugged in as much as possible. I rarely use it for more than 15 min. when it is not plugged in. I decided to drain it down to the cut-off once. That was the first time I have ever heard the low battery warning noise. Yeah, it really was a bad choice wasn't it? When I recharged it fully the first time it was still down around 95% - 97%. After a couple of days of my normal use though, it came back up to 100% It does not stay at 100% for long -- maybe around 10 sec., before it drops down to 99%. As far as I can remember, that was the way it was before this firmware upgrade. I cannot remember what it was like back when I bought it (because I tend to use it plugged in so much anyway).

It took me a couple of days usage to fully drain the battery. That was what I expected. I would say that the change of firmware has not affected my real battery life, and if you use it like I do (short drain periods and charging while in use whenever possible), then eventually it will re-scale itself back to normal.

[Greg_e]

That Samsung battery saver is crap! I have a QX410 and I was using it, problem is that it soon forgets where that 80 percent really is and I was getting down to 2 hours battery life from a full 80%. Recharge from 15% to the 80% was like and hour. Set it back normal battery and I am back to the 6+ hour battery life. Novell idea, but I don't think it works.

[OllieG]

I don't quite understand what happened, but I have both new found love and dread for my A101 after this patch.

Firmware 2.3.20 + full reinitialization gave me a "new" A101:
- the device appears to have a little more zip than in the previous firmware
- some of the OS's default settings which I must have disabled months ago during earlier builds (such as window effects and browser bookmarks as icons) were re-selected and working wonderfully
- at first, the default browser's default google home page was a differently formatted google page, but now displays like it used to again

But on the downside,
- I immediately noticed the battery levels seemed to drop faster (both immediately after charge as well as draining during the day), as I now see others have reported as well
- It still doesn't have what it takes to multitask both Firefox and the default email Compose
- The A101 has rebooted itself like I've never seen before. (I feel like my actions are a part of the reboot, like it reboots if I'm waking it from sleep after a slightly bumpy placement on a surface? I don't know, but clearly it's rebooting more often than it used to)
- I've also encountered the device not wanting to wake up a couple of times since installing 2.3.2 firmware. For example, just now it took a few seconds to wake and the displayed screen was darkened, like it looks right before going to sleep, then it woke fully. Once while I was attempting to wake it, I gave up and decided to hold the button for reset. I waited and observed a slight flash of the screen (dimmed) as I was holding the power button to initiate the reboot. The screen went dark into a shut down instead of rebooting.

[RomanP]

I see 2.3.26 firmware version listed in Archos site to contact customer service. I wanted to report them about 2.3.20 problems and found that new version, that possibly has the fixes.
Let's wait when it will be available for download.

[PoisonBinky]

2.3.26 is now available. Unfortunately, it does NOT fix the audio app problems on my A32; stuff still pauses after the screen times out, the A32 is going into deep sleep when it shouldn't.

Here's what they claim:

Version 2.3.26 - April 21st, 2011
Wi-Fi: fix cannot scan on an access point above channel 11 regression
Phone tethering: fix TCP/IP header compression setting crash
System stability: avoid Android reboot in case of missing audio
Media library: fix media libray not updated on hard drive based A70
Notification: decrease low battery notification volume
Application: attempt to solve Pandora application not able to switch songs
Application: solve music lag in applications using OGG format
Bluetooth GPS: increase compatibility with 3rd party applications
Display: avoid white/black screen happening sometimes when switching back the display on

[mailinglists4me]

PoisonBinky,
Thanks for being my beta tester. I won't be upgrading my A32 until you give me your okay, LOL

[PoisonBinky]

Well, it's not any worse. 2.3.20 already did the damage and 2.3.26 is just more of the same.

[mailinglists4me]

I figured that. I didn't do the 2.3.20 "upgrade" yet. I nwas really hoping I could get grooveshark working after an upgrade.

[cutterjohn]

I just came to report that I had the WiFi drop once on me whi,e using tune in radio the other day even though I had powersave disabled for that AP, but I see that we have a new fw now... guess we're guinea pigs unless/until they offer it OTA as .26 is available OTA.

Off to try that one for a while... it's downloading ATM...

[faki00]

This update is extremely frustrating - Running 2.3.26 and the tethering doesn't work, I get the force close dialog box. GPS dongle doesn't work, even did a full reinitialization and samething

[VipFREAK]

Edit for terrible language that adds nothing.

[jamie41]

I know this is now an old thread, but it seem like the right place to report the findings I reported in this other thread, as a result of some trials to discover how and which Archos FW stopped recognising cameras connected via the USB port, when using the PTP protocol. http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.p ... 9&start=20 (in case anybody from Archos still looks at these bugs threads).

Ok, and the results are:-

FW 2.3.20 broke it. (Update dated April 13th, 2011)

If you check the dates of the first posts reporting this, the first one I can find is May.

I started with

FW 2.0.71 - perfect - (/extcamera - can see all files)
FW 2.1.03 - perfect
FW 2.1.04 - perfect
FW 2.1.08 - perfect
FW 2.3.20 - fail - (/extcamera empty)

Co-incidentally, from the Changelog, that was the update which included this "Fix":-

"Peripherals: display a notification when plugging a USB device that requires more than 100mA current for A28/A32/A70 to provide feedback that it is not supported (e.g. some USB keys)"

Well, that's my lot. Over to you Archos. FW 2.3.20 broke the MTP mode (/extcamera mode) for connecting cameras.

Can you please check your tick list for changes you made in that update?

Thanks in advance.

Zzzzzzzzz.........

Hi Arnold.

It's been interesting. If you read back, you'll see that I hypothesised that the problem was caused by a FW release. Harfainx disagreed with me, because he was running a latest FW release ok. So then I hypothesised that it was something to do with rooting. In the end, both factors are crucial.

Having gone through a process of elimination, it turns out that, whatever the exact nature of the problem, it was introduced in FW 2.3.20, maintained in each FW release since then, and that it is "solved" (as a workaround only) by "rooting" (i.e. by becoming user "root").

I said "co-incidentally", but I think it more than co-incidental that FW 2.3.20 was the one which sought (claimed) to tackle the problem of the low power output of the A70, and "lesser" devices, by notifying us that the device we had inserted would draw more power than the port could provide.

So, as I mooted earlier, there is a possibilty that the developer charged with tackling the "limited power" issue, working as a "root user" left something set to be only accessible by him. when issuing the notification.

I may not be exactly right, but there is enough evidence for Archos to look in that area for a solution to the problem.

In the meantime, I'm going back to the latest FW and rooting, for my regular setup

UrukDroid here I come. Maybe version 1.0 this time, instead of 0.7.

It's been fun.

By the way, in the course of this investigation, I discovered that my "suspect" A70 Host cable works fine. It just reveals a practical size limitation on attached storage devices, of 2GB.

My camera's CF card is 8GB, so that's never going to be read on the A70, using my CF card reader. I tried 4GB sdcards, both full and micro in a card reader, but they didn't work. Both full and micro sdcards in a card reader, of 2GB capacity were read perfectly.

I even bought a battery extender and a Y splitter cable, to connect thumbdrives and HDD drives to my 8GB SSD model A70, but none of them worked, so I'm sending the extender back. I have a sweet little Freecom 1.8 inch 250GB external USB drive, which I bought to extend the capacity of my A5ITs. It does this perfectly with the A5IT (and the A101), albeit I have to use the A5IT's battery dock to connect it, but that's no hardship. That's what it was designed for.

In many ways, the A5IT is a better tool for use with a camera, than the A70.