48 replies to this topic

[HanDuo]

Will I be able to play mp3-files in energy-saving mode on the pandora?

E.g. will there be a media-player with LCD-backlight off screensaver mode and a reduction of cpu-speed to minimum required levels?

I just think that it would be very convenient to just colse the panda while I am on the train and listen to some music via headphones while consuming only 100-150mA an hour to save energy for some gaming later on.

So long...

HanDuo

[LevelPlane]

If not, a program could be made to do that.
But otherwise, gathering from the pocket mp3 player discussion, it will be able to close and play music.

[@c0nsum3r]

That would be a great feature, I am planning on using it as my portable music listening / recording / sampling device, so that would be great.

[javaJake]

Same here. I don't mind recharging it every night, but the more time I have the better.

[Squidge]

Why not just buy a small mp3 player that works for 10 hours of a single AA battery?

[Chip]

Why not just buy a small mp3 player that works for 10 hours of a single AA battery?

Half the charm of Pandora is that it is an all-in-one computing device. If you're going to be carrying it around anyway, you might as well use it as an MP3 player and not have to carry a separate player as well. Not that I'll be ditching my 8gb Nano any time soon.

To answer the original question - Yes. Pandora will have the capability to do what you are asking. The real question is whether someone will build that functionality into a media player.

I haven't seen anybody volunteer to port a media player yet, and there is still no official word on whether there will be one included with the device at launch. I expect we'll find out more as we get closer to the ship date.

[Firefox]

Small MP3 players that run on a single AA are generally a bit shit, and usually don't play OGGs or FLACs, have gapless playback, etc etc.

I've just reflashed my iriver H120 with RockBox and am absolutely loving it having used it for a week at work. Something similar for the Pandora would be awesome (especially with SD cards being so huge + cheap now), and would mean I'd have one less gizmo to carry around.

[Squidge]

Half the charm of Pandora is that it is an all-in-one computing device. If you're going to be carrying it around anyway, you might as well use it as an MP3 player and not have to carry a separate player as well. Not that I'll be ditching my 8gb Nano any time soon.

Yes, of course. However, I'm thinking "Sledgehammer - nut" scenario. If your going to playing MP3 files more than what you'll be using the real power of the device for, then it's certainly going to be better (and save your battery capacity) by using a dedicated mp3 player.

Saying that, who says we need to use the Cortex to play MP3s? I think one of the challenges will be to see how low we can get the current consumption whilst still doing something useful.

[javaJake]

Yes, of course. However, I'm thinking "Sledgehammer - nut" scenario. If your going to playing MP3 files more than what you'll be using the real power of the device for, then it's certainly going to be better (and save your battery capacity) by using a dedicated mp3 player.

Of course, when the title "Can It Play Mp3-files In Energy-saving Mode?" was written, HanDuo really meant to say "As a cool side thing among the other trillion things this thing can do, Can It Play Mp3-files In Energy-saving Mode?"

[quote]

Small MP3 players that run on a single AA are generally a bit shit, and usually don't play OGGs or FLACs, have gapless playback, etc etc.

I've just reflashed my iriver H120 with RockBox and am absolutely loving it having used it for a week at work. Something similar for the Pandora would be awesome (especially with SD cards being so huge + cheap now), and would mean I'd have one less gizmo to carry around.

Ahhh, rockbox, i remember putting that on my iPod (along with ipod linux) It's a great alternative

Edited by pandora, 02 February 2008 - 07:31 PM.

[@c0nsum3r]

Half the charm of Pandora is that it is an all-in-one computing device. If you're going to be carrying it around anyway, you might as well use it as an MP3 player and not have to carry a separate player as well. Not that I'll be ditching my 8gb Nano any time soon.

Yes, of course. However, I'm thinking "Sledgehammer - nut" scenario. If your going to playing MP3 files more than what you'll be using the real power of the device for, then it's certainly going to be better (and save your battery capacity) by using a dedicated mp3 player.

Saying that, who says we need to use the Cortex to play MP3s? I think one of the challenges will be to see how low we can get the current consumption whilst still doing something useful.

Although I think Squidge brings up a valid point, I also was under the impression that one of the great functions of the ARM processor series was its ability to save power by using less juice when the processor was not working as hard. Also when it comes to devices that I carry in my pocket, I think most people will agree that a multitasking computer and a cell phone are enough of a load to the pants, and with those its already necessary to wear a tight belt to make sure your not going to be "depantzed" just by pure wind factor alone. So, I think this is an important feature, but also I think that it will definitely have to be added as an after market upgrade or add on program. As I'm sure the creation of the Pandoa's hardware alone is taking up a fair amount of time and energy. Just conceptualizing and releasing any new hardware device that was created from scratch pretty much is hard enough, and I commend the team for efforts thus far. I'm sure that such additions will be more of an after market issue. I just saw the new renderings as well and I', looking forward, although I'm hoping that the microphone jack and the red model are still part of the package set for release.

[HanDuo]

It's nice to see that so many of you want an energy-saving mode for playing mp3's as well. I seldom use my GP2x for listening to music just because the LCD always is wasting useless energy.

[sindbad]

I guess it would be sensible for the backlight to always be off when the lid is closed, regardless of state.

If the music player does it's decoding on the DSP (this requires a bit of work), then the main Cortex cpu could cool off and not eat much power at all. This is feasible and should happen at some point, but I doubt it will be there when you get your pandora out of the box.

[Kyosys]

What I currently use is my DS Lite for playing MP3s with lmp. I have an MP3 player, but why bother buying batteries when I have my DS with me anyway? Plus it has more options, so I will be looking forward to using my Pandora as MP3-Player as well.

[MWeston]

This is sort of the idea I had in mind when suggesting to Craig we could get 100 hours of battery life just playing music.

What I thought would be ideal is to suspend Linux to SDRAM and then put the external memory to sleep. Then, using the internal scratch pad RAM, and maybe using the DSP core and its RAM, a low power, low speed music player could be run to just play music and use the shoulder buttons to change tracks. It would be pretty basic, but most of the time, I don't even look at the display when playing music. I just put the player on random shuffle so this seems like a great idea for when you don't need any of the Pandora's other capabilities.

The alternative is to see just how little power we can use with the screen off, unnecessary features powered down, the clock speed reduced way down to whatever minimum keeps required external interfaces working, and still running Linux (since it has so many codecs supported already). This will take a while to master because I don't think current OMAP3 kernels even turn Smart Reflex features on yet.