Pine Phone requests and tips

[tllim]

Sounds like a small thing, but for me, if the new phone and tablet devices are going to support a gtk style linux desktop, then they absolutely MUST support Touchscreen-as-Touchpad functionality similar to the TouchMousePointer app available in Windows (Google lovesummertrue).

Thanks on the tips, I will explore. BTW, Z80 reminds me on the first CPU that I learn and also gets me interest in the SBC world.

[bcnaz]

Sounds like a small thing, but for me, if the new phone and tablet devices are going to support a gtk style linux desktop, then they absolutely MUST support Touchscreen-as-Touchpad functionality similar to the TouchMousePointer app available in Windows (Google lovesummertrue).

One of the reasons that the multitudes of Atom based Windows 8 tablets were such a total commercial flop (aside from the fact that Windows 8 sucked) was the fact that the morons at Microsoft were too stupid to realize that that you can't fat-finger existing Windows desktop apps in absolute mode (like Android or IOS) in Windowz because neither the apps nor the desktop environment were designed to handle it.  Turns out that fixing the issue is actually not that difficult, as proven later by the introduction of an aftermarket app called TouchMousePointer, but the idiots at Microsoft were too dumb to package it with the Windows 8 OS.

The TouchMousePointer app fixes touchscreen precision issues for older apps by letting you activate a virtual mouse mode where the whole screen acts as a nice big  precision trackpad, letting you control a mouse pointer with precision at least as good as a keyboard trackpad.  This works because, since touchpads are setup for relative motion, you can use any section of the screen to nudge around the pointer at any other point on the screen, and thus keep out of your own way while still controlling the virtual mouse pointer very accurately. 

It takes only moments to get used to the idea that, for example, you can diddle the lower left corner of your touchsceen to accurately control the pointer at the upper right (or vise versa) - and once you get the hang of it, this works every bit as precisely and easily as a standard keyboard attached touchpad, letting you do things that are virtually impossible to do on a standard touchscreen, like precisely cutting and pasting text, or dragging and resizing windows, etc.

Until recently there were NO good TouchMousePointer equivalents available for Linux.  There wasn't much pressure to develop such a driver since virtually no one was running any of those cheap Atom based Tablets using desktop style linux because the kernel support from Intel was total shit at the time and they would crash approximately every 5 minutes.

With the most recent kernel patches though, it is now finally possible to run desktop Linux on these Baytrail/Cherrytrail tablets, which has apparently motivated someone into re-visiting the problem of finding a way to duplicate the functionality of that oh-so-wonderful Windows TouchMousePointer app in Linux.

Here is the link to how it was done:

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?sho...e=threaded


... and a link to a youtube video showing how it works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsJn3eMvG7w


It's not quite perfect though, because, unlike the Windows App, he doesn't provide a simple gesture based way to switch from Absolute (Android/IOS) to Relative (Windows/Linux desktop) mode on the fly.

I hope you can build on his simple driver, to let the user seemless swip to active trackpad style pointer mode then just as easily swip again using another gesture to switch back to absolute mode.

As I said above, this may not seem like a big thing, but please believe me IT IS, as without it it's basically impossible to run old-school desktop apps on a tablet or phone touchscreen device without an external keyboard/touchpad.

If you REALLY want to create a 'disruptive technology', shake things up, and make a ton of money in the process, figure out how to seamlessly swip in a custom Android launcher panel onto the user's active X11 session, then use that to load and run standard unmodified Android Apps from the Playstore (using the standard Android Absolute Touchscreen mode) - then let them swipe back to Ubuntu Mate, Xubuntu, etc. running in touchscreen-as-touchpad mode, to open and edit a 500 page document with Libreoffice, and while doing that, seamlessly bounce into Android to check their messages - GLORIOUS.

*!*!

  Sounds absolutely Fantastic  !
Though I would opt for a software button somewhere on the screen,  rather than a swipe motion.
  But this would add such ease of precision.
  GREAT Suggestion  

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Though myself, I prefer to have nothing to do with anything Google or "Their Store"
BUT that's just "My Choice"

[bcnaz]

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HARDWARE  ?
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I Wonder,   If it is in the realm of possibilities to add PCIe capability to the Pine phone   ?
   but this does seem to be a growing trend for faster connections between the onboard components
and it should compliment the onboard RAM.
As the NVMe drives mature and shrink in size,  I think the rest of the existing components could really scream with such a change. ( ? )
 BUT,  It may be too early, or  too expensive at this time  ?
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Curious what the IT hardware guys have to say  ?
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[z4v4l]

a64 SoC, used in PP, doesn't have PCIe controllers inside. and overall, it sounds a little bit too much. it's like requesting Ethernet in the phone. No, there is probably a "mobile" profile for PCIe, but it's for expensive things (iphones?). the future fast storage for specifically phones is UFS. I wonder how soon it will appear in Rockchip/Allwinner offerings.

[bcnaz]

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Thank You  EFIFY  !

 The UFS sounds to be a good candidate that is available now,  "3 times the read speed and 2 times the write speed of the current eMMC available."
 According to what I just read from a micron web-post.
> I was just looking to solicit some conversation on the pine phone possible upgrades, without breaking the bank.
( Though it does seem a few of the NVMe modules do require much less power than the mainstream ones )
A quick search online does show the UFS  could be a great thing in cell phones and cameras.
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That was the 2.1 spec I read first, I see there is already a 3.0 spec also, even faster.