yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
I responded to the author of the article the same way I will here to you.

I respect that viewpoint and think it has merit, at the same time though, release a product is a commitment to the future of said product and everything that implies. That means you do your research and you plan for the unforseen.

"we support this now and if it doesn't work out, WE PUT OUR NAME ON IT, so that means we will fight for it until the fight is no longer asked for by the customers"

I think we are much too quick to apologize for corporations these days, business is business but ethics are ethics (and the two do have a relationship)

You have a responsibility to offer a solution that satisfies people that put faith in your name, or enjoy the new consumer backlash.
[G Tablet General] 10roller:
Well this just shapes my perspective on future purchases. Not so happy with tegra, will look for qualcomm, TI, etc when looking for devices.

I can understand moving on, but release the drivers for the aosp community developers.
[G Tablet General] Tostino:
Apparently Android Central looked into it more.

http://www.androidcentral.com/nvidia-stop-supporting-harmony-platform-past-froyo

-Adam
[G Tablet General] Da_Sheezy:
Shouldn't we be upset with Google

To quote Jerry Hildenbrand's post at Android Central:

"These popular devices are just the first official victims of Google's new method of forcing companies to obtain its blessing to use a free and open-source operating system. It's not Nvidia's fault. You can't be expected to spend money and resources to update drivers for tablets that will never have official support from Google."

I am just starting to look into this, but regardless of whom is more to blame...

this news sure makes getting the stable full Gingerbread CM7 Rom on my GTab yesterday bitter sweet!
[G Tablet General] y2k-inc:
But maybe it not all lost, since Notion Ink: Adam is only a few hardware modification and will getting the Honeycomb, maybe gtab can have it too if Roebeet figure out how to port it LOL

http://www.notionaddicts.com/forums/showthread.php/3474-No-honeycomb-on-Adam-(harmony)?
[G Tablet General] HexusOdy:
The story is wrong. I know for a fact that Smartbook in Germany have a working Honeycomb ROM running on their MN10 tablet. Which is a clone of the Advent Vega, Viewsonic Gtablet, POV Mobii, Olipad etc

Only thing stopping them releasing it is Google. Who don't want them to release it until they say so.
[G Tablet General] HexusOdy:
I'm not altogether sure this story is accurate. As I've said on the other thread on this subject, I know for sure that Smartbook in Germany have a working Honeycomb ROM for their MN10 model which is a Malata clone like most of the 10.1" Tegra tabs around.
[G Tablet General] ramerco:
The device is not "more than a year old" Maybe the dev kit is, but consumer devices based on harmony have been out 6 months max. Go the engadget and tip them this story. Or any other larger outlet. This needs to get out there. Nvidia could easily reverse this decision. The quote was only from a tegra dev, wouldn't be hard for them to flip-flop on it.
[G Tablet General] Mantara:
So disappointed in nvidia. Their past support of their products was a huge factor in my purchase.
[G Tablet General] P00r:
To their root SOC are designed with proprietary code so that they can limit who can use their hardware at their fullest potential, this way they do not have to care about company seelling their circuit on the grey market, only registered customer who purchasse their dev kit have acces to the code.

It's a win win situation since they can still profit from the product made in china and cloned, that said Google is aware of this feature and is using it to prevent product of low price being able to benchmark higher than fully licensed product!

In the cell market radio firmware is usually proprietary (Broadcom is a champion of this type of marketing see their NDA), so it was less noticeable for the end user since it was enforced in the radio firmware, but with tablet clone appearing everywhere forced them to disclose their card a bit more!

Apple is using the same type of proprietary stuff to prevent people using the ipad as an android platform...
[G Tablet General] Mantara:
I still don't know the difference between a harmony and ventana chip.
[G Tablet General] whiplash13:
Created a Submission for Slashdot as well. See if it gets posted :)

http://slashdot.org/submission/1527348/Nvidia-will-not-support-Harmony-Tegra-2-beyond-22
[G Tablet General] skoodog:
I did this. We'll see what they say.
[G Tablet General] sjmoreno:
Android Central has an article

http://www.androidcentral.com/nvidia-stop-supporting-harmony-platform-past-froyo
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
They need to fix OTA to get that out though. :D

Thanks for the update! I'll be watching for it.....
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
okay, we've gotten our first response!

it's a placeholder, but someone knows we're here. It is Bruce Chan, His email is posted on the first page.
[G Tablet General] CodeNinja:
Translation:

Sir, the masses are angry

Eh, just follow procedure.

Right, Sir, telling them we're looking into it then going back to playing Solitare!
[G Tablet General] iorikun:
From what I have been reading, it's not really a different chip, but rather a different "reference board" with a different hardware configuration.

Nvidia sells development kit with a default set of hardware, and it looks like harmony and ventana are two different kind of hardware sets. The main difference includes the display 1024x600 vs 1280x800 and few other tibits such as lack of gyroscope on Harmony platform.

Since Tegra2 is everything on one chip solution, i'm guessing unless the driver is compiled with an exact configuration, it's not going to work. I could see how Google wants to focus on forcing everyone to one specific hardware configuration for better compatibility between applications (as Apple has this huge advantage of working on their only hardware), but it still sucks for people who bought Harmony (or Beatlejuice) devices which are less than 1 yr old with half baked driver support (such as lack of proper video acceleration).
[G Tablet General] CodeNinja:
That's the thing here, though. Google doesn't make hardware. Google makes the software, second tier developers make the hardware (such as nVidia). Google is apparently arbitrarily picking which manufacturers hardware, and indeed which versions of their hardware, will work on their OS.

That's akin to Microsoft saying, "Hey, our new OS only works on Intel i7 processors. The rest of you people on AMD or other Intel units, yeah... sucks to be you."
[G Tablet General] Icewyng:
@sjmoreno

Thank you for the link.

I was actually wondering how much Google's new policies regarding Android could be part of the reason why nVidia dropped Harmony.

If this is any indication of the future, it does not bode well.

Even if nVidia was just releasing drivers for Gingerbread, I'd be fine with it. Yes, Honeycomb looks great but I would be happy using Gingerbread.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
24 hours later, no noticable changes yet

All I've seen is a few "we aren't dropping the GTablet" on Twitter. Nothing else, so far. Still in my holding pattern.....

...btw, I will have some plan of action if I see no changes by the end of the week. Not sure what that will be yet, but I will give it some more thought, tomorrow.
[G Tablet General] cd112:
Hello

I got this response as well from Bruce. We will need to push on this to get them to support it. If enough people send emails they may start the support again.
[G Tablet General] brave_otaku:
Did I understand that right? There is going to be an update to the official OS tomorrow?

I don't suppose you could copy/paste that email here. I'd like to see it.
[G Tablet General] y2k-inc:
Of cause the more advance the version of windows, the more we see it working with more hardware, it's now NOT the case of Google, they choose and pick hardware vendor and platform to be use with so called "open" OS ...
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
that's right, now is not the time to stop and wait for an answer! that's why I said this answer is a PLACEHOLDER. we have their attention, they won't do anything though until we give them no other choice but to act.

keep emailing, twittering, posting.

we are further than we were this morning
[G Tablet General] lllGurulll:
This thread has me worried that I just blew $300 on an obsolete device. Are we basically saying that if 3991 doesn't come out that we will never be able to improve the device further? Should I just return it to TigerDirect?
[G Tablet General] Synman:
Not impressed with the article but I certainly enjoyed the comments.
[G Tablet General] davidukfl:
Here it is
[G Tablet General] pr0cs:
Not really, 3991 is already available through some of the ROMs in the Dev forum. Even if Viewsonic/USM/etc decide to drop the gtab there are roms that expand it beyond 2.2 anyway. Even when/if Honeycomb comes out it will likely be ported to the gtab.

The largest issue now is that Nvidia isn't going to be releasing drivers for the gtab (harmony boards) past Android 2.2. So if you want to do any video viewing and higher end gaming then the gtab's use will be seriously limited since everything would have to be done in software.

I think for a lot of people it may be a non-issue. If you're just playing 2d games and web browsing, checking email all of that will still work as is shown with the recent CM7 release for the gtab.

Google has shown with Honeycomb and beyond that it's implementing hardware acceleration even on 2D elements so running a device with a simple software solution only could get really painful.
[G Tablet General] bso44:
It's spreading

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/04/12/nvidia_ventana_android_honeycomb/

http://phandroid.com/2011/04/12/nvi...vers-and-support-for-harmony-tegra-2-devices/
[G Tablet General] Tostino:
Yeah, I am not the most impressed with the analysis from the author considering the info I gave them when I sent the email. It's all good though, it's still exposure.
[G Tablet General] normskilight:
I have an Adam its definitely Harmony.

What Rohan meant on the blog when he said "in September we made few hardware changes to make Adam Ventana compatible" I have no idea.

(at a guess i would say the Driver set for Ventana has dropped support for say, a WiFi card or something, so they changed it for a newer one)

My understanding is Ventana is three things; a flavour of the T20 SoC, a board form factor and a driver set.

The board.......

Is Harmony.
[G Tablet General] macbroom:
Updating if it becomes available?

My Tiger Direct gtab arrives tomorrow. If the new OTA update comes online tomorrow I take it that it would not be recommended to update?

Max
[G Tablet General] Zaphod-Beeblebrox:
I'll bet a cup of coffee (not starbucks .. can't afford that) that they release a kanged version of GoJimi's Vegan Ginger :)
[G Tablet General] lllGurulll:
I'm using mine as primarily a video watching device. I do a little surfing and play free games and that is about it.
[G Tablet General] GTablet:
This is what I posted on the Tegra Developer Site

This is what I posted on the Tegra Developer Site and sent to Bruce Chan - Product PR Tegra and Handheld Products...

I can certainly understand the need to put additional focus on the Ventana platform, from a business perspective that certainly does make sense. However you need to take responsibility for the Harmony platform for a reasonable amount of time (6 months does not constitute a reasonable amount of time) and support the devices you have already deployed to the market. I also realize that for NVIDIA, this chipset might be older than a year. However the consumers have only had access to it since early last winter and for use that is when the clock started.

The “Pump and Dump” business approach may work for some companies however as you can tell by the comments in this thread your customers do not expect nor should they expect that from you! These devices were purchased by people who understand the value proposition of having an NVIDIA device. They have enjoyed the high level of materials quality, customer service and after purchase support NVIDIA has become known for in this highly volatile and competitive industry.

I am not seeing one post on this thread where anyone is asking anything unreasonable or out of the norm for NVIDIA to do. Nor is anyone asking NVIDIA to do something it not has already done for many of its products. They are asking you to do what you have historically done with your products; stand behind the products and provide the customer with a stellar customer experience.

I believe that your decisions were made in a vacuum and no one considered the impact this would have to the customers who own thousands of these devices. Remember just because Google changes their direction that does not mean that we will all throw away our devices for new ones. This is an investment for many of us; one that we now have to live with for at least 24 months to justify the expenditure. NVIDIA should honor our loyalty, purchasing decision and step up to the plate; go back to the fantastic customer support focus you are known for and continue to develop the drivers for the Harmony platform.

Should you decide that from a human and financial resource perspective that this decision is not viable then please release the source as Open Source code and let the developer communities do what they do best! Gartner and IDC are predicting tablet sales in the United States will top at approximately 58 million units in 2011 (not all will have your products inside) you may find your market positioned weakened and certainly take a hit when all of us today purchase a new product down the road. Without support on the Harmony platform I personally will be choosing “Anything But NVIDIA”.

NVIDIA… time to grow up and live up to your reputation…

Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do!!!
[G Tablet General] P00r:
Part of the OS is open, all hardware related stuff is often proprietary as is the radio parts, unfortunately anybody can claim it's open without being fully open.

I still prefer a partially open os to a fully closed os and platform, there's still chance smarter people than me will figure out a few thing about those platform...
[G Tablet General] notsob2002:
I thought this summed it up everyone.

By incrediblecub on April 12, 2011 - 14:51

Wait a minute. Less than 3 weeks ago over 10,000 people brought Gtabs from Woot. This move from Nvidia has basically EOL their machines. Machines which are more than capable of running Gingerbread and most likely Honeycomb, but they need the video drivers.

Let's forget about Honeycomb, it is really reasonable and fair to leave users whose devices are only 2-3 weeks old stuck at Froyo? I don't think so.

People are worried about crappy tabs or Nvidia 'wasting' money due to Google's changes? What about the enduser's experience?

Think about this, what happens to those users who now realize they've just tossed away their money? Do you think the next time they decide to purchase a device, they will chose an android or instead they will play it safe with an iOS or Windows device? How does that help the android community?

The support these early tabs get set the standard going forward, regardless of whether the tabs are crappy or Google is being difficult. The enduser doesn't care, all they care about it that they brought something 2 weeks ago and now it is effectively EOLed.

We all understand that the tabs are suffering through growing pains and there is plenty of blame to go around in this mess; however the enduser should never have to be the ones to pay for it.

Right now due to forces beyond their control, they are and it doesn't have to be that way. If Nvidia released the drivers at least for Gingerbread, that would be a sign of good faith.
[G Tablet General] y2k-inc:
I will just link my thread here for answer your question about Google's practice ...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1032582
[G Tablet General] kekinash:
Well, I bought 2 devices on march, and I see the lack of support on the android platform and the big fragmentation that reigns on Android, so this is gonna be the last Android purchase I will ever do. Next year I'm going back to iPad 3, at least I will be sure to get updates for several years to come. Android is just a joke for end users. Google is making a lot of errors and this is gonna cost them later. How you can release a tablet (Honeycomb) when you have only 72 apps for tablets?. There is so much wrong on Android, that even I'm not a fan of Apple, I see why they success where Android fails miserable. Or Google starts to put things together or they can say bye bye to customers....
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
"Jeff" might be the Jeff I talked to yesterday (he was Ken's boss). If so, I'm not so sure he means a new update - he might mean that the OTA updater might be fixed tomorrow (which means old stock users, like the ones being found on Tiger Direct devices, can get an OTA update to build 3588). I would very surprised if he meant a newer update than 3588.

I hope I'm wrong, but by the wording on the email I think he means OTA / 3588.
[G Tablet General] lsu205:
Well they told me about a month ago "any day now" for an update. Now since the whole update process has been off for a week (as many of the "woots" testify), if they turn it back on tomorrow with 3588...that is the latest update--they wouldn't be lying. What we are looking for is a new update. I'll side with Roebeet, if none by the end of week, he'll get us something that works.
[G Tablet General] y2k-inc:
I guess if we are not getting a turn around from Google or nVidia on this situation by tomorrow noon, i wish everyone who know online retailers (Amazon, TD, BestBuy, etc) that where we can leave a review, should warn future buyer of the Android tablet about the short term support they will be getting from the hardware and OS company! And this may get them to rethink about their business practice.

Many has just bought the Tegra devices form month, if not weeks and now this is absolutely a bad new for them ...
[G Tablet General] edirector:
Got your back. I said this from the beginning. ...you should be getting paid. I will contact them.

On the upside you guys are teaching others how to fish. Your reward for this is priceless. These same vs gtab users could be just playing games or consuming. Here they get to think inside and outside the tablet environment. At least here the dumbing down stops.
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
have you guys seen viewsonic's twitter lately???

two new posts g tablet related???

patting itself on the back right now seems like either a slap in our faces... or maybe it means renewed support and re evaluation of how important it is to their business?
[G Tablet General] thebadfrog:
Don't hold your breath
[G Tablet General] notsob2002:
I for one read reviews and if every tab on the market was to get a bad review due to Google's heavy handed practices and the lack of support from the makers of tabs then maybe Apple and Windows will win the fight for the market. Which by the way may not be all that bad considering both support their products and both dominate the PC market.

Google is so worried people will try and install 3.0 on their phones that they are hosing themselves.

I now ask myself what would make me want to even think about getting another tab.

Does anyone here think another tab like the ASUS or Zoom won't be in the same situation 6 months from now????? Man wouldn't want too and I defiantly can't afford to make that kind of $ mistake.
[G Tablet General] edirector:
I agree, every electronic device I practically own I have modded or customized to my own need. It's not hard to guess from the comments here most bought for hardware specs. But part of keeping hardware current and functioning tiptop is updates. Most manufacturers do perform those some two or three years after release.

What this forum does do is provide and unprecedented learning environment. For someone like myself who was use to working with other platforms I feel what I have learned here about Android was a crash course and useable information future forward.

Looking at it from Robeet's perspective--he is providing something of value that VS is not and he should be compensated for that value.

Hey, Roebeet take your numbers to court and sue them for your tech support. You have your website stats to prove your claim and if your web traffic is increasing and you are left to bear the costs of providing what VS is not, you have a right to compensation. Don't forget to print out their website support page. Last update, December, but they did update you to top of the list for after purchase support on one of their product support pages. Maybe the contact should be a wake up call from your attorney.
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
I've summed it up for twitter, all it one tweet!!! GO TEAM!!!
[G Tablet General] white2kss:
......THIS...... Okay, so I sell the Gtab and get the Transformer. 6 months later, here comes Icecream!! But the Transformer is to old, sorry you have to buy the Megatron. I can't stand Apple, but they looking pretty good right now.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
If you read the first article they linked to, I find it interesting that they talk about how "the GTablet requires some geekish ROM flashing". By linking to this, are they condoning this? And this same article talks about how the GTab "will" have Honeycomb. Again, dangerous ground here.

I know that they opened the source code for the kernel and they link to XDA in their favorites, but I think it's well understood that doing this voids your warranty and you are "on your own". But when you link to an article to advertise how much better your device is to a Xoom, you need to tread carefully.

Honestly, that's not my goal. I just want them to fix their problems - the OTA updater and their broken customer service would be a good start (as well as updating their web page with something recent). And I would really like to know when they plan on retiring the old firmware and giving their stock users, and thus us by extension XDA, a solid base ROM. We know that they have the potential because it was there in build 3991 - I just want to see it released.

3588's build date was January 18th, and the pulled 3991 UAT with the updated drivers was February 12th (yep, it's now officially two months old).
[G Tablet General] edirector:
I don't find your story plausible. All the work-arounds you have to employ to just get stuff on and off ipad 2 that has multiple issues far more than G Tab with a very dated phone GUI. Screen bleed with yellow tinge, poor quality speakers, two crappy video cameras the inability to connect 3G without freezing. You are not fooling anyone with your post. Work on ipad 2, yeah right after you buy the gadget to turn the proprietary input into something useable. Then you have to go through cloud services to get crap on it. Particularly large files. Nice try....

I bought a tab for work too and I can access my c-panel from my tablet and plug a flash drive directly into a port and get stuff on and off. I can also read my documents with no problems. You are funny. lol
[G Tablet General] 7lbOwl:
Looks like we just got a response from nVidia, though I have no idea what exactly they are saying -

"Sorry folks looks like I caused a bit of confusion. Since this is a developer forum my comments were targeted at Tegra Honeycomb developers and for this we’d like to focus on Ventana. For shipping or production products, customers should contact the device makers directly for OS support plans. They are responsible for the OS shipping on their device.

In relation to our linux kernel git repository, NVIDIA will continue to provide full open-source support for all of our kernel components and will push more of that upstream over time.

Andrew Edelsten

Tegra Developer Relations

NVIDIA Corporation"
[G Tablet General] thorpe24:
So true and so aggravating. Though a tablet called the megatron might be worth it lol