yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[G Tablet General] Tostino:
Yeah i am really wondering exactly what they mean by that. We are not expecting them to port honeycomb for us, we want the drivers so we can build gingerbread and honeycomb properly.
[G Tablet General] notsob2002:
I think the real story behind nVidia is they want to push the new chips (quadcore) for tabs and smart phones.

Just search their own web site and read up on the timetable for the future releases. Very fast tracked.

I speculate everything sold now or in 6 months and probably even 12 months out will be unsupported and be at EOL

before you even turn it on

.:eek:
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Sounds like they are just deflecting. Yes, take it up with the manufacturer - and they will tell us that they'd love to support HC or GB, if only Nvidia would support it on Harmony. And we are back to where we started again.

Prove us wrong, Nvidia - tell us that production devices like the Adam and Gtablet are based off boards that Nvidia supports and can supply HC or GB drivers for. They can put whatever spin they want on this, but in the end we're still going to look to them to answer the question.
[G Tablet General] notsob2002:
:eek:

What does that mean? Are we are HOSED?
[G Tablet General] mcgeeb:
From the thread at: http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/honeycomb-harmony?page=1#comment-7026

Now we wait for clarification...
[G Tablet General] huntar:
nVidia clarification...

Seen at 7:21 this evening... nVidia is apparently going to continue some support for drivers through GB, but not in the commercial realm.

I don't think I can post the URL, but check androidcentral for the thread about nVidia and scroll down to around 7:21 this evening for nVidia's clarification...

We may get hardware drivers after all...
[G Tablet General] sundar2012:
Its not clear yet - there is some risk of double speak...this is what they said - perhaps someone can translate if this means the drivers will be updated for GB and/or honeycomb.
[G Tablet General] Kaucito:
i dont know what this means...... "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"
[G Tablet General] CodeNinja:
I agree. If they came out with a tablet called Megatron, I'd shell out a few hundred for it. :D
[G Tablet General] adampdx:
Fail fail fail. Terribly disappointing. Business moves too fast and the consumer gets screwed. But wait...we get better products! But wait...we can't buy them because we just bought something that's now outdated! But wait...we can use custom software designed by awesome developers at XDA! But wait...they can't develop better software because the manufactures dump their products. But wait...no, I don't think this is more to say. Oh, I'm so depressed. I got burned by Tmo and Sammy when I bought my Vibrant. Now I'm getting burned by Viewsonic, Nvidia and Google for this crap. What's an Apple-hater supposed to do? I guess it's time for something to replace Android until that OS gets locked down and has to be replaced by something else. What it's really time for is to move to the woods and not have to be tempted to consume electronics. Psh, like that's going to happen. :p
[G Tablet General] bkmassive:
This is my first post even though I was one of the first batch of Woot customers. I am new to the whole android market (recovering crackhead, lol) but xda has been an invaluable place to learn more about their os. So I think it befitting to pop my cherry by supporting roebeet's effort to get the technical support us viewsonic customers demand and deserve.
[G Tablet General] Icewyng:
Seems Google's Andy Ruben's "FUD" press release is just another PR move to buy some more time before people realize what they are doing and leave for Apple or RIM...

Anyway, I think there are many forces at work in all this. Google is one (you have to wonder if the arrival of Larry Page as CEO has something to do with it) but also the manufacturers & carriers as well. Let's not forget they are all in it for the money. If you force consumers to upgrade to a newer product, you are making money. It's that simple.

The china Android market is not a lucrative market for them. Best way to disrupt it is to cut the supply line (drivers, software) and get back those customers.

I think Google is playing a dangerous game. The fact Android is based on Linux does not make it an open OS... I think Google just demontrated that in its change of policy.

As for VS... keeping your customers in the dark is not helping. If all of this is affecting them, just step forward and say so.

You know... everything that happened in the last few weeks make sense now. They tried to get rid of their G-Tab inventory before nVidia announced the end of Harmony development. Too many coincidences...
[G Tablet General] Mantara:
"We aren't waiting for stock updates, the updates just give the devs more goodies to work with."

Exactly!
[G Tablet General] clayginn:
Yea I think I'm done with Nvidia their support is just to unpredictable. I was waiting for the Toshiba but I think I might look for Qualcomm's release. The G Tablet is still a good device but could have been much better with Honeycomb. I also have an Adam and with out Honeycomb don't waste your time. Great design but mediocre at best builds and hardware. I gave the adam (Rooted and ROMed) to my wife and she still uses my Nook more.
[G Tablet General] zman519:
Op do know how bad samsuck ****ed over the ppl that got the sgs line? The i9000 is the only one they kinda suported

Sent from my ComBadge..
[G Tablet General] adampdx:
Woo-friggin-hoo. Exactly my thoughts.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Tuesday has come and gone, and the OTA updater is still not fixed

EDIT: Deleted my nastygram, as I will give this 24 more hours.

@badfrog -- you and I don't see eye-to-eye, I'm aware of that. You think I'm overeating, and that's certainly your opinion to make. But I don't think I'm being melodramatic. I'm just going to take what happens over the next week or later and make a decision on how to proceed with my own device. Simple as that.
[G Tablet General] thebadfrog:
I need to buy stock in Kleenex.
[G Tablet General] Icewyng:
It makes sense after all... all the shake-ups at top-level means they are changing direction and buying time is what they need so a press release from the "Father of Android" to reassure people is the best they could do it seems.

Of course, only Android is an alternative to iOS right now and they know it. In the next few months, however, things might change. Google is giving a fighting chance to RIM and HP on a sliver platter...
[G Tablet General] ramerco:
Lol, way to keep it lighthearted.

I think people should keepafterhat nvidia developer thread too. maybe wecan actually get a clear answer about future drivers (the really important bits for projects like cm7).
[G Tablet General] drum747:
+1 for Megatron. I'm all in.
[G Tablet General] jerdog:
Here's the deal - what they're saying is that Ventana is where nVidia is putting Honeycomb support. They're also saying that it is the device manufacturer who is responsible for decided what OS to put on their device - as long as the nVidia hardware will support it and they provide the drivers/libraries. Which means that Froyo is the last stable platform nVidia is supporting for the Harmony devices, and some of the Gingerbread-compatible libraries are available and were rolled into CM7.

They will continue to provide non-proprietary kernel support as long as the hardware supports it - but they're not going to do anything with new OS' on Harmony ("targeted at Tegra Honeycomb developers and for this we’d like to focus on Ventana"). It's the responsibility of Viewsonic to provide OS-level support for existing, shipping (and that's a KEY phrase) products.

We have space to maneuver and develop in the existing space with CM7 and AOSP, and possibly any new enhancements and fixes VS can get TnT to deploy for Froyo - and ongoing kernel development will help as that's currently taking place. So the end is not here - but the gTablet/Adam/Vega/and all other Harmony-based Malata tablets are at the end of their NEW OS deployment. Pretty typical for a mobile hardware platform that is a year old (with rare exception).
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Their website just got updated, in the last 20 minutes or so

Nothing about the OTA updater, but at least they updated the phone number and stale dates. Now its says ETA May 2011 for the new firmware with embedded Flash in it.

I'm not going to respond to this yet as I have to let it roll around in my head for awhile, first. Probably three weeks minimum, possibly 7 weeks - and that's assuming they stick with the date and not let it slip. And the OTA updater still an unknown ETA at this point.

If I responded right now, I'll have to retract it again so I'm just not going to do that, yet.
[G Tablet General] ramerco:
That still comes down to them giving up on providing future os driver support for a 6 month old device. if this happened with pc hardware it would be a ****storm.
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
I've sent this email to this address: android.developers@ViewSonic.com

with the title: we still need more answers
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Thanks for posting this - when I read things like this, it helps me keep a level head.
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
this was sent to Andrew Edelsten through the contact tab on this page:

http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/users/nvdru
[G Tablet General] Icewyng:
Is it just me or how can you take this guy seriously when he is replying with only capital letters? (Check your caps lock key!)

What I think is this is all a desperate PR move to hold on to their customers for as long as possible.

Since the communiy is at a crossroad, it needs to decide what to do: do we move forward nd continue to develop the G Tab and

help it grow or do we abandon it to its faith?

It would be a shame to see this device die just because VS decided it might be worth it anymore.
[G Tablet General] notsob2002:
Yea right are you ok with that?

Is anyone here believing that?

They have no track record of providing reliable info. Is it on their web site?
[G Tablet General] marckarasek:
Maybe I am off base here...

Excuse me if I am not informed.

I do nto fully understand the whole Android structure. But it looks to me like it is a linux kernel with an OS on top of that.

With respect to the NVIDIA drivers, as long a the kernel has the support the upper OS layer will have the features from the driver. I have done a lot of embedded linux devleopment (professionally) and this is based on my experience.

What I do not understand is how HC is linked to the NVIDIA driver being updated? It would seem to me if we had the upper OS layer of Android for HC we could put the current Froyo/Gingerbread Kernel with it to get HC for the Gtab.

If I am wrong on this, I would love to be educated.

I would also like to submit my talents to the pool of resource.

Marc
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
http://www.viewsonic.com/gtablet/

"anticipated in May, 2011". This was just updated tonight. Btw, notice they wrote "anticipated" -- I'm sure that it was worded that way on purpose.

No expert either, but think proprietary Nvidia .so files in the Linux world. Now imagine that Ubuntu, or whatever other distro you used, REQUIRED new shared libs when it was updated and the old Nividia libs did NOT work because of how tightly integrated it was into the OS (actually compiled into Ubuntu). Then image that Nividia dropped support for your card five months after you bought it retail and you were basically stuck on whatever Ubuntu revision they did support unless you replaced your hardware (which cost a few hundred bucks).

And when you complained, they told you to direct your issues to your PC manufacturer and not them. That's the closest comparison I can make.
[G Tablet General] TaterTot24:
Reading this thread has me so fired up right now...

I will make sure I get something up on twitter and give them a call tomorrow...

Everyone should take 30 secs and at least put a tweet out there right now... :D
[G Tablet General] y2k-inc:
it's now a good time to drop some nvidia & Google's stock?
[G Tablet General] yahooguy:
Ever read 31 pages of a thread in one shot while at work? I just did!

I'm taking up the cause as well, and letting the appropriate parties know how I feel (which is right in line with roebeet).

I'm not going to run off and sell my tablet just because of this, either. I enjoy it entirely too much!
[G Tablet General] notsob2002:
Read that page again. ....flash big deal. Nothing important as far as I'm concerned.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Read between the lines - they've been sitting on their 1.2 dev branch for two months, now. It's not just Flash - it's bug fixes and enhancements to their Froyo stock ROM. Stuff we've gotten a taste of in UAT build 3991 but was never released.

Again, two different camps here. But, keep this in mind: Given the Nvidia grumbling today, it's allegedly up to the manufacturer to get their users updates (like GB and HC). Now, assuming that's true, if they can't get us a decent Froyo update, what do you think the chances are that we'll see GB or Froyo from them? We'd better hope Notion Ink has better luck.

AFAIC, this is a big disappointment (although I'm certainly not surprised).
[G Tablet General] jazzmanmonty:
according to androidcentral.com's report on this topic, the writer wrote:

"I got myself a third cup of coffee, and sat down all ready to bash Nvidia for abandoning support for very capable devices, then I realized something -- I can't. 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."

So we have three companies we can technically assign blame to: Nvidia, Viewsonic, and Google.

We have enough users on this forum, esp with the flood of new gtab owners that have purchased recently, to where we should petition to all three to get what we want and deserve. maybe someone should put a sticky on the main page here and we can all post our support.

i bought three gtabs in december and i'll be damned if my tablet with such superior technology (aside from screen lol) is outdated so quick. i tell people that ask me about the tablet that its the best investment and to get out vs. whats out there for the money. lets try to let our voice be heard and teach these corporations a lesson that they can't just stop supporting a product because they want to make them obsolete so we buy their next release.

And lets all thank our dev's for giving us versitality with our devices! good job guys!
[G Tablet General] jhreid1969:
The way I see it at this point, TNTL 4.40 works just fine for what I wanted. By August or September, if there has not been any improvements by then, I will see what is out on the market by other companies and chipsets. Which by then there should be many more choices to choose from.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Well said. If it works for you NOW, as is, that's the most important thing.

I'm just aggravated that, regardless of the whole Nvidia / GB / HC thing, that we had four firmware releases in two months from Viewsonic, and nothing (released) after that for almost three months now. And now a few weeks longer to wait, at least. There are a lot of things they can still fix (like mouse support and extra soft keyboard support) and things they can enhance (like the latest Nvidia drivers which are still missing). A three month wait is a very long time for a five month old product.
[G Tablet General] heinrich:
My brothers

I think you're all missing something... this is exactly how Nvidia rolls. Exactly. Ask anyone who bought a Windows XP laptop with any range of built-in Nvidia graphics chips... and lest we forget, Nvidia... are... a graphics chip company.

There is nothing new here.

Gingerbread works perfectly. Is the driverset for Honeycomb really incompatible? For Windows, i posted a method online to make Nvidia's Win7 unified drivers work great with so-called discontinued chips, simply by adding vendor haddware lines to the installer inf's.

So... no surprises here. I would be quite surprised if the actual drivers didn't work. But maybe they won't... either way, this is standard Nvidia business.
[G Tablet General] jazzmanmonty:
quick thing i forgot to mention. if we want to make some kind of movement to make this work out is 1. get google to somehow release HC source sooner (idk how easily that'll work out) 2. petition viewsonic to make gb/hc update available for our device 3.once all that is accomplished, push nvidia to release drivers for gb/hc since we are expecting an update for gtab. thats all we gotta do, and we'll all be happy. sound pretty easy? :/
[G Tablet General] dfin13:
Unless you're watching a video file, then it gets dicey. I know some of you don't watch videos on it, but updated drivers are must for those who do.
[G Tablet General] heinrich:
Dude im watching m4v files and they seem fine.on my aosp vanilla
[G Tablet General] edirector:
I'm typing on grab so excuse my typos. But there was an article on information week I saved the article but cut and paste on gtab is challenging. That Google said they don't want the code to be seen because they rushed to market so they are embarrassed by what they have produced. The non-release is damage control.
[G Tablet General] Isira:
We are missing the hardware accelerated drivers for any Gingerbread ROM. This means that some videos that used to play perfectly fine on Froyo will not play on Gingerbread (or be choppy). The workaround is of course to play low resolution/bitrate files, but quite frankly, having to reencode the files is a PITA. :mad:
[G Tablet General] dfin13:
Oh, the files will play, but if they are of any quality, they won't play very well.
[G Tablet General] jhreid1969:
I agree with this, that is why I'm sticking with what have now which is TNTL 4.40. ;)
[G Tablet General] Isira:
The Windows driver model is vastly different from the Linux model. The Windows driver model is very stable which is why it is very easy to add support simply by editing .inf files.

Under Linux, things may break between kernel and display server versions. To make things worse, Nvidia drivers are closed source and will only work for very specific kernel and display server versions. Nvidia's Linux support has actually been quite good IMO which is what makes their support stance for the Tegra2 very disappointing.

However, the closed source nature of the Nvidia drivers means they choose to support when and what they want to support, which does lead to things breaking occasionally. To avoid this, the Linux community created open source Nvidia drivers called Nouveau by reverse engineering the closed source drivers. Their hard work has paid off and has been merged into the Linux Kernel since 2.6.33.

The success of Nouveau does lead me to believe, with the right developers, we may be able to develop our own open source drivers for the Tegra 2, particularly since the Tegra 2 is said to be derived from the GeForce 6/7 series we may be able to get a head start from the Nouveau codebase. It would be great to hear comments from roebeet, pershoot, clemsyn, gojimi, etc. on this point.
[G Tablet General] Mantara:
Totally forgot about that! Thanks for the reminder :)
[G Tablet General] titobetlogs:
@ Roebeet,

I see you posting away at the Notion Ink hacks board as well. If this whole Nvidia fiasco really is exactly what it sounds like (still waiting on clarification from NVDru as far as I'm concerned) would the potential fix currently being discussed @ the Notion Ink hacks board with regard to the Notion Ink Adam - ie, potentially reprogramming Harmony board to report Ventana, allowing access to eventual GB & HC updates - be something that, if it could work, be duplicated for the G Tablet? Theoretically?

That would be splendid. Then again, if NVidia is set in this path, and they eventually decide to drop support for Ventana as well, even if this did work for the G Tablet as well as the Adam, you could be right back to square one in as little as 6 months from now. :(
[G Tablet General] titobetlogs:
I may have answered my own question... Reading through the whole thread it looks like a potential solution specific only to the Adam? Are G-Tablet owners truly screwed? If so, man... I feel like I've just been had. Conned. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled. etc etc etc.
[G Tablet General] wacckkoo1:
Gumby = Tool

Robeet = www.thebomb.com

I would really write something more intelligent but this whole thing has me pissed. At least support the device with drivers and updates. We all supported viewsonic with our hard earned dough.This its my second g tab as my other one broke, this one its also on the way out. I will not buy another VS product as they are pos's.

VS if you are going to stick it to people with sub par HW, the least you can do is use a little lube and provide better support. Or better yet lie to me and tell me I'm pretty, and promise the updates/support are coming. FU viewsonic for making me feel like I took home a cheap hooker that pulled out her ..... You get the idea give us what we paid for.
[G Tablet General] ch3vr0n5:
Wow... so much has happened since I first posted my support on this subject just a few days ago.

The only words of value I can offer is my unending thanks to developers like Roebeet, Clemsyn, Gojimi... just to name a few. Your commitment to our shared device is truly inspiring considering this is not even your day job! You take the valuable time out of your lives to turn coal into diamonds for the entire world to have... all for free. I'm am utterly grateful for all the work you do for us.

I also feel completely shafted and conned by this entire ordeal. I did weeks of searches for the right tablet and was originally sold on the Archos 101 namely because I am not made of money... but when I saw a post on Android Police titled "From Rags to Riches" about the work being done by developers at XDA to give the G-Tablet its proper due... I was sold.

I absolutely LOVE my tablet and I have it set up perfectly for my daily use. Everyone's needs are different and I would love to see better video decoding support (oh yea... thanks Nvidia...) but I also feel like everyone else when I say I am utterly disappointed in the sudden dismissal of our product by both companies. (I do recognize Viewsonic's somewhat lackluster acknowledgment...)

It is only thanks to Roebeet and all the other developers out there that my G-Tablet has become an important extension of my life (It's become like another arm) and in my eyes they have returned my investment on this device in full. The G-tablet is just as amazing a device as most other tablets that are still coming out and it would be an INJUSTICE if it didn't get its just desserts.

In closing, thank you again Roebeet and all other developers out there. It is people like you, who don't even work for the companies of the devices we own, that make people like me feel like valued customers.

We will not go quietly into the night!!

Cheers!
[G Tablet General] sk8erord:
Thank you all for your hard work and support. I hope we hear some updates soon. I really am loving my GTab with VEGAn 5.1.1 on it. I bought this for the Tegra 2 hardware, and to find that it has been EOL'd already is... disappointing at best.
[G Tablet General] jhreid1969:
Thanks roebeet, but don't take it the wrong way. If VS or one of you devs are able to get better version going, I'm all for it. I will jump on that boat and go for a ride with you guys. I will go as far as testing out a new rom or a update just to help out, but I know which version is working for me at the moment and will continue to use it until a better one is produced. All the hard work here does not go unnoticed.

This community is important to me and I enjoy reading everbodies thoughts and ideas about every thing. :)