yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[YotaPhone] manmikey:
Some questions about the EPD

So Thisco13...to summarise your wish to know the following, I will post this list and then we can add our replies for you :)

1). How does Comixology work on the EPD.

2). Can you use a Bluetooth keyboard with a word processor on the EPD and does it lag whilst entering text.

3). whilst Using a sat nav type application or maps the EPD whilst driving, how does the screen refresh and would it use less battery that using the OLED

4). Can you use the Chrome "reader mode" on the EPD

5). How does Spotify look/work mirrored on the EPD

6). What can the yota panel music widget control

7). Testing games emulation on the EPD

8). Can the EPD constantly display a note/ check list (from Evernote in the OPs case)

---------- Post added at 09:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:55 AM ----------

I can answer some of these.................

1). How does Comixology work on the EPD.

I installed the app and set up an account but it wants credit card details even to get a free comic which I didn't want to do so I am unable to test, however I read The Walking dead comics from Google Play books and they work very well on the EPD.​

2). Can you use a Bluetooth keyboard with a word processor on the EPD and does it lag whilst entering text.

I am sure this would work, my Bluetooth keyboard is traveling the world with my daughter at the moment so I am unable to confirm​

3). whilst Using a sat nav type application or maps the EPD whilst driving, how does the screen refresh and would it use less battery that using the OLED

4). Can you use the Chrome "reader mode" on the EPD

I'm not sure what this mode is! I cant find it on my chrome browser, the browser does mirror very well to the EPD though​

5). How does Spotify look/work mirrored on the EPD

Spotify works great mirrored on the EPD, when tracks change the screen refreshes with the new album art, song info etc, this is a great use of the EPD as the phone wont lock the EPD (unless you set it to) so you always have access to the music controls etc.​

6). What can the yota panel music widget control

The music controls will control whatever audio player is active on the device eg Spotify/audible/stock music player etc, what ever app you start playing then the controls with operate it.​

7). Testing games emulation on the EPD

8). Can the EPD constantly display a note/ check list (from Evernote in the OPs case)

Yes! I don't use Evernote but I do similar things to you but using Google Keep and you can have your lists/Notes mirrored on the EPD and it will remain visible and interactive whilst you are shopping or doing what ever you need to, Aps mirrored to the EPD will stay on indefinitely unless you set it to time out (I have mine set to 20 mins) then the screen locks to what ever the device is set to (in my case the pattern lock) you unlock the device on the EPD just as you would on the front.​

[/QUOTE]

Hope it helps :)
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
2). Can you use a Bluetooth keyboard with a word processor on the EPD and does it lag whilst entering text.

- My educated guess is yes, at least when using mirrored mode. In this case you can use a proper word processor app. The only additional lag will come from updating the EDP, so input should show on screen maybe after 0.15-0.2 sec.

3). whilst Using a sat nav type application or maps the EPD whilst driving, how does the screen refresh and would it use less battery that using the OLED

- This depends on how often the screen refreshes and how much of it needs to be redrawn. A simple top-down 2D map should save you some battery. Just make sure all the animations are disabled. Also, for example Google Maps updates the screen only once a second (or something like that), which works in your favour. The EPD is also very pleasant to read in sunlight.

4). Can you use the Chrome "reader mode" on the EPD

- You can use Chrome in two ways: Fully functional mirrored mode (i.e. the normal Android version), or specially modified simpler version for the EDP. The latter can be launched when you have Chrome running and then activate the mirroring from the home-button. Both work well.

7). Testing games emulation on the EPD

- There is some input lag, but if your game is not that precise, you should be set. There is some ghosting on the screen, so big constrast changes might look messy.

8). Can the EPD constantly display a note/ check list (from Evernote in the OPs case)

- You can take a screenshot of your screen and place it on the EPD. The new Lollipop update should also allow you to make simple notes work as widget.

If you are planning to buy the device, make sure to wait a bit for the ~100€ price drop.
[YotaPhone] huntajc:
Can people let me know what they make of the E-Ink screen please? I've read a couple of reviews which are less than complimentary, picking up on its laggy refresh rate and ghosting issues (e.g. PC Advisor - sorry, too junior to post a link).

This doesn't seem to chime with the experiences I've read about here though. How does it compare to a Kindle Paperwhite for instance?

Also, I'd be coming from a Nexus 4. Can anyone help quantify whether I'm likely to feel any performance improvements, or are the internals specs too similar for a significant improvement?

Thanks all.
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
There is ghosting and input lag, yes. The refresh rate of the screen is like 8fps. But whether that matters is up to how you use the screen. I mostly use the EPD to show collection of most useful information, like time, date, weather, battery life and notifications, and there it works just fine. It also works very well for reading emails and sms and browsing the internet - i.e. static content. Where it doesn't work that well is running highly animated applications or using applications which require little to no input lag, like some games. You can run any Android application on the EPD by using mirroring, but it is always slower than when running on the OLED screen.

When it comes to performance, I think it's plenty fast. Everything I've thrown at the device runs like butter. Of course the device has a premium price (although it just dropped from 700€ to ~600€ in my region), so it'd better run smoothly.
[YotaPhone] Thisco13:
Thanks manmikey for taking my long text and structuring it in a set of numbered questions :) Thanks also to you and Jeopardy for taking the time to answer my questions.

When I look at the replies it really seems like the Yotaphone 2 would do with its e-ink screen what I would want it to do. I will be checking out this forum and still look for some more reviews (preferably videos) of people using it. I am also curious about the Lollipop upgrade and all the extra functionality so whenever someone could shed some light on that it would be much appreciated, specifically with regards to the Gmail-notification widget.
[YotaPhone] Rossonero224:
Still waiting for Lollipop.

I'm in 4.4.3, although I can login to Yotafacebook, I can not find a way to display facebook update to EPD.

Anyone know how to do it?
[YotaPhone] adamo86:
I found it a bit tricky saving panels on lollipop do u need to wait a while before it saves also how many panels are allowed.

Also how do you access the Facebook and gooogle+ widget I can't find it
[YotaPhone] mocassino:
So do I: I can't use facebook albums on EPD
[YotaPhone] SteadyQuad:
Jut like the original email widget, the Gmail notification widget shows only (part of) the subject of one email (plus sender). I'd like to see smaller/customizable fonts in general for the EPD widgets.
[YotaPhone] zute333:
Anyone else suffering from drastically reduced battery life since Lollipop? Not just talking battery without root, it drains a looot faster now for me.
[YotaPhone] IlPeach:
I was wondering if it was just me. Screen seems to be draining *a lot* of battery... Wonder if it's going to be fixed somehow. :(
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
My batterylife is the same it was on Kitkat, with a bit better stand by time. I did disable some applications though, like yotasports.

And now that I have rooted Lollipop I'll try out some xposed battery savers. :)
[YotaPhone] scdoyle:
I am another one with significantly worse battery drainage since lollipop. I can now barely make it through a day with the same usage and services as before. It is frustrating as that was one of the key advantages of this phone. The battery usage list in settings does not give any clues as to what is causing this.
[YotaPhone] manmikey:
^^^ exactly this

Terrible battery life since lollipop

I haven't changed my usage habits but I am back to chargeing my mobile in the afternoons as its down to 20-30% and will die in the evening without a charge.

Prior to lollipop I could easily get to bed time with 40%plus

Battery info gives no hints and all the decent battery apps need root to really get an idea of problem Alps, wakelocks etc.

This morning my yoga went from 100% to 92% in 20 minutes!

Seriously thinking of selling it now
[YotaPhone] zute333:
I'm the same, with less than normal usage (very low) and energy mode on it will be between 65-50 by the time I'm home from work (about 11 hours off charge), whereas when on KitKat it wouldn't drop that low until at least 48 hours.

Think will have to make a support call with Yota
[YotaPhone] zute333:
I would hold off until they figure out a patch or something. Plus, now that someones figured out root we might be able to see whats causing the drain. It's almost unfortunate that not everyone is suffering from this as it won't be Yota's main priority. Still though, I feel your pain. The USP of the EPD is completely negated if battery life is worse than a normal phones. Now its just a pretty thing with 2 screens, both of which suck power far more than they should.
[YotaPhone] scdoyle:
I have the battery widget on my EPD showing the estimated time remaining at all times. It used to sometimes go as high as 3d, now it barely goes over 1d. If I then start to use the main screen it drops dramatically. Turning off bluetooth helps a bit (I have it on usually to connect with Garmin Vivosmart), but I had that before so the key point is that it has worsened significantly since the update.

I am hoping that this is because it is the first firmware version and a future update will address this.
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
Hmm. Maybe we can pinpoint the problem. I have not experienced this issue, but I have done some modifications like:

- Disabling YotaFit and Twitter from application settings

- Switching the preferred network type to WCDMA(preferred)/GSM

Can some of you try these out?
[YotaPhone] manmikey:
This is today's performance, 100% to 15% in about 12 hours , only basic use, no calls, gaming or video, just messaging and web browsing, look at the way it drops off a cliff towards the end!

Ill try a factory reset when I get a spare couple of hours as I never did after the lollipop update as it all seemed to work well.

I've just found yotafit was tracking me so I've turned that off.

View attachment 3357106
[YotaPhone] adamo86:
Well you need to share with us how to root. ?
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
Look here
[YotaPhone] smekla:
I also noticed the increased battery drain after upgrading to lollipop and I have to charge my Yota every day now with same usage as before where on KitKat it was up to 3 days.

Reading good hints here I'll try to disable unused stuff like YotaFit, YotaSports, Yotagram, etc to see if it helps but Yota should really look at this and release a patch.

Sent from my YD201
[YotaPhone] zute333:
Yota inform me 'Our development team is working on a solution for this issue.'

Fingers crossed for a patch soon.
[YotaPhone] smekla:
Interesting if this is OS or new Yota apps that causing increased battery usage.

I've disabled the unused apps and BT and though the battery life has slightly increased it still drains in less than 2 days.

Sent from my YD201
[YotaPhone] manmikey:
Okay, here's today's battery performance, I've turned off a lot of apps especially yotafit and the yotacover that uses my own photos as it was getting stuck and hot when photos were changing.

I've also noticed the device is heating up, I mean getting really hot, I notice it in my pocket like a hot stone!

Something is causing wakelocks and killing the battery to such an extent its barely getting to the afternoon without constant charging.

Its no dropped below 15% as I'm typing this post
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
Yeah, that does not look good at all. Your device is basically awake all the time. :eek:

Based on your previous screenshot the Android OS is doing something extra it shouldn't be doing. On my device it's usage is 1%, on yours it was 34%.

Can't really pinpoint what it could be though. My wifi and location services are enabled normally etc.

It could be some specific widget on the EPD. Everything on the rear screen is a service, so it might be counted towards the Android OS. It doesn't even have to actively do anything, but only keep the wake lock and the system will keep the CPU revving at high rpms, wasting battery. Are you running some new widget on your EDP? Stocks? RSS? Twitter?
[YotaPhone] manmikey:
Thanks for your thoughts, I haven't done anything different since updating to lollipop, i have removed everything from the EPD except the clock, notifications , yota power, yota snap and a few links to apps, it's getting worse so i am now going to factory reset , I'll report back in a couple of days to let you know if it helped
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
If you are rooted, you could try out some wakelock detector app to see which one is the problem child. If the problem is not wakelock related (which I think it is, though), you could try out some app which monitors and logs cpu usage per app and see which one is consuming the most.
[YotaPhone] zute333:
I had an oddday of it yesterday. Didn't get round to screenshotting but all day everything was pointing to the kernel using at least 97% of battery and it ran down seriously quickly. It's seemingly better now (gone from 6 am to now with over an hour of screen time and it's at 66%) but still not a patch on what it was pre-update). Hopefully Yota manage a patch soon.

Going to back up, root then see if some apps can figure it out. If nothing improves will back up everything then factory reset.
[YotaPhone] IlPeach:
I really wish they would have given an official statement and kept us up to date. This doesn't look good and is impossible to not notice it.

Really close to give it up.
[YotaPhone] adamo86:
New update released uk
[YotaPhone] zute333:
Today was the day I decided that if it went on for longer then they need to sort their **** out, so nice timing :P. Fingers crossed it sorts out some issues.
[YotaPhone] zute333:
'Standby power consumption improved.'

We shall see...
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
Tried to update on my rooted lollipop: no success. I guess I need to roll back some changes... :mad:
[YotaPhone] irl_x10_user:
Got the update (build LRX21M.5.0.0-EU1.1.44) last night - 66Mb. Did anyone take a screenshot of the changelog? (or know what all the changes are?)
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
Change log as attachment.
[YotaPhone] IlPeach:
This doesn't look particularly good to me...

View attachment 3371588
[YotaPhone] Rrreutel:
Intelli3G

I'm on a 3G network most of the time, and I noticed that 3G eats up a lot of battery, only leaving 1 or maybe 2 days of battery usage. With 2G battery life is MUCH better, but it's slow.

I've found a nice and smart app (Xposed module actually) that switches intelligently between 2g and 3G. It can really reduce battery usage IF you're currently on 3G most of the time.

It can switch to 2G when e.g. screen goes off, so you still remain connected (and thus receive mail, whatsapp, notifications etc). When switching screen back on, it can switch back to 3G e.g. to be able to browse at full speed. That's already cool, but it's even smarter than that If it finds wifi connected when screen goes on, it will NOT switch to 3G, but remain at 2G to save battery (internet will go through wifi anyway). On the reverse: when putting the phone to sleep while downloading something over 3G, it can delay switching back to 2G to finish the download faster.

Anyway, check out the Intelli3G thread for info (don't forget to press thanks there!). It's available in the Play Store, but IT NEEDS Xposed framework installed to work (see here if you don't know how)

After installing (and probably rebooting) you have to go through the settings to make sure it does exactly what you want, I had to tweak the defaults.
[YotaPhone] smekla:
Anyone else received a patch last weekend? Seems it did improve battery time.

Sent from my YD201
[YotaPhone] adamo86:
I received one few days back uk
[YotaPhone] IlPeach:
Not really, the above screenshots I posted was taken a day after the update.
[YotaPhone] smekla:
Have you noticed any weird phone behaviour since then? Mine keeps rebooting without a reason, like just now I was browsing photos on the phone and it just restarted with no warning or errors

Sent from my YD201
[YotaPhone] Jeopardy:
Mine's been working fine. Both stability and batterywise. It could be some EPD widget which is misbehaving in your case. It probably would show up as Exception in the system log moments before your random reboots.
[YotaPhone] TRISTANY:
Hi,

A long time passed since the last comment, so I have some questions:

Can anyone comment how works the phone with the last updates?

Some improvement from the last lollipop update?,

Is the high consumption of battery fixed now?

And the heat of the phone?

Is now Whatsapp integrated with the EPD screen?

Something new?

I go to purchase the phone, and I don't know if is better no actualice them to lollipop.

Please tell me something about the questions

Thank you, and sorry for my English.
[YotaPhone] pingocho:
This please can someone answer if yota fixed the battery drain in lollipop? I'm still on kitkat and don't know if it's a better idea to stay away from the updates.
[YotaPhone] pingocho:
Wow thanks for a so detailed response!

It was veryy helpful :)

Can you post some battery stats when you have the oportunity? I just wonder how many hours of on screen time you are gettin with the last update.

The new features looks pretty good, but the battery life is important too, decisions, decisions...
[YotaPhone] zute333:
Estimation of battery life since update - 3.5 - 4 hours when running heavy games.

Will attempt to do a decent test soon, has been a long long time.

If you use the main screen, getting into the routine of using the EPD, and regularly use the battery saver mode, then you won't find anything better as a package (the EPD has a few wonderful benefits that within a month of enjoying I was struggling to see myself without).

If used normally with little EPD use and normal battery mode then it will still last about as well as the flagships of it's year.

That's why I really like it - it is actually a perfectly decent phone on it's own without the EPD, with it it's pretty great.

Please do bear in mind that 1. - I almost always have battery mode on unless gaming or I'm at home so my reports will be scewed a bit, but if your someone that is battery conscious then my report will probably be more appropriate. In that regard the Yota is the first device I've had since before touch screen that I finally stopped worrying about battery life.

The other side is that with normal mode and heavy usage the battery can be pretty poor, though mine is a first batch model that has taken a hammering for a year, so understandable.

I shall try and dig up some old battery stats so you can compare - those will likely be more accurate for you.
[YotaPhone] mohammad.nomaan:
Hi Guys,

A colleague is willing to sell his Yota 2 at USD225.

The device is clean and no dents, unfortunately we dont have any official retailer here so dont knw the current price.

Any suggestions

Cheers
[YotaPhone] MonsieurSun:
A very interesting review + dev idea

Hi everyone.

During my numerous searches for Yotaphone improvements, I found this user review sensible and nicely written, good mix of critics and praises :

(since I cannot post any link since I'm too young, search for it on the site : ignorethecode.net)

And I was happy to see someone else had the same crazy idea as I had : Use the EPD touchscreen to transform the Yotaphone into a PSVita (the one with the back touchscreen).

It's a feature I haven't tried yet myself, but I was seduced by the idea when Sony made it.

And then came the Yotaphone, and then IT made THAT possible.

Anyone has any idea about this dev ?
[YotaPhone] ruisan:
I have a new YotaPhone and I have found that the wifi coverage is really bad. I have to be like 5/10 mts from router to work, while any other cheap phone works without a problem around the house. Is this the usual or maybe it is a problem of my terminal?
[YotaPhone] MonsieurSun:
So far I have experienced no issues with Wi-Fi, it works fine in my home despite 15m and 3 or 4 thick walls between router and device. Not sure about the bandwidth, but when it is connected, it holds on without issues.

On the other hand, I have some doubts on the phone/data network and GPS sensitivity. I expected that a russian-designed phone would be very good at grabbing even faint and far-away networks, but I am kind of disappointed on this side.

I still have to compare with a dumbphone using the same french carrier in the same places.
[YotaPhone] mc_gee:
Fellow Hearthstone player here ;)

It is time on AMOLED, right? Did you try to play on EPD? How much longer (approx.) will battery hold then?
[YotaPhone] Freedom4Catalonia:
Hi, right now, we can buy a yotaphone 2 for 140$, it's still a good option?

Any update since last post? There are new updates?
[YotaPhone] MonsieurSun:
Hi !

I think it is still a very good option at this price, but you should go see another thread of this forum named "Is it still worth buying it ?"
[YotaPhone] Parmo100:
Now the Yotaphone 2 costs 136 USD, why has it come down in price so much? It has a couple of competitors now Oukitel and Siswoo with larger e-ink screens, but more expensive when you can get hold of one. Mine is coming soon!
[YotaPhone] waj1234:
Had mine 2 days. Love it overall but battery could be better

Battery has got better after a few charges. I managed to get 3hrs screen on time and got from 7am till 10.30pm. Not the best but acceptable.
[Android General] dorpmuller:
Didn't quite know where to put this... seems downloads on the CM site are gone. Tried downloading a nightly to go back to CM11 on a device and all the links are 404.

Anyone know what's going on?

Thanks,

Rich :crying: