[General Topics] Menneisyys:
In these tests, I’ve also compared

the old, 1.1.2 version to the new, 1.2.3 on all my VGA devices

the latest WM6.1 upgrades on all my other VGA devices to the older WM version (for example, the official WM5 A12 on the Dell Axim x51v or the initial WM5 AKU 3.5.2 on the hx4700) to see whether they deliver any speed in/decrease or lack of support for the special graphics acceleration support.

The benchmark results are as follows (please consult the H.264 Bible for more info & help in interpreting the results!)

1.4.1 iPAQ 210

As you can see,

CorePlayer 1.2.3 defaults to the DirectDraw mode on the iPAQ 210. Make sure you set it to XScale to get the maximal performance!

(Non-4:3) VGA-resolution videos are played back with (almost) full frame rate (that is, over 100%). If you don’t run any CPU-intensive task in the background, you will rarely encounter any frame drops – unlike with PXA 270-based systems, which are pretty much unable to play back fully-fledged, 640-wide AVC videos at their full glory (for example, with deblocking enabled). Unfortunately, as the VGA playback is just a bit above 100%, this means using A2DP encoding will result in a lot of stuttering / dropped frames. This can only be fixed by disabling deblocking in runtime (not the best idea) or completely forgetting about A2DP and using wired headphones instead. (Or, using a lower-resolution input video –but who would want to see a lower-res video on a great, large screen like this? The other alternative is, of course, using the good ol’ ASP for encoding videos – at the expense of file size.)

I’ve also made some serious tests with 1.1.2 (the one I initially reviewed in the H.264 Bible) on the iPAQ 210 to see whether the, AVC-wise, excellent benchmark results cited above are any different with a non-PXA310-optimized player. The results are as follows:

That is, with VGA videos, version 1.2.3 indeed has some major enhancements with both AVC and ASP videos, with about 50…55% performance increase with the former and 38% with the latter. With QVGA videos, the improvement is about 35…40% (AVC) and 14% (ASP).

I’ve also run some tests with (some of) the other VGA Pocket PC’s I have to test whether

the optimizations in CorePlayer 1.2.3 (as opposed to 1.1.2) have any effect on the playback on these, older (PXA270-based) devices

the unofficial, cooked WM6.1 ROM upgrades still contain full support for the graphics chipsets with the hx4700 (ImageOn) and the x51v (2700G). (The HTC Universal doesn’t have anything like this.)

1.4.2 iPAQ hx4700 with VIET PDAV61KBD WM 6.1

The results are approximately the same with the old, 1.1.2 version. This means owners of the PDA’s or handsets based on the older, PXA270 will not really see any performance increase by switching to 1.2.3 – unlike with the PXA310-based iPAQ 210. (Of course, the new CorePlayer has a lot of cool features; most importantly, the native YouTube support I’ve elaborated on in the YouTube Bible.)

Incidentally, these figures are the same as on the WM5 3.5.2 ROM, both ASP- and AVC-wise (see Section 1.4.5.3 Other VGA Pocket PC’s in the original H.264 Bible for them). This is certainly good news for hx4700 users: the new ROMs not only excel at, for example, fighting the compaction issues, but also at supporting the special chipset in the PDA. I bet the same is true of all the other WM6.1 ROM’s discussed in the XDA-Devs hx700 ROM cooking thread.

1.4.3 Dell Axim x51v with makuu’s A06 privß06p WM6.1 ROM

The results are almost the same as with the official, very old, WM5 A12 ROM (see the old benchmark figures in section 1.4.5 Effects of en/disabling deblocking, CABAC and Bidirectional Prediction of the H.264 Bible):

ASP: 273k QVGA: 597% (with 2700G enabled)

464k VGA: 267%

AVC: 464k VGA: 83% (same with DirectDraw mode)

This, along with my earlier reports of the hardware 3D acceleration working great with makuu’s ROM is certainly great news.

1.4.4 HTC Universal with Ranju’s WM6.1 v7.6

That is, the figures are pretty much the same (except for some variation / "white noise"), showing the old PXA270 platform indeed hasn’t received any speed boost in the new CP version. Interestingly, the old WM6 AKU 0.2.0 ROM version I used on the Universal delivered somewhat better results (see section 1.4.5.3 Other VGA Pocket PC’s in the H.264 Bible) at playback even at 520 MHz (while Ranju’s ROM runs the Universal at 624 MHz by default). However, the difference isn’t big enough to warrant downgrading.

1.5 Using an external cellular handset to connect to the Internet

In my previous iPAQ 210 article, I’ve explained you’ll want to use a Bluetooth (or, if you don’t mind the higher power consumption, Wi-Fi) connection to an external handset to provide you with mobile access to Internet when you don't have access to any (working) Wi-Fi hotspot.

1.5.1 Bluetooth

1.5.1.1 Nokia N95

I’ve run some serious tests with the Nokia N95 (an excellent smartphone; an ideal companion to the iPAQ 210 as it has strengths in areas that are pretty much the opposite of the iPAQ’s strengths) as a modem and found the duo working excellent. No need for manual interaction on the Nokia (as long as you declare the iPAQ as a trusted client). The only problem I faced was the somewhat limited Bluetooth speed when using HSDPA – that is, speeds over ~700 kbps.

Unfortunately, unlike the iPAQ, the N95 doesn’t support EDR (see its PDAdb.net spec HERE), which is certainly visible in the following benchmark result. Over HSDPA, downloading a 7.25M file in IEM using the N95 as a HSDPA modem took 1:35…1:40; that is, the transfer speed is 0.0725 Mbyte/s = 72.5 kbyte/s. (Incidentally, the HP downloads the same file over ActiveSync in 25s and over 802.11g, via a Linksys Linux-based router is 14s. The latter figure on the N95, as of firmware revision v21, using the built-in Nokia Web, is 7s – an excellent result!) Downloading the same 7.25 Mbyte file to the Nokia over HSDPA only took 29s (measured in Vodafone’s network), which is an excellent result (250 kbyte/s); that is, 3.4 times more than the throughput of non-EDR Bluetooth DUN. This means EDR (or an alternate technology like Wi-Fi) is more than welcome if you want to transfer hundreds of megabytes – for example, you’re watching high-quality (H.264) YouTube videos or video streams operating at more than ~700 kbps (like those of YLE, the Finnish national broadcaster company, with their high-quality, high-resolution 1 Mbit/s WMV video streams).

1.5.1.2 Windows Mobile handsets

I had no problems using Windows Mobile handsets as clients. I’ve tested the HTC Vox with the official, upgraded ROM version (see THIS), the HTC Wizard and the HTC Universal with WM6.1 (running AMP’s 19199.1.1.0 and Ranju’s v7.6; see THIS for more info on these ROM versions).

Note that the Universal, in the default Internet Sharing mode (see THIS for more info on what Internet Sharing is and how it compares to the traditional Dial-Up Networking, DUN) seems to have DHCP problems: it just can’t hand out dynamic IP’s correctly. The other two devices, as is expected, don’t suffer from this problem. I don’t know if this bug is specific to Ranju’s v7.6 of WM6.1, or other WM6.1 Universal ROMs are also plagued by it. Note that:

if you connect the iPAQ 210 with another Windows Mobile device running Internet Sharing, you’ll receive an IP, which will be remembered upon the subsequent connection to the Universal. (You may even want to set the BT PAN local IP to a static address – I think I’ve explained this in some of my past networking articles. This way, you won’t need to connect to another PAN server to do the trick.)

Ranju’s v7.6 already contains the dial-up hack (see THIS for more info); that is, it can also be used in the traditional dial-up mode.