SmartReflex issues
 

In order to improve the battery life, I have enabled SmartReflex as described in:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7633

I have had it on for about a day (so hard to judge battery life improvement) and noticed that the charging just takes forever - it never stops. I am charging it via the USB cable from laptop which never took more than 4 hours, but with SmartReflex it did not stop after 6 hours.

Could this damage battery? Is there a workaround for this (besides turning SmartReflex off again)

I have googled a little and found out that some other users have the same experience, cf. http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pr...ng-issues.html

Do you observe the same issue?

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I've had SR enabled for about a month now. No charging issues here, but I normally charge with the wall adapter. I plugged in via USB a few times and it was charging but I have not tried a full charge. It should make no difference though.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I enabled it via editing "/etc/pmconfig", then rebooting the device. (Also described in your link.)

It hasn't caused any issues for about a week for me. (I didn't charge it with the USB cable from a computer, I always used the wall charger.)

However, since it is not enabled by default, and it is in a bug report which states there are some instabilities, you shouldn't be surprised.

As you can see in the comments section of that bug report, it may or may not work. There are some people for whom it is flawless, and some other who experience frequent crashes.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I have turned SmartReflex off again via "/etc/pmconfig" & rebooted and the device just keeps charging for another hour! :confused: Maybe I will try a hard reboot (turn off and on instead of using the reboot via DBUS signal).

The stability issues seem to be related to earlier firmware versions, I am using the latest firmware. Anyway, I have observed no stability problems (well one browser crash, but that may be coincidence), just the weird charging issue.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Has it crossed your mind that this issue is not related to SmartReflex?

The current coming from your laptop is way weaker than the one from the wall charger.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

thx venemo.... i wanted to post the same thing..... i never got a full charge when it was charging with usb....
just an example....
its simple...

500mAh usb
dont know atm what the wall has ... lets say 900mAh

lets say the n900 consumes 170mAh in idle...
50mAh are lost through heat while charging...

on usb 500 - 170 =330 - 50 = 270 mAh charge...
on wall 900 - 170 =630 - 50 = 570 mAh charge....

that example tell me that usb will need more than the twice time to charge....

IF all the values are correct.... and they are not correct .... beacause i dont have no wall chafrger here at car.... and i dont know what the n900 is consuming while idle....

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I have had the phone for about 2 months and never had issues with charging from the laptop. In fact, I do it every working day and always needed no more than 4 hours for full charge. When charging from the wall charger, it takes up to 2 hours.

Besides enabling SmartReflex, I have done two things with the phone in last 24 hours:

• edited /var/lib/gconf/apps/hildon/update-notifier/%gconf.xml to change the time of day when auto update occurs
• updated the pidgin messenger

none of these seem charging-related to me.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I will just have to see if the normal behavior resumes (turned SmartReflex off).. When I unplugged the phone now, i.e., after 8 hours of charging, the reported battery level is 74%. Yesterday, it was 96% after 4 hours of charging and 4 hours of being plugged in and reporting full (green led when idle).

Actually, there is one more thing I should mention. Today, after about 3 hours of charging, the status bar battery indicator stopped moving, it did not stay at full but at some 70%. When I locked the screen, the yellow light was still blinking and the X-term command reported that the N900 is charging. After reboot, the status bar battey icon started moving again. This may have been the first sign of something around charging going wrong...

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

This is another bug which I remember seeing somewhere. (Don't remember the ID, however.)
Conclusion: this in unrelated to SmartReflex.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I had problews with my phone rebooting with 32wd_to reason (bugs #6334 and #8229).
I had to disable deep sleep in /etc/pmconfig which caused reduction of battery life. To have somehow manageable time of running I have then enabled SmartReflex - and even though my device had reboots, they were never caused by SR.

I have had SmartReflex enabled on all available firmware F original, PR1.0.1, PR1.1, and PR1.1.1 - no problems with it.

Usually I charge by wall charger, but IIRC I have charged once over USB; this was however from my desktop.

Maybe this is reason of your prolonged charging - maybe your laptop does not provide enough power. If you have desktop, please try charging from it.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I bought some extended battery device for emergency re-charging it in a run. It provides a little less power (750mA instead of 800mA) and I observe difficulties in recharging while battery level is low. Recharger device circuitry switches it OFF after it discovers too much power sucked by N900.

And it actually charges N900 much more time in comparison with wall charger.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I dont have a desktop, but the thing is that I have successfully charged the phone from the laptop (running on AC power, not batteries btw) some 40 times. Then I enabled SR and had a problem. I have disabled it again and I will see tomorrow and report here.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

This is just a thought...though, It is possible that your battery may be a 'fake Nokia BL-5J', and this might be the actual cause of your problems. Because smart reflex is specifically coded to work with certain models of batteries and devices...

Check and make sure your battery isn't a fake as it is very likely that smart reflex is bugging out because of this. I would post the forum link that shows the difference between fake and original nokia batteries...but I'm currently too busy.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

good thought. I got my N900 from an unofficial sales channel - had two reasons for it: 25% lower price & english keyboard with all arrow keys instead of localized czech keyboard. so yes there could be some chance of having non-original accessories. The fake battery thread is http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=46987 I have turned off the phone and did all the checks, but my battery appears to be 100% nokia.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

yikes!!! charging via usb cable on a pc or laptop is a bit different IMHO.

when i did that, it took 4 hours before full charge. good thing is that'll cause me less overcharging of the device

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I enabled smart reflex yesterday and charged via a USB connection to a powered hub to a full charge today in what seemed to be the usual amount of time.

Frank

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Yes, 4 hrs charging from computer is normal, my problem was the charge was not complete after 8 hours and I gave up and unplugged.

I have heard that slow charging is generally better for batteries - slow charging should mean less wear, i.e. getting more charge cycles.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

so slow chargers are also good. i also heard that slow charging gives more battery life. not sure how much longer.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

With SR disabled, the phone charged normally from laptop today (from 70% to full in 2 hours). So I suppose that there is a reason for SR being disabled by default. It seems not to work reliable under some circumnstances. While it may work for some, it does not work for me. Thank you all for discussing this issue with me :)

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

But can you disable/enable it on run?

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

You mean without rebooting? Yes, it is possible:

to turn on:echo 0 ... for turning off.


Hmm, perhaps I could make a script to automatically turn SR off as soon as the battery is charging and put it back on when not charging..

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Exactly. This was what I also thought.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

It is not a bad idea, but on the other hand -- I don't need SR that desperately. The periodical checking of "is_charging" could easily outweigh the benefits of SR...

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

That could be useful (event triggered). I had my crash during the charging. Before that, the hack seemed to work ok.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?...gi?id=7633#c31

edit:
I also would be interested to read (here) what does that SmartReflex actually do. Why two places for settings? What if only other one is enabled (1) and the other left as disabled (0)?

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Could you please elaborate on that?
What is deep sleep and how does it affect battery life?

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Could it be that smartreflex makes the phone reboot because cpu frequency scaling is also on?

It seems to be the case on palm pre (http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/...oltage_Scaling) so it could also be the case on n900?

Is there a way to disable cpu scaling and test smartreflex by itself?


PS: I could be a nub and smartreflex autodisables cpu scaling but i might as well ask more knowledgable people :)

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I have experienced the above issue again today (SR disabled). The bottom line was that the device was not charging when the status bar icon stopped moving (even though the indicator led was blinking and hal-device reported that the device is charging.

I tried to search the bugs, but did not find this.. Do you remember if this bug is really in the bug database?

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Note: Space between "1" and ">" is significant.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Note that Eero pointed that changing those values without a reboot "isn't guaranteed to work properly". Better do it the pmconfig way.

I've been using both settings for half a week and can say that:
a) It seems to slightly improve active use time -- that is, with CPU demanding apps. It doesn't improve much but since that's the N900 weakest point IMHO I plan to keep it
b) It doesn't seem to alter idle/standby time at all. No significant changes by any measure.
Note that I've not yet found the time to do a long idle test nor a torture test thus I'm not giving proper numbers.

Disabling scaling would be disastrous to battery life. SmartReflex is not worth disabling ondemand scaling.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

lately i just perform smart reflex.

everything seems to be normal except for 2 consecutive reboots. unfortunately when the 3rd shut down occured, my n900 did not boot up.

well i tried every troubleshooting i know. but reflashing seems the only way that fixed it. :D

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

i enable SR yesterday and i vant see any improvement in battery but i got 1 reboot loading a video from youtube (i suppose it was flash load in cpu) but i wanna confirm if it was SR reboot or something else... someone can tell me the command to see the cause of reboot???

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

My report: I edited pmconfig a few days ago and didn't run into any untoward instability. However, I also didn't notice much enhanced battery life.

Edit. By the way, I don't have any issues with regard to charging, because I almost never charge on the N900, but with a separate charger.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

First line of /etc/pmconfig is enable_off_mode and is set to 1 (enabled) by default. This allows phone to turn off parts of CPU in order to save the power. Some devices had problems with this setting - firmware PR1.0 was not able to bring back processor from this state, which caused reboots. This was described in bug #6334
(https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6334) and was fixed in PR1.1. Temporary fix for those affected, while waiting for new firmware, was to disable enable_off_mode, but it caused battery to last very short time. In order to have working phone some people (including me) were enabling SmartReflex then.
Normal people do not need to disable enable_off_mode - as it will disable power saving and will cause phone to last under one day on battery.

I hope it answers your question.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I have SmartReflex turned on since I can remember.
As I was downloading backup to my computer I decided to test charging over USB. I downloaded all files, unmounted MyDocs and flash, and left phone plugged in. At the beginning it had about 70%; it took almost 2 hours to get it fully charged (to 95%), when green LED came. Analysing slope of the line in BatteryEye during charging using wall charger and USB it looks like USB is charging about 2x longer.

So in case of my phone enabling SmartReflex does not interfere with charging in any way.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

@tomaszrybak: Thanks for your explanation about the enable_off_mode!

Yeah, I use SmartReflex too, and it neve affected anything in my device. BTW, to me, the car charger seems to be the weakest, but it is because I use a noname old Nokia charger with the charger adapter.

And it charged to full with USB for mee, too.

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Hello,
I think i need a little help :S

I've tried:
echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd1_autocomp
echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd2_autocomp

The device stays Ok during 1 hour.
So, i have thinked, its stable!

So.. I edited the PMCONFIG file, changed:
sr_vdd1_autocomp 0 (to 1)
sr_vdd2_autocomp 0 (to 1)

Reboot the phone, and now..doesnt boot :(

I've been reading a little but..want 'online' opinions..other way that is not re-flash ?!?

I never did it before, read about it and seems a little confused.

So..any help, please .

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

Does it hang during booting, or go into a reboot loop, or what? You could possibly recover from a reboot loop, otherwise I think you're going to have to reflash. Oh, and have you tried powering off completely, removing the battery for a few minutes, then booting up again?

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

It shutdowns during the boot (sometimes hang up).
But now..

Well..:confused::confused::confused:
After remove battery..it works..

So.. Thank you..? :)

Re: SmartReflex issues
 

I feel like the device performs faster when SmartReflex is off. Is it just a feeling or is there some justification for this? I suspect that lower voltage (SmartReflex on) causes more CPU operations to fail and to be recalculated. Is this a total nonsense or could this really be happening?