Thread: 2.2006.39-14 IT2006 available at maemo.org
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2006-11-08 , 21:40
Posts: 1,245 | Thanked: 421 times | Joined on Dec 2005
#90
Originally Posted by chill633
It used to be when I clicked the power button and chose "shut down", it shut down fully. Starting it back up would mean a full boot and take 20-30 seconds. Now, a "shut down" seems to be more of a deep sleep that only take 3-4 seconds to come out of. It restarts X, which was my intent, but it is so much faster. Before, I had to keep telling myself "It's a handheld, you don't really shut it down, you just pop the cover on and let it sleep. That long start-up time may be embarrassing, but you never really start it, do you?" Well, no more rationalizing for me!
Actually, this behavior depends on whether or not the device is plugged in to AC power. This is the same in any of the recent versions. I'm not an expert on the subject, but the following are my observations.

If plugged in, then holding the power button for 2-3 seconds (or choosing "Switch Off!" from the power button menu) will not really shut down the device - it goes into sleep mode, as you described. This mode of operation uses a little bit of power (in fact, if the cover is off, it will actually leave the screen on, with the "Charging" animated icon), but since you're plugged in, it's not a big deal.

When the device is not plugged, it will do an actual shutdown, so that it doesn't use any power at all.

If you shutdown when plugged in (and it goes into "Charging" mode) and then you unplug the device, it will do an automatic "full" shutdown (as though you had pressed "shutdown" when the device were not plugged in), thus reducing power usage to zero. Pressing the power button in this state causes the device to do a full boot.

However, if instead of pressing the power button, you plug the device back in (or, actually, any time you plug in the device after doing a "full" shutdown), it will start the boot process for you automatically, in the background, without showing the progress bar (instead, a non-animated "charging" icon will appear while booting). When the boot completes, the animated "Charging" icon appears. And if you press the power button, you get the quick-resume.

I don't know if this means that the device has to actually be booted in order to charge the battery (seems unlikely - more likely it needs to be booted to show the animated "Charging" icon, which seems like a waste, but whatever), but it does mean that if you leave the device plugged in and shut it down every night, then every morning when you "boot it up", it will be a quick-boot (because it never actually did a "full" shutdown).

If you're one of those guys that likes to start every morning with a fresh boot (?), it's better, then, to shut it down before plugging it in for the night, since the plug-in will initiate the fresh boot, and it will be ready and re-booted for you in the morning when you pick it up (just remember to push the power button before you unplug it, otherwise it will automatically shut down).