RIM has pushed the second update of the QNX-based operating system running on the PlayBook. One of the new features listed? “The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet can now be charged even when fully powered down.” Oh my.
RIM has pushed the second update of the QNX-based operating system running on the PlayBook. One of the new features listed? “The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet can now be charged even when fully powered down.” Oh my.
As a mac zealot, I can’t make fun of BB too much since most of Apple’s updates yesterday were also things that were considered standard on other systems…
Furthermore, they were things that Apple and co always said were bad ideas: like full screen apps, and menu bar hiding.
“The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet can now be charged even when fully powered down.”
Is being turned on something that is a common need for tablets to be able to charge, or is this just every bit as fucked up as it looks at first glance?
When has this ever been an issue before?
Never heard of that before, but if it can be fixed by an update it means it’s a software thing and not a hardware one.
So was it a bug or was is designed that it needed to be on to be recharged?
Either seems silly. During testing someone should have noticed it doesn’t charge when powered down.
I can see how this got through the testing phase myself.
Many devices nowadays are designed to be permanently sleeping to various degrees, and rarely, if even, be fully powered down. So it’s logical that they did not experiment a lot with this operating mode during the testing phase, which focuses on the target use cases of the manufacturer.
30 second boot times are too much and fixing it would require too much effort, I guess… So let’s waste power and never clean up the device’s state instead.
Edited 2011-06-08 09:26 UTC
Actually, “turning the device off” often reboots the device, to a state where you got the kernel running in an “acting dead” state, where charging (and detecting when power button is pressed to “turn the device on”) can occur.
You mean that the device is not wired on the inside so that both have the action of a mechanical switch for turning the device on the “charging/on” state ? I had always thought, just sounded like the most clever option…
Well, at least the state is cleaned up. But I’d have thought that only the clock would remain powered on. Especially considering how much time most devices take between the moment where they are plugged in and the moment where they display some “charging…” indication.
Edited 2011-06-09 06:44 UTC
It takes time to bring up the graphics stack that displays the charging indicator.
But what exactly is brought up when the device is in deep sleep then ? Is it only about keeping the minimal amount of electronic components on so that interrupts work, and wiring some interrupt handlers to the “load the rest of the OS” actions ?
Edited 2011-06-09 07:46 UTC
The “whole operating system” (i.e. kernel) is up when the device is sleeping. It just doesn’t do anything (i.e. no wifi, graphics, apps), so it won’t consume much power either.
From what I can glean, most devices need to be powered up to charge, strictly speaking, but if you plug them in while off, they power into some kind of intermediate charge-only mode automatically.