Newsletter #23 - October 2021 (Diversification) (Patreon)

It's been a while since my last newsletter. So many things have been happening, and so fast too that I've always felt I was one step behind summarizing it.

But things have settled (a little) and I feel that now's the time to summarize everything in a neat, easily understandable, way.

Lean back, grab something to drink and join me as we unravel everything that's been happening from start to finish!

Diversification

When I started this Patreon I couldn't even afford the single device I had (PsyOps kindly donated a GPD XD+ to get all of this started at the time).

Whenever I wanted to test the waters with a new device the old one had to go, so for the longest time the XD+ was my center of attention (and to a big extend it still is, more on this further down).

Thanks to all the support all of you have shown me I am now in a situation where, every once in a while, I can just go out and buy devices of interest and start developing for them.

In some rare cases I am now even able to get hardware early!

As such I figured, why not spread our wings a little?

So I picked up a Powkiddy X18S, a Moqi i7 and a Moqi i7s, all of which I hope to continuously support in the future, along with the kindly donated GPD XP and of course the already supported GPD XD and GPD XD+!

The GPD XD Android Updates

When I decided that I would support more than one device several months ago I spent a lot of time philosophizing with my dear friend PsyOps as to what devices would be in most dire need of upgrades first, and we decided that the original GPD XD would have to be the very first goalpost (given how it had been stranded on Android 4.4 for the longest time).

The journey to making that one happen was a long one, mostly because of some roadblocks like the Espressif WiFi driver, need for custom HALs, and plenty of other kernel mishaps.

But we came out victorious, giving people the option to upgrade all the way to Android 9.0 (with 10 & 11+ updates coming at a later point in time).

The upcoming Powkiddy X18S LineageOS 18.1 release

For those that follow my Twitter this isn't exactly news, but the last two weeks have been (mostly) spent on getting the Powkiddy X18S ported to LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11), getting all the stock OS features ported (touchscreen mapper), fixing several bugs & issues on the device and adding some much needed additional features to it.

To name a few of these things...

• START / SELECT now doubles as L3 / R3 when long-pressed (these can be mirrored too)
• A digital button to axis translator was added (which makes the built-in gamepad compatible with Minecraft, the GTA series, Xbox cloud streaming and several other modern apps)
• A bug that caused the analog stick to lose granularity (sensitivity) has been fixed, making the analog stick way more responsive to smaller movements
• A internal screen burn-in issue that occured while using HDMI has been fixed

... and several more.

At this point in time the release is pretty much ready, with no additional bugs having been found. As such I'm mostly just waiting on PsyOps to finish editing the installation guide videos, so expect a release post for this device soon!

Where will this diversification plan take us next?

While I have no particular order set for the remaining devices on the to-do list (GPD XP, Moqi i7, Moqi i7s), I figure we will probably start with the GPD XP, simply because its the newest and will be the easiest to grab for new users on the open market (with the Moqi devices being somewhat of a rare find now-a-days).

The reason why I opted for these 3 devices in the first place was because all 3 of them have SIM card slots, which means they could make viable on-the-go online gaming / video game streaming devices without the need for a second device to tether WiFi to them.

But expanding to other devices isn't the only thing I hope to do...

Revisiting the GPD XD+ and how it will benefit the original GPD XD

Several people asked me if the GPD XD+ would be seeing another update, and I will get straight to the point here: Yes, it will.

I hope to start by addressing the Android 10+ lockscreen security issue (being unable to enable lockscreen security) first, as this is a Google-sided regression that affects all TEE-less devices.

This means, once GPD XD gets upgraded to Android 10+, it would suffer from the same issue (due to it being TEE-less), so there's some synergy to benefit from here as fixing the issue on the GPD XD+ would also fix the issue for GPD XD.

And after that there's still the issue of HDMI audio not working, which needs to be addressed as well, however this issue will require me to write a custom audio HAL from scratch, which, given we have no similar HAL source code to base off of, will take some time.

All summed up, the GPD XD+ will be seeing additional updates, and with Android 12 not being all too far away now I am fairly sure I will be drowning in work before long anyway, as all the supported devices (GPD XD+ included) will be in need of another Android update.

So where does this leave us?

To be horribly blunt: with a lot of work.

While I still think that diversifying was the right thing to do, making better OS software accessible to more Android handheld users, it does leave me stretched thin, forcing me to carefully pick what to work on next and what to shelf for the time being.

Because of this there will always be people waiting on one project or the other while I am otherwise occupied, and truth be told, this fact bothers me, making me wish I could be even more productive or better at managing my already micro-managed schedule.

All of these ramblings aside, I am extremely grateful to be in the situation I am in right now and can't help but express my deepest gratitude to each and every one of you that paved the road for me and my work.

And as always. I will keep you all posted!

- Black-Seraph