I don't currently own a Webtop enabled phone but I have wanted one for a while now. I am on Sprint and have a SERO account which I would like to hang onto so when I heard about the Motorola Photon Q I watched it with a lot of interest. As more info kept being released I got more and more disappointed. Finally I noticed that the phone won't come with Webtop.
Seems strange considering it is going to be priced like a high-end phone yet it is missing a relatively important feature most high-end Motorola phones have. Even the Atrix HD won't have Webtop but according to Motorola they didn't include it to make the phone more cost effective.
So those 2 phones won't have Webtop but on top of that the lapdocks are being sold for really cheap yet there hasn't been any announcements of a successor or refresh. The last lapdock released, as far as I know, was the 500 Pro and that came out 8 months ago. It hasn't been a year yet but that is still a really long time without a refresh to a phone accessory.
I know it is a little too soon to tell if Webtop has been discontinued and we won't know for sure till Motorola comes out and confirms it but I was just curious what others thought about it.
Sorry if this has been discussed before but I did a search and couldn't find anything.
Android 4.0 doesn't use webtop anymore because it just switches into tablet mode when plugged into a tv or external monitor via hdmi.
As long as I can run my phone at higher resolution through an hdmi cable, who cares what they call it?
MrCavity said:
Android 4.0 doesn't use webtop anymore because it just switches into tablet mode when plugged into a tv or external monitor via hdmi.
As long as I can run my phone at higher resolution through an hdmi cable, who cares what they call it?
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Is it that way with all android phones using 4.0 that have video out? Thought most android phones that can do video out just did screen mirroring without switching to a tablet mode.
Anyways, the main reason I am interested in Webtop is because of the lapdock. I wouldn't use Webtop on a TV or monitor but the lapdock would be the sole reason for me wanting Webtop. I know I could get a cheap android tablet but I'd rather have a lapdock since it is laptop-like and it would contain everything on my phone. Don't really want 2 separate devices.
As far as I know the lapdock will only work with Motorola phones that have Webtop. Correction welcome if that assumption is wrong.
You don't have to do tablet mode, you can choose to just mirror your display.
The thing is that despite webtop was based on linux, you only had one desktop program, Firefox, and better resolution.
The only difference at ICS is that you will use either the android version of Firefox, or just the Chrome. It's a faster solution, but it lacks at the flash support part.
Sent from my XT910
No, sorry, thats not the only diffrrence!
Its much bigger. With the real Webtop you have got a real Linux system so you can use libreoffice, gimp and so on.
With tablet mode you have an fuc* android on an untouchable lapdock display.
With linux you can get n programs on the screen. With android you have only on. To change through the open programs, you get illness...
There re many differences!
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium
Related
I wanted to hear from the users what their experience has been with Lapdocks and/or webtop. Id like to know what and how you are using your lapdock. and to those that are using webtop over hdmi or the docking station, what things have improved your productivity at work and home.
Im trying to weight the pros and cons. of course the cons are always that little thing called $$$. not sure how i would utilize these products and want to know how the current users are.
is it just the "i can do this with my phone" or have they made youre life better?
and to give you an idea, my workstation consists of a HP EliteBook thats never open and directly connected to my 32inch LCD. so im also thinking about the idea of doing a KVM switch and have the ability to toggle between the two at the office. This would leave my desk clean and simple. BUT, that doesnt do anything for me at home and travels (but then again i have a laptop, so i dont see where the need would be) and a HDMI KVM switch is not a cheap solution either.
Thoughts?
lroy said:
I wanted to hear from the users what their experience has been with Lapdocks and/or webtop. Id like to know what and how you are using your lapdock. and to those that are using webtop over hdmi or the docking station, what things have improved your productivity at work and home.
Im trying to weight the pros and cons. of course the cons are always that little thing called $$$. not sure how i would utilize these products and want to know how the current users are.
is it just the "i can do this with my phone" or have they made youre life better?
and to give you an idea, my workstation consists of a HP EliteBook thats never open and directly connected to my 32inch LCD. so im also thinking about the idea of doing a KVM switch and have the ability to toggle between the two at the office. This would leave my desk clean and simple. BUT, that doesnt do anything for me at home and travels (but then again i have a laptop, so i dont see where the need would be) and a HDMI KVM switch is not a cheap solution either.
Thoughts?
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Click to collapse
Im using the docking station and it has been great for me I find myself hardly using my laptop anymore which is also hooked up to my flat screen
as far as the web browsing goes its not as fast as the laptop but I have the wireless keyboard also and it makes a huge comfort difference, there is about a 1 to 2 second delay for me when I click a link for the page to load completely,, honestly I say give it a try and if you dont like it just return it,,, but I think you would really like the wireless keyboard it literally replaced my laptop I can do all my work from my phone now, its great,,
Using the HD dock with a portable wireless keyboard/mouse. Even though I wish it would do more it does make the phone more functional. Think it all depends on what type of apps you need to use. It makes it very nice when traveling to take the place of a laptop but in the office there are just too many Windows apps I need that won't run on my phone.
If I traveled more I know it would be a very nice feature to have.
I use my Lapdock daily for just about everything. I have found most useful replacements and with Logme In I can control all my PC's or Servers.
I also use the HD Dock which is connected to a 32 inch TV.
I like the device and all it offers.
Motorola is coming out with a lapdock for the Photon and Bionic/Other Future Devices... Model 100.
Let's see how they price it though....
xTMFxOffshore said:
Let's see how they price it though....
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According to http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/10/15/ctia-lapdock-100-hands-on-for-sprint-photon-4g-coming-1021-video/, it will be priced around $250 at the Sprint Store. For more information, click on the link and watch the Fall CTIA Motorola Photon 4G Lapdock Accessory Video.
Cool. Thanks
Sent from my Photon via XDA
xTMFxOffshore said:
Cool. Thanks.
Sent from my Photon via XDA
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One quick thing, xTMFxOffshore, I wanted to let you know that we all appreciate your contribution to the forums, and I wanted to personally thank you.
I haven't really done much Man. I'm not a Dev. So I just try to help where I can. But no problem.
Sent from my Photon via XDA
I always wondered how Honeycomb had a hidden Gingerbread mode but since that never had any call/radio support it wouldnt really be possible or worth having anyone boot Honeycomb on the Atrix.
However now we have ICS which still has the same feature of different DPIs and tablet mode launcher support.
So I figure, how cool would it be that when ICS is working on the Atrix, someone manages to make HDMI mirroring basically be Atrix pushing Tablet resolution onto the webtop with the full Tablet environment. (all you would need is something similar to ICS for other tegra devices)
It has full Mouse and Keyboard support already and it would for once make the lapdock actually useful.
Also, it wouldnt be too hard to do since technically all we would need is HDMI mirroring (with automatic DPI/resolution change) and the Mouse and keyboard should already be functional.
This means that your phone would operate ICS without issue. Plug the phone to lapdock and it changes resolution and DPI to the Tablet mode and that becomes your extension. This would be the most baller thing to do and there would be no more need for the crappy webtop/lin environment.
What do you think?
that sounds like an awesome idea seven.... thinking about it blows my mind.
Nice thinking ahead.
Im about to check for myself, but does ICS have landscape HDMI mirroring? I know Ricardo Cerqueira posted a picture on his G+ of I think an O2X landscape mirroring, but I dont know if thats device specific.
Edit: Nope, doesnt work, its all effed up.
+1
seven2099 said:
I always wondered how Honeycomb had a hidden Gingerbread mode but since that never had any call/radio support it wouldnt really be possible or worth having anyone boot Honeycomb on the Atrix.
However now we have ICS which still has the same feature of different DPIs and tablet mode launcher support.
So I figure, how cool would it be that when ICS is working on the Atrix, someone manages to make HDMI mirroring basically be Atrix pushing Tablet resolution onto the webtop with the full Tablet environment. (all you would need is something similar to ICS for other tegra devices)
It has full Mouse and Keyboard support already and it would for once make the lapdock actually useful.
Also, it wouldnt be too hard to do since technically all we would need is HDMI mirroring (with automatic DPI/resolution change) and the Mouse and keyboard should already be functional.
This means that your phone would operate ICS without issue. Plug the phone to lapdock and it changes resolution and DPI to the Tablet mode and that becomes your extension. This would be the most baller thing to do and there would be no more need for the crappy webtop/lin environment.
What do you think?
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Click to collapse
it's defiantly a good idea to use the tablet interface in the laptop.
I think I had the same idea earlier. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1410273
I'm glad more people are thinking like this though. I hope it means that eventually this becomes a thing.
Hey guys, have a lot of questions, so bare with me.
Some background info, ive been with android since the droid 1, every single phone ive owned is rooted and had a custom rom. I am currently using a HTC Rezound with sense 4.0 as my phone. The Atrix 4G i am using is just a phone to play around with for me. The main purpose i bought it for, was to use it as a HDMI out entertainment hub. I also bought one of those Atrix Lapdocks, and wanted to make better use out of it then the portable LCD monitor i was using it for.
Right now im running NottachTrix4G 2.3.6 rom on the phone, Faux 1.3ghz kernel, along with the full GenTop2 webtop as well. At the moment, it is the full rom i am running, i haven't stripped anything yet but i do plan to since i don't need any of the mobile data/phone stuff, just wifi.
The first thing i did was i put the rom on, then got GenTop2 working. After that, i then tested the HDMI out separately to my hdtv. I noticed when i plugged in the HDMI out, the Gentoo login showed up till i changed it to hdmi mirroring on the phone. This was my first concern about how all of this functions.
My questions are as follows:
1 - Does webtop run the entire time the phone is on? I assumed that it wouldn't turn on till the MicroUSB host + hdmi both connect and then it fires up. It seems like i am wrong on this.
2 - Does having Gentop2 running the entire time hurt performance of the phone? My main usage of the device is either for the Gentop2 via the lapdock, or HDMI out mirror'd for Emulators (snes/nes/genesis/n64/PSX) which are all performance heavy and Netflix. I noticed things weren't as crispy and smooth via the hdmi out as they are on my HP touchpad, wondering if having webtop running is hurting performance.
3 - If having Gentop2 does hurt performance like i am suspecting, how does CM7/CM9 perform when it comes to HDMI mirror performance and emulators/netflix? I could dual boot via Boot Manager or even the 2 partition method i've seen in the Android Development forum for the atrix. That way i could have a Gentop2 setup via blur for the lapdock, and reboot into a different rom (either CM7/CM9/Blur but without webtop) for usage of HDMI out for a HDTV.
4 - Is there perhaps something better then the Gentop2 i am running? I went with that because its still being worked on and i liked the performance on it, but i would not mind having Ubuntu or Linux Mint instead. There is not much centralized info about Webtop flavors and comparisons, its very scattered and hard to know what is what.
Overall i absolutely love the device, pleased so much with it. Thanks.
1) X (and the webtop desktop) starts the first time the doc is plugged in and stays running. I beleive it detects the USB device ID but am not certain.
2) All X based webtops will take some resources, in particular RAM. This means your forground tasks will have less available for them. I beleive you can execute /etc/init.d/webtop-shutdown.sh to spin it back down. (Then maybe /usr/local/bin/webtop-restart if it will not start back on its own).
3) Mirror will not take resources AFAIK.
4) If your issue with Gentop2 is lack of functionality, there is a mod "Full Debian" or such that does a similar mod with a standard debien. There are also notes there and how to do a custom distro. Note that Gentop will be most efficient.
A couple side notes. The true webtop concept (an X based distro on the dock) might well be history. Moto is going to mirror + tablet mode in ICS and it will be a challange to keep the current stuff working from then on (unless somebody wants to stay with gingerbread).
I suspect from then on the ability to run X based linux applications will be via the vcn method. A "headless" linux distro is used with a vcn server and the 'droid vcn client is used to present the screen. This can be done now on gingerbread (some like it), but on ICS we need some help from moto on the drivers before we can get a decent enough resoloution to do that right.
I had a convergence idea (that i'm sure others have had in the past) about using an atrix 4g laptop dock (via mhl to hdmi) on my galaxy note. I'm running cm10 (4.1.2) with ubuntu installed experimentally, but I would really like to get xwindows working on the video out on my note instead of just a mirror of what' on my phone's display (sort of like the atrix demonstration of cannonical's ubuntu for android) the sad part is that I haven't the foggiest about how to bind an xserver to the video out and then how to disable the bluetooth input to android and enable it on that xserver... if cannonical can do it with an atrix, i'd imagine we should be able to do it on a note...
just kicking around some ideas. if anyone has any idea as to how to go about this, or has additional ideas and information related, i'd be interested. I'm very interested in mobile phone / notebook / desktop convergence and would love to see something this this in action in my hand.
now that atrix laptop docks (which are really just hdmi displays / speakers and usb keyboards that power for 8 hours) are $50 on ebay it seems like the time is right...
Beat me to the post I was going post a similar idea as well today. Only I have no interest in using the pad dock. Just "ubuntu" video out activated on mhl input.
Good afternoon!
Last time I was on the xda threads I learned how to install Linux Ubuntu Jaunty within the Webtop feature of my now ~5 year old Motorola Atrix. It was so sweet because it would launch on HDMI out to the TV while the touchscreen became the mouse & keyboard.
The only downsides were that
1. Had to carry around >= uHDMI adapter
2. Ubuntu was unstable
3. Weak CPU/GPU performance.
Now I am looking to do something similar with a more recent device so I can stream video from the web-browser. (The Motorola Atrix was just not powerful enough, unless SD and non-fullscreen, which a few years ago was still pretty awesome.)
I am comfortable with any hacking that may be necessary; rooting, flashing, developing, etc. Just want to know what's possible and what would work best.
Any ideas?
Thanks, guys!!!