SmartQ7 on Ver.5.0 Firmware

Posted by Madu in Devices Sep 25th, 2009 | no responses

Flashed my SmartQ7 with the newest firmware, ver.5.0 and so far it is pretty good. It looks and feels much better than ver.4.0. This version looks more polished. The most important is run a Ubuntu Karmic Koala port meaning you will access to a large number of applications that are available for a normal Ubuntu installation. Let me walk you through briefly.

Click the links for larger photos. (http://www.technicaljar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Shot1.JPG)

Here is a screen shot. If you have seen ver.4.0 you’d immediately notice that this is much different. This version has a dock at the bottom and the background also looks much nicer. It takes a little while for this to mount the SD card, but it gives a nice notification once it finished mounting.

(http://www.technicaljar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Dock.JPG)

Here is a close up of the dock. Pretty nice right?

(http://www.technicaljar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Panel.JPG)

Here’s the top panel. The icons looks much prettier and gives the whole desktop a nice look.

( http://www.technicaljar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ScreenShot.JPG)

Finally another screen shot. The menus are almost the same as the last version. Not much surprise there as far as I noticed.

I only played for a while with this and so far no complaints. Well, except for that the screen turns off during inactivity and I couldn’t (yet) find the settings to adjust it. I am sure it is there somewhere. Overall this firmware version gives a much pleasant experience with the SmartQ7. Some have noticed delayed startups of applications, but I did not notice such. The bootup seems to have gotten quicker, with it coming to a full start (cold boot) under a minute. Will do some more testing later on. Stay tuned.

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