Closed Bug 1038045 Opened 12 years ago Closed 8 years ago

[v2.1] Multitouch Detection Issue ZTE Open

Categories

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox OS Graveyard
Component:
General
Platform:
ARM
Gonk (Firefox OS)
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: Mozilla_BEC, Unassigned)

References

Details

The ZTE Open displays the inability to distinguish two fingers from one another when the delta of the Y-Axis values of the two fingers approaches 0. This can be most easily seen in the linked video here: http://youtu.be/n9cVHCBHuYY As you can see, two discrete inputs are detected provided Y-Axis delta is greater than some threshold. Once Y-Axis delta approaches 0, FFXOS begins to "average" the X-Axis position between the two inputs. This behavior is incredibly undesirable as it has a huge negative impact on typing accuracy and speed, as well as preventing the successful usage of the pinch gesture in orientations other than "normal" Portrait or inverse Portrait.
Blocks: 1037894
I think the video in comment 0 is more than enough to confirm this. Can you provide a pointer to the test app you used in the video? I would be curious to test it on other devices and see what kind of results I get there. Also, did this work in the past? I.e. is this a regression? Knowing this would help us putting this bug in the appropriate component and possibly figure out when we the issue was introduced.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Gabriele, Here is the link to the app I used to test: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/multitouch-detect The example photos show up to 5 discrete detections on the app writer's device, so we know that the app can support up to that many fingers for detection. The only FFXOS device I have to test with is my ZTE Open, and as I have shown in the video, it can only detect 2 discrete touches because anything else causes all the inputs to actually get nullified and the screen/app show 0 inputs. I'm not entirely sure when this behavior appeared, but I can state without a doubt that it has been present in v2.1 for as long as I can remember. The only other versions I can easily flash to are v1.1 (zte) or v1.2 beta (zte). Do you need me to flash down to one of those to test?
I've posted this to the mozilla.dev.b2g mailinglist to see what all replies we get: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.b2g/3UVdrh4KKOg It looks like the Hamachi will only detect 2 touches under FFXOS v1.2 with no Y-Axis issue, but it will collapse the two discrete touches into one touch if they get too close.
Device: Hamachi (Alcatel One Touch Fire) FxOS: Boot2Gecko 1.2.0.0-prerelease Max fingers: 2 Y-axis issue: No Touch collapse: Yes
Device: Flatfish (InFocus F1 Tablet) FxOS: Boot2Gecko 1.4.0.0-prerelease Max fingers: 11 (+?) Y-axis issue: No Touch collapse: No (only when fingers are pressed together)
(In reply to Adrian Custer from comment #4) > Device: Hamachi (Alcatel One Touch Fire) > FxOS: Boot2Gecko 1.2.0.0-prerelease > Max fingers: 2 > Y-axis issue: No > Touch collapse: Yes It seems the Y-axis issue and collapse can occur; this is intermittent behaviour.
(In reply to Adrian Custer from comment #6) > It seems the Y-axis issue and collapse can occur; this is intermittent > behaviour. That is an interesting development. It is 100% of the time on my ZTE Open. Does it seem to be effected by the location on the screen you're testing or no?
(In reply to Brett Edmond Carlock from comment #7) > That is an interesting development. It is 100% of the time on my ZTE Open. > > Does it seem to be effected by the location on the screen you're testing or > no? This happens 100% of the time for me too on the ZTE Open and I've noticed the same behavior on the Tarako and Alacatel ONETOUCH Fire. My take on this is that we're dealing with a genuine limitation of the hardware. A similar test on the Geeksphone Peak, Flame and ZTE Open C doesn't exhibit this behavior and the said phones can correctly track either 4 (Peak) or 5 fingers (Flame, Open C) without issue. I suggest closing as INVALID since there's nothing we can do in Gecko/Gaia to solve this limitation.
How can we isolate whether the issue is firmware or hardware? I'm not willing to give up and accept the fact that this kind of behavior on the device is okay for the consumers to put up with.
(In reply to Brett Edmond Carlock from comment #9) > How can we isolate whether the issue is firmware or hardware? From our perspective it doesn't make much difference since either way we can't fix it without vendor help. That being said I'm now pretty confident that this is a hardware limitation: I've tested a couple of very cheap Android phones and they exhibit the same behavior we see here, namely they can distinguish only two fingers at the same time and only if they're not at the same vertical coordinate. > I'm not willing to give up and accept the fact that this kind of behavior on > the device is okay for the consumers to put up with. I'm afraid that's the way it is. On the plus side none of the new Firefox OS phones I got to work with is exhibiting this problem (except for the Tarako but that's a ridiculously cheap model).
See also bug 1080652 where I'm looking for ways to improve typing on devices that have this kind of low-end hardware.
(In reply to David Flanagan [:djf] from comment #11) > See also bug 1080652 where I'm looking for ways to improve typing on devices > that have this kind of low-end hardware. David, will you be investigating improving detection of gestures that are broken by this behavior like pinch to zoom as well? Hopefully these fixes will apply outside the Takaro as well. Thanks for taking the time to look into this issue. This is the kind of thing that will sour people to the devices/platform almost instantly. I know it did for me.
Apparently if you flash a Tarako with Android, the android keyboard has basically the same problems that ours does. This is super low-end hardware and there is only so much we can do about it. For the time being bug 1080652 is just to see if there is any kind of workaround we can do in the keyboard app. If that is successful, then maybe there is some kind of platform fix we could try, but I'm guessing that might be too risky to ship in existing devices. And I just don't see any way at all to make a horizontal pinch gesture work given the fundamental limitation of the hardware. My goal is just to see if we can filter out the unexpected averaging of the x coordinates of two distant touches
Adding that I'm working on Tarako because that's the device I have. But if we can improve the keyboard on that device, the same fix will probably work on the ZTE Open as well. I don't have one of those devices to test on, though.
Right now the fix I'm working on in bug 1080652 only applies to the Tarako device. Can someone tell me what string appears under "Model" when you open Settings and view Device Information on the ZTE Open and any other devices that are known to have this issue?
Flags: needinfo?(Synper311)
(In reply to David Flanagan [:djf] from comment #15) > Right now the fix I'm working on in bug 1080652 only applies to the Tarako > device. Can someone tell me what string appears under "Model" when you open > Settings and view Device Information on the ZTE Open and any other devices > that are known to have this issue? Hey David, Due to a myriad of reasons, I've long since sold my ZTE Open and my Open C. I am using a Flame now. Hopefully someone else with an Open chimes in.
Flags: needinfo?(Synper311)
(In reply to David Flanagan [:djf] from comment #15) > Right now the fix I'm working on in bug 1080652 only applies to the Tarako > device. Can someone tell me what string appears under "Model" when you open > Settings and view Device Information on the ZTE Open and any other devices > that are known to have this issue? The ZTE Open was called 'roamer2' IIRC and the Alcatel One Touch Fire 'qcom'. However those device names are just properties in the Android build so they're not super-reliable (and very generic in general as you can see).
Firefox OS is not being worked on
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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