Interview with Raider Realm

[ian douglas]

Will OpenMoko give any consideration to those of us who purchased the 
GTA01 before the tri-band issue was announced, to discount the price of 
a GTA02 to give us the functionality we thought we were initially 
purchasing? Like a trade-up of some sort like ATI used to do, where you 
send in your old ATI video card and they'd give you a discount towards a 
new one?

-id


Joachim Steiger wrote:
>>>>> "Ortwin Regel" <ortwin at gmail.com> 02/12/08 3:22 PM >>>
>> It sounds like Michael was talking about GSM in general. The area not
>> covered by that indeed does seem negligible in the US. You have got a
>> different issue. From what I picked up, it is not reasonably possible
>> to change the hardware in a GTA01 to support the 850 Mhz band. The
>> best option you have is probably to sell your GTA01 and get a GTA02
>> that supports 850 Mhz when they become available.
>>
>> Ortwin
> 
> this is correct.
> 
> due to limited resources we had to decide to rather focus on gta02 and
> make 850MHz possible there instead of finding a reasonable process on
> reworking gta01.
> 
> the point is that ((shipping and manhours doing it) + (the time to set
> the whole logistics and process up / number of possible wanted reworks))
> just gives a very unrealistic number which makes it even cheaper to
> directly go to gta02-850 and sell the gta01 to somebody who can use it
> in 900mhz-land.
> 
> reworking requires lots of time due to the high packaging density inside
> a phone and also measuring equipment which we only have in asia.
> (which generates hassle with customs, taxes, etc.. you really do not
> wanna know ;)
> its not only changing firmware in gsm and exchanging a few parts. it
> also needs to be recalibrated.
> 
> to sum it up:
> the status is that a 850mhz rework for gta01 for 'the masses' is not
> possible.
> please bear with us that this was not a decision taken lightly.
> 
>