LED notification

Sam Kuper sam.kuper at uclmail.net
Sun Oct 12 14:26:14 CEST 2008


2008/10/12 Kishore <kitts.mailinglists at gmail.com>

> In addition, i would recommend a look a look at multimedia functions. If
> the
> device were to play music (mp3) if there were ways to be more power
> efficient.

Good point. Am I right in thinking that there was a point during the
development of Sony-Ericsson's phones (the point being the introduction of
the Walkman series) when they suddenly became able to play MP3s while on
standby? This would be a really good feature for OpenMoko phones to have,
especially if they are to be competitive against mass-market media player
phones.


> [snip] using one of the ultra low power micron
> controller such as one of the AVR pico series will allow greater
> flexibility
> with the ability to make it function like the device BIOS as well and
> upgrade
> its firmware if and when necessary. This could also help the battery
> charging
> problem when powered down!

I agree; enabling the device to charge when powered down would be a good
thing. The vast majority of consumers will need to be confident that if they
plug their phone into a power source, it will (1) start charging and keep
charging until the battery is full, and (2) light an LED while charging to
indicate the state of the battery (typically, red=empty, amber=usable but
not full, green=full).

An awful lot of consumers, after all, do not RTFM and will assume the phone
is broken if it doesn't do this. I know FR is still oriented at developers,
but most developers are consumers too, and would prefer not to RTM any more
than they have to. What's more, even with the best will in the world,
batteries *do* run down completely from time to time. OM users deserve
better than to have to remember magic sequences, etc, to get the phone
working again after this happens. People do need to be able to rely on their
phones.

At the moment, if you've forgotten (or didn't know) about the magic
sequences, and you find yourself with a discharged phone at a place with not
internet access and only a USB charger, you'd be rather stuck. With most
commercial phones, however, you'd just plug them in and let them charge
until they had enough power in the battery to be switched on again.

Sorry if this has all been said before.

All best,

Sam
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/attachments/20081012/04f9da3a/attachment.htm 


More information about the community mailing list