Quick e-mail poll: Still using your Freerunner?

[Al Johnson]

On Wednesday 30 December 2009, Sebastian Krzyszkowiak wrote:
> On 12/30/09, Torfinn Ingolfsen <tingox at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 9:30 PM, Risto H. Kurppa <risto at kurppa.fi> wrote:
> >> Do you use FR as your daily/primary phone?
> >
> > No.
> > I still test stuff on it when time permits.
> >
> > Do you use FR as your primary PDA?
> >
> >
> > No. Currently, I don't have a PDA. The only thing I need from a PDA is to
> > sync with my calendar at work (Exchange mailbox), and the FreeRunner
> > can't do that (yet?).
> >
> >> What distribution you run most of the time?
> >
> > QtMoko.
> > Note: I would have tested more distributions had there existed an _easy_
> > way to boot several distributions  (multi-boot) from one SD card.
> > Currently it seems that each distribution requires a different
> > bootloader.
> 
> I only know about Android needing forked Qi. Which other distro also
> requires you to have custom bootloader?

I guess Android only needs a forked Qi because it needed different boot  
parameters, and Qi can't read them from file when booting from NAND. I find 
uboot very easy for multibooting.

> >> If you don't use FR as your daily phone/PDA, what phone did you change
> >> over to, and why?
> >
> > Nokia E61, then a Nokia basic model (the E61 died(
> >
> > I never switched _to_ the FreeRunner, because of the short battery life.
> > Having to charge it one or more times during 8 hours is to much hassle
> > for me, and impractical, as I don't carry a computer with me at all
> > times.
> 
> Strange, maybe your QtMoko just doesn't do well power management. Here
> I need to recharge every ~2 days of normal usage, and battery time
> when using GPS is also just nice, for instance for GSM cell logging (I
> have second battery from my old Nokia and I don't need more)

I get ~2days between charges most of the time too. GPS tracklogs cut it a lot, 
more because of not suspending than the GPS power itself, but see below for 
how this compares to a coupe of other handsets.

> > I really wanted to use the FreeRunner as a GPS (for tracking), but the
> > short battery life (even shorter with GPS active all the time) makes it
> > impractical.

I used the FR for recording tracklogs while walking over the summer. Friends 
were using the GPS on a G1 and a Sony-Ericsson (don't know the model) and they 
ran into battery problems much faster than I did. I was pleasantly surprised 
that the FR outperfomed them convincingly in this situation. The S-E also had 
trouble getting a lock when it couldn't get a cell data connection. 

> > --
> > Regards,
> > Torfinn Ingolfsen
>