[Community] Growing the Community

[Radek Polak]

On Thursday, June 13, 2013 10:44:22 PM Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

> I think you can - since the GTA04 is sort of an upgrade for the GTA01/02
> and therefore can extend the life of the device. It was the logical
> extension of the Bas/Buzz/#1024 fix activities. I.e. a CPU/Glamo/WWAN-Data
> speed fix.

From my point of view it appears that:

1/ board upgrade is not enough to attract new people.

2/ being free/open is also not enough - it's just additional value. The real 
value is the product itself.

IMO to be succesfull we need to offer really working phone + something that 
others dont have. Some ideas probably already metioned:

- modified case for AAA batteries instead of openmoko battery. Would be nice 
e.g. for travelling when you dont have charger

- eink display on backside - cool for reading and great battery life

- solar charging

- induction charging

- HW keys for playing games - like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8VRABmJKSw

- case with blackberry or similar HW keyboard like this: 
http://www.blackberrymall.net/blackberry-bold-9700-keyboard-qwerty-keypad.html

- case which converts the phone to tablet or to notebook like this:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/asus-padfone-infinity-review/

It appears now that we dont have demand/money for building new GTA04 but maybe 
that does not matter for now... Doing new designs and products on top of GTA04 
board might be now more interesting and could bring interest to the 
openphoenux project.

And of course fixing existing problems would be really nice. Especially:

1/ poor power management. We are still far behind Neo Freerunner. Try to 
really use GTA04 as a phone for some time and count how many times you found 
it discharged. My N900 which is very similar HW can live 5days and it even 
does not go to suspend. GTA04 if you are lucky can do 2 days. Unfortunately i 
cant really help much here, because i never worked with HW except sending some 
bits to kernel from userspace.

2/ i am willing to try to flash newer modem firmware on my broken GTA04 if it 
helps with modem reenumeration.

Regards

Radek
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