Android on freerunner review (With Sean Mcneil image)

Gergely Imreh imrehg at gmail.com
Mon Dec 29 17:28:28 CET 2008


Hi,

 I just read the overview of testing Sean's Android image. It feels
really weird that so many things that I encountered were opposite to
what the testing results show. I used the Dec 4/5 Android image, with
QI, for quite a few days in a row, and this is what I experienced
differently:


> [Battery Life]
> * It's not really charging, even you plug in AC charger or USB cable, the
> power still reducing.
It was charging very nicely, could monitor the charging (battery
charge %) easily in the Settings area.
The battery lasted about 4, max 5 hours.
The only problem is, that if it completely discharged, had to use
another distro to boot from, otherwise it just takes too long time in
the boot process until the charging code kicks in (i guess), and could
not get it booted.

> [Calling]
> * GSM signal strength seems a bit unstable, sometimes just can't get any
> signal then I have to boot again.
Signal was quite good, actually I got better signal sometimes than
with my normal Nokia (okay, that's not a qualitative comparison),
though I sometimes it took a while to register to the network.

> * Call quality is good.
The people on the other end of the call can hear me very nicely, but
the sound level on the Freerunner is so low, that couldn't understand
anything if not in a completely quiet environment. Keyboard volume +/-
keys are not working (and even if they would be, it takes black magic
to get them during a call)


> [Messaging]
> * After try to send SMS, phone will lost GSM signal, so you can't send or
> receive SMS.
Okay, it was the same for me, but the most annoying. When sending a
message the phone cuts the connection and couldn't get it back until
the message is deleted and the phone is rebooted.

> [Contacts]
> * Can't read contacts saved in SIM.
Can load SIM contacts without problem, though only one by one (as I
checked, the original Android code has an "import all" function, not
just an "import this one", though missing from this build, not sure
why.) Cannot save to SIM, however..


[System]
> * Can't set ringtone after X hour usage
I couldn't set ringtone almost at all. When starting the Ringtones
from the Settings menu, it opened and closed right away, the log
saying that "low memory". When setting ringtone for individual
contacts from the contact list, it worked, though...

Also, there were some other apps that didn't work with the same "low
memory" fail. Couldn't trace it back yet.

Oh, and it works just fine with my 3G (TWN Mobile) card, well, if the
message problem is not due to the 3G-ness....

Read about the fresh release from Koolu, will try to set that up and
improve things. Hope this testing will be at least some use.
Cheers, keep up the great work....

   Greg



More information about the devel mailing list