Daily Snapshot Review 25 March 2008

[Kevin Dean]

Today's image seems to correct the crashing X problems I mentioned yesterday.

I'm noticing that the intial GSM connection to my carrier seems to be
less consistant - that is on SOME boots it gets stuck on "Registering"
and other boots it connects quickly. This has always been the case but
it was typically a 1 in 20 boots or so that the connection would fail
and now it's approaching every other or every third reboot. I'm not
sure if this is related to the suspend tests, if the gsm modem isn't
shutting down properly or if the display (and ability to make calls)
is just wrong.

Sound quality remains the same, quite usable for calls and audio
playback though I've recently been doing a new form of playback - via
the headphone jack. In my experience with my in-car connection or wiht
the Neo's included headphones sound quality on the headphone jack is
pretty bad. Any movement at all causes slight crackling sounds despite
the input being firmly plugged in. I'm fairly sure this is hardware
and not software at all but it is something I've noticed - can anyone
provide their opinion on their experiences with this?

I've noticed a fairly consistant behavior with resume via POWER
lately. In my review I described it as POWER "locking" but more
specifically it seems as if the Neo acts like it's recieving a
constant POWER press. Pushing the button manually doesn't close apps
or bring up the Neod panel, and about 15 seconds after resuming via
POWER the unit shutsdown in the same way it would if you held the
button down.

My full review can be found at
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Snapshot_review/2008-03-25 and the list
of reviews at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:SnapshotReview

My recommendation today would be to continue to use the known stable
21 March 2008 image. Today's image isn't particularly bad except for
the gsm issues and since there's little to be gained from updating,
stability wins in this case.

-Kevin Dean