[gta02-core] how many gta02-core devices ?

Werner Almesberger werner at openmoko.org
Wed Apr 21 21:06:45 CEST 2010


Rafael Ignacio Zurita wrote:
>   one question : is this offer open ? I mean, just gta02-core
> developers should want/pay gta02-core devices, or it should be 
> possible that other guys (no currently helping gta02-core project) 

For the purpose of this poll, it's open to anyone. I.e., I'd
like to know how many prototype devices people would want if
we could make an unlimited quantity.

For the actual production, there will be various limits, some
of them may be quite low.

So not everyone who would be interested may be able to get one,
in which case gta02-core project contributors would have
priority.

> If this question is NOT just for gta02-core developers then perhaps we
> could forward this question to other openmoko related lists (for example
> to community ml,

I thought of this. It would certainly help to inflate the numbers,
which is good advertizing ;-)

However, I'm concerned that anyone who isn't at least passively
following the gta02-core project wouldn't be too happy with what
they'd get, and I don't want to raise the wrong expectations.

For instance, it may well be that the devices won't work at all
and we'll never figure out why.

More likely, some things will work and others won't. We may not
have time to test every feature and to analyze every problem, so
it may be necessary to make the prototypes with subsystems that
are defective but may be fixed later (a la buzz fix or #1024).

Some problems may also turn out to be too difficult to fix, e.g.,
any issues with power consumption.

There may be reliably issues, where a device passes initial
testing but fails after transport or in the field.

Also, the total number of devices will be very small and there
will be no direct follow-on model. So it's unlikely that anyone
will put a lot of effort into maintaining support for the
platform.

Since it's quite similar to GTA02, most of the software above
the middleware shouldn't see much of a difference, though.

So this is much more a trophy, a collector's item, or a
scholarly result than anything approaching a real phone. I
can't guarantee that it will be completely unusable, though :-)

- Werner



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