Freerunner will be GTA02v5 or GTA02v6? (was: Fwd: Future Button and LED software spec)

["Marco Trevisan (Treviño)"]

I'm re-posting here some mails from the openmoko-devel "Future Button 
and LED software spec" thread [1] in which there are some infos about 
Freerunner hardware that I think they should be more visible.

Summarizing, they say that the GTA02v6 hardware version fixes an 
hardware bug that causes the LEDs to use about 150mW instead of 25mW.
Btw Werner Almesberger stated there that the first batch of GTA02 to be 
sold will be composed by GTA02v5 phones while GTA02v6 hardware will be 
sold only in a second phase.
The hardware differencies between the two versions [2] (I've updated 
with this LEDs issue) don't seem so worthless since there are some power 
fixes (not only this one).
Read below:

> Andy Powell wrote:
>> Shawn Rutledge wrote:
>>> Werner Almesberger wrote:
>>> Right now, we could only leave them (the LEDs) permanently on, which comes with a
>>> hefty electricity bill, particularly on GTA02v5 (each LED burns about
>>> 150mW). In GTA02v6, this should come down to about 25mW, maybe less.
>> 
>> But  GTA02v5 is not going to ship, is it?
>>  
>>> Marco Trevisan (Treviño) wrote:
>>>> Werner Almesberger wrote:
>>>> Last thing I've heard, the first units will be GTA02v5 :-(
>>>> 
>>>>> thomasg wrote:
>>>>> @Werner: do you know - or can you figure out - how many GTA02v5 will
>>>>> leave the factory and reach the customers?
>>>>
>>>> I've heard something like "thousands". However, I've also heard that
>>>> there'll be some sort of fix for the LED problem in these GTA02v5.
>>>
>>> Why this? Why not selling v6 directly? And... Which are other diffs
>>> between v5 and v6? I think that the power usage of every element of the
>>> phone is vital.
>>> And which kind of fix for v5 is planned?
> 
> I certainly think that this should be made very very clear to people buying 
> the first batches and not just left as a passing comment on the dev list.

So why shipping semi-bugged hardware if there's a fixed version ready?

[1] http://tinyurl.com/6p2mct
[2] http://tinyurl.com/6knk5m

-- 
Treviño's World - Life and Linux
http://www.3v1n0.net/