GTA02 Battery Capacity (Was: Re: More about the GTA02)

[Michael Shiloh]

Uncle Kridley wrote:
> Michael Shiloh wrote:
>> We are well aware of software changes we need to make in order to
>> improve battery and have simply not had the time to do this. You can
>> expect much better battery life when we implement these changes.
> [...]
>> that my very simple testing suggests should last for well over 12 hours.
> 
> Twelve hours is great compared to the five the GTA01 gets now, but it's
> maybe a third of what I'd consider to be the absolute minimum for a
> usable phone.  

I agree. I tried to make it clear that we're not done.


Can you give us an idea of how many hours of "talk" and
> "standby" you expect the phone to provide once all of these planned
> changes have been made?

Not yet.


> 
> I want an OpenMoko because I want to carry a computer in my pocket.  I
> want to run cron jobs that fetch content from the web.  I want to use it
> as a wifi web browser.  I want to turn it into a gps cycle-computer.
> And I want it to be my phone, which means that when I've done all of the
> above, it needs enough battery left at midnight to call a tow-truck when
> my car breaks down.
> 
> My Treo 650 has an 1800 mAh battery, and even when it was new I never
> got more than three days off a full charge.  Now that it's a few years
> old, I can barely make two days.  If the GTA02 needs charging every day,
> after maybe a year the battery will be aging, and won't even last a
> whole day.  That's not going to be very practical.  Are you guys sure
> that 1200 mAh is going to cut it for what amounts to a portable computer?

I don't know what we're sure of in this regard.


In summary:

1. We have made much progress
2. We are aware of more improvements we can make
3. We don't know (yet) what all these improvements will get us

Sincerely,
Michael