Power Management on Neo1973

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

> I certainly know that. But it says:
>
> - proper power management (i.e. no reasonable battery life yet)
>
> There is this tiny "yet". It suggests that it - the GTA01 - is  
> going to
> have a reasonable battery life in the future. And that's not going  
> to be
> the case.

I think that this sentence was written in July 2007, just before the  
selling
of the GTA01 devices started and was never changed (why: because it was
part of the offer - and you shouldn't change offers afterwards).

So it simply describes the expectations that the OpenMoko team did  
have at that time:

"there is no reasonable battery life yet (as of July 2007 - and we  
expect that it can
be improved with progress in the software)."

Since nobody can look into the future, nobody could *know* that it  
may become
an unsolvable problem. Note, that in software, you can solve any  
problem (unless
NP complete or logically contradictionary) by putting more work in  
and distributing
an upgrade. In hardware this is not possible.

Therefore, I guess, the OM team still works heavily towards the GTA02  
to make it
perfect and to avoid such situations.

Originally I found that a good decision.

Now, I feel that this was the *wrong* strategy to delay the GTA02 until
its hardware perfect (it *never* will be perfect!). I would have been  
happy with a GTA02
coming for Xmas 07 with still some hardware issues (as long as they  
are less than with the
GTA01) and a GTA03 for summer 2008 fixing even more of them.

So I ask myself what a difference it would have made if a GTA01.5  
with no working WLAN had been
made available in December? It would still have been better than a  
GTA01.

Every large phone manufacturer prepares to have updates/upgrades  
every 6 months to
introduce new form factors/designs. It is common practice to start  
sales as soon as a certain
level of functionality is reached and improve the hardware while  
already in prodution (board revisions).

But that is a different topic.

-- hns