Battery life & case design

[steve]

A deeper back cover is an option. The cad files are open. I also thought of
an external battery pack
( maddogg sent me some stuff on it). Lots of ideas, too little time

Steve 

-----Original Message-----
From: community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org
[mailto:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] On Behalf Of
jonathan at topnoc.co.uk
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 7:17 AM
To: community at lists.openmoko.org
Subject: Re: Battery life & case design

Mikko Rauhala wrote:
> ti, 2008-07-01 kello 14:35 +0200, Arne Zachlod kirjoitti:
>> Im not sure, but I think with an even thicker phone there will be 
>> more no-geeks who dont care about the freeness who wont buy the phone 
>> only because its thick and heavy (and such a phone would be heavy).
>
> Actually reading the text you would have noticed he was suggesting for 
> someone (maybe Openmoko, maybe not) to produce a large battery back as 
> an optional accessory, so your criticism misses the point entirely.
>
> For myself, I would be at least somewhat interested (depending on bang 
> per buck, of course; it's not a must-have for me), for largely the 
> reasons the OP mentioned. That is, simply for getting to have more of 
> it on more of the time doing useful stuff.
>
> Power management is obviously important regardless, as is getting 
> decent standby time with the default battery. (If anyone would like to 
> offer a short summary to the community on how cpufreq and suspend are 
> progressing, that would be interesting.)
>

Thankyou, that is exactly what I was suggesting.   For instance, I was
pretty
excited over the ideas for the mybot program (is that what its called?)
having a phone that alters its behaviour based on GPS and where you are....
I'd like to take that idea further and include WIFI so the phone also knows
where it is based on what SSIDs it can find.... but can you imagine how long
the phone would last with GPS and WIFI turned on??  kind of makes the idea a
no go. 
Which is a shame as such functionality really goes a long way to make the
phone a transparent and intelligent technology which you'd quickly be lost
without... also its something that most other if all other phones do not
do....

So in short if there is anyone who has the means to mass produce a new
deeper back cover for the phone so we can have a large battery in it then I
think it would be in our interest to pursue that.  I'm sure as time goes on
there will be many other great software ideas for the openmoko/gta02 that
will require the goodies to be switched on at all times.

I've had a gta02 for a few days now. It really interested me as a platform
for my various codings.  My old mobile was a P.O.S so I started using the
gta02 as a phone straight away (which is fine with some tweaks).  However,
already I have the habbit of getting to work and plugging the gta02 into my
PC's USB port.... thus whenever I leave the office for a while I usually
leave my phone behind which completely defeats the idea of a mobile :-)

Regards,

Jon




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