Neo as cellular modem?

[Michael Shiloh]

Alexey Feldgendler wrote:
> On Thu, 29 May 2008 08:59:10 +0200, Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com> wrote:
> 
>> We're helpless unless Atheros decided to implement Master mode in their
>> closed firmware.  Unfortunately the power advantages of having the bulk
>> of the ieee80211 actions managed in the firmware are pretty compelling
>> so I don't know how we get out of that bind.
> 
> The very knowledge that we can't do something that the hardware would 
> technically be capable of is annoying, 

Strongly agree. In some cases this was a result of the agreement we were 
able to reach with the chip manufacturer in order to open source the 
driver. We don't view this as a perfect solution, but rather a good 
start. Hopefully in the future the success of Openmoko will encourage 
chip manufacturers to become more open.


> but I don't really see why we would need to implement a true AP in the phone. 

Strongly disagree. Innovation is stifled whenever choices are limited 
simply because we can't think of why someone would want to make that 
choice. We should always strive to make such choices available.




For any reasonable use
> case I can think of, ad-hoc mode should be enough. The only usability 
> advantage of being an AP would be that it can send beacon packets that 
> allow other devices to detect an available network, but sending beacon 
> would be a battery drain anyway.

Assuming the use case made sense, the Freerunner could be powered 
externally.

Michael