Back to the basics: improving user experience

[John Lee]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 01:01:27PM +0200, Riccardo Centra wrote:
> Why Qtopia? I prefer that you release the next minor update ( aka 2008.10 )
> and focus all works on paroli and tichy.
> The new framework is pretty usable and stable.

Our plan is to bring qtopia to a more usable state then it currently
is before the next big thing - fso + tichy (?) + paroli , but
enhancements which could be brought to the new software stack will get
higher priority.  People (including myself) still need to use the
phone before that.  :)


- John

> 2008/10/16 John Lee <john_lee at openmoko.com>
> 
> > On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 05:15:59PM +0800, W.Kenworthy wrote:
> > > 2008.9 + updates
> > >
> > > A phone that works:
> > >       reliably make and receive calls
> > >       reliably make and receive sms's
> > >
> > > At the moment, totally losing sms messages (phone sometimes
> > > hangs/crashes when one comes in) or not waking up if suspended  when one
> > > comes in means that its almost unusable as a phone.
> > >
> > > It often takes several boots before the pin dialog comes up. If you
> > > forget while waiting and it does come up but its awhile until you get to
> > > it, it will hang so you have to reboot anyway.  Sometimes restarting X
> > > helps, but not always
> > >
> > >
> > > Stability:
> > > My average in normal usage is at least two boots a day due to crashes,
> > > and often extra rebooting to check if an sms comes in (sometimes they
> > > will only show on fresh re-registration.  Leaving the phone on and
> > > registered for hours doesnt seem to help - not sure how vodafone
> > > australia takes to retry messages but surely its less that 12 hours.
> > > The only way to stop crashes is not to use the thing! No GPS, no
> > > wireless, no phone calls, and definitely never send/receive an sms :)
> > >
> > > I suspect the event/0 thread is at the root of a lot of this so I am
> > > waiting a fix for that.
> > >
> > > I dont think I am alone in this - hopefully the new focus means that
> > > these issues can be dealt with.
> > >
> > > I am a little concerned though that you think things like boot time is
> > > important enough to mention, but not basic issues like being able to
> > > reliably make a phone call.  Though a faster boot means less time wasted
> > > going through multiple bootups to get the thing registered. :)
> >
> > I would like to explain a bit more about this:
> >
> > We're not the only team that will work on the new focus.  Stability
> > should be greatly improved by the effort of FSO, and boot time is just
> > another thing we would also like to improve.
> >
> > At the same time, we will work on fixing qtopia bugs as well, so if
> > the problems you have is in trac already, we will look into them.
> >
> >
> > - John