Daily Snapshot Review 04 April 2008

[Kevin Dean]

Today's full review can be found at
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Snapshot_review/2008-04-04 and the list
of reviews at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:SnapshotReview

First and foremost, as of yesterday I updated my uBoot image. I've had
several people ask me about if certain uBoot versions work better than
others and I'm not able to answer that. I didn't buy a debug board, so
once I got a good image I left it. Yesterday I took the plunge and
updated to the msot current image (at the time). The full review now
reflects that I use the
u-boot-gta01bv4-1.3.1+svnr4297+gitb29661fc1151077776454288051bc9a488351ce8-r3.bin
image on my device. A link has been put there and the image can be
found in the recommended section in Openmoko Downloads
(http://downloads.openmoko.org/recommended/)

This is also the first time in a few days I've seen a reduction in
boot speed and I think I attrbute it to uBoot which has a slightly
faster startup (doesn't scroll up, just appears).

Not too much has changed since yesterday's review, but I did a few
different tests on the "Echo" issue and I'm finding that it's somewhat
inconsistant. Testing on my work phone had very little echo though the
echo I heard was slightly distorted (could have been the work line).
I'll do some more testing tonight and tomorrow and see if my wife's
phone has shown any improvement or if it's just as bad.

I forgot to mention a tiny issue the other day when I commented about
the new startup sound. On the Neo this sound is pretty much two notes
(low-high) but when connected to my car's AUX input the sound is full
of life with echos and tone changes... In short, it's a neat sound in
my car (and I'd guess on a PC) but on the Neo, it sounds quite dull.
I've heard someone in IRC say they felt like their Neo was moaning.

My recommendation today is that anyone wishing to upgrade their image
do so. Today's image is pretty good, though I don't think someone
running a very recent image would benefit too much from an update, but
doing so always helps test the most recent code. :)

-Kevin Dean