Daily Snapshot Review 21 March 2008

[Kevin Dean]

I began my review earlier today but a work emergency distracted me and
I ended up shutting the browser without submitting. The only "real"
loss was accurate boot times, and they're still accurate to around a
second or so since they were pretty much unchanged. I've redone the
rest of the review.

My full daily review can be found
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Snapshot_review/2008-03-21 and the list
of reviews at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:SnapshotReview

Today's image is pretty much unchanged from the 19 March 2008 image
but in many ways that's great news. Having gone "out and about" today
more than usual I'm rather happy about my Neo. Enough, in fact, that I
purchased a car charger and an audio cable so that I can use it to
play some podcasts in my car. :)

Anyway, what I didn't touch on so much yesterday was sound quality.
The 18 March 2008 image was "typical" for me meaning I heard some
feedback in the audio receiver as well as mild GSM buzz. The 19 March
2008 image, and todays, have greatly improved sound quality.
Conversations are a bit louder on my end (easier to hear) will
signifigantly less GSM buzz and feedback.

Media player is also doing well in the audio department. About 40
minutes of uninterrupted audio was played this afternoon from my Neo
without any skipping. Pausing playback to call and check my voice mail
and then resuming playback worked without issues (I've had them in the
past).

It is with some excitement that I STRONGLY urge people to update to
one of the recent image. Users who updated to the 19 March 2008
probably won't see any change and wouldn't gain much unless there are
problems. Images from PRIOR to 19 March 2008 however, would benefit
from a replacement.

I've made a slight formatting change to the phone calls section to
make one aspect a bit clearer. I've moved "Call quality" from a part
of the "Incoming/Outgoing" calls section into it's own section that
addresses call quality from the person on the Neo and the "other"
person. This allowed me to add the well-known echo problem to the
review page and link to the bug that is open on it.

-Kevin Dean