Community Updates

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Even though OpenMoko strives to keep the community informed of the development progress, OpenMoko does not provide delivery dates. Instead, OpenMoko reports the project status here and on the openmoko-community mailing list.

The status is usually updated at least twice a month, usually by Michael Shiloh. Updates are also mailed to the community mailing list (see below for previous updates), and major updates are also sent to the announce list.

You are invited to add questions or topics you think should be included in the Community Updates.

The latest Community Update is the December 09, 2007 Community Update.

Discussion of current issues

GTA02 hardware design and test

The information below has been collected from various sources, feel free to add questions and comments here.

While writing a device driver for the new battery which provides an accurate counter of the charge state of the GTA02, the driver developer discovered that the device driver does not get a reading of the charge state due to a very long response time with only one I/O signal when trying to read the charge state. To be able to read the battery status properly, it has been written that it will be necessary to re-design that part of the GTA02 for hardware version GTA02A5 to use two I/O signals to reduce the response time (one for transmitting commands, one for receiving data?). Bug 957 may have more information.

12/06/2007 - GTA02a5 is a minor variation from GTA02a4, so it shouldn't take very long. We are waiting for confirmation of Wifi and a few other parts of the GTA02a4 hardware before we manufacture even a small test run of GTA02a5.

gllin GPS driver for GTA01

11/29/2007 - Thanks to a tremendous amount of hard work by many people, we have ready a release of gllin, the GPS drives. Instructions at [1] or grab the ipk directly from [2].

850 MHz band not supported in USA+Canada (e.g. comment 24 on bug #256)

The GSM chip set is capable of quad band operation but the circuit implemented in GTA02 only supports 3 bands. Currently GTA02 supports only 900/1800/1900MHz.

11/29/2007 - We would like to offer an 850/1800/1900MHz version of GTA02 for areas that need it. We are looking into whether this is feasible or not. This requires a number of changes (components, firwmare, calibration, etc.) and so is uncertain until we test it.

Conversion of GTA02 to quad band would require major changes and so will not happen.

12/09/2007 - Since the GSM section is essentially the same between GTA01 and GTA02, we thought a good experiment would be to modify a couple GTA01 handsets for 850MHz and to test them out here in the USA. I just received these handsets on Friday and am now getting ready to thoroughly test them. I have more than enough volunteers to help test, so I have no need for more.

Delivery of a GSM firmware update for the 3G SIM bug (#666)

Background:

A bug in the GSM firmware prevents some USA 3G SIM cards from working properly. The bug has been fixed, but since the GSM module is under extremely tight legal protection, it is not clear whether or how we can allow customers to perform this upgrade themselves.

11/13/2007 - We have heard that TI has figured out a way to let you, our customers, upgrade the firmware, but we have not been able to get hold of the person at TI who can tell us how we should do this.

A temporary workaround was that I would perform the GSM firmware upgrade for you, but unfortunately, I've not been able to connect reliably with the GSM hardware debug serial port. I'm working on solving this with the crew in Taiwan. GSM firmware upgrade is pretty much done by one person at one computer setup, so I suspect there is something different between his setup and mine that we have not yet identified.

12/09/2007 - We've been informed that everything legal has been agreed upon by all parties regarding the process that would allow you to upgrade your own GSM firmware. All that remains is to get everything signed. Apparently the process of getting things signed takes a few weeks!

Questions or Topics you think are missing

SMedia 3362 Documentation & OpenGL ES Drivers

There is an open source kdrive driver being written for the GTA02 which will use hardware to accelerate the XRender extension. While the chip is capable of 3D graphics, no OpenGL ES driver/library is avaliable and OpenMoko developers will not be writing one in the near future (although they have not ruled it out in the long-term).

Documentation for the SMedia 3362 has been promised (see this post). However, this refers to documentation OpenMoko developers will be writing themselves, not the technical documentation SMedia have provided OpenMoko with. The OpenMoko developers had to sign an NDA with SMedia to obtain this documentation and are therefore unable to pass this information on to community developers. (See this post for details)

I have a question.

I read from Claes Mogren's notes "a hardware bug in power management with GTA02v4... ...release will be delayed even further... " So how long is this delay? (OpenMoko does not predict how long things will take. Instead, we do our very best to tell you what is going on. - Michael Shiloh)

I'm sure I'm not the only person feeling disappointed as I had really hoped to get myself a wifi version of the phone for a Christmas present, even if I have to use the command line just to make a call at least I would have it in my hand.

Previous Community Updates

Personal tools

Contents

Even though OpenMoko strives to keep the community informed of the development progress, OpenMoko does not provide delivery dates. Instead, OpenMoko reports the project status here and on the openmoko-community mailing list.

The status is usually updated at least twice a month, usually by Michael Shiloh. Updates are also mailed to the community mailing list (see below for previous updates), and major updates are also sent to the announce list.

You are invited to add questions or topics you think should be included in the Community Updates.

The latest Community Update is the December 09, 2007 Community Update.

Discussion of current issues

GTA02 hardware design and test

The information below has been collected from various sources, feel free to add questions and comments here.

While writing a device driver for the new battery which provides an accurate counter of the charge state of the GTA02, the driver developer discovered that the device driver does not get a reading of the charge state due to a very long response time with only one I/O signal when trying to read the charge state. To be able to read the battery status properly, it has been written that it will be necessary to re-design that part of the GTA02 for hardware version GTA02A5 to use two I/O signals to reduce the response time (one for transmitting commands, one for receiving data?). Bug 957 may have more information.

12/06/2007 - GTA02a5 is a minor variation from GTA02a4, so it shouldn't take very long. We are waiting for confirmation of Wifi and a few other parts of the GTA02a4 hardware before we manufacture even a small test run of GTA02a5.

gllin GPS driver for GTA01

11/29/2007 - Thanks to a tremendous amount of hard work by many people, we have ready a release of gllin, the GPS drives. Instructions at [1] or grab the ipk directly from [2].

850 MHz band not supported in USA+Canada (e.g. comment 24 on bug #256)

The GSM chip set is capable of quad band operation but the circuit implemented in GTA02 only supports 3 bands. Currently GTA02 supports only 900/1800/1900MHz.

11/29/2007 - We would like to offer an 850/1800/1900MHz version of GTA02 for areas that need it. We are looking into whether this is feasible or not. This requires a number of changes (components, firwmare, calibration, etc.) and so is uncertain until we test it.

Conversion of GTA02 to quad band would require major changes and so will not happen.

12/09/2007 - Since the GSM section is essentially the same between GTA01 and GTA02, we thought a good experiment would be to modify a couple GTA01 handsets for 850MHz and to test them out here in the USA. I just received these handsets on Friday and am now getting ready to thoroughly test them. I have more than enough volunteers to help test, so I have no need for more.

Delivery of a GSM firmware update for the 3G SIM bug (#666)

Background:

A bug in the GSM firmware prevents some USA 3G SIM cards from working properly. The bug has been fixed, but since the GSM module is under extremely tight legal protection, it is not clear whether or how we can allow customers to perform this upgrade themselves.

11/13/2007 - We have heard that TI has figured out a way to let you, our customers, upgrade the firmware, but we have not been able to get hold of the person at TI who can tell us how we should do this.

A temporary workaround was that I would perform the GSM firmware upgrade for you, but unfortunately, I've not been able to connect reliably with the GSM hardware debug serial port. I'm working on solving this with the crew in Taiwan. GSM firmware upgrade is pretty much done by one person at one computer setup, so I suspect there is something different between his setup and mine that we have not yet identified.

12/09/2007 - We've been informed that everything legal has been agreed upon by all parties regarding the process that would allow you to upgrade your own GSM firmware. All that remains is to get everything signed. Apparently the process of getting things signed takes a few weeks!

Questions or Topics you think are missing

SMedia 3362 Documentation & OpenGL ES Drivers

There is an open source kdrive driver being written for the GTA02 which will use hardware to accelerate the XRender extension. While the chip is capable of 3D graphics, no OpenGL ES driver/library is avaliable and OpenMoko developers will not be writing one in the near future (although they have not ruled it out in the long-term).

Documentation for the SMedia 3362 has been promised (see this post). However, this refers to documentation OpenMoko developers will be writing themselves, not the technical documentation SMedia have provided OpenMoko with. The OpenMoko developers had to sign an NDA with SMedia to obtain this documentation and are therefore unable to pass this information on to community developers. (See this post for details)

I have a question.

I read from Claes Mogren's notes "a hardware bug in power management with GTA02v4... ...release will be delayed even further... " So how long is this delay? (OpenMoko does not predict how long things will take. Instead, we do our very best to tell you what is going on. - Michael Shiloh)

I'm sure I'm not the only person feeling disappointed as I had really hoped to get myself a wifi version of the phone for a Christmas present, even if I have to use the command line just to make a call at least I would have it in my hand.

Previous Community Updates