latest c139 build

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hi David,

> sadly a quick look at shows that even my low standards of usability
> are not quite met.

So now you know what I mean when I keep saying that the current state
of the handset functionality code we've got from TI is unusable. :)

> Indeed the display now switches off, but when it's on the fairly
> garbled screen does not show the time.

Yes, this is one of the UI bugs I noticed right away too: the time
display is there on boot, but then it disappears and never comes back.
And like all other UI bugs (yes, there are plenty more), we currently
have no way of telling if this bug was already there in TI's D-Sample
UI configuration, or if it was caused by me resurrecting the bitrotten
C-Sample one.  One of the several reasons why I want to build our own
HSMBP (the planned board *after* FCDEV3B) first and do the bulk of the
handset firmware work there, and then port it to the C139, as opposed
to doing it all directly on the C139.

> As a very light call and text user, a watch substitute is quite
> important to me.

Yes, I also use my phone as a pocketwatch, so my wrists stay free
except for occasional fashion accessories. :)

> So for now, I'm going back to the pirelli, which as M has said, is
> indeed a superior piece of hardware compared to the c139.

Yes, and it is such a shame that this superior hardware is so
mysterious and undocumented.  I think that the most sensible way to
make a libre phone based on the Pirelli would be to design and build a
replacement motherboard to go into Pirelli's shell, reusing their LCD
and everything else - a replacement motherboard with the same Calypso
core chipset, but *without* the undocumented chips for the camera and
VoIP-over-WLAN.  But of course it would be a very non-trivial project..
Barring such MB replacement, I really don't see how a device that is
full of mysterious, undocumented and non-understood chips can ever
qualify as libre no matter what the firmware...

> It's software faults are hugely annoying though - comparatively large
> screen real estate, yet the text is so small I can't easily read it and
> the idiotic locking mechanism, where although you cannot mistakenly make
> a call from your pocket, the screen nevertheless constantly switches on
> and wastes battery.

Hmm.  I have plenty of my own personal annoyances with Pirelli's fw,
but the issues you are complaining about are not among them.

Text size: I actually like the font/text part of Pirelli's fw a lot,
and wish we had the source to reuse it in our own.  Unless we are
talking about different things: when I say I like their text font, I
mean the one you get when reading or entering SMS - makes good use of
the screen real estate for long SMS.  OTOH, if you are talking about
the home screen, that one does make little use of the screen RE, so I
suppose the text could be made bigger there indeed.

Keyguard: what is idiotic about it?  If we had the power to change the
workings of this mechanism to taste through fw source, how would you
wish to change it?

But at least Pirelli's proprietary fw is based on TI's architecture,
the serial interface they bring out behind their built-in USB-serial
is TI's RVTMUX, and they have enabled the same TMFFS2 protocol which I
adopted for FreeCalypso - thus you can connect to Pirelli's running fw
with fc-fsio and read your stored SMS etc out of their flash file
system - I find it neat.

I've also been doing some work on ringtones - I'll post an explanation
a little later, it's bedtime for me now.

M~