Brainstorm: Brainstorms, category Devices

Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience

texrat@ovi.com (Randall Arnold) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:21:11 +0000

Some have complained that the N900 cell capability feels like an afterthought, and is missing features expected on advanced communications devices.

While the N900 may be a mobile computer first, there is no reason to accept phone shortcomings if improvements make sense and can be reasonably incorporated.

If you have ideas for UI and/or usability improvements to the cell or even VoIP functionality, add them here!

Discussion thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33830

57 solutions for this brainstorm.

Undelayed bugfix releases for Nokia (open source) packages.

vilre@cs.tut.fi (Ville Reijonen) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:49:08 +0000

Nokia has few applications under open source licence such as Modest and application manager. Now, as case with Modest by the time of creation of this text, there are a few critical bugs/issues which affect a large amount of people. The fix is available in the source code but updated version of the package is not released until Nokia releases a full update. The lead time could be couple of months and the release times are never annouced beforehand.

Due to the delay, many active people notice the same bugs and go to bugzilla. Sometimes they do notice the existing report and write their own - this causes many duplicated bug reports to appear. Sometimes the bug is already fixed internally. A lot of effort is wasted thereby with the delayed bugfix release and redundant work. Delays and redundant work creates frustration. Additionally, the software may be unusable for many months when it could be fixed now. Talented individual frustrated enough might roll up their own update, but if 10 people do it for themselves this is clearly again a lot more wasted effort and time.

Delay is therefore bad for user experience and can make the whole device look bad in the eye of frustrated people. This is definitely a lost position for marketing efforts when fast bugfix releases would be a positive element for consumer mind.

Discussion on Talk: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=35793

5 solutions for this brainstorm.

Make the device into a P.A. microphone

qole@qole.org (alan bruce) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:21:50 +0000

With the FM transmitter on the N900, it should be possible to make the device into a wireless microphone for public speaking events, using any portable stereo system with an FM radio in it. Older tablets could become wired microphones with the use of the headphone jack.

(sorry that I'm giving a solution in the idea, I don't know how else to phrase it)

2 solutions for this brainstorm.

Hardware: Battery Improvements

mrojasg@gmail.com (Mario Rojas) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:10:55 +0000

In the N8x0 series of tablets, the hardware receives its power from the battery, which in turn gets its power from the wall socket charger. Apparently, this design has not changed in the new N900 tablet. That makes the battery being used a lot, and also to force a shutdown of the device in order to replace the battery (no battery hot-swapping).

Link to Talk Discussion Thread

1 solutions for this brainstorm.

Sound reminder for unread messages, missed calls etc.

mmiicc@o2.pl (Michal Predotka) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:51:05 +0000

At the moment when I miss a call, there's only visual sign of it. It's not very useful when I have my N900 in my pocket. It'd be very handy if there was a sound (beep) notification for it as well. It might play every 5 minutes for example.

Talk link

3 solutions for this brainstorm.

More efficient and flexible use of internal flash

tanner@gmx.de (Tom Tanner) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:04:38 +0000

about 27GB of the N900 internal flash memory are reserved for a VFAT (FAT32) partition which is mounted on /home/user/MyDocs and exported as USB mass storage.

The VFAT filesystem is an ancient, slow, inefficient (cluster size, bad for many small files) non-POSIX compatible (no symlinks, permissions etc) filesystem and only used for maximum compatibility when exporting it via USB mass storage.

It would be nice if it could be replaced by a ext3 or any another modern POSIX filesystem and merged with the /home partition so that all advantages of those file systems can be used.

This would remove the 2GB limit for the home partition and make a more standard Linux home directory layout possible (eliminating MyDocs, new directories Pictures, Documents etc. in the home directory).

For USB mass storage mode file system images with any file system (e.g. FAT32, ext3, NTFS, HFS+ depending on the users desktop OS) and arbitrary size could be stored on the partition and exported using loop devices.

Brainstorm forum thread

4 solutions for this brainstorm.

Boost battery output

bag@bagproductions.com (Brad Grigor) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:10:37 +0000

"Power" users (pun intended) will not achieve all-day computing on the N900 with the supplied battery due to the high drain of the various radios, the added load of the GSM radio and phone application and certain other applications. While other brainstorms are looking at improving application efficiency, this brainstorm is looking to improve the battery in the N900.

The Talk discussion thread is at http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=467478

3 solutions for this brainstorm.

Predictive Dialler

tri@bcs.org.uk (Venomrush .) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:00:39 +0000

Taken from http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=388189

It'll be great to have the dialer picking up the names of contacts when you input few letters from their names or the first few numbers of the phone number using the dialing pad.

Similar feature to feature on WM dialpad.

1 solutions for this brainstorm.

RDS and PTY interface and player integration

james@type-this.com (nemo nowhere) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:16:02 +0000

N900 is currently capable of sending "Nokia" as RDS station name. I suggest that we expand this functionality so that it can send all types of RDS fields and PTY codes and make it into a general API.

Secondly we should enable media players to broadcast RDS info from mp3 filename or name tags.

Eventualy some one could use the interface to send sms or caller id while FM transmitter is in use.

1 solutions for this brainstorm.

USB Connection Mode Switcher

ejasmudar@gmail.com (Ejas Mudar) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 08:13:36 +0000

When the device is connected to a PC via the micro-usb cable, we can chose the connection mode-PC Suite/Mass Storage.

But if we want to change the mode after sometime, the cable has to be removed and reconnected.

1 solutions for this brainstorm.