[Sandbox] Improved Power Feeding to Maemo Devices
 

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).

There is room for improvement, in the sense that the device could be re-designed, in order to get its power primarily from the wall socket charger (when present), and then from the battery. This is a design present in some laptop models, and would allow to not depend so much on the battery, thus preserving battery life and allowing the hot-swapping of the battery (an internal capacitor might help with the hot swapping too).

http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._improvements/

Re: Improved Power Feeding to Maemo Devices
 

With lithium-ion, according to some experts, shallow cycles don't age the battery. The primary killer of the battery is heat, which is accelerated when the battery is empty or full. half-full and cool extends it more.

That said, hotswap would be nice feature. Amusingly, the smartdevices tablets seem electrically capable of hotswapping, but they don't have user-swappable batteries. Funny :)

Re: Improved Power Feeding to Maemo Devices
 

I'm not shure that this is the right Brainstorm threat...
But Software improvements could also cover the Battery Issue.

So what about auto disconnect Data Connections when not used for a couple of minutes and automatically fallback from 3G to GSM connection?

Re: [Sandbox] Improved Power Feeding to Maemo Devices
 

Please set a link from the Brainstorm proposal to this discussion thread. Thanks!

Re: [Sandbox] Improved Power Feeding to Maemo Devices
 

The Pandora designer, MWeston, designed the Pandora so that it could be powered by the charger only, with the battery left out. Presumably the important reason at the time was to make it easier to set up and use the prototype boards (developers were using a setup with only a bare board, connected to cables etc.). The final Pandora kept the feature. So it certainly can be done.

Re: [Sandbox] Improved Power Feeding to Maemo Devices
 

Thanks to you Quim, updated the proposal with the link.

While this is something that is not going to be fixed on already existing devices because it is hardware idea, hopefully future devices can have this feature. The idea is to avoid the device consuming electricity at a higher rate than the charger keeps the battery up and to allow for battery hot-swapping. So if someone has a wall socket nearby, they could just plug the device in and save some battery life.