Freerunner with Android, new case, battery
posted Dec 27th 2009 12:23pm by Mike Szczysfiled under: android hacks, classic hacks
[Dennis] got snowed in after the biggest storm in the history of the state hit. Like any good hacker he didn’t let the time go to waste. He decided to dig out his Neo Freerunner to give it a decent battery and a new OS.
The original battery for the Freerunner has a controller board integrated into the package. [Dennis] pulled out the board and attached it to a portable DVD player battery. After running it through a discharge cycle with another hack of his, the board learned the new battery capacity. The larger battery plus a fast-charger from SparkFun required a larger case. He made it happen by combining a 2.5″ HDD case with the original body courtesy of some JB weld. The final portion of the hack was to load up Android which is as simple as untarring the package onto an SD card.
It’s a bit big, but the battery will last and he’s got an open platform. Nice work!
This is an excellent hack if only for the battery life angle. The battery life of smart devices has been extremely disappointing as the manufacturers favor a combination of speed, features, and light weight that precludes long battery life from cellphones through laptops. At least in the netbook arena they’re starting to figure out that 10 hours is more reasonable than 2, but my older cellphones could be left on for two weeks or longer without going dead, and we have the technology to make smarter items that will do that too. I would consider that much more helpful than higher resolution color graphics.