@Hopper Labs - I have given your question some thought as its an important one. I often see folks lamenting about the lag in advancement in vape technology but often these same people are a bit stumped when it comes to what real, solid, new approaches that they would like to see. And stealth and apps are not, IMO, a real advance.
With that, these are my views ONLY and I don't really expect people to necessarily agree with them, but here goes:
1. Base point for me is that I do not want to grow a GH into the size/feature set of other already available and much larger vapes. I like that the GH is, to my mind, the stripped down engine of a vape and its works wonderfully at the limited base functions of a vape. It turns on, temp can be adjusted, it heats the load, it turns off. I often use my GH with a J hook or FC-188 dewar joint type rig. Its just the little heater that could, in my view, and that's what I would like to see it stay at. But, there is def room for improvement, as with all products.
1. Whatever you do, please do NOT require a fucking mobile phone app to run your device. Please, please, please. I don't hate apps...as long as EVERY function of the app can be actuated from the device itself, which most do not.
2. Battery - I'm not going to second guess Hopper too much about the custom battery. They say that they needed to go in this direction, during the design phase which was years ago, to get a battery that would meet their performance requirements. But, its not well down the road and the custom battery, and its cost, are to my mind an inhibitor of sales. I hear you about 18650s and I don't believe I want my GH to grow into a 60 ring size robusto, but perhaps something more in the 14500 range? A widely commercially available battery would be, IMO, desirable.
3. Stealth - naw....I mean, if its that important to you, just cover up the ring of small lights with your hand. The lights are important, provide essential info like its time to hit it, it over heated, its time to change the battery and does so in very little physical infrastructure. Not at all worth it to my mind.
4. Get rid of all of the idiosyncratic behavior - I'm sorry but if you go to the Resources area of this forum, you will see a whole list of attempts to draw insight into what the hell your GH is saying and how to maybe keep it running better. Its almost to the level of reading tea leaves and making sacrifices to the gods. Get rid of blue flickering lights would be one example of this. Hot back ends...some back ends not hot, some hot but if you turn the dial they aren't hot until they are again...what's up with this? Just look at your Trouble Shooting decision diagram, right? Back ends should never get hot. And temp variability between different units, on a given temp setting, seems to be very quite variable.
5. Reliability, availability, maintainability, testability - I hear that you are saying that this is much improved. Ok, I will accept that. But to my mind the criticality of your design works to undermine rock solid reliability and maintainability. In particular, using the body of the unit as part of the power path to the heater. Again, look at Resources and figure out how many people now own Blue Tack and a host of other products to try to keep this thing working. I think corrosion and metal dust in threads has contributed to a lot of issues, you may have better data on this but...
Then there is the back end with its mechanical contacts for temp and the mechanical on/off button. Having to turn your temp dial back and forth to try to get it clean enough to not end up with a scorching back end is not good enough. My on/off switch on my again RMA'd OG GH is flaky (see above about idiosyncratic behavior). Sometimes clicking it will turn it off, sometime it results in red lights until clicked a second time. That kind of stuff is just annoying to me.
Again on maintainability, which really seems to be an issue, if there is a heat sensor that needs to be accessed and cleaned, then make it accessible. If I have to blow into the air intake holes in the hope that it will clear out some gunk in the heater, then this area just needs to be made accessible as in a removable heater section, perhaps?
I know Hopper has claimed much improved testability, but I don't see it, frankly. In my last three RMA actions, both Ti GHs were returned to me unusabley cold. I returned on under the third RMA pleading for a GH that runs...well, not cool, and finally got one of two working. And, the stores are legion (and many are from not very long ago at all) of returned GHs that still had issues. This is unacceptable to your customers and eats up your time and money. This needs to be fixed, IMO.
6. Pass Through Charging or Plug-in back end - Given the very small amount of space available, its kind of hard to see how you could implement pass through charging so that owners can use their device with a depleted battery by plugging it into the wall. But, perhaps a completely different back end...no battery needed, that plugs in and connects to the forward electrical contact would be keen. Somebody (JCAT maybe??) did something like this as a one off experiment. But it seems doable, it doesn't have to match the entire units diameter...IMO, it can be a bit wider to accommodate circuitry and cord outlet...and would be very useful and desirable...well, by me at least.
7. Cooler MP - yep, I know this has been mentioned. For me, personally, its not a big deal. I can use the OG MP with the sleeve protector and its fine by me. But its one of the big hits against the GH. Perhaps a double walled MP???
8. Not interested in a battery level indicator as IMO, and perhaps due to the non-linearity of LI battery discharge, are almost always wrong or misleading.
9. I personally have no interest in capsules. This is a high performance vape and capsules, IME, always degrade performance. Others view it differently.
In general, I don't really want to advocate turning the GH into something else entirely. I love it for what it is.....I just mostly want true rock solid, predictable performance and RMA (rel/main/avail and I will throw in testability).
I don't know that any of this is helpful at all and its mostly just wanting a better GH and not try to turn it into a Terra, Mighty, or something else.
Cheers
