(no subject)
The Treo finally gave up the ghost a few weeks back. One too many skitterings across the pavement from hip-level, one too many dives into a puddle. I kept it around for as long as I did because it had Bluetooth and ran PalmOS, which I was quite familiar with and I found to be the least annoying of all the handheld OSes I've seen out there. The emergency replacement Sprint phone I've been using just drives me up a wall.
So, that made me willing to experiment. Partially because I've been thinking about getting a tri-band phone and partially because I like the idea of actually really OWNING my things (as opposed to paying somebody to let me use them), I decided to give the OpenMoko Freerunner a shot and see if it would be make a good replacement 'dillophone.
If you're not a Linux geek or the above link didn't make sense to you, the Freerunner is basically an open-source Linux-based smartphone. Or, more accurately, it's an embedded Linux development system that happens to have 802.11g, GPS, Bluetooth, an accelerometer and a GSM radio in it.
What's to like is that it's open and you can do pretty much whatever you want on it. You can ssh into it, you can run Python, Perl, most of your favorite networking utilities(tcpdump,iperf, iftop,kismet, I'm looking at all of you). The packaging system for installing applications is based off the OpenEmbedded distro which has been around for a few years and is pretty solid, IME. I've had one or two issues around things not installing because of dependencies but that was resolved by finding a package that worked with the version of glibc or libc6 installed on the phone or just building it from source directly on the phone.
The device itself is pretty solid and is likely to stand up to "acts of 'dillo" as feorlen likes to put it. It came in a hardboard box with a cool-ass Lao Tze quote inside, US and int'l power adapters, battery, and 512MB micro-SD card. This is much more of a product than well-funded community effort with access to somebody's CNC.
What's less likeable is that it's still running a UI designed by a bunch of OS programmers rather than people who have a background in UI/UE. Meaning that defaults are defaults, just not necessarily the sensible ones. The default for on-screen keyboard is this predictive, guess-what-you're-typing keyboard which might work except that the dictionary it uses never seems to have the word I'm looking for. There is a straightforward "terminal" keyboard, but you have to specifically choose it and it's not obvious how to set THAT one to being the default.
This is sort of the fundamental problem with open source software. Just because anybody CAN look at it or modify it doesn't mean the right people will be interested in doing so. For all the different factions and subdisciplines of people I know working on FOSS projects, I don't know of any that are graphic designers or UI/UE nuts. The Qtopia UI from Trolltech has most of these problems licked, but that's because they'd been banging on it for a number of years before Nokia bought them and could pay them real money to work on it.
Generally, I like it and am not disappointed, but I think that's mostly because I'd set my expectations beforehand. System-wise, it's quite stable. I haven't had it actually outright crash on me once, which is lot more than I can say for some of the other phones I've used over the years.
It does reliably get and receive phone calls and text messages. The GPS works well and I will give them points for using the dillo web browser in the default distro. The interface wonkiness is easy to work around if you're familiar with the various permutations of Linux/UNIX desktops that have come and gone over the years.
If you're looking for a new phone that's both open hardware and open software AND don't mind occasionally having to pop up an Xterm to run udhcpc or iwconfig to reset your wireless(802.11) connection, you'll probably like this. If not, you'll probably want to pass and go with something else.
Here in the US, I'm using it with a pre-paid T-Mobile SIM. I had no problems with getting it. I thought there might be some minor hassle or list of "approved" phones they'd only sell you one for, but fortunately, no.
I'm taking it with me to Trieste and will get a SIM over there to pop into it. Not having another phone to fall back on like I do here, I suspect this is where the real test will happen. I'll let you know what happens.
So, that made me willing to experiment. Partially because I've been thinking about getting a tri-band phone and partially because I like the idea of actually really OWNING my things (as opposed to paying somebody to let me use them), I decided to give the OpenMoko Freerunner a shot and see if it would be make a good replacement 'dillophone.
If you're not a Linux geek or the above link didn't make sense to you, the Freerunner is basically an open-source Linux-based smartphone. Or, more accurately, it's an embedded Linux development system that happens to have 802.11g, GPS, Bluetooth, an accelerometer and a GSM radio in it.
What's to like is that it's open and you can do pretty much whatever you want on it. You can ssh into it, you can run Python, Perl, most of your favorite networking utilities(tcpdump,iperf, iftop,kismet, I'm looking at all of you). The packaging system for installing applications is based off the OpenEmbedded distro which has been around for a few years and is pretty solid, IME. I've had one or two issues around things not installing because of dependencies but that was resolved by finding a package that worked with the version of glibc or libc6 installed on the phone or just building it from source directly on the phone.
The device itself is pretty solid and is likely to stand up to "acts of 'dillo" as feorlen likes to put it. It came in a hardboard box with a cool-ass Lao Tze quote inside, US and int'l power adapters, battery, and 512MB micro-SD card. This is much more of a product than well-funded community effort with access to somebody's CNC.
What's less likeable is that it's still running a UI designed by a bunch of OS programmers rather than people who have a background in UI/UE. Meaning that defaults are defaults, just not necessarily the sensible ones. The default for on-screen keyboard is this predictive, guess-what-you're-typing keyboard which might work except that the dictionary it uses never seems to have the word I'm looking for. There is a straightforward "terminal" keyboard, but you have to specifically choose it and it's not obvious how to set THAT one to being the default.
This is sort of the fundamental problem with open source software. Just because anybody CAN look at it or modify it doesn't mean the right people will be interested in doing so. For all the different factions and subdisciplines of people I know working on FOSS projects, I don't know of any that are graphic designers or UI/UE nuts. The Qtopia UI from Trolltech has most of these problems licked, but that's because they'd been banging on it for a number of years before Nokia bought them and could pay them real money to work on it.
Generally, I like it and am not disappointed, but I think that's mostly because I'd set my expectations beforehand. System-wise, it's quite stable. I haven't had it actually outright crash on me once, which is lot more than I can say for some of the other phones I've used over the years.
It does reliably get and receive phone calls and text messages. The GPS works well and I will give them points for using the dillo web browser in the default distro. The interface wonkiness is easy to work around if you're familiar with the various permutations of Linux/UNIX desktops that have come and gone over the years.
If you're looking for a new phone that's both open hardware and open software AND don't mind occasionally having to pop up an Xterm to run udhcpc or iwconfig to reset your wireless(802.11) connection, you'll probably like this. If not, you'll probably want to pass and go with something else.
Here in the US, I'm using it with a pre-paid T-Mobile SIM. I had no problems with getting it. I thought there might be some minor hassle or list of "approved" phones they'd only sell you one for, but fortunately, no.
I'm taking it with me to Trieste and will get a SIM over there to pop into it. Not having another phone to fall back on like I do here, I suspect this is where the real test will happen. I'll let you know what happens.