Domain: openmoko.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to openmoko.org.
Comments · 322
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Depends what Baseband firmware you want to trust
There are a number of android based phones where you can replace the majority of code. The biggest problem is the baseband processor in each of these phones have a great deal of freedom in what it does and almost all of them have firmware which has not been audited/documented publically. Even if the company writing the baseband code has no intention of doing anything under-handed, they may still unintentionally produce code which allow for zero day exploits.
The last truly trustworthy phone was the OpenMoko with the OsmocomBB project code for the baseband. After 2012, I am not aware of any project to full document 100% of what the code on a phone does in a way that is easily available to the public to review.
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A perfect example of something unpatentable.
Given the idea (which is old) 'wouldn't it be nice to be able to find people who steal phones' - the idea of 'let's use all the sensors in the phone to do so' is what occurs to anyone with the tiniest modicum of a clue in under a second.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/...
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Mar...
'What's workingGeolocation info
Network info
Take screenshot
List of running programs '
Are just a couple of the several year old things Ihappened to know of. -
Re:Surface contact jack
How about an open-source product driven entirely by the user community?
We tried that once.
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It. Will. Fail. Period
Haven't we learned anything from, oh I don't know, Neo Free Runner? Ubuntu Phone anyone? Apparently, we did not. These are spectacular failures, and RTFA just brought us another one.
First, the price is ridiculous: they say 480 Euro for complete device. I look at my Google Nexus 5 and I'm telling you: even if this piece of crap will be able to run Android apps (which I doubt), it does not justify the pricetag. Especially considering its laughable specs - I mean, c'mon, atrocious 3.5 screen and 0.5Gb storage?!
The problem is worse: there is Linux on it. What are you talking about? Which software I could use on a phone? What, GIMP?! Kate?! Full-blown Firefox? I don't care what OS is inside, frankly - I want a working phone, with fscking software in it. And opensource does not provide it - not one bit. It will be glitchy and buggy mess, as always, and I don't want it. I use Debian on desktop, and it is OK (finally, in 2015) - but on mobile? You've got to be kidding me...
Bottom line: I'm willing to bet on 50 bucks that this piece of crap will not gain even 0.5 marketshare in 5 years from now - if any. -
Goes with your OpenMoko
People who use an OpenMoko will love this.
There's something to be said for what the FSF is trying to do. The problem is that they're too slow in doing it.
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Getting VID/PID.
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Re:we are all to blame
> And what alternatives can you suggest for sourcing phones and phone-like tablets that are more open.
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Re:Mod Parent Up!
Openmoko.. http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
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Re:Mailing list already closed due to legal troubl
It WOULD help if you'd have quoted the other message from Bob Ham:
I feel I should clarify this. I was told that the lawyers said it would
be "not a good idea" if the project was hosted by GNU and they said "the
risk was small but that it would be better to avoid it entirely". It's my
inference that the risk they're talking about is of a lawsuit (although I
can't imagine what else they would mean).From http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2012-June/067132.html
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Mailing list already closed due to legal troubles
The mailinglist is closed already cause of a possible lawsuit. Let me
quote Bob Ham:> The GNU lawyers have apparently stated that this PowerVR reverse
> engineering project should not be hosted by the GNU project (on
> savannah.nongnu.org) as there is a risk of the GNU project being the
> subject of a lawsuit. Yay for lawyers!
>
> Unfortunately, that means this mailing list is now closing. I
> apologise for the inconvenience.citing this OpenMoko mailing list message:
http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2012-June/067130.html -
Re:Wrong focus
You mean like Openmoko?
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Re:Great
good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/ i'm a bit reluctant to do it on your behalf [aitch tee tee pee slashdot dot org slash tilde hatta]
please do bear in mind that in the early stage we're *not* going to sell completely untested cards in mass-volume right away, that would be foolish. we're going to follow the process that Dr Schaller has been doing on the development of the GTA04 - http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA04_revisions as have various other projects, OpenPandora included.
so, early alpha boards go out to people prepared to take a risk, but who have the money spare (under $100, gosh, wow, break the bank why not) to consider "what the heck, this is cool, let's support this initiative" but at the same time have some expertise in embedded GNU/Linux development, and they might actually get something that works perfectly first time, and they're the ones that got it, before anyone else.
beta boards go out to people who want something that, hardware-wise, is pretty much guaranteed to work 100%, but maybe the software's not all there, and they might have to (gosh) get involved and help write it.
stable boards go out to people who really would "just like something that works, thank you, where's the debian distro image, where's the instructions for putting everything onto an sdcard, heck, where can i buy a pre-loaded MicroSD card so i don't have to do that, even".
so it's a known trade-off: the principles of Software (Libre) Development as applied to hardware: release early, release often. exactly the sort of thing that you never normally see in the development of hardware products, and i think it's pretty damn cool to be able to witness and be part of something that *isn't* GPL-violating. at bloody last.
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Re:HP becomes Palm?
Here's nerd hope that they'll release WebOS as full open source (since they're not going to be making any $ on it anyway), and then we can run it either on the Nokia N900 or the OpenMoko.
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Openmoko missing from the list (1.05 W/kg)
Openmoko seems to be missing from the list. According to http://people.openmoko.org/openmoko/certificate/gta/gta02/certificate/CE/EA832514_R01_CE%20SAR_FIC_GTA02.pdf the SAR is 1.05 W/kg for GSM.
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Re:Ask IBM
And where's the Free Android distribution? With an own market with only Open Source apps? No, there's MeeGo instead... yet.
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Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA04_revisions I saw the samples. Nice stuff.
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Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future
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Re:Can Nicola Tesla claim prior art?
Can the banks and the patent office please get together with the trademark office and put and end to people calling things Qi?
Qi: The Bootloader
Qi: The Open Source Hardware
Qi: The wireless charging standard
Kthxbye -
Re:Why Mobile Innovation Outpaces PC Innovation
It is very hard to improve if you're already close to technical and physical limits and any made improvement won't look as impressive.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." Apparently misattributed as being said by Charles H. Duell of the US Patent Office in 1899, but the point stands.
IMHO the mobile market's not particularly far behind the PC, for instance my phone's 400MHz and so is my laptop, and they're both a few years old now (Freerunner and XO-1). They both running Linux, Enlightenment 0.17, Pidgin, Midori, etc.
I think the mojor problem with mobiles is the software, based on the fact that that very few people think of them as computers. To a techie, a mobile phone is a stripped-down digital computer that can barely do email. To the average mobile phone buyer it is an incredibly advanced version of the analogue phone which can even do email. Apple announce something simple and obvious, like multitasking for example, and it's apparently a huge leap for the mobile phone. When thought of as a computer, on the other hand, such things underline the lack of development for these things. Who cares if the iPhone App Store has loads of programs? There's already a shit-ton of applications out there on the Web. For example, here's OpenOffice.org http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Image:Freerunner_Debian_runs_openoffice3.jpg
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Re:Well that's good news
Illume is the standard window manager for the openmoko SHR distribution. All the standard applications are written using the enlightenment toolkit. One advantage of enlightenment for phones and other small devices is that the toolkit has finger driven operation built into it. The standard list components can be scrolled by dragging a finger (or mouse or stylus) along them for example. Text components can be scrolled the same way.
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Re:There can only be one!
Well, iPhone is doomed to stay as proprietary garbage, as is WinMo 7.
Now what's left: Android, Meego, Palm, ...Those 3 could probably work together... Maybe Android is too full of itself and Samsung should join Meego and drop Bada too.
There is SHR and QtMoko. Enlightenment is the desktop environment for SHR and the enlightenment team are working for Samsung now.
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Re:There can only be one!
Well, iPhone is doomed to stay as proprietary garbage, as is WinMo 7.
Now what's left: Android, Meego, Palm, ...Those 3 could probably work together... Maybe Android is too full of itself and Samsung should join Meego and drop Bada too.
There is SHR and QtMoko. Enlightenment is the desktop environment for SHR and the enlightenment team are working for Samsung now.
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Re:Other distros?
Other distros? Sure would be nice, but the fact that they're ARM means it probably won't be ready just yet.
SHR would probably work with a bit of kernel tweaking.
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Re:iphone???
but I would think it wouldn't be a big deal that they were porting it to portables...
It really isn't. It was ported to the OpenMoko a long time ago, too. I managed to get Quake 2 "running" on the Openmoko after a few hours and only a couple of code changes (It could just play a
.dem back at about 5fps). Given that Duke Nukem 3D has already been running on similar platforms for some time, I wonder just how much "porting" was required - which makes this even less news worthy. The n900 might make the game playable though. But the n900 probably beats the OpenMoko hands down purely because it can actually make phonecalls. -
Not necessarily
You also need good amount of CPU and RAM. Websites and especially video streaming and flash games are quite heavy, and so are the heavily-ajaxied Google apps.
To be precise : Adobe's crappy flash plugin and most current Javascript *interpreters* require lots of processing power.
What I mean is that the current slowness of Flash and AJAX is mostly due to current software not being efficient enough.But google has quite some budget to leverage - both in terms of cash and brain power - to tackle this problem.
Their effort on Chrome's (browser) flash JIT compiler show that this is actually their intent.
(Similar as other work in other browsers. It seems that every browser conceptor is currently trying to make Javascript less CPU-power hungry).Now if Google also could use their resource to bring a decent open source Flash plugin that isn't a huge useless junk (For example: finishing to make Gnash compatible and making it efficient ?)
Nonetheless, there are current (closed, proprietary) implementations of flash already running on embed hardware, so it should be achievable by google.
Last but not least : CPU performance of ultra low power embed CPU is currently rising - The next generation of ARM Cortex A9 is supposed to provide dual cores for the same power envelope as current single core Cortex A8.
In addition to that, handheld and palmtop CPUs usually have some special purpose hardware in addition to the ARM CPU (usually some DSP/FPU and some PowerVR 2D/3Dcore) - so the most CPU intensive task - decompressing the video streams - could be done in hardware.And like someone said, shown hardware had 32 GB SSD card, which isn't really dirt cheap either.
That's probably because it is the smallest SATA SSD that you can quickly buy nowadays. They just went for a quickly customised Netbook using off-the-shelf parts.
But keep in mind that Chrome OS is basically just a browser-as-a-GUI running over a simple graphic server on a linux kernel. A minimalist Linux distribution is pretty much enough.
I've personnally already managed to cram Linux installations on 4GB Compact Flash modules (you can plug them directly into a IDE connector given the proper cable. CF and 16bits PC-CARD are basically ATAPI with a miniature connector.)
You can find projects like Damn Small Linux which pack much more functionality on minimalistic LiveCDs. (On 50MB mini CD !)
As another example OpenMoko manages to cram quite a few linux tools into 256MiBytes images.We're really far from the minimal 16GB requirement of Windows Vista and 7.
In theory you could run Chrome OS into something like a Pandora with a bigger screen. And could indeed jury-rig something like this using Beagle boards.
That means having a Chrome OS low-power machine build *today* out of *hobbyist* parts. Now think about the near future, with mass produced units.
By 5-10 years, as the GP wrote, it's entirely possible that you could find such hardware with a bigger screen and a slightly better CPU within reasonable costs.
Even earlier than that I think. -
Re:Two way street
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Re:Solution looking for a problem
Nope, that google code project is unrelated: citation.
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I'd rather have an N900
Android (and Palm's new WebOS) phones seem fairly cool but I'd rather use a phone that had more of the normal Linux userland. The FreeRunner still has lots of very rough edges but the new Nokia N900 with Maemo 5 looks really mouth-watering
.
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Re:Open source mobile phone?
So how open is the Openmoko hardware? The best reference I could find was wikipedia's entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko#Openmoko_hardware
Well, as I've already indicated, the GSM chip / firmware are not open, for legal reasons (at least). Also, the specs for the graphics chip ("Glamo") are protected by an NDA, although the NDA doesn't prevent writing open source drivers.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Smedia_Glamo_3362 -
Re:The n900 cometh...
It's been dead for a while because of all the open-source goodness of Openmoko's Freerunner, our real savior from proprietary-ness! Open hardware, software and runs Debian for ultimate freedom.
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Re:Lying like dogs...
You have the code to the app-side of the OpenMoko - the Linux side. Do you have the code to the radio stack? The code to access and manipulate the calibration parameters, change RF chipset behaviour, manipulate handoff. Can you add new custom AT commands to the stack? Or are you just interfacing with the radio firmware via AT?
That is, is the Calypso Moko FW open source?
http://people.openmoko.org/joerg/calypso_moko_FW/all_version__CHANGELOG.txt
Jailbreaking is the gateway to the real danger of modifying the baseband radio binaries (not apps-processor). In and of itself, I agree that just jailbreaking won't affect the cellular network.
Post-jailbreak modification of the baseband firmware is what is happening when you unlock an iPhone. This modification invalidates the FCC, CE, GCF and PTCRB certifications of the phone. It has the potential to increase support costs and negatively impact network operation.
Its not analogous to using an IP Sockets API to crash your router. Its like modifying the firmware of your router's PHY and then calling customer support because your network is down. -
Meraki looks promising
If enough people would get behind products like those at http://meraki.com/, then a phone that supports wi-fi (like the FreeRunner) would do the trick. However I think the government holds us back on this front by limiting the output power we can transmit.
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There's only one obvious choice...
...and that choice is the Neo FreeRunner.
:p
Or, for a more capable cell phone, I would believe that any phone with Android would do. -
Re:Who cares?
Unfortunately that's not a phone. The only open phone (openmoko) has 2 buttons : power and aux. Not quite enough for a good game experience.
Erm, point and click games work nicely on the OpenMoko phones, it also features acceleratometers that can be used as game controllers, too. The only problem is that the phone is damn slow for anything more sophisticated. And while software can be improved, the hardware sucks, or at least the video subsystem, so you would have trouble with anything utilising the full resolution of the display, for example.
But if the graphic subsystem didn't suck (and SD I/O), it would make a great device for many sorts of games. And it is already enough for the games that I play on it (most supported by ScummVM, though the sound is choppy at times, but I believe this is a software issue).
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Non-locked Bluetooth
Unfortunately that's not a phone. The only open phone (openmoko) has 2 buttons : power and aux. Not quite enough for a good game experience.
But, on the other hand, the OpenMoko FreeRunner's Bluetooth isn't locked (unlike iPhone/iPodTouch's) and thus can be use with one of the various bluetooth game pads designed for phones.
(There are also people using Wiimotes for gaming inputs on PDA/Smartphones, but the lack of grips to firmly hold the device and controller together make it less interesting.)
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Re:Who cares?
Unfortunately that's not a phone. The only open phone (openmoko) has 2 buttons : power and aux. Not quite enough for a good game experience.
I keep wondering why this is so hard. Nokia's 5500 and 6820 have such useful and quick keyboards. Nokia Ngage is a freaking game console (didn't sell all that well though), and has lots of phones supporting it.
Nothing open source though. An ngage-style-controls phone with a few emulators, and a large screen ebook reader (perhaps simply by combining a pico projector and a screen flipping up or something*). Something that can run nes, snes, sega megadrive, and n64 would certainly cover all I want (psp games and the necessary controls for those would be a great bonus). And, of course, a pdf reader and some storage slot that isn't limited to 2 gigabyte.
* yes it wouldn't work well in direct sunlight. You don't get much of that up here though, besides you won't find me outside all that much either.
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The no-need-for-dev phone
You might need to buy a dev phone if you want to do kernel development, but hey, that's much better than just about any other platform I've seen. {...} But you can still do that with the dev phone if you really need to.
OpenMoko (and Koolu - the Android-based version of the same FreeRunner hardware) don't need to have a separate "dev" phone. Everything is doable on the main phone.
So yes, indeed, you can always find "more free" elsewhere.---
Though thankfully, the business model in sereval European country (including here in Switzerland) make it so you don't need a locked phone. You don't actually buy a subsidized phone *from* a service provider.
You go to any supermarket or store which sells phones. There you buy or extend a previous service plan with a provider of your choice and the service provider gives you a rebate (amount variable depending on the service) you can use to buy any phone of your choice in the same store. The phone isn't locked. You can pretty much do anything you want with it and the provider doesn't give a damn about it. You can keep the phone and use it with the service you just bought. You can give the phone away as a present to your girlfriend and let her use it with her service or pre-paid SIM. As long as you pay the monthly subscription of your service, the provider is happy with this.
Thus, you can find computer shops happy to sell you the service you want with a non-locked Android phone. Be it the HTC Dream, the HTC Magic or the Samsung I7500 (I didn't know about that one until I found it in the shop's catalog).
In fact in several jurisdiction, selling a phone tied and locked to a unique provider is illegal under monopoly laws (France was mentioned on
/. some time ago).This will help getting non-locked phone faster over there I hope. And I hope most Android-based phone maker will be intelligent enough to release non-locked phone which can also be developed on. i.e.:
- a special USA edition with everything locked on
- a special dev (sold in EU too) edition with nothing locked on
(and not a seperate third EU edition without service provider lock BUT kernel upgrades still locked). -
Re:It may be illegal..Why hide the source of the above quote? Oh yes, because the next paragraph reads:
"The NDAd documentation for the calypso, register definition (sic) and hardware definition, was leaked [...]"
Maybe not so un-hackable after all...
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Re:It may be illegal..
Depends on your definition of hard. If I were a Criminal I'd be looking at an open moko, to see if you could hack that in a similar manner. The firmware is fully open
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Re:The problem...
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Re:devices? Since when
Well I'm not saying this from my experience. This comes from the official site.
Under the topic "How usable is it"
As the hacker's dream toy: it is fully functional. As a GSM phone: some people have been using it to receive and place phone calls and SMS for months, but with currently shipping software the battery life is only one day. As a GPS device: critical bugs have been ironed out and there is nice software to know where you are using OpenStreetMap. As an alarm clock, media player, internet browser, game console, email reader and contacts manager: software is not stable yet.
Well, this paragraph was added to the wiki on the 30. July 2008. I assure you that Freerunner's power management has evolved a lot since then. At that time it was pretty much non-existant.
Either way I've had phones that lasted 48 hours, I've had phones that lasted less and I've had phones that lasted longer. For me 48 hours doesn't cut it. Sure it's perfectly usable, but it becomes a hassle. Perhaps it's just human nature to get spoiled but I know the technology exists so I'm not exactly asking for the impossible. I'll give them time, not to worry, I can always wait and purchase without compromising.
:)I agree with you, uptime could always be longer. Still, when taking into account that Freerunner is not really a phone (as it has been wrongly marketed) but a handheld linux computer with GSM capabilities I have to say that I'm very impressed with the power management so far. Kernel guys said that it can be improved even more.
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Re:devices? Since when
Daily recharge is a bit harshly put.
Well I'm not saying this from my experience. This comes from the official site.
Under the topic "How usable is it"As the hacker's dream toy: it is fully functional. As a GSM phone: some people have been using it to receive and place phone calls and SMS for months, but with currently shipping software the battery life is only one day. As a GPS device: critical bugs have been ironed out and there is nice software to know where you are using OpenStreetMap. As an alarm clock, media player, internet browser, game console, email reader and contacts manager: software is not stable yet.
Either way I've had phones that lasted 48 hours, I've had phones that lasted less and I've had phones that lasted longer. For me 48 hours doesn't cut it. Sure it's perfectly usable, but it becomes a hassle. Perhaps it's just human nature to get spoiled but I know the technology exists so I'm not exactly asking for the impossible. I'll give them time, not to worry, I can always wait and purchase without compromising.
:) -
Works as a phone
Just to throw my own experience into the mix. I use the Freerunner as my daily phone and it works well enough.
It takes some time to set up, that's true, but I'm quite happy with the latest SHR release and can finally make phone calls with good quality. There was a major mess before as most of the distros caused the other end of the phone call to hear a constant echo of their own voice. That is sorted out now and Freerunner works as an everyday phone for me, not to mention as a mobile web browser (Midori, dillo), a GPS unit (tangogps), an IM client with wifi (Pidgin) and (what I didn't think was possible in the beginning) as a decent music player using an A2DP headset (pythm). There is some sound criticism among the comments but most of it is just scaremongering - the Freerunner keeps evolving on just fine.
Certainly not a phone for the common Joe, but for a more computer-literate user it can be a more powerful tool then most closed phones on the market.
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Re:But does it make calls yet?
I can't recall where I heard it or if it was true, but I did hear of some success on getting Android to run on the Freerunner.
It's true.
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Re:But does it make calls yet?
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions#Hardware_Support has pretty current info. From my experience: Using At&t atm. Distros: Om: Usable, no bluetooth gui. FSO: Usable, no bluetooth gui. Androd: Panicking cupcake. Usable, somewhat. Phone goes to sleep after receiving a call. FDOM: based off of Om 09. Still has suspend issues that was resolved in the Om 12. QTExtended Improved: Trying this one out this week, so no clues. Well for voicemail I get a text message with "50". For SMS I haven't tried since it costs me to send messages.
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Sad, but not so surprising
Sean Moss-Pulz is a total airhead. This is his attitude towards usability:
[openmoko-announce] Openmoko on DesignOn 7/29/08 Jay Vaughan wrote:
> [snip]
>
> This does not work. That is all.Sorry to hear it doesn't work for you. But like I said, we each have our
own ways of understanding and making meanings.You are free to create your own meanings.
-Sean
I still hope that some day there will be an OS that allows me to use my FreeRunner as a phone... it'll probably be Android.
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Re:Of course we will...
The battery is fine. The iphone only lasts 5 hours when running something, the openmoko developers version I have lasts 4 hours without suspending. If you suspend it when not in use (hit the power button), it can last a long time. Here's a log where the phone was mainly listening for calls with 70 hours standby time:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/StandbyLifetimeThere are certainly issues, but battery life isn't the main one.
I'm sorry but I have to only partially agree. Yes, the battery life is OK, but actually putting the phone in suspend is a very dangerous thing to do. Coming out of suspend my FreeRunner gives a "white screen of death" at least 3/4 of the time. This requires a reboot to get out of (which isn't good if the phone came out of suspend due to an incoming call!). Turn off suspend and it gets 4-6 hours battery.
I hear that it's been fixed very recently in a kernel update, but haven't reflashed it yet.
As far as the choice of OS, I'd say that's a non-issue. The point of a Free phone is to make things competitive and work in the users' favour. Choice is a manifestation of that. To make an awful car analogy, it's good that there's more than one model available from more than one manufacturer. The problem, in OpenMoko's case, is that the default is a discontinued electric rollerskate, which forces those users who are usually content with defaults to choose something else.
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Sean's speech at ESC about making a 3G devic
Reposting from http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-April/044915.html
Sean's speech at ESC about making a 3G device:
Since I worked on the presentation with Sean for the days he was here in
SF, let me give you my view and sean's view. That way we won't get into
some version of the telephone game.Sean discussed three things at OpenExpo.
1. Our successes.
2. Our mistakes.
3. Our challengesI won't go over 1& 2 but I'll cover #3 since rasters perception has
a bit of color added to it. Only a tiny bit and he's entitled
to that color commentary, I'll just add what Sean and I, as authors
of the presentation, had as our message.Our biggest challenge was to make a choice about how to spend the
balance of 2009.There were two paths:
A: Fulfill our promises on FreeRunner and launch GTA03
B: Fulfill our promises on FreeRunner and launch project B.We will talk more about project B in the coming months, but these
salient facts should be able to guide any budding executives out there.1. GTA03 was in constant flux as a design.
2. GTA03 schedule was consequently always slipping.
3. The resources required for GTA03 are 3X those required for Project B.
4. We don't have 3X.So, we picked plan B.
Now comes the question, what about GTA03? how do we get there? And when?
and what is it?Well my basic argument was and is this:
First we attend to the issues that still remain with the GTA02. That's
why the VP of marketing ( of all people) is working on the buzz fix
problem. Second we complete project B. When we've done that, then we
get to eat dessert. Essentially, I made the same argument I heard so
many times on this list: "How do expect us to buy a GTA03 when you've
yet to deliver on all the promise of FreeRunner?" And I took the
arguments I heard from disty seriously, "how do you expect us to buy FR,
when GTA03 is right around the corner?" And I accepted the arguments I
heard from Engineers I respect who questioned the viability of the GTA03
in the market place. All of those arguments said "put a bullet in its
brain pan!"So, what about GTA03? As it was defined, it is dead. So how do we
get to a new GTA03? Two requirements: continue to improve GTA02; deliver
on project B. What is GTA03 and when do we get there? There are a number
of independent efforts out there that are pitching me ideas for GTA03.
I talked to sean a bit about this and I'd like to try to open up more
of the design process and the marketing process to the community.
Perhaps on a separate list. Some of these discussions have already started.What can you do to help?
1. Move GTA02 code upstream.
2. Stay Involved.
3. Continue work on applications
4. Buy a FreeRunner.
5. Get involved in GTA03 discussions -
Re:Of course we will...
The battery is fine. The iphone only lasts 5 hours when running something, the openmoko developers version I have lasts 4 hours without suspending. If you suspend it when not in use (hit the power button), it can last a long time. Here's a log where the phone was mainly listening for calls with 70 hours standby time: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/StandbyLifetime
There are certainly issues, but battery life isn't the main one. Actual issues include:
- some phones/networks experience a buzzing noise on phone calls that requires a hardware fix. One of these days the fix will be in the newly sold phones.
- It's not clear for new users which software stack to load. (i.e. FSO is good for stable phone use) -
Re:Android vs. Apple?