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Open Source-Friendly Smartphones For the Small Office?

Posted by timothy on from the ethics-schmethics dept.

Thunderstruck writes "I work in a small office with just two computers. Both machines run long-term-service releases of Ubuntu, with Gnome, and Evolution for scheduling, contact management and electronic mail. We plan to stick with Linux long-term. For telephone service, we're using smartphones. In order to keep everything straight, we need phones that can synchronize easily with the calendars and contact data on each owner's desktop machine. We cannot use cloud based services for this function due to ethics rules, and for security reasons. Right now, we do all of this with older Palm phones, but these are a dying breed. What options are out there right now for phones that will sync with Evolution (or another good Linux PIM suite) which do not require data to go through the cloud first?"

5 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Windows Mobile. by saintlupus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I sync Evolution with a Samsung Epix running Windows Mobile 6.5. Works fine, at least with the USB cable - I haven't tried Bluetooth.

    I'm running Debian Squeeze.

    --saint

  2. Re:Android is what you want by Izaak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It won't do it out of the box, but as an open platform it should be possible to make it happen. Might require an a custom OS patch though... As an Android developer myself, I might look into this and release something if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

    --

    The Bolachek Journals

  3. Nokia N900 by Colin+Smith · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's basically a Debian box with phone functionality.

    Add blue tooth keyboard & mouse, plug the video out into a decent monitor and I'm not even sure you need a desktop or laptop.

    --
    Deleted
  4. Re:Android is what you want by rtfa-troll · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The N900 is great. I'd be very careful recommending it to a Windows/Mac user without Linux experience, but if they are technically competent they should be able to get it working fine. The main problem is that, like so many recent Nokia products, it seems to lack the last two months of beta testing polish which makes the real difference. However, if you already know Linux you can really benefit from it.

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  5. What about encryption? by hawguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you have ethics and security issues with storing data in the cloud, then shouldn't you also be looking for a device or application that encrypts sensitive data?

    Do any Android phones do encryption natively? I've heard that the upcoming Droid Pro claims to. I know the iPhone has encryption support, but I don't know how whether it encrypts all application data or only data that Apple deems 'sensitive'.