Ask Slashdot: Scripting-Friendly Smartphones?

An anonymous reader writes "I am choosing a smartphone for work, moving up from a long history of just-a-phone phones. This coincides with moving into an environment where I will have a desktop machine in my office, rather using my laptop — so I'll VPN in from home, and am looking forward to not trucking my laptop around everywhere. BUT ... this means I now won't have my laptop all the time. I have gotten used to scripting various little things that make my life easier, and would like to carry that over to the phone. For example, periodically check that a certain machine is online and backing things up the way it is supposed to; if the lab monitoring system sends me an email that the -80 freezer is up to -50, play a sound and run the vibrate system in a specific, arbitrarily chosen pattern; when I press this button, record an MP3, when I release it prep an email with it attached, that sort of thing. Does such a beast exist? Has anyone used one and if so what do you think? Bonus points if you know if I can use it with Rogers (Canadian wireless provider used by my workplace)." I've heard good things about (but never used) the payware Android app called Tasker; what other recommendations do you have for running the world from a smartphone?

Comments

Your choices are...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia n900 would be my first choice for reasons that are obvious.

HTC HD2 would be my second choice. Laugh if you must, but the interface HTC slapped over WM 6.5 makes it halfway decent and the APIs are open for pretty much anything you want to put on it.

Re:Your choices are...

[RobbieThe1st]

It's as you said: Nokia N900, hands down.
You get:
1. Fully unlocked phone, unlocked bootloader and real Linux.
2. Loads of "hacker" tools and apps.
3. Busybox ash(stock) or full Bash if you want.
4. The phone part is fully scriptable with dbus commands. There's even a dbus monitor daemon to run a script when a certain dbus signal is sent.
5. Hardware keyboard, decent specs(CPU's a bit weak, but greatly overclockable), and good screen.
6. Debian Chroot gives full LXDE system right on your phone if you need it.
7. Real web-browser functionality: tablet-friendly stock microB(FF based, renders like FF 3), Firefox Mobile, Chromium(desktop version basically), Opera

Really, it seems to be the only option.
The N9 might also be doable, but there you have to enable developer mode, and have no hardware keyboard, screen's poorer(AMOLED vs LCD), and it's just more hassle.

Android Scriptin

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about sl4a, it's still a legitimate project.

Nokia N900 no contest

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nokia's N900 (not the newer 900) is a full linux distro that happens to also function as a phone. It is the best computer I have ever purchased.

N9 or N900 -- full *nix

[hardaker]

The N9 is a wonderful phone, can certainly be scripted (I ssh into mine all the time to do things), but lacks a physical keyboard. The onscreen one is great, but because it takes half the screen it makes the shell-window smaller. (really, you might want an N950, but those "don't exist" and getting one is difficult, plus the antenna issues make it less useful as a real phone).

The N900, now hard to locate, has a great screen, a great keyboard and is the predecessor to the N9. But they have a known issue with the USB port breaking over time, so if you do actually succeed in finding one to buy don't expect it to last forever and ever. But this is 2000+ where things aren't expected to last longer than a few years.

sigh

Re:seriously?

[Lisias]

No.

The vast majority of the people is used to under thinking about everything.

Re:seriously?

[mwvdlee]

Name me one professional rally racing team that doesn't install their own shocks on their brand new car.

If your needs are specific enough, no standard solution will suffice.