Newbie: Converting a brick to a phone

Markus Wachenheim s at flymw.de
Mon Dec 8 19:28:32 CET 2008


Hello Roland, you already have a good and detailed answer from Damien
which makes very much sense. Depending on what you exactly want I anyway
have some alternatives for you:

SHR Works perfectly with me. Is not as "fancy" as QTextended but just my
personal feeling is that is is more stable in the core functions:
	- making and receiving calls and SMS I had absolutely no issues (but I
guess that differs a lot on what phone provider you use - Vodafone
Germany with me), as mentioned the application is very simple so you use
the SIM memory for contacts and SMS and you can only delete 1 SMS at a
time etc.
	wifi connection to WPA2 protected WLAN works fine together with using
the DNS of my router without any extra settings
	Suspend works but I think the battery still does not keep for too long
(1 day???) but I never really took note of that so I might be completely
wrong about battery life

so you might just want to try this out and see if that suits your needs,
more information here: http://shr.bearstech.com/trac/wiki/Get%20Started

 On my GTA02 v5 I am using this uImage:
http://shr.bearstech.com/shr-testing/images/neo1973/uImage-2.6.24+r10
+gitr6e2a723ef54ee2e739c34786981b2c508db803c1-r10-om-gta02.bin
and this rootfs:
http://shr.bearstech.com/shr-testing/images/neo1973/shr-image-om-gta02.jffs2


And in addition I run Debian on my SD card which really gives you a lot
of options and runs stable with the FSO phone stack that it comes with.
You can expect exactly the same phone functionality as on SHR. But
Debian is for the fun and possibilities and loads of programs - if you
don't need that and don't want to bother configuring Debian to your
liking you don't have to read on!


Good instructions I used to install Debian on my SD card (you need an
SD card, recommended min 1GB!) as the distribution is very large are in
the Debian wiki: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianOnFreeRunner 
In addition to those instructions I had to change one setting to prevent the GSM from constantly going on and off: I had to change the /etc/frameworkd.conf file under the ogsmd section to ti_calypso_deep_sleep = never (and only if you want to play around you can have a look at the tweaks at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Debian#Time like how to set the time)

Hope this helps you enjoying you phone freedom as I am and does not make that confusing amount of choice agein

Markus

 Am Montag, den 08.12.2008, 18:38 +0100 schrieb Damien Thébault:
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 17:23, Roland Whitehead <roland at quru.com> wrote:
> > Yes there are many different distributions out there but what is very
> > clearly missing are simple, obvious instructions on how to go from a brick
> > to a working device - just a machine that will turn on and off, will ring,
> > answer and make calls, not hang and not have buzzing when on a call. After
> > that, the user should be left to get on with it but I've completely failed
> > to get to that stage despite trying 4 different distributions. I'm really
> > talking basic here - if you have a machine that works for you, what
> > Bootloader, Kernel and RootFS are you using and where did you get them from?
> > What were the core applications that you loaded to make it work, where did
> > you get them from and which versions? What were the modifications that you
> > made to various settings files. If you have a working machine, could you
> > blat it and rebuild it to get to the same position as you are in now? If so,
> > would you document your process and share it with us? I don't really care
> > which distribution at the moment - I just want one that could claim to work
> > that I can then start developing with. I've got my Python books out ready...
> 
> I installed QtExtended, previously 4.3, it was the best distribution
> back then, and now 4.4 (and I think it's still the best):
> The image links are available here:
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions#Images
> I took the images from Hypnotize
> (see http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-November/035245.html )
> 
> qtextended-4.4.2-gta02-rootfs-release-working-with_voip+jabber+gtalk+SystemRingTones.jffs2
> from
> http://other.lastnetwork.net/OpenMoko/
> 
> Then the stable kernel from mwester's
> http://moko.mwester.net/dl.html#kernels
> (maybe it changed)
> 
> And... well... that's all.
> 
> I used it last weekend because the battery of my old phone was empty.
> 
> The good things:
>  * SMSes are working
>  * Calls to voicemail are working, like a real phone (didn't try a
> real call with someone), keep in mind that you can hang up with the
> power button if you leave the dialer
>  * The phone wakes up when sleeping (when a call comes or a SMS comes)
>  * I really like the new handwriting input module, once you know how
> to use it in a different
> language than english:
>  - draw a triangle (lower left -> lower right -> up -> lower left),
> choose the lower-left choice to disable word recognition.
>  - draw some letters, if it doesn't recognize it, try the next one
> with the good gesture (lower-left -> upper right -> lower left) or
> choose from the list (double clockwise circle)(this is most useful for
> letters with accents)
>  - insert special characters (double counter-clockwise circle)
> Some characters (like "t" or "x" are a little hard to draw, but skill
> improves over time, I'm now even capable of drawing an "i" instead of
> "l" when I want to)
> 
> The bad things:
>  * I get SMSes more than one time in the inbox, and there's problems
> with SMSes in the trash
>  * Sometimes it's acting weirdly and I have to restart QtExtended
> (it's faster than just rebooting), and sometimes the phone think it's
> charging when it's not even plugged in (so it doesn't sleep...)
>  * There's the buzz issue with the wired headset
> 
> The "I don't like" things:
>  * I don't really like the "kinetic" scrolling
>  * Using a word file in my language would allow me to use the
> handwriting more successfully
>  * I think that my SD card (the one that came with the phone) is
> broken, the phone can't recognize it, my laptop can't either, and if
> it's plugged in, the SIM doesn't work
> 
> The "more than just a phone" things:
>  * I don't really like the music player
>  * The GPS doesn't work
>  * I was not able to configure GPRS and MMS
> 
> I'm back to my old phone now, but for me it's definitively improving,
> I'm waiting for 4.4.3/4.4.4.
> 
> Regards,





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