[Android] Converting a brick into a phone

Rui Castro rui.castro at gmail.com
Thu Dec 11 00:52:29 CET 2008


Hi,

English is not my primary language and that's the reason, I think, for
some people that replied to my message, totally missing the point of
it.
I support the Openmoko initiative as much as everyone in this
community, that's why I bought a Neo Freerunner and that's why I
contributed with a humble keyboard for Android and I will continue to
contribute as much as my abilities allow me.
I think it's excellent to have an open and general purpose SO for
smart phones, but at the moment, IMHO, none of the distributions
available is a real alternative for everyday use.

Some distros do almost everything (the basics), but more often than
expected they fail in simple things, like duplicating messages,
unregister from the network, not waking up the phone with a programmed
alarm, not showing the name associated with the phone number that is
calling, etc. PLEASE, don't take this as negative criticism, it's the
facts. I know they will get to a point when they will deal with all
that and much more.

Again, IMHO, Android is the current OS that is closer in the short
term to become a real OS for everyday use with the benefits of having
a coherent UI between all applications (usability).

Having a reliable and good looking OS running on Freerunners would
make more people use it daily and that is the best publicity that any
product can have. It would make Openmoko sell more phones and thus
having more money to sustain new developments.

So, my idea with my first message was to try to encourage people from
the community (and from Openmoko too) to put a little effort to make
Android stable in the Freerunner so that Openmoko and the community
could benefict from having another alternative OS, in the SHORT term.

Please don't make this thread a flame war. If my opinion means nothing
to you or if you think I'm just stupid, don't answer me, I will get
the message.

Best regards,
Rui

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 9:52 PM, Warren Baird <photogeekmtl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 8:58 AM, Rui Castro <rui.castro at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Like many people in this community I have my Neo resting comfortably
>> in my desk because there isn't a stable OS with the basic phone
>> funcionalities available at the moment (I already tried all the
>> distributions available). Some distributions provide some of the basic
>> stuff, but they're not reliable in many ways.
>
> I'm definitely feeling like a broken record now - but I have to disagree
> with you - QtExtended 4.4.2 is a stable OS with basic phone functionality.
> The only major annoyance I have with the basic phone functionality is that
> you get some duplicate messages in the SMS inbox - I use google calendar
> with SMS notifications for my calendar solution, and I have to empty my
> inbox maybe once every week or two.
>
> I do tend to prophlactically reboot the phone every few days, but I've been
> using QtExtended 4.4.2 as my day to day phone basically since it came out,
> and I haven't missed calls, or not been able to make calls because of it.  I
> finally gave up on carrying around my emergency backup phone - which I had
> to resort to regularly when I was using FDOM or OM.
>
> I must admit that I'm looking forward to being able to use the smart-phone
> features of the FR, so I agree it'd be great if Android or SHR or someone
> else was able to provide the phone stablity of QtE, plus everything else...
>
> Warren
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>
>




More information about the community mailing list