Questions about Freerunner: Phone Usability, Battery Life, Shipping Date

[michael at crosscode.org]

On Fri, 9 May 2008, kid charlemagne wrote:

> I've done some extensive digging on the community site
> but it's very hard to tell what information is
> outdated, what information is current, and what
> information will be true in the future but not now.
> Specifically, before I buy a fresh GTA02, I would like
> to know:
>
> 1. Will it be usable as a simple GSM phone? Will I be
> able to reliably make and receive voice calls with it?
> I don't need fancy features right off the bat, but
> this is a bare minimum.

 	I don't have answers to your other two questions, but I can help with this
one :) The best source of information to answer that question is Kevin Dean's
*excellent* snapshot reviews. He's been using a GTA01 with the same software
that will be available for the GTA02 as his daily phone for quite some time
now. If you read the most recent review, though, you'll find the phone doesn't
always turn GSM back on after it's gone to sleep. While I'm sure "they" are
working furiously to fix that problem, I think my personal advice would be:

 	1. As an opnmoko enthusiast, I would love for you to use the phone as your
 	regular phone so the softwre gets more exposure to the world.

 	2. As an opnmoko enthusiast, I would not want you to use the phone in any
 	situation where alpha or beta quality behavior from it will make you start
 	telling your friends what an awful device / software it is, because it
 	will almost certainly exhibit that behavior from time to time.

- Michael