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

[Kunal Singh]

Hi,

    I am located in India, and I have decided to go for Free-runner.
    But, I am really wondering about why this phone is so costly?
    Apple will be releasing the iPhone in India later this year.
    This phone is likely to be priced much cheaper than free-runner 
(free-runner is currently available for $500 in India).
    Also, it looks to me that iPhone has much more features (it has 8 GB 
memory - I could not see similar in Free-runner).
    On a plus side, iPhone is fully tested. Their is official 
performance rating for each feature.

    Why is the Free-runner cost so high?
    With open-source development, the cost of devices should in fact 
come down (that is my thinking - correct me if I am wrong). At least be 
at par with the commercial products.

    Is the high cost due to the low volume production? Or something 
related to the location of production units?
    If the cost is high because of above (or similar) factors, I assume 
that costs will come down in long run.
    In such a scenario, does any one have a (rough) idea about what the 
final (appx) costs would be?
    Will it be any better than the commercial products?

    My interest in openMoko is purely from a developer's point of view 
(I guess every one currently using it is has similar interests).
    And the reason why I want to participate in open source development 
is that I want technology to proliferate and become affordable to the 
common masses.
    If this objective is not going to be satisfied, I am going to feel a 
bit dis-appointed with the loss of time which I spend on my efforts.

    Also, I really find the Free-runner too expensive just for the 
development purpose. I am hoping that if I can use it as my cell-phone, 
I can feel a little better. In case the phone is not practically usable 
(very poor battery performance, or loosing networks, going to infinite 
sleep etc), that will add to dis-appointment too.

    Another possibility - is it that Free-runner is much beyond iPhone 
in feature list (which I have failed to capture)?

Regards,
Kunal Singh
www.singhkunal.com
michael at crosscode.org wrote:
>
> 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 outdated, what information is current, and what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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>