Is a FreeRunner sufficient for me?

[Ben Wong]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Joerg Lippmann<jl_lists at donalbain.de> wrote:

> Then the Freerunner is not for you.
> It may sound harsh, but it's definitely *not* suitable for daily use. Period.

Brolin,

I must respectfully disagree with Joerg's advice to you.  There are
flaws, including the ones Joerg points out, but they do not
necessarily make the Freeruner unsuitable as a daily phone.  I think
it depends on the person.  I use mine daily as my only phone and it
works well for me.  From your description of yourself, I suspect you
would be happy with a Freerunner as well, as long as you don't expect
it to do everything you want out of the box.

Battery life?  Yes, Joerg is correct that it's mediocre.  I do charge
it every night, but that's not a big deal, especially since it charges
off of any USB port.

The sound quality is "terrible" according to Joerg, but that has not
been my experience.  Perhaps I'm just lucky, having bought a later
model unit, but people have actually been telling me how crystal clear
I sound compared to my old Samsung phone.  The one thing I don't like
about the sound on the Freerunner is that the default volume is too
low, but it's not been enough of a problem for me to even look into
how to increase it.

Joerg also mentioned that the device is "lame".  I'm not quite sure
what he means.  The Freerunner is certainly lacking features that some
proprietary phones boast, such as a multitouch interface and 3G/4G
data transfer.  Since I live in a big city and have WiFi nearly
everywhere I go, the lack of 3G is not a disadvantage for me.  And
multitouch?  Well, somehow I survive without.

The one thing that jumps out at me in your request, Brolin, is keeping
your SMS messages on the microSD card instead of the SIM.  I know that
the SHR distribution, which I'm using, stores everything on the SIM by
default.  Perhaps David Ford's improved SMS app will do what you want?
 Alternatively, if you are happy with simply archiving your SMS to a
text file, David Ford sent out a one line script to do so about a
month ago.  (I can dig it up if you need.)

--Ben


> 2009/6/17 David Murrell <dmurrell at waikato.ac.nz>
>>    Fundamentally, at this point, my Openmoko Freerunner fails the Not
>>    Interested in Technology - Significant Other Acceptance Procedure,
>>    otherwise known NIT-SOAP.

> That is not a problem for me because I am single. :)

P.S. You may not be single for long.  One little known feature of the
Freerunner is that it is an Ultra-Powerful Magnet for Attractive
People.  They will sidle up to you and exclaim, "OMG!  Is that a
Debian box in your pocket?!"  ;-)