Why one cannot recommend the freerunner as a daily phone (was Re: Is a FreeRunner sufficient for me?)
Vasco Nevoa
vasco.nevoa at sapo.pt
Sun Jun 21 06:53:35 CEST 2009
Works for me too! :D
It is my only phone for almost a year now.
Yes, it needs A LOT of attention and tweaking for about 3 months until
you get it "just right" for yourself, but after that it's "good enough"
as a phone and GPS, and a pretty good PDA. And yes, the screen is not
bright enough, and the earpiece not loud enough, and the vibrator not
strong enough, and the audio/DSP is not perfectly tweaked yet (still
some people complain in calls); but these are minor complaints when you
think about all the freedom you get in installing anything you want, to
use it in ways no other device lets you...
Things I still miss: working out-of-the-box bluetooth integration
(headsets, PAN), a rock-solid GPRS and Wifi experience (still unstable
with some kinds of network and encription), and above all, a rock-solid
kernel.
Some people will, of course, dearly miss the 2D and 3D acceleration
capabilities that the Glamo chip still does not have active (and
apparently will never have). But I don't use the FR as a jukebox, so it
doesn't affect me.
The kernel is, in my opinion, the area where OM (the company) has failed
more spectacularly; I've never had a kernel that does everything well at
the same time, and it certainly has passed enough development and
testing time for that to happen. For example, it is common to have a
kernel revision that does at least one of these things:
- crash (panic or silent lockup) on wakeup, making you lose calls -
fortunately very sporadically, about once a month or less;
- ruin networking (drop GPRS or WIFI packets), making a connection stall
mysteriously;
- corrupt the screen data (random noise in framebuffer) - also very
sporadic, fortunately;
- make the FR incompatible with Windows boxes (some people need this at
work, you know?);
- some minor hardware not working, like accelerometers;
Yes, I know that most of this stuff is hard to debug, but that's the
kind of thing an embedded products company does: it secures the kernel
quality first and foremost. It's all water under the bridge, now that
the FR is strictly "community", but in my view this is what has
prevented the device from being a world-class bedrock for VARs and
tinkerers and inventors and anyone with and interest in FLOSS phones...
I think that if the kernel was rock-solid and stable, people wouldn't
care so much about "which distro works?" - the hardware would always
"just work", and the distro would be just a matter of taste and "fitness
for a purpose". Get the kernel right, and you have a winner.
jeremy jozwik escreveu:
> works for me too : )
>
> actually, i really like the thing. just with the screen was not
> recessed into the shell.
> and ffalarms works great for me.
>
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Michal Brzozowski <rusolis at poczta.fm
> <mailto:rusolis at poczta.fm>> wrote:
>
> 2009/6/20 Joerg Lippmann <jl_lists at donalbain.de
> <mailto:jl_lists at donalbain.de>>
>
>
> OK, maybe I should explain.
>
> My mail should not be taken as FUD. I have a freerunner since
> it came out a
> year ago and - being a linux user since 1994 - I was prepared
> to get something
> rough and unfinished. But I hoped that it would one day be
> sufficient to replace
> first my phone, then my Palm Tungsten C and maybe my
> Etrex-GPS. It does neither
> in a satisfactory way.
>
>
> You're spreading a lot of misinformation. Since you might
> influence someone's decision about buying the FR, I'll address
> those points with which I completely disagree (about the rest I
> could argue).
>
>
>
> I used it for about year now, installed this and that distro
> and during that
> time I defended all the shortcomings as being a
> work-in-progress and a
> community effort. But all in all I cannot recommend it to
> anyone as a daily
> phone. Here's why:
>
> - The device wakes up too slowly, I lost some calls.
>
>
> The wake up time is about 2 to 2.5 seconds. Usually small enough
> for picking up the call quickly.
>
>
>
> - The vibrator is too weak, I missed more calls.
> - The volume is way to low, You can really only use it indoors.
>
>
> Depends on a particular mixer setting. I could get one that's good
> enough for me (found a link on the wiki)
>
>
>
> - The Display is too dark for sunny days, even in the shade.
> - I lost many SMS. I eventually receiced most of them after
> restarting the
> device
> - The battery lasts only a few hours, again, I lost many calls
> (this depends
> on the distro. But even with a »good« one, I had cases in
> which the device did
> not suspend due to something crashing)
>
>
> With most distros you get ~48h of suspend time with the GSM
> running. Whether the distro you choose crashes a lot or not
> depends on your luck and ability to chose the right distro and
> version (release, testing, unstable). But agree that most of them
> crash occasionally, although I don't see how this influences
> battery life (just restart the device)
>
>
> - Sometimes I cannot access the phonebook (Android, SHR)
> - Wifi does not work reliably and it takes a long time to connect.
> - The device/software is terribly slow. How fast was even the
> oldest palm in
> comparison!
>
>
> There is a ton of software, and some of it is slow, some of it is
> fast. The device itself is pretty fast for a phone I would say.
>
>
>
> - the on-screen keyboards are all terrible for finger-typing.
> I liked the one
> from QTe, but you have to install german wordlists by hand.
> Also it was
> impractical to switch upper/lowercase. Best solution would be
> to use landscape
> automatically.
>
>
> Then you haven't tried the illume predictive keyboard. It's better
> for typing sms with your finger than anything else I've seen.
> Certainly 10x faster than a phone without a touchscreen.
>
>
>
> - Even simple tasks like inserting the number of the caller
> into the
> addressbook is sometimes impossible or very complicated.
> (- Many people I called complained about terrible buzz, but I
> hope to get the
> fix soon)
>
>
> You can buy a buzz-fixed FR.
>
>
>
> - The alarm clock does not work reliably.
> - When the battery is completely empty, it takes ages to
> reload the phone and
> you're not able to turn it on even when plugged in.
>
>
> I think it takes a few hours to reload it. The problem with
> starting on an empty battery have been fixed in recent devices I
> think.
>
>
>
> - You cannot sync dates or even contacts, PIM-functions are
> virtually non-
> existent.
>
> (And I did not mention nice things like video-playback, a good
> MP3-Player,
> voice-notes, a nice email-Interface or a feed-aggregator...)
>
> Granted, most things depend on the distro you're using. But
> neither is really
> good:
>
> OM: 2007: very stripped down, although I liked the simple
> interface.
>
>
> That distro is 2.5 years old! :-)
>
>
>
>
> QTe: Overall quite OK, but no Sync, no working wifi, no usable
> browser, no
> GPRS, no usable GPS-Application
>
> SHR: good battery life when not crashing. some bad design
> decisions
> (animations are useless on this phone), slow (especially the
> setup-menus and
> finger-scrolling), ugly phone-function, contacts crash very
> often, tangogps is
> working, many SMS and calls lost. Keyboard either english-only
> or only usable
> with a pen.
>
>
> The slowness can be fixed by tweaking some settings in illume gui.
>
> Keyboard english-only? Changing the dictionary to another language
> is as simple as downloading a word list into the FR.
>
>
>
>
> Android: Best of the bunch so far. But volume too low, missing
> keyboard in
> stable versions (cupcake one looks better, but is not stable
> enough at the
> moment)
>
>
> Well, you definitely forgot about Om2008 and 2009.
>
>
>
>
> Please, developers, don't feel like I want to thrash your
> work. It's just not
> ready for primetime, yet. I really like the design and the
> hires screen. It
> could make a cool device when it would work...
>
>
> I will repeat the famous words, "works for me." Just give it some
> love.
>
>
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