Discussion: what are your dreams for the Openmoko Community

rhn omcomali.rhn at porcupinefactory.org
Wed May 2 13:00:44 CEST 2012


> It has become a little quiet here in the last weeks so that I
> really fear about the spirit and status of this community.
> 
> So what are your dreams with respect to open mobile handhelds?
> What would you like as future hardware? What to see in software
> distros? Anything else? What missing piece are you waiting for?

Let me list the hopes I had when buying the Freerunner. They're mostly related to middleware, and start with the idea of a programmable phone, not a wireless computer.

- tracking of billing in real-time, using a set of user-provided rules. In practice, telling me how many text messages I have left out of my monthly limit

- programmable reactions to different calls - reject some callers, voicemail others, record unknown, set custom ringtones

- compound communication model - most of the time I don't want to pay attention whether I'm sending a message via mail, XMPP or SMS, whether I call using GSM or VOIP, whether I connect the Internet via WiFi or GSM - what I care about are properties of the connection: reliability, security and cost. When I call someone, I usually want to just get connected, no to think about which program I need to run. Also, this approach lets store all communication history in one place.

- a geolocation API (combining GPS, GSM and WiFi information) that will be able wake me up when I reach my train station. Potentially useful for determining reliability of communication (see above).

These days what I care about is much more humble: reliable GPS (SHR + tangogps were the best combo I've seen so far), full communication logging (SHR was pretty good at this too), alarm (SHR alarm was wonderful) and PIM: calendar, some form of note making and todo list.

Cheers,
rhn



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