Bluetooth busted (Was: [HW] Ear phones with microphone, for hands-free calling?)

Joerg Reisenweber joerg at openmoko.org
Tue Mar 31 05:48:10 CEST 2009


Sorry, this whole pile of rant is mostly completely incorrect.
The remarks about "debug-tool that runs on a certain linux release" reveal the 
value of the whole message as well as the competence of OP.
/j


Am Mo  30. März 2009 schrieb Craig Woodward:
> This is one of the major things holding me back from using the FR.  The 
shape of it is clunky at best, and add the super low volume you need to run 
the earpiece at to NOT get echo in the mic and it's useless without a 
headset.  That's assuming you can get it to work as a phone to start with.  
Most images still can't reliably do that, even with suspend turned off.
> 
> Having bluetooth connectivity would be great, but that's busted too.  As of 
a couple months ago (when I last tested) _none_ of the images out there could 
handle bluetooth audio correctly for calls.  To pair the device you often 
have to enter it by hand into a config file, and run a script to connect it, 
since GUI scanning and pairing is busted in all images.  For some images you 
have to alter another set of config files so sound IO routes to the device 
(also not a simple task).  And after all that, when making a call something 
always goes wrong.  Either you get no audio at all or you get a couple 
seconds of audio/static and a kernel panic.  I tried this with at least 5 
different images (2009.12, SHR, FDOM, QT, & Debain) and 4 different headsets, 
all of which work with 2 other phones AND my desktop PC.
> 
> Right now the only image I've found with good call reliability is Android, 
but that has it's own issues since it really wants a hardware keyboard.  
Unfortunately this means for the few images that have bluetooth support, you 
have to go in with the debug tool to add a default password. I can't do that 
right now since it requires a linux box with a certain release to run the 
debug software, which I don't have the time or hardware to setup right now.
> 
> And FYI:  Good luck selling to anyone out there thinking of getting out of 
the pool.  I put my phone (plus stand alone charger, gps antenna, 4G card w/ 
reader & spare battery) up on Ebay shortly after my group mailing a couple 
months ago.  I stated it at $100 with a $250 reserve, it got a few bids but 
didn't even get close to the reserve.  Just what I figured would happen: 
expensive device that's not usable as a daily phone and now has little to no 
value. 
> 
> The whole project (FIC, OpenMoko, et al) has such a bad rep that nobody 
wants a FreeRunner now, even at a discounted price.  In the future I'll stick 
to semi-open devices for phones.... Unless it comes with some reasonable 
guarantee that it's going to actually WORK in the way it says it will *at the 
time of purchase*.  I should have returned the phone and reversed charges the 
first week I got it when it didn't work as simple phone out of the box. 
(Since it WAS advertised as a consumer ready phone when I purchased mine 
about a year ago, before FIC/OM updated their web pages to re-tag it as 
a "developer" phone.)
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