Om2008.8 comments and questions

[Helmut Tessarek]

Hi Openmoko cummunity (and developmen team),

I'm a little bit concerned about how priorities are set and handled and would 
like to read your opinion.

2 weeks ago I got my Neo Freerunner with Om2007. I was able to get it up and 
running, even importing my contacts from my old phone wasn't really an issue. 
WiFi worked ok too.

Then I flashed my phone with Om2008.8.

Call me oldfashioned, but I'm one of the guys who wants to use his phone for the 
reason it was actually built in the first place: making phone calls.
I expect only 3 things from a phone (which are the most basic things a phone 
should be able to accomplish):

1) making and receiving calls
2) managing contacts
3) alarm function

I will go in more detail regarding these 3 points in a moment. I know that the 
phone has overwhelming features and I would like to see them in action, but 
first I should be able to use it as a phone. I don't care about GPS, games or a 
graphical installer right now.

ad 2) I was not able to migrate my phonebook from om2007 to om2008. I had a 
backup from my home dir and I had the .vcf files on my sd card. Well, entering 
my 500 contacts is not an option. The keyboard is more or less useless, since it 
takes at least 'number of character' times 2 seconds to enter a word, which 
cannot be guessed by the keyboard 'logic'.
What about sending contacts via Bluetooth? What about importing vcf files?

ad 3) this does not work either. sometimes I can see an alarm icon, but no alarm 
tone. hmmm, not much of an alarm then.

These are basic functions which do not work and people are talking about GTA03, 
cameras, GPS mapping functions.
I don't get it. First of all the phone should be able to do at least things that 
a 50$ phone can do.

I bought the openmoko phone, because I'm using Linux and I thought that it would 
be easier to sync contact and calendar data with my workstation.
I was definitely wrong. The data is not even compatible between Om releases.
Furthermore it seems to me that a propriatary system is developed which makes it 
even harder to communicate with standard Linux distros.
In that case I could have bought the iPhone as well. At least that phone works.

As long as the priorities are not focused on basic features as I described 
above, this phone will not be useable for quite a while.

Regards,
   Helmut