ASU software - pre-pre-release impressions

[Ian Darwin]

I have been using a FreeRunner for a few days with a pre-pre-alpha
snapshot of the ASU software. For those who have been off-list for a
while, or who have not been looking at the Wiki much, the April
Software Update switches the Window Manager from matchbox to
Enlightenment (E17) and the main applications from the GTK-based apps
(developed by OpenMoko and OpenedHand) to QTopia (but using X11, of course).

The new phone is in the same case, so it looks and feels a lot like a
GTA01. I think the partition numbers for dfu-util have changed; newer
versions of dfu-util allow you to use the partition names instead of the
numbers. Beware.

The Home Page (aka Launcher) can now be displayed either in an Icon Grid
(conventional cell phone style, e.g., Blackberry, and the traditional
QTopia format) or a "slider" style (the latter demonstrated by MokoNinja
here: http://people.openmoko.org/ninjutsu/freerunner1.4.swf (flash
required).

The small home/current-apps menu has been replaced by a larger
slide-down top panel, listing the current apps, and containing the time,
battery panel, GSM on/off, qwerty keyboard on/off, Configuration, and
the Enlightenment menu.

Neither of the above is, AFAIK, cast in stone.

I must admit I have mixed feelings about the switch from OM/GTK apps to
QTopia. However, I recognize the need to get something "finished" in a
reasonable time and I infer Sean et al felt the need to go this way;
in hindsight, building the whole thing from scratch is a daunting task,
and something that QTopia has been honing for several years.

The QTopia apps do have a somewhat more conventional "cell phone"
feel to them (see my screenshot of the Contacts "Overview" page here:
http://www.darwinsys.com/tmp/contacts1.png).

So, I think we're in good hands here. On to the "experience".

Short form: functionally, it works.  Among other things, the phone wakes
up reliably on incoming rings (assuming it's booted and suspended, of
course), and GSM voice works after a resume.

There are still some minor glitches. I hope I'm not out of line
reporting these here, given how pre-pre my software is, but Steve has
been asking me to report on this list since my FreeRunner arrived. I
remind everybody reading this to remember that this is PRE-PRE-RELEASE 
software. None of this intended as criticism of those who worked under 
time deadline to make this early release ready for the show I was 
presenting OM at!  Nonetheless these are things that I would not like to 
have fall through the cracks.

1) Incoming calls do wake up the phone, but by the time the dialer
appears on screen, several rings have gone by, and, by the time you
press Answer and get it recognized, the screen hasn't responded, the
Answer button changes to Hangup, so if you double-clicked it, you can
easily hang up on your caller without intending to.

2) The ASU software features a qwerty-keyboard. It is switchable between
alphabetics and numerics; unfortunately the gesture  needed to do this
(a triangle drawn counter-clockwise from lower left) is a bit hard to
get right; hopefully there will be a  button to switch this. As well,
the current version of ASU uses QTopia's input manager, offering what
looks like a predictive style but is  actually doing a dictionary
lookup; I find this very distracting compared to a plain do-what-I-type
keyboard, and would welcome an easy way to turn this off (I thought
Lorne Potter posted this once, but I couldn't find it).

3) It's easy to accidentally start an application (thus slowing down
what you're trying to really do) while scrolling the home screen in icon
grid mode.

4) The Preferences that are in the top slide-down panel's Wrench icon
should presumably be merged with the Preferences App.

5) The shutdown dialog does not have a cancel or Back button.
And, it often doesn't actually shutdown.

All for now. Again, please remember that this is very early access.
And don't let my nit-picking distract you from the fact that it's
looking good for something that was merged only a few weeks ago!

Ian Darwin