consider buying Neo Freerunner

xaos xaos at xaositects.com
Tue Oct 21 20:07:07 CEST 2008


Qtextended is probably the most stable at this point, and that has
it's caveats.

Incoming calls are always registered as missed calls.

Incoming calls are always answered as speakerphone, instead of
handset. I'm not sure if there is a setting for it, but I haven't been
able to find it. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd
appreciate it as I hate having to remember to switch it to handset
after I answer a call.

Often, accessing the keyboard after a call starts is impossible, which
makes it difficult when you have to navigate through a company VM
menu. You can use the "Smart" theme which works a little better but
you will need to use the stylus to access the .5" x .5" dialpad the
comes up in a call.

SMS messages received will often double themselves, or show five or
six times the amount of new messages in the New Message alert.

Select All->Move to Trash works sometimes, sometimes not, and it will
often redownload them from the SMS server after the phone
crashes/hangs/doesn't-come-out-of-suspend and requires a hard restart
which, for me, is about every two or three days.

Using the stylus is almost a necessity; you're not going to have much
luck using your finger for anything other than the largest, most
well-divided buttons. Even on the menus, you'll find yourself
selecting the wrong entry over and over (fingernails are not much of
an option for me. I'm a guitarist and keep them pretty short.) The
dockable qwerty keyboard works moderately well for composing messages
with the stylus, but the arrow keys don't work in the terminal, so be
prepared to type commands over and over, as the bash/ash history is
not accessible. The predictive text keyboard is mostly unusable due to
the inability after a word or two to change keyboard types or erase
characters.

I don't use the alarm so I can't comment on the issues others have had
with that module.

MP3 playback is pointless as it stutters constantly.

WEP wireless connections seem to only be available via command line. I
can't connect via WEP by the GUI, so I just wrote a script to do it.
Even that is weird, as I have to follow the following sequence to get
that to work:

iwconfig eth0 essid my_ap enc my_encryption_key;
sleep 2;
iwconfig eth0 essid any;
sleep 2;
udhcpd eth0;

The first time I call the script it fails. so I control-C it, and run
it again (the up arrow on the keyboard would be very handy here in the
terminal.) The second time it works and gets an IP address, however it
seems resolvconf is not updated (even though the DNS addresses are in
resolv.conf) as I can't ping by DNS, only IP. Now, if i run it a third
time it works like a charm. I don't know if this is something odd with
my network and the card on the Neo, or what but my laptop connects
fine with Ubuntu.

These things of course have all been filed as bugs already AFAIK. If
there are fixes for anything I've mentioned here, I'd love to apply
them.

I'm not sure if the phone is just grossly underpowered for what we are
trying to do with it (MP3 playback) or if it's just that the software
has  a loooong way to go before being usable as a day-to-day phone
with some extra PDA features.

So, in conclusion, I'd say there are a lot less expensive gadget
phones out there that do more and will not result in your hair turning
gray prematurely. The Neo is a wonderful idea, just not implemented
very well I guess. The design is nice, it's case feels better in your
hand than any other phone I've used. It's nice to have linux on my
phone and be able to do all the things I'd do with my laptop or
desktop, but without GPRS or 3G availability, it's kind of silly. If I
have access to wireless APs, I'll have my laptop most likely, so why
use the phone for that stuff? The display resolution is crisp and many
people have commented to me on that. I like the phone, I just can't
use it without a lot of finger digit acrobatics.

</rambling>

-Tom

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is
time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain



On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:42 AM, Alastair Johnson
<alastair at truebox.co.uk> wrote:
> Shawn "prjktdtnt" Thompson wrote:
>> William Kenworthy wrote:
>>> No, you are in the vast majority I think - those who can reliably make
>>> phone and sms calls are in the minority - if they even exist.
>>>
>>> BillK
>>
>> Those of use using reliably are minority but we do exist. Occasionally
>> the phone will coma on me and require a hard restart (remove battery and
>> reinsert) but this happens less than once a week in most cases.
>
> For certain values of 'reliably' then ;-) That might pass for reliable
> in the WinCE world, but not here.
>
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