Why one cannot recommend the freerunner as a daily phone (was Re: Is a FreeRunner sufficient for me?)

[Helge Hafting]

mobi phil wrote:
> no offense, but thinkin only about yourself, what you want, is probably 
> the cause nr. one for openmoko company/project failing. If you want a 
> company to sponsor the development of the project, they need to have 
> benefit. They can generate benefit by selling devices. But if you fail 
> to put on the device minimal usability only a small amount of the 
> potential customers will consider buying the device. By providing a bit 
> more usability openmoko would have been able to sell more phones. Lot of 
> IT friends laughed at me when I tried to show them the phone... actually 
> I could show nothing. If I was able to show a bit more... these guys 
> would have probably considered buying the phone etc...

If you want to show off, install some apps. For game players: Linball 
and mokomaze looks good. Tangogps with some maps, and one of the audio 
players. Set up wifi and surf the web on the 640x480 screen, which 
really is better than the 320x240 or so found on many other phones.

And then stuff that is hard to do on other phones because they don't 
have linux. ssh into some other machine, for example. Or in a 
windows-only place, show how you can log onto the file server directly 
and browse your files. Because the thing is a computer too. Look at 
images and documents.

> Developing only for your own satisfaction and thinking zero about giving 
> back as usability helps less than zero!

Many developers develop only for their own satisfaction - but happily 
share the stuff. And this helps, for generally, lots of people wants the 
same stuff.

Helge Hafting