FR: Problems, problems: please help

Toni Mueller support at oeko.net
Thu Mar 26 10:54:10 CET 2009


Hi Tom,

On Wed, 25.03.2009 at 12:16:09 +0000, Tom Yates <madhatter at teaparty.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Mar 2009, Toni Mueller wrote:
>> can we perhaps agree on "all hardware usable on a daily basis"?
> my 'moko, which is the same hardware rev. as yours, is my daily usable
> phone.

good for you! I hope to arrive at such a stage, too.

> it took 3 days of solid work to make the phone usable when i first got 
> it. with later revisions, this time has decreased, due mostly to 
> improvements in the distros, and partly to my increased familiarity with 
> the device.

This sounds quite fast to me. I do gain increasing familiarity with the
phone, but there are a lot of things that I'd just consider to be bugs.

> if it's of any use to you, my step-by-step guide to what i did to my moko 
> to get it working on 2008.12, with links to some earlier writeups, can be 
> found at http://www.teaparty.net/technotes/openmoko-3.html .

Thanks for posting the link. I found your writings before I posted here
first, but, while overall I think your writeup is easy to follow, I
must also say that it contributed to my confusion. At the top of the
page, you have two photographs. My device looks like the one on the
left side ("Om2008.8"), even after the flashing, only with some 5 apps
or so installed, while I thought that it should like the one on the
right. Someone on this list said that I did achieve the upgrade,
but the photograph suggests exactly the opposite.

Please see below.

>> Yes, but documentation is _poor_.
> to be honest, i found the documentation excellent - but very widely  
> distributed; it's not all on the wiki, nor on any one website.  this  
> doesn't surprise me, as the 'moko is such a general-purpose device, but i 
> agree that it's unhelpful if you're starting from cold.

Ok. This is generally a valid point, but from a manufacturer, I expect
to have comprehensive documentation in one place. IOW, I expected to at
least find everything about the hardware and the Om200x.y software on
the wiki. So far, I can't match what I see to this expectation. Eg. I
had expected a detailled explanation about how to use the phone (eg.
the often semi-working "keyboard" doesn't suggest how to use it, and
also doesn't work like I was used to on my Palm). I also expected much
more in the way of being able to work with the device w/o having to ssh
into it.

I may consider attempting to "fix" the problem in a similar style like
you did, through a series of personal writings, although that would
proably mainly contribute some more to the "decentralization" of the
available information.

> i urge you to persevere with your 'moko.  people do regularly use exactly 
> that model as a daily 'phone, with a variety of distros, though it does  
> take some work.

I am prepared to live with the device if I can verify that it has no
significant hardware bug (=defect), which I can't determine ATM. Eg. I
expected a self-diagnosis program to be shipped with the device, so I
could at least come to a conclusion like: "Oh, the hardware is ok, so I
need to look at some software bugs". Instead, now something does not
work, and I don't know whether I hit a hardware bug, which seems to be
far from uncommon, or whether I hit a software bug, of which there seem
to be even much more, or whehter I'm just too stupid or uneducated to
handle the device properly. Case in point: I was so far unable to send
an SMS using the phone "as is", because the software kept complaining
about a missing recipient, despite the fact that I selected one from
the contacts list.


Kind regards,
--Toni++



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