Perpetual quest for GNU smartphone

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 01:05:27PM +0300, Arie Skliarouk wrote:

> For a long time I find myself looking for an open smartphone, with
> Linux and GPS.

> Initially I had high hopes for OpenMoko's platform, but now I think it
> is dying (...)

> This makes me look into direction of Android G1.

Note that the wiki claims that Android can run on an OpenMoko
FreeRunner.

I also got interested in the Android G1/G2 line, but as a free/open
platform it is severely lacking:

 - That you can get root access on a G1 is an accident in history, not
   by design.

 - The shipped applications have a very closed mindset: upload all
   your data to Google or suffer. A friend of mine got a G1, and I was
   evaluating it for my parents to eventually get one. Really, the
   only thing I wanted to check is that they would be able to import
   contacts (and hopefully appointments) from their old Treo/PalmOS
   smartphones, via their desktop computer. Oh, boy, I was in for a
   surprise. The only way to do that is to get a Google account,
   UPLOAD YOUR CONTACTS TO YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT and have your G1
   synchronise with your Google account. THERE IS NO WAY TO GET
   CONTACTS IN YOUR G1 SHORT IF SHARING THEM WITH GOOGLE. A company
   that is known to have trouble "forgetting" stuff you delete from
   your account. That's *so* not acceptable to me. That's utterly
   broken design; I don't want to have anything to do with
   applications written by people that think like that.

   With some Googling, you can find third-party applications that
   sort-of patch a beginning of a brittle solution. So it is not a
   total blocker, but it let me a very bad taste of the platform in my
   mouth.

-- 
Lionel