Perpetual quest for GNU smartphone

[Arie Skliarouk]

Hi,

Four months later... Responding to myself :)

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 13:05, Arie Skliarouk <skliarie at gmail.com> 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 for several reasons:
>  * their's latests phone model Freerunner has audio issues
>

The bug affects only 2% of users:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Buzz_Fix
Is it the case in Israel as well?


>  * It has weak connectivity (GPRS)
>

It should not matter much as I am not going to use the internet much because
of the outrageous cellular internet prices that are in use in Israel. It is
somewhat an advantage, as you can't break the internet limit easily.
The GPRS speed (64Kbit/s) should be enough for SIP call. Can someone confirm
that?
And how fast is battery drained when GPRS is constanly on (For chats,
incoming SIP calls, updates)?


>  * There is no quality applications for it (like GPS turn-by-turn
> navigation) due to chicken-egg problem and lack of DRM.
>

Someone reported using freerunner with android and andnav2 (albeit slow and
requires internet access)
http://android.koolu.org/pipermail/android-freerunner-koolu.org/2009-August/001260.html

This makes me look into direction of Android G1. It is too young to have
> elaborated applications support, but it already has
> http://www.andnav.org/ that uses OpenStreetMap data.
>

The android-freerunner is pretty active lately:
http://android.koolu.org/pipermail/android-freerunner-koolu.org/2009-September/thread.html
So it can be viewed as a cheap version of the real Android, albeit without
the Android Market.

Currently there is no coverage for Israel though:
> http://www.andnav.org/images/stories/news/coverage/


The andnav page does not say that Israel is supported, but there already is
MapTilePack for Israel:
http://wiki.andnav.org/index.php/List_Of_MapTilePacks/

Has anyone checked andnav with that?

--
Arie
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