Perpetual quest for GNU smartphone

[Michael Shiloh]

Openmoko has departed the cellphone business and no longer makes the 
FreeRunner, although you can buy them and there is still very large 
community support.

Arie Skliarouk wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Four months later... Responding to myself :)
> 
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 13:05, Arie Skliarouk <skliarie at gmail.com 
> <mailto: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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