Free Runner Phone

[Neil Joseph Schelly]

On Thursday 14 August 2008 14:30, Bruce Labitt wrote:
> Anyone using / playing with a Freerunner Phone?  Opinions?  Cool?
> Stinks?  Not ready?

I've got one. I like playing with it so far.  Ready depends on your target 
audience I guess.  I'm not using it as a phone, but I hope to within the 
year.  I think the hardware is ready as it finally has (with this release) 
all the hardware support I was waiting for.  Software is still hampered.  The 
input methods aren't complete yet, which makes trying out a lot of things 
rather frustrating.  

The distros that are usable include the Qtopia one, the 200808 release just 
made last week, and the FSO (FreeSmartphone.org) images.  I really like the 
FSO for input.  The Qtopia one is reliable and polished but not nearly as 
interesting to play with since it won't run most of the software out there 
(no X11).  The 200808 release is the newest OpenMoko release and has the most 
software available for it and it combines the GTK and QT libraries together 
pretty well.  If they brought in the screen input methods from FSO to that 
one, it'd be a clear winner and probably ready for actual usage.

> If not ready - what is your estimate of ahem "talent level" to get it to
> work well enough.  (Makes and takes calls, browses on wifi, GPS?)

If you're reasonably competent at a prompt, you can get wifi running.  I know 
there's been a bunch of work lately on a wifi GUI configurator too - haven't 
used it.  I just edit the /etc/network/interfaces file.  Browsing is not 
terribly good without a decent input method.  I've played with Minimo a bit 
though and the OpenMoko browser.  They are both capable, but not really 
polished yet.  GPS has seen a lot of development.  It won't read you 
directions like a Garmin yet, but gpsdrive is working on that.  I like the 
tangoGPS software.  And the 200808 release includes Locations which I think 
is packaged rather well since you can download packages for various maps to 
have offline.  I don't expect to necessarily be near wifi when I want maps, 
so that will be quite helpful as they expand the maps available in packages.

> Does anyone know if they have any plans to go quad band?  That way I
> could use it when I travel.

I doubt it.  I know they had a lot of trouble finding the hardware they could 
be open enough about as it was.  I presume the only chipset they could find 
forced a choice between the two different tri-band groupings.  

I look forward to having more free time to play with the device.  I fit it in 
when I can - I've had it about a month now, but I've been really busy and 
travelling a lot, so I haven't gotten to do much.  I'd like to start pulling 
down SVN trees and seeing what's in there and trying my best to contribute.  

As I said, I think the hardware is just about there - I just wanna see the 
software catch up.  I also have an interest in taking the CAD drawings they 
have and working with a friend of mine to start some hardware hacking.  
There's a lot of good ideas on the OpenMoko Wiki for things like slide-out 
keyboards, extra "media" ports for USB/FW/CF/SD/etc, whatever.  They designed 
the rear cover so that it should be easy enough to add in pieces between the 
phone and the rear cover and I'm excited to see some cool things there. I 
think that will in the end be what makes this a truly great "arbitrary 
embedded device" rather than just a phone.  I expect a lot of things can be 
prototyped really easily with it.
-N