Hello Ian,
Monday, December 31, 2007, 3:08:12 AM, you wrote:
> Well from a 'user' point of view, part of me wonders if we are reaching some
> sort of crunch? I've thought about this somewhat having recently got hold of
> a Samsung Ultra F700 mobile phone.
> As a day to day user, suddenly I've got a decent pocket device with a qwerty
> kb, and it does a LOT! I have a 1gb SD in there, and I dump a load of music
> onto it, which is simple to access using the Samsung Touch interface. I can
> write a text or email very easily with the keyboard, and it's fairly simple
> to send them. I can make 'cell' calls on it, quite happily, and it has all
> my PDA data on it.
> So as a UK phone user, for £20, I've got almost everything that I spent
> £1000 on trying to get with the SL-C3000.
> There are shortcomings with the F700 though, of course. It's a locked OS,
> tied up very much by Vodafone. There is no GPS, which I'd love to use with
> the Google Maps Java app. There is no real word processor, tho u can open
> and read .doc files.
Good point. We're fully aware of state of the market and Angstrom
doesn't compete with resource-reach vendors on their grounds. But come
visit us with your somewhen-cool device in 5 years to meet us on our
grounds - the grounds of community involvement and support, and if
your device did real hit once and got people's affection (like Sharp
Zauruses, Compaq iPaqs, etc), you will see that your device is alive
and well, long before the original vendor stopped support and forgot
about it!
Note that Angstrom doesn't compete with big guys not because its
technology inferior, but because we understand pool size of our resources
and the gap between technology and finished produce. But brave folks
of us, who have great experience and strong motivation, do want to
compete, they want to join wealth of open-source software choice and
community feeling with vendor polishness and market/support coverage,
and are finding way to achieve that. And oh my, looking at the
progress OpenMoko project made for less than a year, I bite my elbows
for not participating in developers' drawing for early phone samples
to help with development. Unless I'll find *really* good bargain on
a used HTC phone well enough supported by Linux, Moko is going to be
next device I'll be shopping for (I'd say "I'll buy, but who knows,
when they will be available in my place; Zauruses never have arrived
for example ;-(".)
> What Angstrom does, and this is purely thanks to the brilliance of the
> developers, is support hardware. A wide range of hardware.
Ian, it seems you've done good reading these few days, and now know
a lot more about Angstrom! You pinned it exactly right - as an
OpenSource ditsro, what we can do is work on integration. And what
we've done really well so far is hardware integration! We support
(as in allow to use on, not give a warranty for) really wild range of
hardware. Noone did this before, believe me, I wouldn't join with
Angstrom if it would be otherwise ;-D.
Alas, we're still early at software integration. What we offer
indeed so far looks more like just random collection of software made
boot on your device, than a well-fitted distro. We lack that small
integrated core which allows you to feel well with your device right
at the start, while preparing to install loads of OpenSource software.
But we know that, and are working on that.
> Our devices also
> have CF/SD/USB which means we can plug more in to our handhelds to make them
> flexible.
> Can I plug in a bluetooth SD and a CF GPS, and then run google maps on my
> Angstrom PDA linking with my phone modem?
> Can I use USB or Bluetooth to sync phone and Angstrom contacts, diary and so
> on? There is the AT command set available to do that.
> What about in the car, can I replace my car stereo with my pda and a decent
> display on it to play an MP3 collection? Or connect to a USB DAB digital
> radio? I jump in the car with my stereo face plate at the moment, a PDA, a
> phone, a TomTom, and so on, can the PDA just replace a load of that baggage?
Dumb answer, but bear with it - other people did it, why wouldn't
you? It's Linux, you can everything.
> I say again, the technical brilliance of Angstrom is superb. Looking at it
> as an end user though, what does it do?
> As a showcase for technical ideas, it's superb. I'll help all I can with
> docs, but can we in some why make a road map for a target frontend with some
> unique apps that just help the end user reduce pocket baggage? Surely that
> way we get more involved and evolve a bigger project?
Please keep in mind that we don't write software. We wouldn't have
resources ever, but neither we have to! There're unbelievable wealth
of software, we just should know what works best for us and work on
integrating it well into our distro. And you don't have to make
executive decisions to help Angstrom - just start installing and
testing software available for it (already in feeds or being in
OE, which you can build yourself), start your blog, share there what
you've found out. I'd love to read such blog! And once you'd blog in
such way for couple of month, and would grow your Angstrom spirit
during that time, I'm sure you would come with specific and
well-grounded proposals what software should be available in feeds,
what should be recommended for beginners, would start making patching
for great apps to work better on a PDA, etc, etc!
> Bon
[]
--
Best regards,
Paul mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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