Re: open phone (is openmoko the only option ?)
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008, Erez D wrote about open phone (is openmoko the only option ?): i have a Nokia N95 8GB. on the paper it is a great phone (if you look at the hardware spec) however the MMI/software sucks bigtime (like most phones on the market). This issue is unfortunately not specific to Nokia N95, or to phones. I recently got myself a Creative Zen, a movie and music player (what is colloquially knowns as an mp4 player). Using this player is a continuous experience of cognitive dissonance: The hardware is fantastic, one of the best I ever saw: a crisp and clear screen, small and light (but the screen is large enough to be enjoyable), long (enough) battery life, good headphones, etc. It's also very cheap (just 90$). It's a real joy to watch movies in bed, or listen to music, with this player. But the software is terrible - one of worst I ever saw. I need to reset the device (something which requires to find a pin...) at least once a day. At least half of the movie files need complicated tricks to play, and some still play badly (e.g., the audio sync drifts). It uses some propriatary Microsoft protocol to connect to the computer, which doesn't work (properly) on Linux. If you look on vendor sites (e.g., Amazon.com) you'll also see that the reviews are very bimodal: many people love this player (giving it 5 stars) and many people hate it (giving it one star), and almost nobody in the middle. So the thought comes to mind: What can Creative possible gain by keeping this software? If the software became better with zero added cost, we would get a great $90 player, which will beat hands-down all other players in the market (because most of them are either not as good, or much more expensive). And making their software a free-software project sounds like a great way to get this software improved, with very little cost to them. I think the situation here is even simpler than with phones: With phones, the makers (like Nokia) always hidden incentives (like getting paid directly by the network operators, and in exchange making it hard for you to do things without paying the operators hefty fees), and also government regulations and other issues. None of these issues exist with media players. Even the patent issues are non-existant (I assume that Creative already pay the patent licenses for mp3 and so on, so it should have no problem to run free software that plays mp3, for example). -- Nadav Har'El| Monday, Aug 18 2008, 17 Av 5768 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Cats aren't clean, they're just covered http://nadav.harel.org.il |with cat spit. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: open phone (is openmoko the only option ?)
Erez D wrote: hi i have a Nokia N95 8GB. on the paper it is a great phone (if you look at the hardware spec) however the MMI/software sucks bigtime (like most phones on the market). so i was thinking of getting an open phone. what is your definition to open phone, is it just the software or include an open hardware / open specs ? 1. what kind of open phones are there ? is openmoko the only option ? 2. what kinds of hardwares for an open phone are there ? is freerunner the only option ? the FreeRunner is almost free , there is an issue of GSM spec that is not free - but it's work with a standard protocols (gsm 7.05 and gsm 7.10) the Freerunner is my choice - because it's have the maximum freedom , I also check the possibility to import the devices to Israel ( we complete all the process - now we have an issue of GCF certification ) . 3. specs, where to buy in israel, how much it costs. there is NO commercial import until we finish the GCF certification issue (MOC demand that GSM cellphones will be certified with the GCF certification and FCC/EC is not enough) BTW , for the Freerunner there is 4-5 linux based OS and oss tools . - doron in the past i looked at some motorolla phones running linux. but i saw that getting them to compile on my one was not really viable, so although they are supposed to be open, it is not open in my book. thanks, erez. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: open phone (is openmoko the only option ?)
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 2:33 PM, doron-iglu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Erez D wrote: hi i have a Nokia N95 8GB. on the paper it is a great phone (if you look at the hardware spec) however the MMI/software sucks bigtime (like most phones on the market). so i was thinking of getting an open phone. what is your definition to open phone, is it just the software or include an open hardware / open specs ? of course i would prefer open specs. however being realistic, if i can make the hardware work reasonably , it will do for now. 1. what kind of open phones are there ? is openmoko the only option ? 2. what kinds of hardwares for an open phone are there ? is freerunner the only option ? the FreeRunner is almost free , there is an issue of GSM spec that is not free - but it's work with a standard protocols (gsm 7.05 and gsm 7.10) the Freerunner is my choice - because it's have the maximum freedom , I also check the possibility to import the devices to Israel ( we complete all the process - now we have an issue of GCF certification ) . 3. specs, where to buy in israel, how much it costs. there is NO commercial import until we finish the GCF certification issue (MOC demand that GSM cellphones will be certified with the GCF certification and FCC/EC is not enough) do you have an estimation of when and how much ? BTW , for the Freerunner there is 4-5 linux based OS and oss tools . yeah, i know these desktop environments from the time i had linux installed on my ipaq, i had written a mail client (gtk-mail) and a non-volatile-ram-disk (NVRD) for it then ... i hope it is a lot more mature now, back than it was nice but not really usable as a PDA ... seeing the buzz around open-moko, i'm sure there are many developpers working on it and it might be actually usable as a pda ... (and maybe i can help too ;-) btw, is openmoko/freerunner the only viable option ? thanks, erez. - doron in the past i looked at some motorolla phones running linux. but i saw that getting them to compile on my one was not really viable, so although they are supposed to be open, it is not open in my book. thanks, erez.
Re: open phone (is openmoko the only option ?)
BTW: I just saw this article on SlashDot: Debian On the Openmoko Neo FreeRunner Phone Direct URL: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/16/0037221 On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 2:33 PM, doron-iglu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Erez D wrote: hi i have a Nokia N95 8GB. on the paper it is a great phone (if you look at the hardware spec) however the MMI/software sucks bigtime (like most phones on the market). so i was thinking of getting an open phone. what is your definition to open phone, is it just the software or include an open hardware / open specs ? 1. what kind of open phones are there ? is openmoko the only option ? 2. what kinds of hardwares for an open phone are there ? is freerunner the only option ? the FreeRunner is almost free , there is an issue of GSM spec that is not free - but it's work with a standard protocols (gsm 7.05 and gsm 7.10) the Freerunner is my choice - because it's have the maximum freedom , I also check the possibility to import the devices to Israel ( we complete all the process - now we have an issue of GCF certification ) . 3. specs, where to buy in israel, how much it costs. there is NO commercial import until we finish the GCF certification issue (MOC demand that GSM cellphones will be certified with the GCF certification and FCC/EC is not enough) BTW , for the Freerunner there is 4-5 linux based OS and oss tools . - doron in the past i looked at some motorolla phones running linux. but i saw that getting them to compile on my one was not really viable, so although they are supposed to be open, it is not open in my book. thanks, erez. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
