Openmoko Neo Freerunner: Round one
I received my Openmoko Neo Freerunner last Monday, August 4, much earlier than I had anticipated. Score one for both the Canadian postal system and the USPS. I haven’t had one big chunk of time to experiment with it, but a few hours here and there over the last 6 days. I’ll start with some general impressions first.
This device is fun. Any phone that I can SSH into is a phone that I’m bound to like, even if it doesn’t work perfectly. Don’t compare this device to an Apple iPhone. It does a disservice to Openmoko as well anyone who might mistakenly get the impression that this is some sort of iPhone alternative; it is not.
I won’t even bother talking about my experiences with the device prior to the official August 8th release of the Om2008.8 distribution/image. Before installing this official release the device was only semi-functional in any given area. That said, I have to note that I was still loving it.
So, the Om2008.8 release is actually pretty good. All aspects of the phone that would matter to me seem to work nicely, SMS messaging works well, the device suspends after some inactivity and then wakes upon receiving a call. The interface is fairly nice, intuitive, and even reasonably snappy.
One thing that surprised me is that GPS functionality wasn’t working out-of-the-box. I had to manually install gpsd via opkg and also install tangoGPS.
The device is mostly functional but still quite buggy. At the present moment this phone will probably not serve as a primary phone for most people. However, this will probably all change over the next number of months. If you are interested in being an early adopter, buy this phone now. If you want a smartphone that 100% works, wait a while. I’m very happy with my purchase, and look forward to seeing how the software progresses over the next, say, 6 months.
Anyone interested in this device owes it to themself to subscribe to community@lists.openmoko.org and support@lists.openmoko.org. Those lists are somewhat busy, but have proved invaluable.
Soon, I’ll probably create a page that describes various configurations that I’ve done, fixes, and general notes on getting things working.