Dave Fayram takes a tour of the OpenMoko FreeRunner phone's user interface

Anonymous

#1 – 1:56 PM July 19, 2008

That keyboard actually made me wince and squeak involuntarily. My understanding is that this phone is (mostly?) a developer/enthusiast prototype, though, and there's plenty of room to grow. Still, I think the main obstacle to open phones, Android or otherwise, is and will continue to be the carriers.

Anonymous

#2 – 2:00 PM July 19, 2008

"(Less so the desire for an open hardware phone. What am I going to do, upgrade it?)"

Open hardware opens up service opportunities for DIYers, freelancers and local businesses. It makes the artificially outlandish concept of upgrading a cellphone's hardware feasible. (Why shouldn't you want to upgrade it, especially if it's more cost effective?)

To put it a more palatable way, what if Apple encouraged you to open the iPhone and mod it however you wanted? What if they published all the technical documentation and told you to have fun hacking a GPS-enabled, Wi-Fi, 3G, multitouch handheld computer?

What new applications do you think would come from that? Here, Apple is an obstacle, when they could be an enabler.

OpenMoko is the best that company can do with its resources and its expected market. It's not the answer, it's a niche product, almost more a proof-of-concept than anything. The real question is, why don't companies that have the resources open up their phones?

stratosfyr

#3 – 2:07 PM July 19, 2008

The single most exciting thing about this phone for me is the USB host plug, meaning you could plug, say, a keyboard or camera or flash drive into it.

I guess open hardware is kind of useless, but expect case mods.

Anyway, looks pretty disappointing, but still early in the game.

Rob Beschizza

#4 – 2:58 PM July 19, 2008

ZAURUS FOREVER

dssstrkl

#5 – 3:00 PM July 19, 2008

Yikes! It looks like the Open Moko people learned all of the wrong UI lessons from Palm. Plus, it has a music player, but ONLY plays ogg? Who has an ogg-only music library? That really seems like a FSF religiously induced decision there.
Its really hard to take FSF seriously when they recommend that (specifically) over the iphone, or really any other smartphone, including windows mobile.
I'd like to see a truly open mobile OS, just because its good for the market for such a beast to exist, but they really need to get their crap together it they're going to succeed beyond RMS and the most rabid freetards. (I say that as a linux and FOSS user and contributer.)

Sxe

#6 – 3:07 PM July 19, 2008

I'm extra disappointed, as I paid another CAD $110 for duty fees, and won't even have the unit in my hands until Monday. No electronic-based touchscreen? That sucks.

It's my understanding that everything from the power management to the keyboard in the UI can and will be improved over time, but yeah, the hardware flaws of the screen bezel and pressure-only touchscreen make me feel pretty sheepish for spending half a grand on this.

Hopefully someone will make and sell a new casing and a better touchscreen that won't significantly add to the cost. This is probably a long shot.

Another case of early adopters getting burned, methinks.

Sxe

#7 – 3:34 PM July 19, 2008

@4: The thing is, all the software stuff can and will be improved. I'm sure we'll see an MP3 player.

Camillo Miller

#8 – 5:25 PM July 19, 2008

Ok this comment is gonna be fanboystic and pretty lame but, come on solid orange and blue menu background? I couldn't go further watching that Xelibri 2.0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xelibri

lev3k

#9 – 6:06 PM July 19, 2008

"What am I going to do, upgrade it?"

I would. The hardware radio is only GPRS. The phone could certainly do with a radio upgrade whenever someone figures out a Free UMTS/HSDPA radio that could fit in this thing.

hohum

#10 – 6:16 PM July 19, 2008

Okay, I think the OpenMoko is as much of a joke as most people do, and I very much enjoyed these reinforcement videos.... But seriously, this guy has no familiarity with single-stroke gestural inputs? "T" isn't that hard to figure out...

Side note, I knew that thing was thick, but... God, is that thing thick! Seems about as pocketable as my MicroTAC.

lev3k

#11 – 6:21 PM July 19, 2008

Also, I could see licensing being a reason for only including ogg. Ogg is Free, while a license for MP3 would cost money. Considering the audience of this phone, I would guess that they probably have more ogg files than the general population.

Harrkev

#12 – 6:34 PM July 19, 2008

Lev3k, I would imagine that you are right about the license issue. However, I would hope that they would do the same thing that Ubuntu does. If you try to play an MP3, it should helpfully tell you where to get one, and warn you that you will be breaking the law if you install it. That way they can still CYA and make thing easy for end users.

musicalwoods

#13 – 7:29 PM July 19, 2008

The hardware problems aren't the greatest, but the software will improve in time. He didn't even try the ASU, which is the stack FIC is pushing for development now. His analysis of it, though, would probably be about the same, as it is in an alpha stage of development.

I'm really wanting this project to go well, and I want to get one if the software and hardware become practical in the future. I'll probably be looking at a GTA03 by then.

strider_mt2k

#14 – 4:43 AM July 20, 2008

The audio quality was annoying as hell, but I wish them well also.

It's young, they'll work on it.

Anonymous

#15 – 10:55 AM July 20, 2008

Hi, the videos is no longer available please re-upload

Clay

#16 – 10:33 PM July 20, 2008

This all boils down to a single problem:

Good UI designers are hard to come by. Project teams that appreciate the importance of good designers are even harder to come by.

That's the main problem with this phone, it's the main problem with Linux, it's the main problem with the open source movement.

FOSS needs better designers. It needs designers who aren't pretentious, it needs devs who don't think they can do everything themselves; it needs designers who can really understand devs and devs that can really understand designers.

Still, there's hope; precedent, even. I've seen the evolution of the Neuros OSD from a barely-usable piece of pre-alpha hackage that I couldn't believe actually shipped to a pretty decent little set-top box, through several different UIs and a vast tightening of the codebase.

Neuros did it. They got their act together on both the design front and the code front, and over about 18 months went from crap to classiness. We can hope OpenMoko is up to the job.

Anonymous

#17 – 1:51 AM July 21, 2008

What the hell? It's a review for a phone and not once did he discuss using it as one. I'm curious about how it does when making a phone call!

Also, are those smudges on his iphone caused by his penis?

Anonymous

#18 – 6:39 AM July 21, 2008

Well, to be fair other features should be taken into account if you're willing to compare it with the iphone, ie: the iphone 3g has a total cost of $ ~3000 while the total cost of the freerunner is $ ~300, plus it has a true gps and it's free, that is, if you don't like something and wanna change it you're able to do it by yourself, but I bet that all the errors reported will be solved by them or the community soon.
Btw, the issue about the mp3 is because it isn't free and, furthermore, its compression is patented so having it installed by feault will require you to pay for it while if it isn't you can install it aswell although ogg is better than mp3 both in quality and size.

wurp

#19 – 12:24 PM July 21, 2008

My Neo plays mp3s just fine... the UI design is crap, unfortunately. That is the nice thing about it being open.

And the Freerunner is $400. Still cheaper than the original iphone when you consider the contract, but more than $300, and much more when you start considering VAT, etc. for European customers.

Bill Barth

#20 – 4:09 PM July 21, 2008

I had an all OGG music library until I met a girl that convinced me to buy some Cloud Cult albums. They distribute a .zip file of MP3s. So now I have a few. The vast majority of my collection is OGG still, though. This makes for rather amusing (to me) conversations at work when I explain to people why they get white noise when trying to listen to my music in iTunes via the share that Rhythmbox exposes! (Yes, this still reliably happens with any of the OGG codecs for Quicktime I've ever tried.) On the other hand, it makes owning an iPhone annoying since I have to transcode anything I want to put on it from OGG to MP3. It's quite tedious.

Anonymous

#21 – 7:50 AM May 15, 2009

Om2009 release is not going to be just as useless as the first release ever if you ask me. This is not a Phone and they should not have marketed it as such, it is an embedded device with a GSM modem. About as useful as a phone as a GSM modem and a piece of toast.

https://log.logfish.net/node/56