2009/6/20 Joerg Lippmann <[email protected]> > > OK, maybe I should explain. > > My mail should not be taken as FUD. I have a freerunner since it came out a > year ago and - being a linux user since 1994 - I was prepared to get > something > rough and unfinished. But I hoped that it would one day be sufficient to > replace > first my phone, then my Palm Tungsten C and maybe my Etrex-GPS. It does > neither > in a satisfactory way.
You're spreading a lot of misinformation. Since you might influence someone's decision about buying the FR, I'll address those points with which I completely disagree (about the rest I could argue). > > I used it for about year now, installed this and that distro and during > that > time I defended all the shortcomings as being a work-in-progress and a > community effort. But all in all I cannot recommend it to anyone as a daily > phone. Here's why: > > - The device wakes up too slowly, I lost some calls. The wake up time is about 2 to 2.5 seconds. Usually small enough for picking up the call quickly. > > - The vibrator is too weak, I missed more calls. > - The volume is way to low, You can really only use it indoors. Depends on a particular mixer setting. I could get one that's good enough for me (found a link on the wiki) > > - The Display is too dark for sunny days, even in the shade. > - I lost many SMS. I eventually receiced most of them after restarting the > device > - The battery lasts only a few hours, again, I lost many calls (this > depends > on the distro. But even with a »good« one, I had cases in which the device > did > not suspend due to something crashing) With most distros you get ~48h of suspend time with the GSM running. Whether the distro you choose crashes a lot or not depends on your luck and ability to chose the right distro and version (release, testing, unstable). But agree that most of them crash occasionally, although I don't see how this influences battery life (just restart the device) > - Sometimes I cannot access the phonebook (Android, SHR) > - Wifi does not work reliably and it takes a long time to connect. > - The device/software is terribly slow. How fast was even the oldest palm > in > comparison! There is a ton of software, and some of it is slow, some of it is fast. The device itself is pretty fast for a phone I would say. > > - the on-screen keyboards are all terrible for finger-typing. I liked the > one > from QTe, but you have to install german wordlists by hand. Also it was > impractical to switch upper/lowercase. Best solution would be to use > landscape > automatically. Then you haven't tried the illume predictive keyboard. It's better for typing sms with your finger than anything else I've seen. Certainly 10x faster than a phone without a touchscreen. > > - Even simple tasks like inserting the number of the caller into the > addressbook is sometimes impossible or very complicated. > (- Many people I called complained about terrible buzz, but I hope to get > the > fix soon) You can buy a buzz-fixed FR. > > - The alarm clock does not work reliably. > - When the battery is completely empty, it takes ages to reload the phone > and > you're not able to turn it on even when plugged in. I think it takes a few hours to reload it. The problem with starting on an empty battery have been fixed in recent devices I think. > > - You cannot sync dates or even contacts, PIM-functions are virtually non- > existent. > > (And I did not mention nice things like video-playback, a good MP3-Player, > voice-notes, a nice email-Interface or a feed-aggregator...) > > Granted, most things depend on the distro you're using. But neither is > really > good: > > OM: 2007: very stripped down, although I liked the simple interface. That distro is 2.5 years old! :-) > > > QTe: Overall quite OK, but no Sync, no working wifi, no usable browser, no > GPRS, no usable GPS-Application > > SHR: good battery life when not crashing. some bad design decisions > (animations are useless on this phone), slow (especially the setup-menus > and > finger-scrolling), ugly phone-function, contacts crash very often, tangogps > is > working, many SMS and calls lost. Keyboard either english-only or only > usable > with a pen. The slowness can be fixed by tweaking some settings in illume gui. Keyboard english-only? Changing the dictionary to another language is as simple as downloading a word list into the FR. > > > Android: Best of the bunch so far. But volume too low, missing keyboard in > stable versions (cupcake one looks better, but is not stable enough at the > moment) Well, you definitely forgot about Om2008 and 2009. > > > Please, developers, don't feel like I want to thrash your work. It's just > not > ready for primetime, yet. I really like the design and the hires screen. It > could make a cool device when it would work... > I will repeat the famous words, "works for me." Just give it some love.
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