On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 01:05:27PM +0300, Arie Skliarouk wrote: > For a long time I find myself looking for an open smartphone, with > Linux and GPS.
> Initially I had high hopes for OpenMoko's platform, but now I think it > is dying (...) > This makes me look into direction of Android G1. Note that the wiki claims that Android can run on an OpenMoko FreeRunner. I also got interested in the Android G1/G2 line, but as a free/open platform it is severely lacking: - That you can get root access on a G1 is an accident in history, not by design. - The shipped applications have a very closed mindset: upload all your data to Google or suffer. A friend of mine got a G1, and I was evaluating it for my parents to eventually get one. Really, the only thing I wanted to check is that they would be able to import contacts (and hopefully appointments) from their old Treo/PalmOS smartphones, via their desktop computer. Oh, boy, I was in for a surprise. The only way to do that is to get a Google account, UPLOAD YOUR CONTACTS TO YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT and have your G1 synchronise with your Google account. THERE IS NO WAY TO GET CONTACTS IN YOUR G1 SHORT IF SHARING THEM WITH GOOGLE. A company that is known to have trouble "forgetting" stuff you delete from your account. That's *so* not acceptable to me. That's utterly broken design; I don't want to have anything to do with applications written by people that think like that. With some Googling, you can find third-party applications that sort-of patch a beginning of a brittle solution. So it is not a total blocker, but it let me a very bad taste of the platform in my mouth. -- Lionel _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
