[no subject]
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: this is a core part of my point. i stare at this screen every day. i know its dpi. most people imho will never make use of such a dpi as they literally can't see it - they will NEED to use much bigger fonts just to see something other than a blur. thus the resolution usefulness degrades rapidly. the but i can't do 80x24 without vga is moot as it is a blur, unless you go up to a font size where all you can fit is 60 wide or less. I stare at my neo1973, which has the same screen, every day. I also use a Treo 700p daily. The treo has a 320 x 320 pixel screen, which is larger than QVGA. If I run the terminal application which comes with the neo's gtk software stack, switch to landscape orientation, go to full screen and reduce the font size by two zoom levels, I have a terminal application which will show 85 columns with 25 lines, and a perfectly legible font. The difference between the neo's display and my Treo's display (which can display 80 columns with a 4 pixel wide font) IS DRAMATIC. This is not a case of the VGA screen looking a little better. This is not me kidding myself about the quality of my eyesight. There is a dramatic difference between VGA and QVGA. I wish I knew how to take a screenshot off of my Treo. I'd set up a wiki page with the images, and then there would be no more discussion of this, I think. Anyone with decent eyesight would see the difference. If someone can email me with instructions about how to do a screen grab with PalmOS, I'll make a comparison page. maybe it just needs people to actually use it for a while and they might begin to see that a lower res screen may just be fine and not as bad as they think. the things you want to do are possible at lower resolutions. I'd venture to guess that most of the people on this list who have posted an opinion about this have used cell phones with lower resolution screens. I have - I use one every day. Do you really think the consumers who are afflicted with featuritis, who care only about bragging to their friends about how slick there phones are, are hanging around waiting for the Freerunner? Take a look at the iphone which was anounced yesterday. Its hardware is superior, in every aspect (except the screen, but you appear to be working on fixing that) to the Freerunner's. It costs $199 (I know Apple extracts money later via the service contract). Anyone with even the mildest case of featuritis is going to buy something like *that*. The people who are going to buy the Freerunner are persons who want to see cell phones take a different path.And, though this sounds pretentious, I think the people who are reading the OM discussion lists, waiting impatiently to buy a Freerunner, know a lot more about cell phones than the average consumer.If these people are telling you they want VGA, not QVGA, I don't think you should just assume they have no idea what they really want. browsing full web pages scrammed into a 2.8 screen as many have suggested, is really... pushing such a tiny screen far beyond its usefulness. web pages are designed for 14 or 17 screens or so. squeezing them down into 2.8 is nigh madness. it's possible - but vga vs qvga there isn't the factor (imho) :) Why is it that viewing web pages, which are designed for 14 or 17 screens is nigh madness, but viewing videos or movies, which are designed for even larger displays, somehow makes sense to you? Ken Young ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
[I trust this will not initiate a flame war.] Please? iPhone v2 announced today. I'd like to understand on a hardware basis ONLY (I grok the value of free and open source) how does the entry level $199 iPhone with 4GB compare with Freerunner GTA02. where I get lost is how much RAM iPhone has vs Freerunner. I realize I can buy high capacity microSD flash card to match iPhone flash capacity are these assertions correct? Apple has: -- 3G data [much faster than Freeruner's GPRS] -- faster processor -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) -- 2 megapixel camera -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) the two smart phones are aprox equal on -- wi-fi -- accelerometer -- bluetooth Ron K. Jeffries http://www.retaggr.com/Card/RonKJeffries ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:43:22 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: I said this in the channel but you weren't there. We should be going forward with specs, not backward. By the time the next revisions come there'll be a whole new generation of hardware so the freerunner will then be lagging even more. Someone mentioned getting a faster cpu and my 2c are that I think that that's a much better option. But it sounds like you've already made the decision. i'd love a better cpu - better memory bus and much more. right now the only thing we have is gta03 - same cpu as freerunner etc etc. just different gsm subsystem (2g/edge) and no glamo (dumb 2442 fb), new case, added camera. don't get me wrong - i've been running high res as long as i have been able to. i went to 1600x1200 as soon as mu hardware could. i have insisted on laptops with 1600x1200 or higher - 1920x1200 ones too. i use tiny fonts and high dpi screens. i personally love high resolution, but i have noticed a tendency to be the only one in the room who can read it. i'd love an 800x480 300dpi screen - they exist. i was playing with a phone last week with one on it. but practical factors may just not allow it. if you wish to find a reliable supplier for us of such hardware at a good price, then go for it, but practical product concerns may mean it just can't happen. same with cpu speeds and graphics. we are in a world where to get gfx support to run such high resolutions means we need to have closed drivers. and that is not somewhere where we are going. we make compromises. you won't get the best of components in every possible way due to the nature of what is being done here. we try where we can, but somewhere compromises will need to be made. what people have been saying here is that they have excellent eyesight and can see a tin 2.8 vga screen well enough to make use of it. like really see the difference and be able to do things with that res that would be not possible, impractical or painful otherwise. i've fairly amazed at the number of people saying their eyesight is so good as it is in stark contrast to my experience over the years, but ok - i'll take it for what it is. i didn't know how many people really could see the difference AND make use of it. i'm surprised. On Tue, 2008-06-10 at 08:52 +0800, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:43:51 +0200 Peter Kraker [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: not going to happen - that's 2 product runs. expensive to maintain. gta03 is vga right now - unless there is a very big push to qvga. it is possible to go, and not hard at all. it would save costs on hardware, but it won't change at this stage. but beyond gta03 it's an open book and who knows - we may likely pull out a lower res screen. it is in fact very likely something will be a lower res in later products as there is just so much more choice there below vga. How painfull would it be, to sell GTA03 with QVGA and GTA03V version with VGA screen, if those two are indeed very similar ? I'm certain there are enough of us geeks ready to give up some glitter for pixels. Regards Peter Kraker Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) pravi: On Mon, 9 Jun 2008 08:56:22 +0800 Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: On Sun, 8 Jun 2008 18:58:15 +0200 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: we could just not ever even ask you guys and you get what you are given. too bad. no input at all. i've opened up the floor for input - but i'm trying to dig specific things out of it - not things that smell ofi just want higher specs. or keeping up with the joneses. i want real use case scenarios that make real sense. :) This discussion starts to become quite boring. Isn't a single potential customer who says I want it and I am willing to pay for it enough? There have been several here on this list, if I remember correctly who expressed exactly that. no. it is absolutely not enough. why? i am asked by product management to do things that are just not possible in vga (to do sanely/fast). they come first. you users come second. in the end if product management want X they get X. and if for X to happen we go QVGA, then so be it. you guys lose. i need a very very very strong argument against going to qvga - and that means product management need to drop a feature. note - i am talking hypothetically. i don't want to discuss vga as a product management feature - not if you like it or not, or it looks pretty. i am looking for hard cold technical facts. what does it stop being possible i know: 1. u may need to scroll more 2. viewing of images/data that just have more pixel content will need to be zoomed out and have less display fidelity 3. some things requiring text displays like
RE: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
It's 8GB not 4 and it's $199 with a 2yr contract. Regular retail prices have yet to be announced. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ron K. Jeffries Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 10:38 PM To: OpenMoko Subject: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02 [I trust this will not initiate a flame war.] Please? iPhone v2 announced today. I'd like to understand on a hardware basis ONLY (I grok the value of free and open source) how does the entry level $199 iPhone with 4GB compare with Freerunner GTA02. where I get lost is how much RAM iPhone has vs Freerunner. I realize I can buy high capacity microSD flash card to match iPhone flash capacity are these assertions correct? Apple has: -- 3G data [much faster than Freeruner's GPRS] -- faster processor -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) -- 2 megapixel camera -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) the two smart phones are aprox equal on -- wi-fi -- accelerometer -- bluetooth Ron K. Jeffries http://www.retaggr.com/Card/RonKJeffries ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
3G iPhone coverage: http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/wwdc-2008-coverage-roundup-the-iphone-3g-has-landed/ Its a good phone. extended Office functionality is missing though. $199 is just too good a price to beat. Rahul J On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Richard Reichenbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's 8GB not 4 and it's $199 with a 2yr contract. Regular retail prices have yet to be announced. *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Ron K. Jeffries *Sent:* Monday, June 09, 2008 10:38 PM *To:* OpenMoko *Subject:* comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02 [I trust this will not initiate a flame war.] Please? iPhone v2 announced today. I'd like to understand on a hardware basis ONLY (I grok the value of free and open source) how does the entry level $199 iPhone with 4GB compare with Freerunner GTA02. where I get lost is how much RAM iPhone has vs Freerunner. I realize I can buy high capacity microSD flash card to match iPhone flash capacity are these assertions correct? Apple has: -- 3G data [much faster than Freeruner's GPRS] -- faster processor -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) -- 2 megapixel camera -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) the two smart phones are aprox equal on -- wi-fi -- accelerometer -- bluetooth Ron K. Jeffries http://www.retaggr.com/Card/RonKJeffries ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
On Mon, 9 Jun 2008 22:37:33 -0700 Ron K. Jeffries [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: [I trust this will not initiate a flame war.] Please? iPhone v2 announced today. I'd like to understand on a hardware basis ONLY (I grok the value of free and open source) how does the entry level $199 iPhone with 4GB compare with Freerunner GTA02. where I get lost is how much RAM iPhone has vs Freerunner. I realize I can buy high capacity microSD flash card to match iPhone flash capacity are these assertions correct? Apple has: -- 3G data [much faster than Freeruner's GPRS] -- faster processor -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) -- 2 megapixel camera -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) the 3g iphone is significantly better in all tech specs except screen resolution (the screen is bigger on the iphone and i think it is easier to see in sunlight). the freerunner screen is much smaller and much higher dpi. iphone is 320x480 and 3.5 (163dpi), freerunner is 480x640 and 2.8 (285dpi. freerunner only has 256m flash, iphone (3g) has 8 or 16g. both have 128m ram. iphone's memory bus will be much faster though as well as the cpu being faster. freerunner has a usb1.1 connection, iphone is usb2. as you said eblow - they are about equal with the below items, yes. the two smart phones are aprox equal on -- wi-fi -- accelerometer -- bluetooth Ron K. Jeffries http://www.retaggr.com/Card/RonKJeffries -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
Hello, I won't coment on the techical specs, but the pricing is in no way comparable. The iPhone v2 might be 199$, but that's with a 2 year ATT subscription. If you want a real comparison of the real device price, at least double the iPhone price. There was some country where Apple had to sell the original iPhone separately too because of the law (france? gremany?), and then it was priced 799€ or thereabouts iirc. So to compare the actual phone price, I think iPhone is even more expensive. Cheers, Kalle Ron K. Jeffries wrote: [I trust this will not initiate a flame war.] Please? iPhone v2 announced today. I'd like to understand on a hardware basis ONLY (I grok the value of free and open source) how does the entry level $199 iPhone with 4GB compare with Freerunner GTA02. where I get lost is how much RAM iPhone has vs Freerunner. I realize I can buy high capacity microSD flash card to match iPhone flash capacity are these assertions correct? Apple has: -- 3G data [much faster than Freeruner's GPRS] -- faster processor -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) -- 2 megapixel camera -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) the two smart phones are aprox equal on -- wi-fi -- accelerometer -- bluetooth Ron K. Jeffries http://www.retaggr.com/Card/RonKJeffries ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: resolution preferences??
On Tuesday 10 June 2008 02:45:20 Carsten Haitzler wrote: lots of devices out there with the same specs - or much better. 800x480 @3.2 or even 2.8 are out there and selling. on shelves - from major manufacturers. Show me one with GSM and Linux. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Acceleration in our pockets
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Somebody in the thread at some point said: | I have seen it this morning in the planet.openmoko.com, | http://unadventure.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/accelerating-in-my-pocket/ | Andrzej balrog-kun Zaborowski was able to use mplayer with glamo | hardware acceleration Not all is lost to have some decent(not | excelent but barelly usable is enough) video playback, or Rasterman | has bad news again? ;) | | Of course I understand than use sd-card as storage will be not an | option(shared bus issue) but a nfs mounted volume or a streaming mp4 | source can be an option I guess Wah that was really good progress from Andrzej. I wouldn't give up on SD card as storage without trying it: if I understood what goes on then only the MP4 compressed stream is being sent to the Glamo by mplayer... I guess it means 100 - 200KBytes/sec which is way below the point we choke the Glamo memory bus. So we should be able to be pulling 200 - 300KBytes/sec (including audio) at the same from from SD. The wildcard is what the MPEG decoder unit in the Glamo is doing from the inside in terms of hogging the internal memory. - -Andy -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkhONysACgkQOjLpvpq7dMr5LACdHtALIaTWa130R5UiioyDgwdG L48An1xm11HQBSwrvNmhXnbo2FvGWCS6 =VD6u -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
latest stable rootfs and kernel
A request - can anyone identify the latest stable kernel and rootfs (ASU and GTK) for the Freerunner and Neo 1973. I have trying them from 10 june backwards and almost all of them crash after booting or cannot make phone calls. thanks Rakshat ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
It's 8GB not 4 and it's $199 with a 2yr contract. Regular retail prices have yet to be announced. as i understand, 199 is apple's price -- providers may subsidise the iphone, too. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: resolution preferences??
I'm sorry to break into your nice flamewar, but I've just wanted to ask: pro-QVGA people, are you serious? In two years (yep, that's when GTA03 will be released judging by GTA01-02) QVGA will be just like floppy drives on notebooks - totally non completive. And won't be because everybody *really needs* =VGA resolution and can't survive with lower one. It will be just because everybody on the block is hi-res. Same thing happened lots times in IT: remember ATA to SATA switch? Do you really think that home users wouldn't be able to stick with good old ATA? Quard core processors? New sockets? Usb 2.0 1.1 ? You think that we couldn't live without these upgrades? Making fonts bigger via lowering the screen resolution is total nonsense. And hi-res tranflective screens will be available in less than a year. Btw, QVGA won't cost much less (it doesn't now and in two years it could be, in fact, more expensive than VGA). ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
In comparison to other phones on similar subscription plans $199 is quite a steal. That never ending list of specs! I'm no appleguy but I gotta hand it to 3G. Rahul J On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:17 PM, Kalle Happonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I won't coment on the techical specs, but the pricing is in no way comparable. The iPhone v2 might be 199$, but that's with a 2 year ATT subscription. If you want a real comparison of the real device price, at least double the iPhone price. There was some country where Apple had to sell the original iPhone separately too because of the law (france? gremany?), and then it was priced 799€ or thereabouts iirc. So to compare the actual phone price, I think iPhone is even more expensive. Cheers, Kalle Ron K. Jeffries wrote: [I trust this will not initiate a flame war.] Please? iPhone v2 announced today. I'd like to understand on a hardware basis ONLY (I grok the value of free and open source) how does the entry level $199 iPhone with 4GB compare with Freerunner GTA02. where I get lost is how much RAM iPhone has vs Freerunner. I realize I can buy high capacity microSD flash card to match iPhone flash capacity are these assertions correct? Apple has: -- 3G data [much faster than Freeruner's GPRS] -- faster processor -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) -- 2 megapixel camera -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) the two smart phones are aprox equal on -- wi-fi -- accelerometer -- bluetooth Ron K. Jeffries http://www.retaggr.com/Card/RonKJeffries ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
Hi Carsten I suppose you passion to be in favor of qvga has to have an strong reason. You have asked to us why be prefer vga vs qvga and I thing this long long thread can be resumed as because is better (isolating it to resolution question only) I propose you to the answer the reverse question and please be as truefull as you can. You considerer than downgrade the resolution will improve so much the perfomance of the hole system to justify it? if so, as long as this decision is only concern to GTA03 (the camera version of GTA02 to simplify) I will change my mind and advocate for a qvga version, and in the marketing view it well still make sense, one version to professional use with no camera and more res to console/spectrometer/and other remote control funny stuff and other more phone like with camera able to do all the above but not so clean so more for hobbyist than profesionals, of for other needs, mean while booth can coexist and costumer is able to choose it will be more than pretty. But if this decision concern GTA04 and beyond ,or gta03 will replace gta02, I will not agree(LOL, I said it like I have some influence in openmoko decisions) because we must go forward and increase specs (and performance), --- El mar, 10/6/08, Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] escribió: De: Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Asunto: Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!) Para: List for Openmoko community discussion community@lists.openmoko.org CC: Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fecha: martes, 10 junio, 2008 7:43 On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:43:22 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: I said this in the channel but you weren't there. We should be going forward with specs, not backward. By the time the next revisions come there'll be a whole new generation of hardware so the freerunner will then be lagging even more. Someone mentioned getting a faster cpu and my 2c are that I think that that's a much better option. But it sounds like you've already made the decision. i'd love a better cpu - better memory bus and much more. right now the only thing we have is gta03 - same cpu as freerunner etc etc. just different gsm subsystem (2g/edge) and no glamo (dumb 2442 fb), new case, added camera. don't get me wrong - i've been running high res as long as i have been able to. i went to 1600x1200 as soon as mu hardware could. i have insisted on laptops with 1600x1200 or higher - 1920x1200 ones too. i use tiny fonts and high dpi screens. i personally love high resolution, but i have noticed a tendency to be the only one in the room who can read it. i'd love an 800x480 300dpi screen - they exist. i was playing with a phone last week with one on it. but practical factors may just not allow it. if you wish to find a reliable supplier for us of such hardware at a good price, then go for it, but practical product concerns may mean it just can't happen. same with cpu speeds and graphics. we are in a world where to get gfx support to run such high resolutions means we need to have closed drivers. and that is not somewhere where we are going. we make compromises. you won't get the best of components in every possible way due to the nature of what is being done here. we try where we can, but somewhere compromises will need to be made. what people have been saying here is that they have excellent eyesight and can see a tin 2.8 vga screen well enough to make use of it. like really see the difference and be able to do things with that res that would be not possible, impractical or painful otherwise. i've fairly amazed at the number of people saying their eyesight is so good as it is in stark contrast to my experience over the years, but ok - i'll take it for what it is. i didn't know how many people really could see the difference AND make use of it. i'm surprised. On Tue, 2008-06-10 at 08:52 +0800, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:43:51 +0200 Peter Kraker [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: not going to happen - that's 2 product runs. expensive to maintain. gta03 is vga right now - unless there is a very big push to qvga. it is possible to go, and not hard at all. it would save costs on hardware, but it won't change at this stage. but beyond gta03 it's an open book and who knows - we may likely pull out a lower res screen. it is in fact very likely something will be a lower res in later products as there is just so much more choice there below vga. How painfull would it be, to sell GTA03 with QVGA and GTA03V version with VGA screen, if those two are indeed very similar ? I'm certain there are enough of us geeks ready to give up some glitter for pixels. Regards Peter Kraker Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) pravi: On Mon, 9 Jun 2008 08:56:22 +0800 Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
it's not 199$... cause it's a subsidized phone... try to get it without any operator contract... at 199$ ;) 2008/6/10 Rahul Joshi [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 3G iPhone coverage: http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/wwdc-2008-coverage-roundup-the-iphone-3g-has-landed/ Its a good phone. extended Office functionality is missing though. $199 is just too good a price to beat. Rahul J On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Richard Reichenbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's 8GB not 4 and it's $199 with a 2yr contract. Regular retail prices have yet to be announced. *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Ron K. Jeffries *Sent:* Monday, June 09, 2008 10:38 PM *To:* OpenMoko *Subject:* comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02 [I trust this will not initiate a flame war.] Please? iPhone v2 announced today. I'd like to understand on a hardware basis ONLY (I grok the value of free and open source) how does the entry level $199 iPhone with 4GB compare with Freerunner GTA02. where I get lost is how much RAM iPhone has vs Freerunner. I realize I can buy high capacity microSD flash card to match iPhone flash capacity are these assertions correct? Apple has: -- 3G data [much faster than Freeruner's GPRS] -- faster processor -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) -- 2 megapixel camera -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) the two smart phones are aprox equal on -- wi-fi -- accelerometer -- bluetooth Ron K. Jeffries http://www.retaggr.com/Card/RonKJeffries ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Steven Le Roux Jabber-ID : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
0n Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 01:43:08PM +0800, Carsten Haitzler wrote: we are in a world where to get gfx support to run such high resolutions means we need to have closed drivers. and that is not Curious, why is that ? -aW IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
About data wipe: I was thinking -- doesn't eny SIM card have some kind of ID number? And if they do, do we have software way to obtain it? Phone could wipe itself if another SIM card is inserted AND upon SMS message receiving. If you have several SIM cards, than we could create simple SIM card whilelist. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:45:18 +0200, kenneth marken [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 10 June 2008 07:37:33 Ron K. Jeffries wrote: -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) i do belive the iphone is lower dpi as the GTA02 is smaller in size, but higher in rez. -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) that is probably just the heat sensitive screen and some code that basically locks out input ones a heat source with a surface area larger then a couple of fingers are detected... [...] It's just the capacitive touch screen. I'm pretty sure no temperature sensor is involved. As you said ,you just measure the contact area between finger and screen (which is easily possible with capacitive touch screens) - and once the contact area gets larger than let's say 3cm you assume that your ear/cheek is in contact with the screen. Raphael ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
I suppose the cell phone number should be more then unique enough. On 6/10/08, Ilja O. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: About data wipe: I was thinking -- doesn't eny SIM card have some kind of ID number? And if they do, do we have software way to obtain it? Phone could wipe itself if another SIM card is inserted AND upon SMS message receiving. If you have several SIM cards, than we could create simple SIM card whilelist. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Iphone proximity sensor (was: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02)
Or you just use an infrared proximity sensor. I was thinking it might be possible to do the same on the Freerunner with the accelerometers. On 6/10/08, Raphael Wimmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:45:18 +0200, kenneth marken [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 10 June 2008 07:37:33 Ron K. Jeffries wrote: -- larger physical screen size (but about the same dpi?) i do belive the iphone is lower dpi as the GTA02 is smaller in size, but higher in rez. -- proximity sensor (knows when held to face, can dim screen) that is probably just the heat sensitive screen and some code that basically locks out input ones a heat source with a surface area larger then a couple of fingers are detected... [...] It's just the capacitive touch screen. I'm pretty sure no temperature sensor is involved. As you said ,you just measure the contact area between finger and screen (which is easily possible with capacitive touch screens) - and once the contact area gets larger than let's say 3cm you assume that your ear/cheek is in contact with the screen. Raphael ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:10:20 + (GMT) David Samblas Martinez [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Hi Carsten I suppose you passion to be in favor of qvga has to have an strong reason. You have asked to us why be prefer vga vs qvga and I thing this long long thread can be resumed as because is better (isolating it to resolution question only) I propose you to the answer the reverse question and please be as truefull as you can. You considerer than downgrade the resolution will improve so much the perfomance of the hole system to justify it? if so, as long as this decision is only concern to GTA03 (the camera version of GTA02 to simplify) I will change my mind and advocate for a qvga version, and in the marketing view it well still make sense, one version to professional use with no camera and more res to console/spectrometer/and other remote control funny stuff and other more phone like with camera able to do all the above but not so clean so more for hobbyist than profesionals, of for other needs, mean while booth can coexist and costumer is able to choose it will be more than pretty. it is an option for gta03 - if there is enough push to go to it, but it is unlikely. gta04 and beyond is an unwritten book at this stage and i want to know what happens when we go to differing resolutions. at the end of the day many phones still are produced to this very day at qvga resolution. it is not unusual. but i suspect we may need to go to qvga or wqvga at some point out of necessity (eg we make a miniature phone that is 1/2 the size of the freerunner - qvga is very very likely - or even less as vga just wont be available at that size). it all depends on many factors. i am beating the qvga drum because i seriously think that vga - at the physical size we have (2.8) while looking gorgeous for stills and text, for most people is a blurr and overkill in cost and drags down performance. maybe i am focusing on the more average joe who doesn't want an 80x24 terminal - the average person who wants just to make calls, read and write sms's and take some photos... for the most common uses of a phone qvga is more than enough. vga is only necessary for some very specialised uses. other than that it's just bragging rights on my phone has more pixels than yours :) But if this decision concern GTA04 and beyond ,or gta03 will replace gta02, I will not agree(LOL, I said it like I have some influence in openmoko decisions) because we must go forward and increase specs (and performance), --- El mar, 10/6/08, Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] escribió: De: Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Asunto: Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!) Para: List for Openmoko community discussion community@lists.openmoko.org CC: Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fecha: martes, 10 junio, 2008 7:43 On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:43:22 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: I said this in the channel but you weren't there. We should be going forward with specs, not backward. By the time the next revisions come there'll be a whole new generation of hardware so the freerunner will then be lagging even more. Someone mentioned getting a faster cpu and my 2c are that I think that that's a much better option. But it sounds like you've already made the decision. i'd love a better cpu - better memory bus and much more. right now the only thing we have is gta03 - same cpu as freerunner etc etc. just different gsm subsystem (2g/edge) and no glamo (dumb 2442 fb), new case, added camera. don't get me wrong - i've been running high res as long as i have been able to. i went to 1600x1200 as soon as mu hardware could. i have insisted on laptops with 1600x1200 or higher - 1920x1200 ones too. i use tiny fonts and high dpi screens. i personally love high resolution, but i have noticed a tendency to be the only one in the room who can read it. i'd love an 800x480 300dpi screen - they exist. i was playing with a phone last week with one on it. but practical factors may just not allow it. if you wish to find a reliable supplier for us of such hardware at a good price, then go for it, but practical product concerns may mean it just can't happen. same with cpu speeds and graphics. we are in a world where to get gfx support to run such high resolutions means we need to have closed drivers. and that is not somewhere where we are going. we make compromises. you won't get the best of components in every possible way due to the nature of what is being done here. we try where we can, but somewhere compromises will need to be made. what people have been saying here is that they have excellent eyesight and can see a tin 2.8 vga screen well enough to make use of it. like really see the difference and be able to do things with that res that would be not possible, impractical or painful
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
arne anka wrote: It's 8GB not 4 and it's $199 with a 2yr contract. Regular retail prices have yet to be announced. as i understand, 199 is apple's price -- providers may subsidise the iphone, too. No, 199$ is a operator subsidised price. from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/the-cost-of-the-199-iphone-10-more-per-month-for-data/ According to a press release from ATT, the carrier will no longer give a portion of monthly usage fees to Apple. Instead carriers will pay Apple a subsidy for each phone sold, in order to bring the price from $399 down to $199 for the 8 Gigabyte model. later in the same Now Apple will get its money, say $500, up front and it no longer has to police what people do with them. which I guess is a fair estimate. What this means is of course significantly higher monthly fees. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Fwd: Re: latest stable rootfs and kernel
Doh? It fires up but where is this beautiful desktop wallpaper? Ok, maybe I can find it somewhere in the configs. :) Roland signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: latest stable rootfs and kernel
On Tuesday, 10. June 2008, rakshat hooja wrote: A request - can anyone identify the latest stable kernel and rootfs (ASU and GTK) for the Freerunner and Neo 1973. I have trying them from 10 june backwards and almost all of them crash after booting or cannot make phone calls. The latest stable or official images from daily build host are booting here on my qemu. Well, I don't have a real device here and I know there is a big difference between the Neo hardware and qemu. :) So if you mean stable then you maybe refer to the one were you can see black boots? Some days ago I had trouble with this combination, qemu + official images from build host, it doesn't launch the Enlightment desktop so it returns to the console. Even there I was not able to get keyboard focus. :( Here is the call for the qemu program: ( cd build/qemu arm-softmmu/qemu-system-arm \ -M gta01 -m 130 -usb -show-cursor \ -usbdevice keyboard \ -mtdblock openmoko/openmoko-flash.image \ -sd openmoko/openmoko-sd.image \ -kernel openmoko/openmoko-kernel.bin ) Now, it is booting up. So I need to wait if this Englightment problem turns up again. :) Roland thanks Rakshat -- (GNU) PGP ID: 0x4D385570 Weblog: http://blog.mxchange.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Federico Lorenzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suppose the cell phone number should be more then unique enough. Yup. But I don't know if we're able to obtain it (don't see reason to RTFM before obtaining of Freerunner). ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: i'd love a better cpu - better memory bus and much more. right now the only thing we have is gta03 - same cpu as freerunner etc etc. just different gsm subsystem (2g/edge) and no glamo (dumb 2442 fb), new case, added camera. Hi, Maybe this was a typo, but are you saying that the current plan is to ditch the existing GSM subsystem yet replace it with a modem that can't even handle 3G? That sounds crazy! ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: resolution preferences??
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Ilja O. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Btw, QVGA won't cost much less (it doesn't now and in two years it could be, in fact, more expensive than VGA). That has been especially true of flash drives - I remember seeing a 16MB flash drive that cost more then the same 32MB model. Cheers, Federico ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
as i have said before - gta03 is vga - as it stands, but can go to qvga easily, but is unlikely to. in the future who knows. it'd be a tradeoff of screen pixel count vs processor speed vs any graphics acceleration we can get - if any. -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi Carsten, There was a WQVGA screen you once mentioned on the IRC and said you liked a lot for the GTA04 screen. I can't remember the specs right now but do you remember which one it was? Rakshat PS but i am being shown designs wanted that REQUIRE compositing - REQUIRE alpha blending and all that snazz. Can compositing and alpha bending be done at QVGA by the glamo? -- -- Please use Firefox as your web browser. Its protects you from spyware and is also a very feature rich browser. www.firefox.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2008/6/9 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: an 80x24 terminal is possible to make it readable @ qvga - if we allow scrolling. (and possible in landscape with an ultra-tiny 4-pixel wide font - possible (3 pixels for text, 1 for space). not very nice though. That is unusable. I'm sorry, I will not force myself to use that. I will buy something else. Using the terminal on a remote machine with a 4 pixels font is possibile like it is possible to eat cockroaches for lunch everyday. There are some 'can get by' that I will not force myself to get by with. have you done it? have you tried it? i have. it works ok. not beautiful - but definitely functional. No, I haven't. Could you post a screenshot of how it looks? Maybe if I see it I can be convinced, I'm at least that open minded. Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 6:44 AM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:10:20 + (GMT) David Samblas Martinez [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Hi Carsten I suppose you passion to be in favor of qvga has to have an strong reason. You have asked to us why be prefer vga vs qvga and I thing this long long thread can be resumed as because is better (isolating it to resolution question only) I propose you to the answer the reverse question and please be as truefull as you can. You considerer than downgrade the resolution will improve so much the perfomance of the hole system to justify it? if so, as long as this decision is only concern to GTA03 (the camera version of GTA02 to simplify) I will change my mind and advocate for a qvga version, and in the marketing view it well still make sense, one version to professional use with no camera and more res to console/spectrometer/and other remote control funny stuff and other more phone like with camera able to do all the above but not so clean so more for hobbyist than profesionals, of for other needs, mean while booth can coexist and costumer is able to choose it will be more than pretty. it is an option for gta03 - if there is enough push to go to it, but it is unlikely. gta04 and beyond is an unwritten book at this stage and i want to know what happens when we go to differing resolutions. at the end of the day many phones still are produced to this very day at qvga resolution. it is not unusual. but i suspect we may need to go to qvga or wqvga at some point out of necessity (eg we make a miniature phone that is 1/2 the size of the freerunner - qvga is very very likely - or even less as vga just wont be available at that size). it all depends on many factors. i am beating the qvga drum because i seriously think that vga - at the physical size we have (2.8) while looking gorgeous for stills and text, for most people is a blurr and overkill in cost and drags down performance. maybe i am focusing on the more average joe who doesn't want an 80x24 terminal - the average person who wants just to make calls, read and write sms's and take some photos... for the most common uses of a phone qvga is more than enough. vga is only necessary for some very specialised uses. other than that it's just bragging rights on my phone has more pixels than yours :) But if this decision concern GTA04 and beyond ,or gta03 will replace gta02, I will not agree(LOL, I said it like I have some influence in openmoko decisions) because we must go forward and increase specs (and performance), Let's be honest with ourselves. The regular joe's going to buy iPhones (or, *shudder* RAZRs) for quite some time. You can't just walk into Verizon to buy it, the software for the device isn't finished, and it costs twice as much as an iPhone. It's going to be a geek phone for some time. GTA04(5,6?) may be interesting to consumers, but that's a ways off. In the mean time, ignoring the current primary demographic -- geeks -- will kill off the phone before it has a chance to become usable for the demographic you want: consumers. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: nb - your chars just become tall (3x7). eg: % # # # # # S ## # # # ## s ## ## ## ## $ # ## ## # ## ## # @ ## # # ### ### ### # ## # # # # # ### # # ### # # # # o # # # # # # I understand. I would still like to see a screenshot of fstab or xorg.conf open in vim with such a font on qvga screen. I don't mind getting used to some displeasures, however others I avoid if possible. Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: what people have been saying here is that they have excellent eyesight and can see a tin 2.8 vga screen well enough to make use of it. like really see the difference and be able to do things with that res that would be not possible, impractical or painful otherwise. i've fairly amazed at the number of people saying their eyesight is so good as it is in stark contrast to my experience over the years, but ok - i'll take it for what it is. i didn't know how many people really could see the difference AND make use of it. i'm surprised. I personally _don't_ have that great eyesight, yet I find the difference between my VGA x50v and the QGVA x50 so substantial that I would not even consider buying the QVGA machine even if it were the only option. I'm nearsighted, though, and farsighted people may have different experience. Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
eg we make a miniature phone that is 1/2 the size of the freerunner - qvga is very very likely - or even less as vga just wont be available at that size well, less physical size is a very plausible rationale for qvga (or hvga) -- but, as i understand, we are talking about the size of the actual neo, right? maybe i am focusing on the more average joe who doesn't want an 80x24 terminal - the average person who wants just to make calls, read and write sms's and take some photos... for the most common uses of a phone qvga is more than enough. vga is only necessary for some very specialised uses. is that average joe the target group (is this the word?) of openmoko? isn't the target user someone who pushes the limits of things possible? i for one will use the freerunner as some kind of full featured computer in my pocket, being able to do almost everything my laptop does. i am unsure whether openmoko will be able to compete with apple or htc in terms of appealing to average joe -- i think openmokos share of the market are users/organisations/companies looking for an open, easy expandable (software side) phone with no small bounds (as a little screen would be). average joe who will not buy an iphone but looks for something similar will be targeted by htc's armada of devices and even blackberry, which are avalibale through the carriers' shops. how big are the chances om will be available by vodaphone, t-mobile, you name it? other than that it's just bragging rights on my phone has more pixels than yours :) well, i know nobody who does and if i would do bragg i do not know somebody who would listen ;-) what i would bragg about is my phone is open! i could do all programming and more -- no need for iTunes or [carrier/platform dependend strait jacket] -- an people bragging about that .. well, that's surely the people you expect to buy the freerunner? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
On Tuesday 10 June 2008 13:46:59 Justyn Butler wrote: 2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: i'd love a better cpu - better memory bus and much more. right now the only thing we have is gta03 - same cpu as freerunner etc etc. just different gsm subsystem (2g/edge) and no glamo (dumb 2442 fb), new case, added camera. Hi, Maybe this was a typo, but are you saying that the current plan is to ditch the existing GSM subsystem yet replace it with a modem that can't even handle 3G? In fact 2G/Edge is really fast (more like standard ADSL speeds over here in Europe). Also latency is the real pain for Cellurar communication. CU W That sounds crazy! ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Click Feedback?
Hi guys, we have been shipping pulseaudio (which is quite a CPU hog on embedded systems) on our rootfs for quite a while now. The main reason not to use alsa directly was because of mixing, since alsa dmix absolutely does not cut it. However just recently I ponder whether I should remove pulseaudio for the time being. I have been mainly using it to create a click sound (touch feedback), since ring tone et. al playback goes over gstreamer anyways. So... how important is that click sound to you? Would you miss it? Personally, I love it, since the device kind of vibrates (because it's low enough) hence I immediately know that the touch has been recognized, even if the UI takes a bit. However, I know lot of other people hate it. If we were to get rid of it, we could ditch pulseaudio and go directly to alsa. This means no longer being able to mix sounds, but rather stick them into a queue and play them sequentially. Opinions? :M: ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: comment related-to-parent-poster=no Sheesh, what's with all the hate? I swear the open source community should sometimes just be called the hater's club. This page [1] is generally a good overview of the iPhone. Lets be serious for a second, a new feature was advertised, the ability to jump to a contact by typing in the first few letters of the name. My Motorola E398 from 5 years ago could do that. For sure the iPhone is not a terrible product, but there is absolutely nothing revolutionary about it. If any other manufacture had made it, identically, it would probably be a moderate success. In my opinion all the hate is caused by the majority of people in the open source community recognize the fact that the iPhone is no miracle phone, even though it's being treated as such. But I'm just speaking for myself. /napalm flamethrower/offtopic [1] http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone Cheers, Federico ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
Maybe this was a typo, but are you saying that the current plan is to ditch the existing GSM subsystem yet replace it with a modem that can't even handle 3G? That sounds crazy! Think of GTA03 as the with camera variation of Freerunner . GTA04 most prob will have 3G and hopefully other feature upgrades. Rakshat -- -- Please use Firefox as your web browser. Its protects you from spyware and is also a very feature rich browser. www.firefox.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
I do not understand this thurst for specs comparisons, since what's interresting in Apple's product is generally the software. So, how does the Freerunner UI stand in front of the iPhone's ? What about the MobileMe initiative ? Do we have anything like that ? I checked both openmoko and maemo, and Im more and more afraid of how far we are (we = the FOSS people) from Apple and Google. Don't you think ? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
Will this mean I wont be able to hear an SMS arrive in background while I listen to music? Rahul J On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 6:43 PM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi guys, we have been shipping pulseaudio (which is quite a CPU hog on embedded systems) on our rootfs for quite a while now. The main reason not to use alsa directly was because of mixing, since alsa dmix absolutely does not cut it. However just recently I ponder whether I should remove pulseaudio for the time being. I have been mainly using it to create a click sound (touch feedback), since ring tone et. al playback goes over gstreamer anyways. So... how important is that click sound to you? Would you miss it? Personally, I love it, since the device kind of vibrates (because it's low enough) hence I immediately know that the touch has been recognized, even if the UI takes a bit. However, I know lot of other people hate it. If we were to get rid of it, we could ditch pulseaudio and go directly to alsa. This means no longer being able to mix sounds, but rather stick them into a queue and play them sequentially. Opinions? :M: ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Benedikt Schindler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ilja O. schrieb: About data wipe: I was thinking -- doesn't eny SIM card have some kind of ID number? And if they do, do we have software way to obtain it? Phone could wipe itself if another SIM card is inserted AND upon SMS message receiving. If you have several SIM cards, than we could create simple SIM card whilelist. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ... by the way : to what phonenumber will you send a sms when the thief has replaced the sim card? you could also test, if there is the selected SIM card in the phone. and if not, you send the GPS-Data of the phone every 10 minutes per sms to a pre given phonenumber. so you could find your phone. (and you have the phonenumber of the thief :) ) If i think about it, we should just send every 30min. because it would be annoying to recive a sms every 10 min. This have already been discussed. but all these things are just functional if you are the only one who have implimented that feature. That's the bad side of the open source thing. If you put it in the general source tree, everyone knows where he had to put his SIM card numbers, so the phone think everthing is allright. If phone will wipe itself if no authorized SIM is present (and program starts as daemon, of course), than it won't be real security hole. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi guys, we have been shipping pulseaudio (which is quite a CPU hog on embedded systems) on our rootfs for quite a while now. The main reason not to use alsa directly was because of mixing, since alsa dmix absolutely does not cut it. However just recently I ponder whether I should remove pulseaudio for the time being. I have been mainly using it to create a click sound (touch feedback), since ring tone et. al playback goes over gstreamer anyways. So... how important is that click sound to you? Would you miss it? Personally, I love it, since the device kind of vibrates (because it's low enough) hence I immediately know that the touch has been recognized, even if the UI takes a bit. However, I know lot of other people hate it. If we were to get rid of it, we could ditch pulseaudio and go directly to alsa. This means no longer being able to mix sounds, but rather stick them into a queue and play them sequentially. Opinions? Write a light weight sound muxing daemon? :) Wouldn't it be possible to get the device to actually vibrate when you touch something, since it does have a vibrator and all? Cheers, Federico ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Landscape keyboard
Interesting idea. There are some problems I see with it: -The screen is very small so typing with two thumbs and trying to see what you type gets difficult. -When you type with two fingers, you happen to touch the screen with both at once sometimes and with our resistive touchscreen that registers a touch somewhere between the two touchpoints. Probably not that much of a problem, though, because you get used to avoiding this. I think it's something that should be tried, especially for a number pad. For a full sized keyboard, the buttons get too small for thumbs. I think the solution for full text input is one-finger-sliding. (Quickwriting) Ortwin On 6/9/08, Steven Milburn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 1:00 PM, Chris Wright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...The keyboard itself has very minimal needs in terms of resolution, but it steals about a third of the screen in portrait mode, more in landscape -- 640x480 is probably a bare minimum. Chris's comment about the keyboard in landscape mode popped an image into my head. Maybe it's been mentioned already, but I don't recall. The keyboard for landscape mode could be split in two and have half on the right, and half on the left. I think that may make it more suitable for thumb typing and take less area away. Someone will probably ask me to mock it up, but I'm a HW guy, so you really don't want me to try :) --Steve M ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:01:03 +0530 rakshat hooja [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: as i have said before - gta03 is vga - as it stands, but can go to qvga easily, but is unlikely to. in the future who knows. it'd be a tradeoff of screen pixel count vs processor speed vs any graphics acceleration we can get - if any. -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi Carsten, There was a WQVGA screen you once mentioned on the IRC and said you liked a lot for the GTA04 screen. I can't remember the specs right now but do you remember which one it was? 3 480x272. it's thinner than the current vga 2.8 by a fair bit and a tiny bit longer (as it is wide). it seems almost the perfect screen for a smaller/slimmer model like gta04/05 etc. same # of pixels as the PSP screen, but in a much smaller space. Rakshat PS but i am being shown designs wanted that REQUIRE compositing - REQUIRE alpha blending and all that snazz. Can compositing and alpha bending be done at QVGA by the glamo? -- -- Please use Firefox as your web browser. Its protects you from spyware and is also a very feature rich browser. www.firefox.com -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:46:59 +0100 Justyn Butler justynbutler [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: 2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: i'd love a better cpu - better memory bus and much more. right now the only thing we have is gta03 - same cpu as freerunner etc etc. just different gsm subsystem (2g/edge) and no glamo (dumb 2442 fb), new case, added camera. Hi, Maybe this was a typo, but are you saying that the current plan is to ditch the existing GSM subsystem yet replace it with a modem that can't even handle 3G? That sounds crazy! correct. no 3g for gta03. -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
hi Mickey, click sound is normally the first thing I deactivate when I get a new phone that uses this. thanks for asking BTW. have fun k. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Click Feedback?
Won't the constant use of the vibrator decrease our FreeRunners expected lifetime? I don't really need a clicking sound, but the phone should be able to inform us with an audio signal that we are recieving a call/SMS, even when we are listening to music Michael, did you recieve my mail to send a sample FreeRunner to Zagg.com to make a full phone protection? It can be a non-working phone, or one with only the casing and the screen (without components inside). y _ De mooiste afbeeldingen van Angelina Jolie vind je met Live Search http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=angelina%20jolieFORM=MIINTM___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:57:36 +0300 Dotan Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: 2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: nb - your chars just become tall (3x7). eg: % # # # # # S ## # # # ## s ## ## ## ## $ # ## ## # ## ## # @ ## # # ### ### ### # ## # # # # # ### # # ### # # # # o # # # # # # I understand. I would still like to see a screenshot of fstab or xorg.conf open in vim with such a font on qvga screen. I don't mind getting used to some displeasures, however others I avoid if possible. http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/images/fonts/atari-small-samp.gif Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
2008/6/10 Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Not at all. First, 03 is about evolution, so change as few parts as possible. Sorry I didn't make it clearer, but what I find so surprising is that the GSM subsystem IS being changed but the opportunity to upgrade to 3G is not being taken. Raster said just different gsm subsystem (2g/edge). If it were being kept identical to GTA02 to keep changes to a minimum it would not sound crazy. 2nd, there are hardly any UMTS modules available on the component market that would attach to serial and fit size- and powerconsumption wide. 3rd, there are insane advance license fees to pay for 3G products. This makes the decision seem much more reasonable, thank you. Very sad news though. Justyn. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
3 480x272. it's thinner than the current vga 2.8 by a fair bit and a tiny bit longer (as it is wide). it seems almost the perfect screen for a smaller/slimmer model like gta04/05 etc. same # of pixels as the PSP screen, but in a much smaller space. http://www.firefox.com Good enough for me if this gives faster performance :-). Need to check for visibility in light and if that is better that the current VGA I vote for this for the GTA04. Rakshat ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
Opinions? my 2c: i hate those accoustic feedbacks. isn't it possible to use the vibration for that kind of feedback, if somebody likes it? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
On 10 Jun 2008, at 02:17, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: browsing full web pages scrammed into a 2.8 screen as many have suggested, is really... pushing such a tiny screen far beyond its usefulness. web pages are designed for 14 or 17 screens or so. squeezing them down into 2.8 is nigh madness. it's possible - but vga vs qvga there isn't the factor (imho) :) I'm sorry, Carsten, but this just makes me think you're nuts. Um, I mean, eccentric. I mean, I know you know loads more about this sort of thing than I do, but mobile phone web-browsers are absolutely standard these days. I can see your point that the size of mobile phone screens makes for poor viewing, but that doesn't mean we're not going to do it anyway - viewing a webpage when you're out and about is SO tremendously useful (maybe not all the time, but when one needs it) that it's got to be a design consideration. And to say that 4 times the pixels makes no discernible difference in this? Well, c'mon! True, there may be many people who never use the web-browser in their mobile phone, but my Mum just uses the cheapest mobile phone she got for £20 from Tesco. Likewise my ex-girlfriend bought her mobile phone because it was pink, or pretty by whatever other criteria is important this week. People buying Openmoko phones will do so because they want to install applications (if only one or two) on them, and these are the sort of people who will turn to a web-browser when they're stuck for some piece of information and away from home. Stroller. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 4:40 PM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: correct. no 3g for gta03. Could you confirm if there is edge, or just normal GPRS? Cheers, Federico ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:12 PM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:57:36 +0300 Dotan Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: 2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: nb - your chars just become tall (3x7). eg: I understand. I would still like to see a screenshot of fstab or xorg.conf open in vim with such a font on qvga screen. I don't mind getting used to some displeasures, however others I avoid if possible. http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/images/fonts/atari-small-samp.gif That's painful for this reader. I couldn't write or read code - or anything really - in that font for more than a few seconds. IMHO, It'd be kind of ironic that a totally hackable phone wouldn't have the ability to read or write text. FYI, I did lasik corrective surgery so my eyesight is relatively good . Robert ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
So, how does the Freerunner UI stand in front of the iPhone's ? What about the MobileMe initiative ? Do we have anything like that ? I checked both openmoko and maemo, and Im more and more afraid of how far we are (we = the FOSS people) from Apple and Google. why should we compete with apple in this respect? i never understood the hype for 3d desktop thingumabob (compiz/aigle or whatever it is called now), animated icons or that stuff -- it usually only eats cpu and memory w/o offering real benefits, it's just eye candy. while i don't underestimate the importance of those gimmicks in marketing i still like to think the users targetd by the openmoko are above this tinsel, glitz and glass beads ;-) imho the palm os ui has still its merits and while improvable its far better then f ex windows ce -- i had no chance to check iphone's way of navigation, but i am convinced, if there is any good somebody will implement somthing sismilar for us :-) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re:Click Feedback?
Hi guys, we have been shipping pulseaudio (which is quite a CPU hog on embedded systems) on our rootfs for quite a while now. The main reason not to use alsa directly was because of mixing, since alsa dmix absolutely does not cut it. Hi, I saw threads about this on the pulseaudio-discuss mailing-list [1][2]. I don't know if changes mentioned there are available now, we can read on the XO wiki page about pulseaudio [3] (linked in [2]) that: Pulseaudio requires FP for resampling calculations. [...] This has been changed in the 0.9.7 release. Pulse is using the speex resampler by default which allows to configure pulse's resampler to do either float or fixed. The Audio Class Policy thing from [1] seems great too and it might be nice to have something like that available on OpenMoko. Currently I don't have any hardware and I didn't start looking at the code, so I don't have any opinion about dropping pulseaudio or not. Maybe when I will be more involved (with a FreeRunner in my hands, for example), I will really look at it ;). Regards. [1] [pulseaudio-discuss] PulseAudio for Embedded System https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2007-May/000385.html [2] [pulseaudio-discuss] Pulseaudio on the XO https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2007-July/000555.html [3] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pulseaudio -- Damien Thébault Créez votre adresse électronique [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1 Go d'espace de stockage, anti-spam et anti-virus intégrés. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) pisze: [...] maybe it just needs people to actually use it for a while and they might begin to see that a lower res screen may just be fine and not as bad as they think. the things you want to do are possible at lower resolutions. well, as for now I have only 15 minutes experience with QVGA, and I have already get used to my beautiful gta01 screen, so the result of this quick comparison is very easy to predict... I have a question for people who are digital photography enthusiasts (personally I prefer old/traditional/dying photography so I can not tell myself)... The neo screen, has almost 300dpi and AFAIK most photolabs are printing photos in 300dpi. Could it be useful for you guys, for some kind of preview? One can scale the photo to some target size and check some, most interesting parts of this photo on neo screen as it would be almost as good as on resulting print. I think one can see that this part is not sharp enough and this detail is not big enough and so on... Is it realistic use case or am I only in love with this resolution and desperately looking for arguments :) I think most digital cameras have no such good resolutions on their LCDs (but again, Im not up to date) with the exception of course of some very high-end SLR cameras. With some big SD cart, neo could be even used as some lifesaving photobank (I know - usb1.1, but if qvga _can_ be usable with tiny font, the same aplies here ;D )... Piotr ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
On 10 Jun 2008, at 14:08, Benedikt Schindler wrote: Ilja O. schrieb: About data wipe: I was thinking -- doesn't eny SIM card have some kind of ID number? And if they do, do we have software way to obtain it? Phone could wipe itself if another SIM card is inserted AND upon SMS message receiving. ... by the way : to what phonenumber will you send a sms when the thief has replaced the sim card? LOL. This was my first reaction, too, and was just about to post to the list and ask the same question when I realised the answer. The new phonenumber doesn't matter, because it'll wipe the phone when the thief's friend sends them a text message. Having said that, why wait for an incoming text? Why not just have the phone wipe itself when the SIM card changes? You just need to store the original SIM ID in flash memory and check against it at start-up. The software can add an additional function for change SIM card which will allow the user to do so safely (add SIM card is probably better - if it allows the phone to check against a whitelist of multiple SIM cards then users can swap between two tariffs easily, without having to worry about activating this function EVERY time they do so). The erasing of personal data can be done silently without alerting the user (thief), and doesn't need to interfere with an additional feature of phoning home its details in the event of theft http:// www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7565813. Stroller. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
Hi, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer schrieb: we have been shipping pulseaudio (which is quite a CPU hog on embedded systems) on our rootfs for quite a while now. The main reason not to use alsa directly was because of mixing, since alsa dmix absolutely does not cut it. However just recently I ponder whether I should remove pulseaudio for the time [..] If we were to get rid of it, we could ditch pulseaudio and go directly to alsa. This means no longer being able to mix sounds, but rather stick them into a queue and play them sequentially. Opinions? I get the impression that it is not well understood what pulseaudio can provide. PA is not YASS (= yet another sound server) that tries to fix the evil 'no hw mixing available' problem. Instead it provides flexible handling of sound sources at a very low level (lower than gstreamer I mean). Please take a current GNU/Linux distro that ships and configures pulseaudio in a useful way (I only know Fedora 9 and Ubuntu Hardy) and do the following experiment: - start a song in your favorite media player (make sure it plays via PA) - hear the music on the analog speakers that are usually connected to your box - plug in a USB headset - surprise: the music will be played on them, too - unplug the headset - surprise 2: music app does not crash instead music can still be heard through the analog speakers again I have no idea how that would work with bluetooth sound devices but if they appear as an additional ALSA device that is managed by PA it work like with the USB case above. Regarding CPU hogging: Lennart, PA's main developer, recently[0] wrote about rewriting parts of PA to fix it. In short: Especially the power-saving features of glitch-free PA should be enough reason for the embedded Linux people to adopt it quickly. So if anyone on this list has no idea what to do with her/his free time. Go hack on PA. :) Regards Robert [0] - http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pulse-glitch-free.html signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
Hello everyone, I dont pretend to start a flamewar of FreeRunner vs iPhone. Everyone knows their advantages and disadvantages and at least for me the main reason to buy an openmoko is the freedom. But the new iPhone 3G price was announced, and the 8 Gigas version will cost only $199 USD and it automatically makes the OpenMoko phone expensive, because they have similar characteristics... this could discourage many possible buyers, for purely economical reasons. I dont know if the FreeRunner price can be changed at this moment, but now the FreeRunner is less competitive than the iPhone in terms of price. Best wishes _ Stop squinting -- view your photos on your TV. Learn more. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/digitallife/default.mspx?deepLink=photos ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
Ortwin Regel wrote: There has been all this fruitless talk about resolution. Well, what is really limiting the Neo's screen right now is not resolution (obviously), not speed (at least not on the GTA01, no idea how messed up the 02 situation is. I'd guess it's faster most of the time.) but size! If the GTA03 get's a new case design, please consider making the screen twice as big! Then we are finally at a size were two-thumb-typing starts to make sense and even people with bad eye sight can benefit from the high resolution (although I'm not convinced that second point is a positive one... _). The device wouldn't even have to be bigger for this because so much space was wasted in the original Neo design. The only handheld I have owned where the screen could be called big enough was the Tapwave Zodiac (RIP). If you shave off the gaming controls and make it a little thicker, you get a very decent phone. Also, I suggest concentrating more on the horizontal usage. For example, bring the stereo speakers back but add one below and one above the display so that they are left and right in landscape. You can get a pretty good stereo effect at that distance. Ortwin ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community I second this post. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02
cedric cellier wrote: [snip] So, how does the Freerunner UI stand in front of the iPhone's ? What about the MobileMe initiative ? Do we have anything like that ? [snip] The MobileMe initiative was a far bigger announcement yesterday than the 3G iPhone. Once one uses a Treo or similar linked to an Exchange server then one is spoiled by having email/contacts/calendar pushed to/from your phone automatically. People choosing the Freerunner shouldn't have to take a step backwards in this respect. Surely someone can start a push project for the Freerunner so that its native email/contacts/cal apps can interact with the most common mail servers and/or GNU/Linux-based desktop apps. (Or there's a business opportunity here for someone who wants to be the intermediate server in the cloud.) Second, there's been some discussion of Android on the Freerunner. Since Google is making increasingly clear that they will open source all the component parts of Android, what's the reason for not throwing Openmoko's full support behind that project too, and working together with them on a great open UI/platform for mobile devices? Maybe there is a good reason--I don't know--so, I'm really asking: why compete with another open source phone project that has such an enormous amount of support? Brian ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
As long as visual feedback is adequate, I don't see why not. Michael 'Mickey' Lauer pravi: Hi guys, we have been shipping pulseaudio (which is quite a CPU hog on embedded systems) on our rootfs for quite a while now. The main reason not to use alsa directly was because of mixing, since alsa dmix absolutely does not cut it. However just recently I ponder whether I should remove pulseaudio for the time being. I have been mainly using it to create a click sound (touch feedback), since ring tone et. al playback goes over gstreamer anyways. So... how important is that click sound to you? Would you miss it? Personally, I love it, since the device kind of vibrates (because it's low enough) hence I immediately know that the touch has been recognized, even if the UI takes a bit. However, I know lot of other people hate it. If we were to get rid of it, we could ditch pulseaudio and go directly to alsa. This means no longer being able to mix sounds, but rather stick them into a queue and play them sequentially. Opinions? :M: ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
Jorge . wrote: Hello everyone, I dont pretend to start a flamewar of FreeRunner vs iPhone. Everyone knows their advantages and disadvantages and at least for me the main reason to buy an openmoko is the freedom. But the new iPhone 3G price was announced, and the 8 Gigas version will cost only $199 USD and it automatically makes the OpenMoko phone expensive, because they have similar characteristics... this could discourage many possible buyers, for purely economical reasons. I dont know if the FreeRunner price can be changed at this moment, but now the FreeRunner is less competitive than the iPhone in terms of price. Best wishes _ Stop squinting -- view your photos on your TV. Learn more. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/digitallife/default.mspx?deepLink=photos ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community No, it won't make the Moko more expensive. You pay through the nose for it because you HAVETO sign up for a 2 year contract minimum. The iPhone is AT LEAST twice as expensive as the Moko. In other words, if the Moko came with a 2 year contract it would basically be free. Please actually compare apples to apples. - Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
GTA - Two models? Was: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
My suggestion here is that OpenMoko may design another phone - if the market asks for this: - An OpenMoko for younger people who need the gaming controls Ortwin is mentioning as subject for removal. - Another OpenMoko for professionals/business/older people without the gameing controls but bigger screen. Maybe there is one available? Surely the software shipped with this OpenMoko doesn't need include software which requires the gaming controls. Any further ideas? :) Roland On Tuesday, 10. June 2008, Ortwin Regel wrote: There has been all this fruitless talk about resolution. Well, what is really limiting the Neo's screen right now is not resolution (obviously), not speed (at least not on the GTA01, no idea how messed up the 02 situation is. I'd guess it's faster most of the time.) but size! If the GTA03 get's a new case design, please consider making the screen twice as big! Then we are finally at a size were two-thumb-typing starts to make sense and even people with bad eye sight can benefit from the high resolution (although I'm not convinced that second point is a positive one... _). The device wouldn't even have to be bigger for this because so much space was wasted in the original Neo design. The only handheld I have owned where the screen could be called big enough was the Tapwave Zodiac (RIP). If you shave off the gaming controls and make it a little thicker, you get a very decent phone. Also, I suggest concentrating more on the horizontal usage. For example, bring the stereo speakers back but add one below and one above the display so that they are left and right in landscape. You can get a pretty good stereo effect at that distance. Ortwin ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- (GNU) PGP ID: 0x4D385570 Weblog: http://blog.mxchange.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 7:00 PM, Jorge . [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello everyone, I dont pretend to start a flamewar of FreeRunner vs iPhone. Everyone knows their advantages and disadvantages and at least for me the main reason to buy an openmoko is the freedom. But the new iPhone 3G price was announced, and the 8 Gigas version will cost only $199 USD and it automatically makes the OpenMoko phone expensive, because they have similar characteristics... this could discourage many possible buyers, for purely economical reasons. *sigh* The 3G iPhone does not cost $199. It costs $199 when subsidized through a 2 year ATT contract. Thats like saying my Nokia E51 costs nothing, because I got it free with a 2 year contract. Cheers, Federico ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)
I'm with Robert on this one. Took me a while to parse many of the characters on that image. On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, robert lazarski wrote: On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:12 PM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:57:36 +0300 Dotan Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: 2008/6/10 The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: nb - your chars just become tall (3x7). eg: I understand. I would still like to see a screenshot of fstab or xorg.conf open in vim with such a font on qvga screen. I don't mind getting used to some displeasures, however others I avoid if possible. http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/images/fonts/atari-small-samp.gif That's painful for this reader. I couldn't write or read code - or anything really - in that font for more than a few seconds. IMHO, It'd be kind of ironic that a totally hackable phone wouldn't have the ability to read or write text. FYI, I did lasik corrective surgery so my eyesight is relatively good . Robert ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
Ilja O. wrote: Why not just have the phone wipe itself when the SIM card changes? That's what i was proposing from the beginning. But for users like me with multiple valid SIM cards, I think being able to run a script/app on the phone that says this SIM is valid, don't do a wipe would be necessary -- keep a 'catalog' of allowed SIM's. If an unknown SIM is inserted, send an Email to some central location with the phone number of the SIM that IS inserted, so you now have the phone number for which to send the 'wipe' SMS message. Just my $0.02. -id ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Audio in qemu?
Hi, I wonder if audio support is available when I build the qemu with MokoMakefile and make qemu? Sorry for bad english. :) I'm still improving it. ;) BTW: I have added --enable-alsa to the configure script because I have ALSA here. Roland signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
Federico Lorenzi wrote: The 3G iPhone does not cost $199. It costs $199 when subsidized through a 2 year ATT contract. Thats like saying my Nokia E51 costs nothing, because I got it free with a 2 year contract. ... and per my last Email, the lack of subsidies for the Freerunner, where you still need a voice/data contract, actually costs more. But the extra cost is worth the freedom of doing whatever I want with my Freerunner. -id ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
What the hell?! Seems like a lot of people STILL don't get it: The iPhone does NOT cost 199$. It's a marketing lie. The actual price is 199$ + a two year contract. That makes it probably closer to 1000$. The Neo is still very very cheap compared to that, especially considering how few Neo phones are being made at the moment. Ortwin On 6/10/08, Jorge . [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello everyone, I dont pretend to start a flamewar of FreeRunner vs iPhone. Everyone knows their advantages and disadvantages and at least for me the main reason to buy an openmoko is the freedom. But the new iPhone 3G price was announced, and the 8 Gigas version will cost only $199 USD and it automatically makes the OpenMoko phone expensive, because they have similar characteristics... this could discourage many possible buyers, for purely economical reasons. I dont know if the FreeRunner price can be changed at this moment, but now the FreeRunner is less competitive than the iPhone in terms of price. Best wishes _ Stop squinting -- view your photos on your TV. Learn more. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/digitallife/default.mspx?deepLink=photos ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
On 10 Jun 2008, at 14:13, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote: ... we have been shipping pulseaudio (which is quite a CPU hog on embedded systems) on our rootfs for quite a while now. The main reason not to use alsa directly was because of mixing, since alsa dmix absolutely does not cut it. ... If we were to get rid of it, we could ditch pulseaudio and go directly to alsa. This means no longer being able to mix sounds, but rather stick them into a queue and play them sequentially. Hi Mickey, In reading this I'm struck by the last paragraph, and not the click feedback example you give. Someone else has already mentioned SMS notification whilst listening to music, but also my GPS concept is affected. If a driver is approaching an accident blackspot he cannot afford for notification of that to be queued to play after some other application is finished. Stroller. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
There are cheaper contracts if you don't get a phone with them in Germany. No idea what the situation in the US is. (It's probably godawful... :-/) Personally, I use a prepaid SIM card so I pay no monthly fees at all. Much cheaper for me than any contract. So for me the price advantage over an iPhone is very real. Ortwin On 6/10/08, ian douglas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert Taylor wrote: You pay through the nose for it because you HAVETO sign up for a 2 year contract minimum. Granted, the Apple and ATT partnership greatly subsidizes the cost, because of the $960 ($40/mo unlimited data plan for 2 yrs) to $2400 ($100/mo unlimited voice/data for 2 yrs) that you'd spend with ATT also helps cover the hidden cost of the hardware. And while I personally don't care much for the iPhone, you also have to sign up for a voice/data plan to use the Freerunner... You're still paying the $960-$2400 over two years, but there's not offset of cost of the hardware to the consumer. The monthly fees you pay that doesn't pay for the actual use of the cell network is 100% profit to ATT instead of going to Apple to help pay for the hardware. Same with TMobile, and I imagine any other carrier who offsets the price of their phones to lock you into a contract. Just my $0.02. What you're paying the extra money for, for the Freerunner, is the freedom of doing whatever you want with your phone. Sure, the iPhone has their SDK released, but all applications still have to go through Apple to operate on your phone -- I don't know if the SDK even allows you to build an application just for your own iPhone to test it. Also, their mobile OS is closed source -- you have no access to hack or tweak it to do *exactly* what you want it to. You can't change the applications that come with the phone, you can't do a lot of things. Sure, they have lots of eye candy and some solid-looking applications, but once we as a community port applications to the Freerunner hardware to run on OpenMoko, we'll be leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone software. That, to me, is worth the extra purchase price. -id ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA - Two models? Was: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
For the record: I was talking about the gaming controls of my Tapwave Zodiac. I realize that this was probably not all that clear from the context and apologize. I think branching into multiple devices starts making sense with the switch to a new SoC. As it is, it looks like GTA03 is supposed to be the Neo camera edition. I can't think of too much other popular uses that should be realized with the current configuration. Maybe a keypad would be popular (though I personally hate it) but that would either require relatively complex mechanics (and maybe patent issues) or it would be awful... Ortwin On 6/10/08, Roland Häder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My suggestion here is that OpenMoko may design another phone - if the market asks for this: - An OpenMoko for younger people who need the gaming controls Ortwin is mentioning as subject for removal. - Another OpenMoko for professionals/business/older people without the gameing controls but bigger screen. Maybe there is one available? Surely the software shipped with this OpenMoko doesn't need include software which requires the gaming controls. Any further ideas? :) Roland On Tuesday, 10. June 2008, Ortwin Regel wrote: There has been all this fruitless talk about resolution. Well, what is really limiting the Neo's screen right now is not resolution (obviously), not speed (at least not on the GTA01, no idea how messed up the 02 situation is. I'd guess it's faster most of the time.) but size! If the GTA03 get's a new case design, please consider making the screen twice as big! Then we are finally at a size were two-thumb-typing starts to make sense and even people with bad eye sight can benefit from the high resolution (although I'm not convinced that second point is a positive one... _). The device wouldn't even have to be bigger for this because so much space was wasted in the original Neo design. The only handheld I have owned where the screen could be called big enough was the Tapwave Zodiac (RIP). If you shave off the gaming controls and make it a little thicker, you get a very decent phone. Also, I suggest concentrating more on the horizontal usage. For example, bring the stereo speakers back but add one below and one above the display so that they are left and right in landscape. You can get a pretty good stereo effect at that distance. Ortwin ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- (GNU) PGP ID: 0x4D385570 Weblog: http://blog.mxchange.org ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
For bonus marks, have it send gps coordinates charged against the new sim card's account every few minutes and see the look on his face when cops walk up to him :) On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Stroller wrote: On 10 Jun 2008, at 14:08, Benedikt Schindler wrote: Ilja O. schrieb: About data wipe: I was thinking -- doesn't eny SIM card have some kind of ID number? And if they do, do we have software way to obtain it? Phone could wipe itself if another SIM card is inserted AND upon SMS message receiving. ... by the way : to what phonenumber will you send a sms when the thief has replaced the sim card? LOL. This was my first reaction, too, and was just about to post to the list and ask the same question when I realised the answer. The new phonenumber doesn't matter, because it'll wipe the phone when the thief's friend sends them a text message. Having said that, why wait for an incoming text? Why not just have the phone wipe itself when the SIM card changes? You just need to store the original SIM ID in flash memory and check against it at start-up. The software can add an additional function for change SIM card which will allow the user to do so safely (add SIM card is probably better - if it allows the phone to check against a whitelist of multiple SIM cards then users can swap between two tariffs easily, without having to worry about activating this function EVERY time they do so). The erasing of personal data can be done silently without alerting the user (thief), and doesn't need to interfere with an additional feature of phoning home its details in the event of theft http:// www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7565813. Stroller. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions
Stroller wrote: Reading these posts of the last few days it has just occurred to me that it's not Carsten we should be beating up on here. Who the heck asked for translucency and flashy animations? Management seem to be asking for this alpha bleeding rubbish, and it seems to me that we users need to be telling management that we don't care a heck for it. Amen to that! Sure, I know the iPhone does this now, but that doesn't mean Openmoko has to do it. Do we really want Openmoko to be just another iPhone clone? I know we see a fair number of posts on here about the iPhone, but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the mobile phone market? This is especially true because if the GTA03 tries to be an iPhone clone, it will be at best a half-assed iPhone clone. The hardware just isn't competitive with an iPhone's. If the GTA03 has QVGA, will it have fast 3G networking? No. Will it have a state-of-the-art SoC? No. That's not to say the GTA03 will be a bad device. There's a lot of very exciting things you can do with the Freerunner hardware. But it's just stupid to try to imitate the slick, largely useless, graphics goodies found on high-end video feature phones. It is also a little alarming to hear that alpha blending is even being discussed by corporate OM personnel, when you consider the state of the current OM software stack. I don't think OM should target consumers who care about watching videos and having slick graphics at all. They should go after uses of Palm and RIM products, who will be attracted to a rich ecosystem of useful 3rd party applications, and a phone geared towards letting professional people get some work done. There are not nearly so many of those people as there are Apple fanboys, but they are willing to part with serious money to get the best phone for their work and hobbies. Think Differently! -- Ken Young ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions
Well said. Ortwin On 6/10/08, Stroller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9 Jun 2008, at 01:56, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: ... i am asked by product management to do things that are just not possible in vga (to do sanely/fast). ... in the end if product management want X they get X. and if for X to happen we go QVGA, then so be it. you guys lose. i need a very very very strong argument against going to qvga - and that means product management need to drop a feature. On 10 Jun 2008, at 11:55, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: ... graphics is the most intensive thing your device is likely to do in terms of processing. if you want soft drop shadows, alpha blending (and trust me - everyone is drooling for it out there - the iphone is doing it already) the sheer memory bandwidth and cycles needed to do that stuff at a smooth framerate is astounding. sure - if your life is plain with still images/ content and everything is plain solid rectangles, you don't. but i am being shown designs wanted that REQUIRE compositing - REQUIRE alpha blending and all that snazz. this is coming to me and i need a way to accommodate it in the long run ... cpu alone can't do it all - unless you really cut down the workload. that means too bad - no alpha ... On 6 Jun 2008, at 08:45, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: ... if we want to play the my specs are better than your specs game right now, we will lose. ... if all you measure a device on is dpi and pixel count, you are being silly. how it looks matters even more. dpi helps there, but so does compositing, translucency, smooth animation etc. in fact these probably have a much greater buy me effect. by far more. i'll put money on that bet actually (this is just speaking from having done eyecandy for over a decade - on linux, and having seen what it can do to attract people). to make things like compositing fast, smooth and nice, you must lower resolution to do it, or increase graphics power grunt. so given that graphicws grunt is not changing, cpu is not, the only 2 things that can change are screen resolution or the eyecandy has to remain toned down. so does vga buy you more sales for the average joe than a sexy bit of eyecandy at qvga? i'm leaning to qvga + eyecandy myself. Reading these posts of the last few days it has just occurred to me that it's not Carsten we should be beating up on here. Who the heck asked for translucency and flashy animations? Management seem to be asking for this alpha bleeding rubbish, and it seems to me that we users need to be telling management that we don't care a heck for it. Sure, I know the iPhone does this now, but that doesn't mean Openmoko has to do it. Do we really want Openmoko to be just another iPhone clone? I know we see a fair number of posts on here about the iPhone, but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the mobile phone market? DISCLAIMER: I haven't used an iPhone, and I'm not terribly interested in it. I do use a Mac as my main desktop, but that's not for the animation, it's because I want something that just works when I sit down at my computer. All us Mac fans found Expose to be a *massive* UI improvement when it was released, but that's because virtual desktops have always been rubbish on a Mac - with so many windows on a single desktop *some* way of finding the bottom-most one was required. The other day I was talking to a Linux developer who turned off compiz on his desktop because it slowed down his productivity - you simply don't need Expose if you have virtual desktops (which admittedly are not suitable for my granny). It seems to me that, whilst the iPhone's animation may wow people, what really distinguishes the iPhone is the same attention to UI simplicity that Apple have always brought to their products. It does a FEW things amazingly well, and that's where it separates itself from the majority of phones on the market, none of which *quite* suit the mass-market of users. Most users don't want to understand the filesystem on their mobile phone, so Apple do away with it; Apple have made it spectacularly easy (so much so that one must include in the discussion the word intuitive) to email a photo taken on the camera or grabbed from a webpage, but they make it impossible to email attachments under many other circumstances. The majority of users don't want to copy paste text on their mobile phones, so Apple just got rid of it - other manufacturers muddy up the phones they aim at girls and little old ladies (excuse me) by including the ability to copy paste; Apple have realised that only a minority of business-phone users want or need that. The Neo Freerunner have both been smartphones, and that's surely the interest that draws Linux users to this list. We want to be able to shell into our unix servers,
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
You've forgotten about the extra grand and a half in contract charges. (that's just in the US, I hate to think what they'll be like here in Canada). Seems inexpensive to me :) On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Jorge . wrote: Hello everyone, I dont pretend to start a flamewar of FreeRunner vs iPhone. Everyone knows their advantages and disadvantages and at least for me the main reason to buy an openmoko is the freedom. But the new iPhone 3G price was announced, and the 8 Gigas version will cost only $199 USD and it automatically makes the OpenMoko phone expensive, because they have similar characteristics... this could discourage many possible buyers, for purely economical reasons. I dont know if the FreeRunner price can be changed at this moment, but now the FreeRunner is less competitive than the iPhone in terms of price. Best wishes _ Stop squinting -- view your photos on your TV. Learn more. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/digitallife/default.mspx?deepLink=photos ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 2:13 PM, Stroller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9 Jun 2008, at 01:56, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: ... i am asked by product management to do things that are just not possible in vga (to do sanely/fast). ... in the end if product management want X they get X. and if for X to happen we go QVGA, then so be it. you guys lose. i need a very very very strong argument against going to qvga - and that means product management need to drop a feature. On 10 Jun 2008, at 11:55, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: ... graphics is the most intensive thing your device is likely to do in terms of processing. if you want soft drop shadows, alpha blending (and trust me - everyone is drooling for it out there - the iphone is doing it already) the sheer memory bandwidth and cycles needed to do that stuff at a smooth framerate is astounding. sure - if your life is plain with still images/ content and everything is plain solid rectangles, you don't. but i am being shown designs wanted that REQUIRE compositing - REQUIRE alpha blending and all that snazz. this is coming to me and i need a way to accommodate it in the long run ... cpu alone can't do it all - unless you really cut down the workload. that means too bad - no alpha ... On 6 Jun 2008, at 08:45, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: ... if we want to play the my specs are better than your specs game right now, we will lose. ... if all you measure a device on is dpi and pixel count, you are being silly. how it looks matters even more. dpi helps there, but so does compositing, translucency, smooth animation etc. in fact these probably have a much greater buy me effect. by far more. i'll put money on that bet actually (this is just speaking from having done eyecandy for over a decade - on linux, and having seen what it can do to attract people). to make things like compositing fast, smooth and nice, you must lower resolution to do it, or increase graphics power grunt. so given that graphicws grunt is not changing, cpu is not, the only 2 things that can change are screen resolution or the eyecandy has to remain toned down. so does vga buy you more sales for the average joe than a sexy bit of eyecandy at qvga? i'm leaning to qvga + eyecandy myself. Reading these posts of the last few days it has just occurred to me that it's not Carsten we should be beating up on here. Who the heck asked for translucency and flashy animations? Management seem to be asking for this alpha bleeding rubbish, and it seems to me that we users need to be telling management that we don't care a heck for it. Sure, I know the iPhone does this now, but that doesn't mean Openmoko has to do it. Do we really want Openmoko to be just another iPhone clone? I know we see a fair number of posts on here about the iPhone, but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the mobile phone market? DISCLAIMER: I haven't used an iPhone, and I'm not terribly interested in it. I do use a Mac as my main desktop, but that's not for the animation, it's because I want something that just works when I sit down at my computer. All us Mac fans found Expose to be a *massive* UI improvement when it was released, but that's because virtual desktops have always been rubbish on a Mac - with so many windows on a single desktop *some* way of finding the bottom-most one was required. The other day I was talking to a Linux developer who turned off compiz on his desktop because it slowed down his productivity - you simply don't need Expose if you have virtual desktops (which admittedly are not suitable for my granny). It seems to me that, whilst the iPhone's animation may wow people, what really distinguishes the iPhone is the same attention to UI simplicity that Apple have always brought to their products. It does a FEW things amazingly well, and that's where it separates itself from the majority of phones on the market, none of which *quite* suit the mass-market of users. Most users don't want to understand the filesystem on their mobile phone, so Apple do away with it; Apple have made it spectacularly easy (so much so that one must include in the discussion the word intuitive) to email a photo taken on the camera or grabbed from a webpage, but they make it impossible to email attachments under many other circumstances. The majority of users don't want to copy paste text on their mobile phones, so Apple just got rid of it - other manufacturers muddy up the phones they aim at girls and little old ladies (excuse me) by including the ability to copy paste; Apple have realised that only a minority of business-phone users want or need that. The Neo Freerunner have both been smartphones, and that's surely the interest that draws Linux users to this list. We want to be able to shell into our unix servers,
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions
I have used an iPhone, my wife's. The animations are pretty at first. After a while, they're just annoying. My wife gets impatient waiting for windows to get out of the way so she can get on with what she's trying to do. What's really funny is that some times the phone will do all that neat animation, and the window that shows up has no content. You stare at an empty contact list for as much as 3 seconds easily before it suddenly fills up with names. My wife may be an exception to the rule here. She sometimes does data entry at work and has the dialogs of her application memorized so she can type in the fields much faster than the application can keep up. When the keyboard beeps, she'll sit back and take a sip of her beverage while the application is popping dialogs up all over the place filling in what she typed. It's fun to watch. (FWIW: the application is running over a slow network via citrix, so it would take a lot to speed things up. She's stopped asking) With the touch screen UI, she can't use this approach. She has to wait. --Steve On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 2:13 PM, Stroller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Reading these posts of the last few days it has just occurred to me that it's not Carsten we should be beating up on here. Who the heck asked for translucency and flashy animations? Management seem to be asking for this alpha bleeding rubbish, and it seems to me that we users need to be telling management that we don't care a heck for it. Sure, I know the iPhone does this now, but that doesn't mean Openmoko has to do it. Do we really want Openmoko to be just another iPhone clone? I know we see a fair number of posts on here about the iPhone, but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the mobile phone market? DISCLAIMER: I haven't used an iPhone, and I'm not terribly interested in it. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
*sigh* The 3G iPhone does not cost $199. It costs $199 when subsidized through a 2 year ATT contract. Thats like saying my Nokia E51 costs nothing, because I got it free with a 2 year contract. Just look Ebay, amazon, etc... you can buy unlocked iPhones for almost the price they have with ATT, in fact there is no ATT in my country, an i could buy one on many shops in the downtown (dont misunderstand me, i want the FreeRunner!!). I am sure it will happen again with the iPhone 3G _ Get your fix of news, sports, entertainment and more on MSN Mobile http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
Ortwin Regel wrote: There are cheaper contracts if you don't get a phone with them in Germany. No idea what the situation in the US is. (It's probably godawful... :-/) Personally, I use a prepaid SIM card so I pay no monthly fees at all. Much cheaper for me than any contract. So for me the price advantage over an iPhone is very real. Ortwin Same here. The iPhone is godawful expensive no matter how you slice it. Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA - Two models? Was: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
Roland Häder wrote: My suggestion here is that OpenMoko may design another phone - if the market asks for this: - An OpenMoko for younger people who need the gaming controls Ortwin is mentioning as subject for removal. - Another OpenMoko for professionals/business/older people without the gameing controls but bigger screen. Maybe there is one available? Surely the software shipped with this OpenMoko doesn't need include software which requires the gaming controls. Any further ideas? :) Roland Yes. I propose a modular approach. 1 phone many external similar to this idea: http://www.icontrolpad.com/ Additionally, there is a certain cool factor to having a single unit but many docking stations if done right, for example: Quick preview: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3871478989.html Their overbearing website: http://www.buglabs.net/products Buglabs is doing something really cool, but you gotta code in java and it doesn't fit into a pocket (well it does fit in a really big pocket). It's pretty clear Mokos core group of users are very demanding, and something like that would allow for everyone to be happy. However, why I really think this could be a really great approach for the moko is the 'Hey Cool!' factor. Can you picture the conversation when you meet up with a buddy hey whats that on your moko? oh it's my new gamepod. COL! can i try it on my moko? sure ... *CLICK* ... here you go. COOL! It also reduces the dev costs for moko, it allows it to remain a smartphone and not move from that niche, reduces the number of formats that people will be demanding the moko be made in and will start to establish a hardware addon ecosystem beyond what is already being developed. What the moko manufacturers then can pull is a NIKE. Instead of relying purely on sales of the moko, they can turn them selves into an RD and marketing company and not only produce their own hardware if they want to, but also licence officially supported modules and addons to control quality and get a cut of each sale. Also when usb3 comes along you can offload all sorts of stuff to that, such as gfx co-porcessing if you want so all of a sudden you can get ati into the picture with their completely documented processors and really start something interesting. Just some brianstorming ... Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
Yeh it is all relative to your country and usage pattern. In the UK you can get a prepaid SIM with data capped at £1 per day. I don't need a contract (I don't make many calls/sms) so the cost of the Freerunner is a lot more attractive to me! Especially at it seems Apple will now make you activate the phone on purchase eliminating cracking and sticking in your prepaid SIM which is what many did with the current model. John. 2008/6/10 Ortwin Regel [EMAIL PROTECTED]: There are cheaper contracts if you don't get a phone with them in Germany. No idea what the situation in the US is. (It's probably godawful... :-/) Personally, I use a prepaid SIM card so I pay no monthly fees at all. Much cheaper for me than any contract. So for me the price advantage over an iPhone is very real. Ortwin On 6/10/08, ian douglas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert Taylor wrote: You pay through the nose for it because you HAVETO sign up for a 2 year contract minimum. Granted, the Apple and ATT partnership greatly subsidizes the cost, because of the $960 ($40/mo unlimited data plan for 2 yrs) to $2400 ($100/mo unlimited voice/data for 2 yrs) that you'd spend with ATT also helps cover the hidden cost of the hardware. And while I personally don't care much for the iPhone, you also have to sign up for a voice/data plan to use the Freerunner... You're still paying the $960-$2400 over two years, but there's not offset of cost of the hardware to the consumer. The monthly fees you pay that doesn't pay for the actual use of the cell network is 100% profit to ATT instead of going to Apple to help pay for the hardware. Same with TMobile, and I imagine any other carrier who offsets the price of their phones to lock you into a contract. Just my $0.02. What you're paying the extra money for, for the Freerunner, is the freedom of doing whatever you want with your phone. Sure, the iPhone has their SDK released, but all applications still have to go through Apple to operate on your phone -- I don't know if the SDK even allows you to build an application just for your own iPhone to test it. Also, their mobile OS is closed source -- you have no access to hack or tweak it to do *exactly* what you want it to. You can't change the applications that come with the phone, you can't do a lot of things. Sure, they have lots of eye candy and some solid-looking applications, but once we as a community port applications to the Freerunner hardware to run on OpenMoko, we'll be leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone software. That, to me, is worth the extra purchase price. -id ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Ortwin Regel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are cheaper contracts if you don't get a phone with them in Germany. No idea what the situation in the US is. (It's probably godawful... :-/) Personally, I use a prepaid SIM card so I pay no monthly fees at all. Much cheaper for me than any contract. So for me the price advantage over an iPhone is very real. Good for you. It's not the case for others. I'm going to have a cell phone for the next 2 years, and prepaid plans cost me plenty when I add in things like text messaging and data. Atop of that, my family has 10,000 rollover minutes just sitting there. For me, it'd be $40/month to jump on that plan, and $200 for the phone. The monthly fee is fairly constant, no matter where I go (and probably higher outside of ATT than in), and the 2 year contract is irrelevant (I'll be using a phone for the next 2 yrs, and in the US a contract is pretty standard), so it really does just come down to $200 vs whatever another phone costs. Sheesh. We get it, we just don't care. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
interface for people with very poor eyesight?
I'm investigating a phone for a person whos recently lost most of his eyesight and thinking about the freerunner. Does anyone have experience with phones for nearly blind people? I'm considering the freerunner rather than a simple phone with very large buttons for the following reasons: - it can say whos calling - gestures to accept/reject calls - ebooks/radio can be streamed over wifi and gesture controlled etc... Of course the display would be nearly useless, except for the touch area, so if its possible to buy freerunners with dead pixels cheaply, I'm interested. -- Joakim Verona ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions
Ortwin Regel wrote: Reading these posts of the last few days it has just occurred to me that it's not Carsten we should be beating up on here. Who the heck asked for translucency and flashy animations? Management seem to be asking for this alpha bleeding rubbish, and it seems to me that we users need to be telling management that we don't care a heck for it. Sure, I know the iPhone does this now, but that doesn't mean Openmoko has to do it. Do we really want Openmoko to be just another iPhone clone? I know we see a fair number of posts on here about the iPhone, but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the mobile phone market? DISCLAIMER: I haven't used an iPhone, and I'm not terribly interested in it. I do use a Mac as my main desktop, but that's not for the animation, it's because I want something that just works when I sit down at my computer. All us Mac fans found Expose to be a *massive* UI improvement when it was released, but that's because virtual desktops have always been rubbish on a Mac - with so many windows on a single desktop *some* way of finding the bottom-most one was required. The other day I was talking to a Linux developer who turned off compiz on his desktop because it slowed down his productivity - you simply don't need Expose if you have virtual desktops (which admittedly are not suitable for my granny). It seems to me that, whilst the iPhone's animation may wow people, what really distinguishes the iPhone is the same attention to UI simplicity that Apple have always brought to their products. It does a FEW things amazingly well, and that's where it separates itself from the majority of phones on the market, none of which *quite* suit the mass-market of users. Most users don't want to understand the filesystem on their mobile phone, so Apple do away with it; Apple have made it spectacularly easy (so much so that one must include in the discussion the word intuitive) to email a photo taken on the camera or grabbed from a webpage, but they make it impossible to email attachments under many other circumstances. The majority of users don't want to copy paste text on their mobile phones, so Apple just got rid of it - other manufacturers muddy up the phones they aim at girls and little old ladies (excuse me) by including the ability to copy paste; Apple have realised that only a minority of business-phone users want or need that. The Neo Freerunner have both been smartphones, and that's surely the interest that draws Linux users to this list. We want to be able to shell into our unix servers, read PDFs and so on. The idea of an open phone fires our imagination because we can integrate our contacts from our LDAP servers and our diary with an iCal server, we can do whatever the heck we want with Openmoko - we want to ADD features, not remove them. In the context of that, does animation and transparency matter? Heck no! We want a phone that displays text icons on the screen, and as long as the phone does that quick enough, we don't want you wasting resources on trying to make the experience more flashy. There has been mention in these threads about the screen requirements of smaller phones. I can only conclude from this that FIC are planning to leverage their experience in building smartphone hardware in order to break into to the larger market of small girlie and soccer mom phones. Fine, but please don't do this at the expense of your smartphone market. Honestly, I don't see how you can do this well, without castrating your power-phone offerings. Parts of this conversation have focussed on making a use case for VGA screens, but please, FIC management, make a use case for transparency and flashy animations before having Carsten work on it. Whilst I was writing an Apple spam arrived here, promoting today's new iPhone announcement - I clicked on the link to iSteve's presentation. The enterprise take-up from Fortune 500 companies was surely impressive, but this leverage is because of Exchange- compatibility and all the features that OS X gives to the iPhone for free, not the flashy animations. This is where Openmoko can compete. I could write a lot, LOT more here, Stroller. I second this. Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions
Ken Young wrote: This is especially true because if the GTA03 tries to be an iPhone clone, it will be at best a half-assed iPhone clone. The hardware just isn't competitive with an iPhone's. If the GTA03 has QVGA, will it have fast 3G networking? No. Will it have a state-of-the-art SoC? No. That's not to say the GTA03 will be a bad device. There's a lot of very exciting things you can do with the Freerunner hardware. But it's just stupid to try to imitate the slick, largely useless, graphics goodies found on high-end video feature phones. It is also a little alarming to hear that alpha blending is even being discussed by corporate OM personnel, when you consider the state of the current OM software stack. I don't think OM should target consumers who care about watching videos and having slick graphics at all. They should go after uses of Palm and RIM products, who will be attracted to a rich ecosystem of useful 3rd party applications, and a phone geared towards letting professional people get some work done. There are not nearly so many of those people as there are Apple fanboys, but they are willing to part with serious money to get the best phone for their work and hobbies. Think Differently! -- Ken Young I second this as well. I posted an email with some ideas / brainstorming about how we can take the phone idea and extend it with some lateral thinking. There is A LOT of room to innovate and set the moko appart from the competition. I think what the project needs to do is OUT THINK the competition, not COPY the competition. Look, Microsoft cannot compete with the Apple brand ... why try and fail at this? Let's not follow behind iSteve (tm) and beast in Redmond. I think we can take this mobile device thing and take it in a totally different direction and really set it apart. Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Click Feedback?
This means no longer being able to mix sounds, but rather stick them into a queue and play them sequentially. Someone else has already mentioned SMS notification whilst listening to music, but also my GPS concept is affected. If a driver is approaching an accident blackspot he cannot afford for notification of that to be queued to play after some other application is finished. I think the current app that is using alsa would be stopped then the notifcation sound will play, they just mean (IMHO) that no two sounds can play at the same time. +1 for not having feeedback click if it can streamline the software, Mickey ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: regarding the 'data security' thread recently
Having said that, why wait for an incoming text?
Why not just have the phone wipe itself when the SIM card changes?
Not by default!! People that travel between North America and Europe
often maintain two (or more!!) SIMs to take advantage of cheaper calling
in different {countries,continents} by having a local number.
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Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
Andy Powell wrote: At some point we're going to start explaining to the folks at OM that we can't actually afford to buy every model they produce to help fund this evolution... I really don't want to have a collection of interesting but ultimately useless devices - Let's face it the gta01 has issues the gta02 has issues, perhaps it *is* time for a revolution... Let's face it, the iPhone has issues, Nokias have issues, Samsung has issues ... blah blah blah. Do you live on planet earth or some magical fairy land where you snap your fingers and you get everything instantly? It sure sounds like you aren't interested in the openness of the moko but more of a consumer device ... yes / no? I'm with you on the multitude of devices but sometimes you haveto try. I think there may be far more creative ways to do this, say have one phone with multiple addons so everyone is happy, but this too requires one to try. Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
Jorge . wrote: Just look Ebay, amazon, etc... you can buy unlocked iPhones for almost the price they have with ATT, in fact there is no ATT in my country, an i could buy one on many shops in the downtown (dont misunderstand me, i want the FreeRunner!!). I am sure it will happen again with the iPhone 3G _ And this will surely happen with the Moko too. So what's your point? Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Jorge . [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *sigh* The 3G iPhone does not cost $199. It costs $199 when subsidized through a 2 year ATT contract. Thats like saying my Nokia E51 costs nothing, because I got it free with a 2 year contract. Just look Ebay, amazon, etc... you can buy unlocked iPhones for almost the price they have with ATT, in fact there is no ATT in my country, an i could buy one on many shops in the downtown (dont misunderstand me, i want the FreeRunner!!). I am sure it will happen again with the iPhone 3G No, it won't. When you buy a 3G iPhone, you will actually have to take out a contract there and then at the Apple store. It's not like how it was before when anyone could buy it, and just bypass activation. They will not sell you an iPhone unless you take out a contract. Cheers, Federico ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
I think what Ian is trying to say is that contract or not, you still have to pay for your phone service and data service. So if you spend US$50/mo on a data plan, it does come out to be more expensive with the FreeRunner if and *only if* you plan to use the phone for two years. if you plan on ditching it in a year, then the FreeRunner is much cheaper (you have that contract buy out fee). Thankfully, I have a pay as go SIM card that allows me to use GPRS. I pay about 10 Euros (US$15) a month with my current total usage (voice and data). Somehow I see that going way up when I get the FreeRunner just with the data I'll be using. I pay roughly 4 Euro Cents per 10kb. In this case, the iPhone is way more expensive than an iPhone. On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You've forgotten about the extra grand and a half in contract charges. (that's just in the US, I hate to think what they'll be like here in Canada). Seems inexpensive to me :) On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Jorge . wrote: Hello everyone, I dont pretend to start a flamewar of FreeRunner vs iPhone. Everyone knows their advantages and disadvantages and at least for me the main reason to buy an openmoko is the freedom. But the new iPhone 3G price was announced, and the 8 Gigas version will cost only $199 USD and it automatically makes the OpenMoko phone expensive, because they have similar characteristics... this could discourage many possible buyers, for purely economical reasons. I dont know if the FreeRunner price can be changed at this moment, but now the FreeRunner is less competitive than the iPhone in terms of price. Best wishes _ Stop squinting -- view your photos on your TV. Learn more. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/digitallife/default.mspx?deepLink=photos ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 3:12 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In fact 2G/Edge is really fast (more like standard ADSL speeds over here in Europe). You're kidding, right? EDGE maxes out at about 470 kbps - if you get a full channel (8 timeslots) for yourself. In most GSM networks one of the timeslots is reserved for signalling (BCCH) so 7 staying (~420 kbps). Even this is only true if you get coding scheme 9. But then you'd have to have a device that supports EDGE at this rates. Most devices only support up to ~250 kbps (mostly less). Under real life conditions you'll get about 120 to 200 kbps as best rates. In germany DSL starts at 384 kbps if the landline is very long. The slowest available option normally is 1000 kbps. The average should be between 3000 and 6000 kbps. 16000 kbps are available in most areas. Max is at 25000 or 5 in some cities. There are other countries like sweden where much higher rates are common. Also latency is the real pain for Cellurar communication. CU W That sounds crazy! ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No 3G for GTA03, 2G/EDGE only?
Robert Taylor wrote: Do you live on planet earth or some magical fairy land where you snap your fingers and you get everything instantly? It sure sounds like you aren't interested in the openness of the moko but more of a consumer device ... yes / no? I'm with you on the multitude of devices but sometimes you haveto try. I think there may be far more creative ways to do this, say have one phone with multiple addons so everyone is happy, but this too requires one to try. Rob A quick apology for this post. I don't normally flame - I was thinking it but I didn't self edit. Sorry about that. It's just that the moko is such a wonderful opportunity for everyone, it bugs me that we are looking for reasons not to make it a success (granted negatives are as important to understand as the positives). I think there is room for comparing the moko to whatever is on the marketplace, but only marginally. What we haveto do is OUT THINK the markeplace NOT keep up with the Joneses. - Robert ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
On 6/10/08, Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ortwin Regel wrote: There has been all this fruitless talk about resolution. Well, what is really limiting the Neo's screen right now is not resolution (obviously), not speed (at least not on the GTA01, no idea how messed up the 02 situation is. I'd guess it's faster most of the time.) but size! If the GTA03 get's a new case design, please consider making the screen twice as big! Then we are finally at a size were two-thumb-typing starts to make sense and even people with bad eye sight can benefit from the high resolution (although I'm not convinced that second point is a positive one... _). The device wouldn't even have to be bigger for this because so much space was wasted in the original Neo design. The only handheld I have owned where the screen could be called big enough was the Tapwave Zodiac (RIP). If you shave off the gaming controls and make it a little thicker, you get a very decent phone. Also, I suggest concentrating more on the horizontal usage. For example, bring the stereo speakers back but add one below and one above the display so that they are left and right in landscape. You can get a pretty good stereo effect at that distance. And I want it half the size:) A tiny, nice phone with QVGA, not a notebook. If you want the double size, why not just buy an eeepc? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price
Granted, the Apple and ATT partnership greatly subsidizes the cost, because of the $960 ($40/mo unlimited data plan for 2 yrs) to $2400 ($100/mo unlimited voice/data for 2 yrs) that you'd spend with ATT also helps cover the hidden cost of the hardware. No doubt, but you can buy unlocked iPhones on many places, including internet and they dont cost $960 What you're paying the extra money for, for the Freerunner, is the freedom of doing whatever you want with your phone. Sure, the iPhone has their SDK released, but all applications still have to go through Apple to operate on your phone -- I don't know if the SDK even allows you to build an application just for your own iPhone to test it. Also, their mobile OS is closed source -- you have no access to hack or tweak it to do *exactly* what you want it to. You can't change the applications that come with the phone, you can't do a lot of things. Of course, thats why I want a FreeRunner!! but in the next months surely you can buy an unlocked iPhone 3G on ebay or the chinatown for $200 USD, and it affects the sales of FreeRunner, remember that GT02 is designed for mass production, not only for geeks like us who love free software _ Stop squinting -- view your photos on your TV. Learn more. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/digitallife/default.mspx?deepLink=photos ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA - Two models? Was: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
Ah, thanks for making it clear. :) On Tuesday, 10. June 2008, Ortwin Regel wrote: For the record: I was talking about the gaming controls of my Tapwave Zodiac. I realize that this was probably not all that clear from the context and apologize. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA - Two models? Was: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
I wonder: Might it be useful/possible to add a connector for Bug modules to a future Openmoko phone? On 6/10/08, Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Roland Häder wrote: My suggestion here is that OpenMoko may design another phone - if the market asks for this: - An OpenMoko for younger people who need the gaming controls Ortwin is mentioning as subject for removal. - Another OpenMoko for professionals/business/older people without the gameing controls but bigger screen. Maybe there is one available? Surely the software shipped with this OpenMoko doesn't need include software which requires the gaming controls. Any further ideas? :) Roland Yes. I propose a modular approach. 1 phone many external similar to this idea: http://www.icontrolpad.com/ Additionally, there is a certain cool factor to having a single unit but many docking stations if done right, for example: Quick preview: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3871478989.html Their overbearing website: http://www.buglabs.net/products Buglabs is doing something really cool, but you gotta code in java and it doesn't fit into a pocket (well it does fit in a really big pocket). It's pretty clear Mokos core group of users are very demanding, and something like that would allow for everyone to be happy. However, why I really think this could be a really great approach for the moko is the 'Hey Cool!' factor. Can you picture the conversation when you meet up with a buddy hey whats that on your moko? oh it's my new gamepod. COL! can i try it on my moko? sure ... *CLICK* ... here you go. COOL! It also reduces the dev costs for moko, it allows it to remain a smartphone and not move from that niche, reduces the number of formats that people will be demanding the moko be made in and will start to establish a hardware addon ecosystem beyond what is already being developed. What the moko manufacturers then can pull is a NIKE. Instead of relying purely on sales of the moko, they can turn them selves into an RD and marketing company and not only produce their own hardware if they want to, but also licence officially supported modules and addons to control quality and get a cut of each sale. Also when usb3 comes along you can offload all sorts of stuff to that, such as gfx co-porcessing if you want so all of a sudden you can get ati into the picture with their completely documented processors and really start something interesting. Just some brianstorming ... Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions
I third this (if that is even how you say it...) - Original Message From: Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: List for Openmoko community discussion community@lists.openmoko.org Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 10:49:21 PM Subject: Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features assumptions Ortwin Regel wrote: Reading these posts of the last few days it has just occurred to me that it's not Carsten we should be beating up on here. Who the heck asked for translucency and flashy animations? Management seem to be asking for this alpha bleeding rubbish, and it seems to me that we users need to be telling management that we don't care a heck for it. Sure, I know the iPhone does this now, but that doesn't mean Openmoko has to do it. Do we really want Openmoko to be just another iPhone clone? I know we see a fair number of posts on here about the iPhone, but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the mobile phone market? DISCLAIMER: I haven't used an iPhone, and I'm not terribly interested in it. I do use a Mac as my main desktop, but that's not for the animation, it's because I want something that just works when I sit down at my computer. All us Mac fans found Expose to be a *massive* UI improvement when it was released, but that's because virtual desktops have always been rubbish on a Mac - with so many windows on a single desktop *some* way of finding the bottom-most one was required. The other day I was talking to a Linux developer who turned off compiz on his desktop because it slowed down his productivity - you simply don't need Expose if you have virtual desktops (which admittedly are not suitable for my granny). It seems to me that, whilst the iPhone's animation may wow people, what really distinguishes the iPhone is the same attention to UI simplicity that Apple have always brought to their products. It does a FEW things amazingly well, and that's where it separates itself from the majority of phones on the market, none of which *quite* suit the mass-market of users. Most users don't want to understand the filesystem on their mobile phone, so Apple do away with it; Apple have made it spectacularly easy (so much so that one must include in the discussion the word intuitive) to email a photo taken on the camera or grabbed from a webpage, but they make it impossible to email attachments under many other circumstances. The majority of users don't want to copy paste text on their mobile phones, so Apple just got rid of it - other manufacturers muddy up the phones they aim at girls and little old ladies (excuse me) by including the ability to copy paste; Apple have realised that only a minority of business-phone users want or need that. The Neo Freerunner have both been smartphones, and that's surely the interest that draws Linux users to this list. We want to be able to shell into our unix servers, read PDFs and so on. The idea of an open phone fires our imagination because we can integrate our contacts from our LDAP servers and our diary with an iCal server, we can do whatever the heck we want with Openmoko - we want to ADD features, not remove them. In the context of that, does animation and transparency matter? Heck no! We want a phone that displays text icons on the screen, and as long as the phone does that quick enough, we don't want you wasting resources on trying to make the experience more flashy. There has been mention in these threads about the screen requirements of smaller phones. I can only conclude from this that FIC are planning to leverage their experience in building smartphone hardware in order to break into to the larger market of small girlie and soccer mom phones. Fine, but please don't do this at the expense of your smartphone market. Honestly, I don't see how you can do this well, without castrating your power-phone offerings. Parts of this conversation have focussed on making a use case for VGA screens, but please, FIC management, make a use case for transparency and flashy animations before having Carsten work on it. Whilst I was writing an Apple spam arrived here, promoting today's new iPhone announcement - I clicked on the link to iSteve's presentation. The enterprise take-up from Fortune 500 companies was surely impressive, but this leverage is because of Exchange- compatibility and all the features that OS X gives to the iPhone for free, not the flashy animations. This is where Openmoko can compete. I could write a lot, LOT more here, Stroller. I second this. Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org
