On 14:30:19 2008-08-10 Stroller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi there, > > I visited one of my customers yesterday - he has just got an > "upgrade" to a Nokia N95 and wanted it set up to transfer his photos > to his laptop. > > Many aspects of using the phone reminded me why I hate mobile phones. > Once a mail account has been added there is no way to change its > name - I initially spelled "aol email" in small letters, so in order > to make its title neat on the phone's homescreen ("AOL Email") I had > to delete the account completely and recreate it. I bought the > Freerunner so that I can fix stuff like this by editing a text file. > The N95 fails to create a mail account half the time you enter the > details, falling silently back to the mailboxes screen without an > entry for the new account you just tried to setup. > > Orange, my customer's mobile phone provider, have installed a utility > to upload your photos to your "blog" account on their website, and > every time you take a photo it comes up with an annoying menu asking > if you want to do so. As free software zealots you may be interested > to read that whilst Googling on how to disable this menu I came > across a number of forum posts and news articles complaining how the > UK providers Orange & O2 have removed the N95's VoIP application from > their software builds, for obvious reasons. I never quite managed to > work out how to remove the Orange Blog Gallery software completely,
> as it's not shown in the phone's application manager. You are able to > remove the annoying pop-up menu, however, by choosing the "upload" > option, agreeing to the long and small-printed terms-of-use and then > cancelling out of the operation. Only after that is there an option > present, so you're not able to remove this menu if you refuse to > accept the terms of use for their software. I find this sort of non- > obvious behaviour - for me it is logical to ask "do you wish to > disable the feature?" when I decline an agreement - the ideal way to > piss me off. > > Another reminder of why I hate mobile phones was the connection > options. I told the phone always to get mail by 3G (and always to > ignore the user's home wireless network and any others) because the > choice was to set one specific network or to ask every time which > network to use. The connection options included "Orange Internet" and > a confusing array of about half a dozen other "Orange ..." options. > Previous mobile phones of mine have had a similar number of options > included by O2 - "O2 Web And Walk", "O2 Mobile Web", "O2 GPRS", and > so on. This completely baffles me, as I would expect only one option > for internet over mobile phone networks (and another for wifi). Why > so many? I could surely work out what is going on if I spent enough > time at it, but I am reluctant to delete all the apparently-spurious > options without knowing what they're for, and my technically- > challenged customer should not reasonably be expected to select the > right one time after time. > > Anyway, on to the stuff that is REALLY COOL about this phone. I > apologise if this is old hat to everyone else, but for me (even after > I discovered the N95 model is at least 9 months old) it was an eye- > opener into what modern mobile phones do these days. > > Firstly under wifi is an option to wake up the WLAN module every X > minutes and scan for networks. As far as I understand the N95's > configuration, this isn't presently as useful as it ought to be. But > on an Openmoko device we could surely configure wifi to automatically > be used for services whenever available. The waking of the wifi > module (and then, presumably, putting it back to sleep) allows full > wifi versatility, however, without the battery consumption of having > it on all the time. > > Secondly, mail settings also have an option to connect every XX > minutes, with the option to only do so on "home" phone networks (to > avoid roaming charges). I have been wishing for this since getting my > Sony Ericsson P990i, which requires a manual check of my IMAP > accounts. Obviously one only uses a manual email check when one is > waiting on a particularly important or urgent message, and one tends > only to do this on a mobile phone when one wants to check quickly. > For me, at least, this isn't a daily occurrence, so my P990i has to > spend ages synchronising the last 3 weeks' worth of messages across > GPRS before its able to tell me whether the important message has > arrived (or not) yet. But on the N95 you're alerted immediately > (checks can be scheduled every 5 minutes) if a new email has come in > - it doesn't need "push technology" for this to be as seamless as SMS > alerts, as long as you have an unlimited data plan. > > I guess my big question is whether this is what the dbus stuff (that > Openmoko are developing) is all about? A mail program needs to be > able to check to see if any usable wifi networks are available and to > wake GPRS (and tell it to dial) if not. Obviously if one has to call > `modprobe` and `iwscan` then the process is a bit non-portable - this > is the one software feature that I really want Openmoko to provide > > I'm sorry if I'm "not with it", but I've never had a mobile phone > that will properly alert me the moment a new email comes in and > (especially since vgetty on my home Linux box will answer the phone & > email an MP3 of an answerphone message to me) it is quite a killer > feature for me. > > Stroller. I'm a N95 user and other than the above mentioned(btw getting rid of the branded software needs for one to rebrand the phone as generic) the one thing I actually like about my phone is that it's a phone... it has a keypad I can quickly enter data with without needing to look at it. I love the slider design. So what I would like to see is a N95 sized or maybe a bit bigger slider phone with a proper keypad but running Openmoko on it... -- Andraž "ruskie" Levstik Source Mage GNU/Linux Games grimoire guru Geek/Hacker/Tinker Be sure brain is in gear before engaging mouth. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies. Ryle hira. Key id = F4C1F89C Key fingerprint = 6FF2 8F20 4C9D DB36 B5B6 F134 884D 72CC F4C1 F89C _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community