Shachar Shemesh wrote:
Michael Shiloh wrote:
Openmoko has departed the cellphone business and no longer makes the
FreeRunner, although you can buy them and there is still very large
community support.
Quoth the man who has worked for them and have been burned... :-(
Thanks. I have no hard feelings, though. I'm sure we've all worked for
companies that folded.
I do wish it had been more successful, though, for the same reason as
the OP: I want a true GNU smartphone.
Actually, that fact matters very little, if you think about it. If Nokia
goes out of business one day after you bought one of their phones, does
that matter to you? For that matter, if Nokia issue a new model of their
phone, priced exactly the same as the previous one, one day after you
bought your phone, does that matter to you (beyond the "damn" effect, of
course). A cell phone is a consumer product. Once you own it, it's
yours. If the Neo Freerunner is a good phone, then the fact that FIC is
no longer contemplating a new version does not really matter to you.
Having said that, I have moved off the Freerunner myself (except as a
portable battery powered Linux machine). It had something to do with the
fact that my GSM receiver stopped working, but also with the fact that
it suffers the classic "market pioneer" syndrom - it's not very good
:-(. It is bulky, heavy, has a small screen (with too high a
resolution), and doesn't have a high enough battery life.
Yup, same here. I have some hopes that the community produces some
software that is good enough that I can use the phone for something, but
otherwise, it's another item in box of things I can't use, but can't
throw away either...
It's a
wonderful dream, and I still hope someone realizes it. Furthermore, the
FOSS model triumphs again, in that, despite FIC not being "the one" to
produce a completely free phone, the next one to come along and try will
have a better starting position, with much more mature software to work
off of.
Not a phone, but have you been following qi-hardware, formed by some
ex-Openmoko people?
http://www.qi-hardware.com/
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