I was one of the Google Summer of Code "interns" for OpenMoko back in 2008. I was so excited to get the free OpenMoko device and actually implemented gesture recognition and screen orientation for the device part of the GSoC project. Here's a video of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2S2rQUETwc
But let me tell you about the device:
1. You couldn't even make a phone call with it. There was a hardware bug that stopped it from making phone calls. It was basically a PDA...
2. If the battery ever ran out, you couldn't start the phone anymore. You had to have a spare Nokia phone that you'd use to charge that battery. Thank god they were using Nokia-compatible batteries. The gist was, never ever to let the phone's battery reach 0%.
3. The development of any UX components was cumbersome. They always insisted in supporting GTK and another platform which I forgot its name. They were such a small team and yet they were building two projects which essentially were doing the same thing. Why?!
Those three were just a few problems. The Freerunner was definitely not a user-friendly phone.
I worked at the Free Software Foundation at the time. We were lucky to know someone at MIT with access to the tools to fix the tiny hardware bug by soldering something near the SD card slot IIRC.
We also had multiple batteries and multiple beefy micro USB chargers (used later on our G1s) as well as external Nokia battery chargers around the place.
I think I managed to take a call once. I could never send SMS, but I would play a lot of numptyphysics on the MBTA with the combination ballpoint pen/mechanical pencil/stylus I bought.
Sean visited us in the office a couple of times beforehand. I remember showing him some of the HTML tricks Apple were doing for Mobile Safari with viewports and fullscreen things, I don't think anyone ever implemented them. This was pre-App Store too, I think.
I remember being so wary that someone would steal my awesome new phone at first, but that quickly wore off and I went back to my Nokia flip phone until Google had developer G1s (ADP1) with a fancy backplate on them.
I had a FreeRunner that I used as a daily phone for a few months (until I got a TMobile G1). It most certainly could make phone calls. IIRC, I used a Qt-based environment that was basically a PDA + a dialer. It even had a webkit-based browser. I remember buying a Nokia wall charger so I could charge a second (and third) battery given that the OpenMoko consumed batteries quickly.
My most memorable moment with the FreeRunner was when I finally received my G1. The screen on the G1 was so much brighter, the phone itself was far more responsive, and it had EDGE data service (my area didn't have 3G). I never bothered fixing the usb port that I broke because the G1 was so much better.
> I remember buying a Nokia wall charger so I could charge a second (and third) battery given that the OpenMoko consumed batteries quickly.
If I recall correctly, the OpenMoko didn't have working CPU frequency management; it was always running at the maximum CPU frequency.
I actually wrote something to manage the CPU frequency for the GTA01, but never pushed it upstream; by then, the GTA01 was a dead end, and the GTA02 used IIRC a different chip.
I had issues making calls on my Freerunner, sure, and it certainly wasn't very user friendly (even flashing replicant to it resulted in a very buggy daily driver) but I did enjoy the phone for what it was; a fun platform to hack around with and one of the first (and perhaps almost the only?) mobile device with hackability not only in mind, but centric to its design.
I hope alternatives like the Neo900 make it off the ground, but I'm not holding my breath. Most people just don't seem to care about open hardware when they could be getting the latest, fastest SoC for their $varPhone. Maybe it makes me weird that I'd rather use an open device with a single ARM core at 800Mhz than a closed one that uses the Snapdragon 835...
Maybe it makes me weird that I'd rather use an open device with a single ARM core...
IMHO, it's neither a question of being weird nor about the power of the phone. The problem is that choosing an architecture that isn't mass produced, you are doomed to disappear no matter what.
I wouldn't care to use an underpowered phone, provided that it's cheap and widely available, being "cheap" an (important) part of "widely available". A hackable phone would generate interesting apps for a wide market. But you need that there are a lot of people that can buy it and has some problem accessing an Android and its apps.
Somewhat related: I was a little interested in Firefox OS. When I tried to get a device I found that I should either be in a wait list for months, buy a "more or less compatible" phone (it might work or it might not) or get a ZTE (brand that I hadn't heard of until then) with lackluster features at a premium price, compared to a regular Samsung.
Being an early adopter is not for everyone, for sure. But being the only adopter is definitely a PITA :)
But let me tell you about the device:
1. You couldn't even make a phone call with it. There was a hardware bug that stopped it from making phone calls. It was basically a PDA...
2. If the battery ever ran out, you couldn't start the phone anymore. You had to have a spare Nokia phone that you'd use to charge that battery. Thank god they were using Nokia-compatible batteries. The gist was, never ever to let the phone's battery reach 0%.
3. The development of any UX components was cumbersome. They always insisted in supporting GTK and another platform which I forgot its name. They were such a small team and yet they were building two projects which essentially were doing the same thing. Why?!
Those three were just a few problems. The Freerunner was definitely not a user-friendly phone.