So I’ve had a Greenphone for what seems like ages now and while it’s nice, it’s got problems that are starting to really piss me off.
1) Battery life is crap. I can’t trust it to last 2 days anymore. I think this is mostly because of the TAT table debacle (where following the published instructions to upgrade to the GPL-compliant bootloader blows away the ADC calibration data, causing the battery to be overcharged). We figured out a way to calibrate the ADC and write this to the TAT table (along with the Bluetooth MAC address) but despite this, my phone still can’t last 2 days if I take any calls.
2) It doesn’t always wake up for alarms. It’s not Qtopia that’s a fault here but atd or something in the hardware. If I wake up the device manually the alarm goes off but I’ve had a number of near misses because of this and that’s just not acceptable. TT no loner cares about the Greenphone (well, we all still use them to test Qtopia on but we have no more hardware for sale) and hardware issues haven’t been something we’ve been particularly good at fixing, mostly because we’re missing big chunks of kernel source (stupid binary-only kernel modules) and we have no specs for most of the hardware.
3) No PIM sync. I hacked something together to get Qtopia Desktop 2.2 (holding the data left after my A300 died) talking to Qtopia 4.1 but due to a variety of reasons I never got this to complete a 2-way sync. I’ve now got changes to the data in Qtopia Desktop 2.2 and Qtopia 4.1 with no way to sync them together. Not even Qtopia 4.3 (which finally features Qtopia Desktop, now called Qtopia Sync Agent) helps here because I don’t use Windows or Outlook (and that’s the only thing our customers care about so it’s the only thing that was given priority).
Bree asked for a “blueberry” the other day. She meant “blackberry” but more specifically meant PDA-like functionality with PIM sync. To my chagrin her cheap Nokia (series 40) has a good-enough calendar and is now setup for one-click sync to iCal via Bluetooth. It gives her what she wanted and highlights for me just how much I’ve been missing since my A300 died.
So what are my options?
A Neo? Ha! The Neo is the most ugly and unusable phone I’ve ever seen. No buttons, a screen you can’t use your finger on and no slot for a stylus. What were they thinking? For the money it costs to get a Neo I could just get an iPhone.
I briefly used a Motorola ROKR E2 before I got my Greenphone. It runs a Qt/E 2.x based system so getting Qtopia running on it should be relatively easy. It might even have decent PIM apps but I’m not really interested in wrestling my data into whatever format it requires because it’s not my phone (it just happens to sit on my desk because nobody else wants it). I think the ROKR can sync to iCal so it might be a useful way to get my data home. I never bothered doing that in the past because Qtopia 1/2 has a serious bug with it’s “unique” ID generation, no checking for duplicate “unique IDs” and disastrous results if multiple “unique IDs” end up in your dataset (ie. don’t sync with more than one desktop/pda combo).
A while ago now, someone got Linux running on the Treo 650. There are screenshots floating around showing Opie (a fork of Qtopia based on the GPL releases) running on it. I’d really rather the Centro (because I’m not a fan of “big” devices) but it’s CDMA only and since Palm hasn’t actually managed to release a Linux-based device yet, support for newer hardware requires people willing to hack on them and it looks like support for anything other than the 650 is spotty at best. If I’m going to pick up a Treo for Linux development, the 650 is what it needs to be. Oh yeah, and while I’m busy fixing up any problems with Linux and getting Qtopia running there’s my old friend PalmOS to use. Unless you are really keen and install a new bootloader, Linux on a Treo is started from a PalmOS app (like loadlin which loaded Linux from DOS) and runs from an SD card. That means I can quickly and easily switch between environments, kind of like Boot Camp on my Mac.
Since my hard disk is dead, I’ve had to postpone my Treo purchase. I’ve already lost half a dozen or so auctions on eBay but I’ve seen how cheap they can go so I’m prepared to wait for demand to reduce. Strangely, it seems that used Treos go for around $180 while new ones (that aren’t “buy it now” only) go for around $200. I expected the difference to be bigger.
Buying a Treo means I won’t be getting an iPhone but then I only wanted one so I’d have hackability and PIM sync. The iPhone would require an expensive data plan while the Treo can use the cheap plan I’m currently on.
