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General Schvantzkoph
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 Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 6:39 pm Post subject: Blackberry support? |
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I'm thinking about doing a phone upgrade soon, maybe to the Blackberry
Storm. I'm currently using a Treo700p which can sync with Evolution
(although the support has gotten much worse that it was) and it can run
ssh which allows be to access my Linux boxes remotely.
What I want to know is how well Blackberries sync with Evolution and how
well they run ssh? Also how good is the web browser? The native browser
on the Treo sucks, Opera Mini is great when it works but it has a
tendency to crash the Treo.
Are there any other CDMA smart phones that are worth looking at that have
good Linux interoperability? I want a large screen, GPS, good web
browsing, good e-mail, and it must sync with Evolution and run ssh. |
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HASM
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| Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:12 pm Post subject: Re: Blackberry support? |
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General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes:
| Quote: | Are there any other CDMA smart phones that are worth looking at that have
good Linux interoperability? I want a large screen, GPS, good web
browsing, good e-mail, and it must sync with Evolution and run ssh.
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The Google "phone", i.e. T-Mobile G1?
-- HASM |
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Joe Pfeiffer
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| Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:23 pm Post subject: Re: Blackberry support? |
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HASM <netnews@invalid.com> writes:
| Quote: | General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes:
Are there any other CDMA smart phones that are worth looking at that have
good Linux interoperability? I want a large screen, GPS, good web
browsing, good e-mail, and it must sync with Evolution and run ssh.
The Google "phone", i.e. T-Mobile G1?
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Not CDMA -- the G1 is quad-band GSM. |
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General Schvantzkoph
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| Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 8:47 am Post subject: Re: Blackberry support? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:23:56 -0700, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
| Quote: | HASM <netnews@invalid.com> writes:
General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes:
Are there any other CDMA smart phones that are worth looking at that
have good Linux interoperability? I want a large screen, GPS, good web
browsing, good e-mail, and it must sync with Evolution and run ssh.
The Google "phone", i.e. T-Mobile G1?
Not CDMA -- the G1 is quad-band GSM.
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And it's T-Mobile which has terrible coverage as does AT&T. I'm currently
using Sprint which I would prefer to keep if I can because they have much
cheaper data plans than Verizon, however I'm might switch to Verizon if
they are the only way to get the right phone.
On the subject of Google phones, even though they are based on Linux are
they Linux compatible i.e. will they sync with Evolution or run ssh? |
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HASM
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 12:10 am Post subject: Re: Blackberry support? |
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General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes:
| Quote: | And it's T-Mobile which has terrible coverage as does AT&T.
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I haven't followed this closely (I have a six year old dual band GSM phone
with AT&T) but does CDMA give you good world coverage? Quad band GSMs work
all over the world. May not be an issue for you.
| Quote: | On the subject of Google phones, even though they are based on Linux are
they Linux compatible i.e. will they sync with Evolution or run ssh?
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You could even get a root shell  Ssh most likely. Evolution probably.
-- HASM |
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General Schvantzkoph
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 1:56 am Post subject: Re: Blackberry support? |
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On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:10:58 -0800, HASM wrote:
| Quote: | General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes:
And it's T-Mobile which has terrible coverage as does AT&T.
I haven't followed this closely (I have a six year old dual band GSM
phone with AT&T) but does CDMA give you good world coverage? Quad band
GSMs work all over the world. May not be an issue for you.
On the subject of Google phones, even though they are based on Linux
are they Linux compatible i.e. will they sync with Evolution or run
ssh?
You could even get a root shell Ssh most likely. Evolution
probably.
-- HASM
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World wide coverage is not an issue for me, it would be nice but it's not
a priority. Good US coverage, especially on the East coast is critical.
Verizon is the best however I've found Sprint to be fine, they have an
unlimited roaming option for $5 a month that I have which fixes their
holes (it's probably roaming in Verizon). Sprint also has the best price
on data access. T-Mobile and AT&T have poor coverage on the East coast so
they aren't in the running which is to bad because there are a lot more
GSM phones then there are CDMA phones.
My ideal phone would be a truly open Linux phone that has a large screen,
the browser capability of an iPhone, seamless Evolution interoperability,
bluetooth and GPS. I've been using a Treo700p for a couple of years and
it's frustrating in that it wets your appetite for what a smart phone
could be but it falls short in so many ways. The number one way it falls
short is that it never gets better, Palm never updates their software, as
a Fedora user I've become conditioned to continuous improvement, but Palm
never improves anything, for example the Contact Manager hasn't changed
since the Palm Pilots. Also because the Palm OS is effectively dead no
one else improves anything. There are are two ssh clients for Palms, they
work but they are pretty crappy. There is also gpilot on Linux which
syncs the Treo with Evolution but it's been getting worse and worse. When
I first got a Treo several years ago gpilot worked perfectly, now it's on
the hairy edge of not working at all. For example the daemon always
crashes at the end of a sync so you never know if it's finished. It
frequently deletes phone numbers from the Evolution database, although it
also doubles them (i.e. creating both a Work and an Office number). There
have been long periods when it didn't work at all, Fedora 7 and 8 didn't
work, Fedora 9 does work but not well. The native browser on the Palm was
OK a couple of years ago but is nearly unusable now because the web has
changed. Opera Mini is very nice when it doesn't crash the Treo (it
relies on an unsupported version of IBM Websphere) so it give you a taste
of decent webbrowsing on a smartphone but it's so unstable that you can't
rely on it.
Linux phones are starting to feel like fusion power which has been 50
years away for the last 50 years. Palm promised a Linux phone years ago
which is why they stopped developing the Palm OS and sold it off but they
are unlikely to survive long enough to ship it. Now we have Google
promising Android but so far it's only appeared on one third tier phone
from a forth tier phone company. LiMo hasn't produced anything at all.
Which leaves Blackberry as the only option. They have what looks like a
good smartphone in the Storm but the Linux interoperability is
questionable. The Barry project provides support for some Blackberries
but they haven't kept up with Opensync so they don't work on Fedora 9
yet. There is an ssh client, I don't know how well it works. I'm going to
live with my Treo for a few more months with the hope that a good Linux
phone shows up and then when it does it will be interoperable with
desktop Linux. |
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