Truly Free phones?

[Ryan Rix]

Hey guys,

Summer approaches and I need a new phone :)

My wonderful flip phone (http://www.pantechusa.com/web/guest/pn210) has
about a four hour battery life nowadays and does nothing that I want it to
do (like send SMS reliably, have decent voice quality) and I'm ready to
upgrade.

I want to tear all non-Free software out of my life this summer (getting an
EEE1000HE and putting Kubuntu onto it) and this includes my phone.  Everyone
knows about the "googlephone," aka the T-Mobile G1, but the question i have
is: is it really Free? Can I run applications on it without going through
the Android apps store? Can I put my own version of Android on it, or is it
a "you can read the source code, but you can weep when you can't flash it (
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/opposing-drm.html) To what level is it truly
Free Software?
Google has nothing on this that I can find, really... A somewhat unrelated
question: Can applications on it run as a daemon? Can I run f.e. python on
it? See question all the way below for the reasoning*. What APIs does it
contain to allow applications to interface with hardware or other
applications? dbus? can I run Qt or Gtk on it, or is it a custom widget
system?
Is it unlocked by default, if I purchase it from craigslist or ebay from
someone currently on a T-Mobile plan? I will probably put it on the cheapest
plan that I can that has unlimited data (not necessary for unlimited SMS or
voice, as I will not talk enough ever to run out of minutes, and I will
probably write a GPS-email gateway to cut down on SMS, since the majority of
my SMS are between the girlfriend and I)

Then there's the Freerunner, which is a truly Free phone by the looks of it
(runs openmoko, or Qtopia depending on what you are wanting) runs whatever
software that you want it to, basically (gtk, qtopia, x11) but it seems to
be pretty unstable and according to the site has a one day battery life with
a 1200mAh battery.

Basically what I want for the phone to is send SMS, place voice, run GPS,
connect to instant messenger networks (I use meebo, in browser right now,
but this is not a requirement), allow for bluetooth/usb tethering between a
computer for dialup.
*More importantly, I want to be able to set up a python or similar daemon on
both the cell phone and the soon-to-be-mine EEE1000HE, that will allow me to
send and recieve SMS from the laptop, pull gps data, etc from the phone, and
other stuff as I get the phone and find out just what I can do with it.
MOST importantly, I want it to be Free, though.

Best,
Ryan
-- 
Thanks and best regards,
Ryan Rix
TamsPalm - The PalmOS Blog
(623)-239-1103 <-- Grand Central, baby!

Jasmine Bowden - Class of 2009, Marc Rasmussen - Class of 2008, Erica
Sheffey - Class of 2009, Rest in peace.
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