Truly Free phones?

[Joseph Sinclair]

While Google (and others) develop the Android O/S, the carriers make all the decisions about how open the phone is.  The G1 is a *T-Mobile* phone, not a Google Phone.  Because Android is mostly Apache licensed, the carriers are free to modify it however they like for "their" phones, and they do exactly that.
The T-Mobile G1, like any other T-Mobile Phone, is a locked phone, and you can only run the apps that T-Mobile permits.  Google wrote the software open-source, but T-Mobile locked down the phone environment.

There are unlocked HTC Dream phones available running Android, but I don't know of any US carriers that will permit you to use them.

Even the Freerunner is difficult to get service with in the US, our carriers mostly still have Ma-Bell Monopoly envy, and want to lock you into their network so they don't have to actually compete.

There are supposed to be several more Android-based phones (and a couple netbooks) released in the next 3-6 months, so if you can wait a little bit, that might be good.

You can develop for the Android environment without a phone using the development SDK, it's a qemu-based virtual machine, so it works just like a real phone from a development perspective.

Android applications are Java applications written for the Dalvik environment.  While it's possible to write a Python app for Android, you'll find it extremely hard to get it on the phone (you have to create a custom build of the O/S and reflash the phone), and your battery life will likely suffer greatly due to Python's higher overhead compared to Dalvik.
The better approach in this case would be to write the code that will run in the phone in Java (standard Java 5), because the Dalvik environment (and it's unusual lifecycle management) is needed to maintain good battery life when apps are running.  You can still write the netbook code in Python, or you can use Java there as well.

A big part of why the Freerunner has such terrible battery life is that it's applications never really stop running, so it can't get into extremely low-power states.  You can simulate the same issues on any phone by running an application that keeps it's high-power components (radio, GPS, CPU) active.
Smart phones depend on turning off almost everything 90% of the time in order to achieve the long "idle" life they market.  If you want a better estimate of how long it will last running applications all the time, look at the "talk" time spec, high-CPU using apps can shorten even that by 50% or more.
If you load an app on the G1 that queries GPS every 45 seconds and sends it to a network server you'll see about 8 hours (or less) on battery, because the radio, GPS, and CPU are all active all the time (the phone never is idle long enough to turn them off).  I've seen some iPhone apps that have similar effects (although Apple won't let them in the Apple store), draining the battery in as little as 2 hours.

Sometime soon I need to put together a how-to-write-for-Android preso for devel, I just haven't had any free time the past 7 months (although that's changing, so I might be able to get it done soon).

I hope that helps.

==Joseph++

P.S. There are some people who've had success getting Android running on other platforms (it's not hard to port, especially to other smart phones), and there may be a port to the Freerunner available somewhere.  I don't know if you'll be able to run the resultant phone on any US network, but you can get it working without too much trouble, and it should have dramatically better "standby" battery life.


Ryan Rix wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
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