February 2009 Archives
2009-02-18
Why all the hassle with an open platform and devices?
That's a question which is coming into my mind not that seldom. Today it came to me while I'm playing with a G1 in a local t-mobile store. Snappy user interface, all hardware features I want and feeling like a real product.
It's the user in me screaming for one of this fancy new smartphones. Get one and be happy. It's the 'I want to believe' [1] factor that let me think that Apple's iPhone or Google's G1 are exactly the phone I need.
Starting to get into a rush buying this new toy my other alter ego shows up. The tinkerer. These guy that ask inconvenient questions like what to do when I reach the end of the supported features? Neither the iPhone nor the G1 seem to support dial up or network connection via bluetooth. Damn tinkerer, life could be that easy. Still he has a valid point. Not having such a thing on the product spec is fine with me. There is always something that you have to scratch for a polished product.
But things like this are showing me the trouble I always get when trying to use these non-open devices. I step back then and think that my Freerunner, main phone since FSO MS4, may not be my taste in ID and needs a lot more work from the software side, but it gives me the freedom I want.
The Android dev phone 1 (aka unlocked G1) could be an option to work with FSO on it as it allows to flash unsigned images unlike the G1 from t-mobile. But a quick research turns up 600USD as cost for it. (400 the device, 180 shipping to germany and 25 developer registration fee. lol). Not an amount I'm willing to pay and then also invest time in working on it.
[1] Book recommendation: Neal Stephenson, In the beginning was the commandline http://nealstephenson.com/command/