Openmoko's Neo Freerunner

On July 4, 2008, Openmoko released the Neo Freerunner, their second generation free/open-source cell phone.  On July 5, I ordered one.  In the two weeks between placing the order and getting the phone, I went looking for reviews, and much to my surprise, couldn’t find any.  Even Gizmodo and the like, as of this writing, seem to lack an actual review of the phone itself: all I see is software reviews, apparently based on development snapshots, rather than the software stack that actually ships with the phone.  For lack of any reviews on the regular sites, I’ve decided to go ahead and write my own.

The Neo Freerunner arrived in attractive, well-designed packaging, holding what turned out to be an attractive, well-designed phone.  I’ve seen complaints on different sites about the phone’s appearance, but I can’t imagine why anyone would take issue with it.  Size-wise, it’s more or less equal to your typical Palm Treo or Blackberry, although slightly taller, and usually slimmer than most.  It’s not heavy, but it does have a little bit of heft to it.  Coming from an old candy-bar-style phone, I find that it doesn’t make any noticeable difference in my pocket.  If your last phone was something more along the lines of the Razr, it will be noticeably larger, but shouldn’t prove cumbersome.

In the package with the phone, they include a USB cable, a power cord, a pen/stylus/laser/flashlight (I feel like a dork for carrying it, but this thing is actually pretty handy), and a 512 MB Micro SD card.  After plugging in the Micro SD card and my SIM card, I turned it on for the first time, and waited through a three-minute startup.  This is where the excellent first impression ended.  The interface looked nice, but it wouldn’t register with my wireless network: it just sat there, with “Registering…” in the top left corner at all times.  A quick look at the Openmoko wiki showed that my SIM card version didn’t work with the phone, and a quick visit to AT&T yielded a new SIM card, this one working flawlessly with the phone.  While the Openmoko system is far from complete, the built-in telephony and SMS software, at least, work flawlessly.  My only gripe is that call volume is always set to the lowest setting at the beginning of a call, and I can’t find a way to make my volume changes persist between calls.  Other than that, voice quality is perfectly acceptable, and I’ve had no issues with reception.

Hardware-wise, the phone is very solid.  Opening the back is a little bit irritating, as it takes more force than I like to apply to sensitive electronics, but it does open without too much trouble.  The only big problem at the moment is battery life.  Strictly speaking, this is a software issue: the power management software for the phone isn’t complete as of this writing.  In its current state, however, don’t expect the battery to last more than eight hours during daily use.  Also, make sure not to let it run down completely, as the phone’s charging circuitry apparently relies on the battery to start up, which means that if it goes completely dead, you’re going to need an external charger to get it going again.

Now, before going on, I should probably mention that I absolutely love this phone.  The openness, first and foremost, is just amazing, and the hardware isn’t shabby at all.  That being said, this thing put me through hell for the first couple of days, for all its assorted software issues.  The biggest problem is that documentation is both scarce and scattered on the wiki, and it can be exceptionally difficult to find a solution to a problem, even when there is one.  With any luck, I can make the setup process a little easier for people here.

The first matter you’ll want to deal with is getting access to your phone from your computer.  Without this, you really can’t do anything but make and receive calls and texts, because even though you can get to the terminal from the phone’s interface, the built-in multitap keyboard doesn’t have a slash key, effectively rendering it worthless for any real terminal access.  Thankfully, the Getting Started Guide will have you covered here, with a link to the USB networking instructions.

I have to say, when I first got this set up, at least for as heavy a geek as me, it was a sublime moment.  I was SSH’d into my cell phone, with complete access to its hardware and software. Now, once you’re connected, the Getting Started Guide tells you to use opkg, its built in package manager, to update a bunch of software, and then a little further down it gives you information on how to import your contacts.  Skip the updates for now, and go straight to importing the contacts: I’ve found that some of those updates  occasionally break the contact importing script, so just get that out of the way first, as it works flawlessly with the phone’s software as it ships from the factory.

Once you’ve got SSH set up, you can install a lot of software that should be there but isn’t, like the calendar, calculator, GPS software, and so on.  The phone’s interface is initially minimal, with no clock or shortcut keys displayed, but the guide gives a short set of commands to change it to the full-fledged desktop.  The multitap keyboard is also something of an annoyance, and the guide will point you to a link to change it.  I opted to keep the multitap keyboard in place, however, because despite its weaknesses, it is much more finger-friendly than the QWERTY keyboard, and there isn’t a streamlined mechanism to switch back and forth between the two.  The one change I do recommend making is to add ‘/’, ‘<’, and ‘>’ keys to the ’1′ button, to get around the terminal’s unusability.  The Switching Keyboards page has more complete information on accomplishing this.

GPS software is easily installed, although there is an issue with the SD card that causes the GPS to take a very long time, upwards of ten minutes, to get its first fix with the factory software.  Yesterday, however, an update that I downloaded appears to have fixed the problem, and the GPS is now quick to acquire a signal, and accurate once it has one.  I’ve installed Tango GPS, per the instructions on the quick start page, and I must say that it’s an absolute joy.  It tracks my progress, shows my location and other vital statistics, and can even keep a log of my path for the day, if I choose to make it do so (of course, it’s easy to imagine some devious uses for this, were you to conceal the phone with logging enabled in someone’s vehicle or personal effects.  Not to encourage such behavior, but it is a possibility).  It will automatically retrieve map data from the Open Street Map system, and can also share your location, and show friends’ locations and points of interest via the Internet.  Which brings me to my next point.

While the Freerunner has several possible routes to Internet access, none of them are particularly easy to set up.  Probably the simplest is USB networking, which you need for SSH anyways: just add your computer as a gateway, which the wiki’s USB networking guide explains, and the Freerunner will have full access.

The other methods, Wifi and GPRS, however, are somewhat more complicated.  Wifi isn’t much more difficult than on any other GNU/Linux system, except that you don’t have the aid of any GUI utilities to help out.  You can either configure a wpa_supplicant file, or simply enter a WEP ssid and key.  While I haven’t configured it myself, I was able to find my network with no problems by executing the command “iwlist eth0 scan”.  I fully expect GUI software to automate the wireless connection process in the near future: if no one else does, I may write a Python script myself to more easily configure it.  There is already, apparently a Python script available to automatically connect to unprotected wireless networks, now we only need an authenticated version.

GPRS, on the other hand, is exceptionally difficult to configure.  The Getting Started Guide links to a page about it, and it appears that you have to manually connect to your carrier’s wireless data server to establish a connection.  The page includes several scripts that make the task achievable, but by no means simple.  I applaud anyone with the tenacity to get this working, but for myself, I choose to just stick to USB, and possibly wireless, if I find myself in an area with lots of access available.  For those with unlimited data plans, you’ll want to either go through the setup process, or wait until mobile Internet is more easily configured to buy a Freerunner.

The Freerunner’s other wireless capability, Bluetooth, is evidently at a state where it’s somewhat useful, but not completely.  I have no Bluetooth devices to test it with myself (anyone who would like to is welcome to send me some, and I’ll be sure to review them apropriately), but my understanding of the situation is that Bluetooth headsets are not supported in software, while Bluetooth keyboards are.  Also, you can make the phone act as a Bluetooth GPS receiver, and there is also some software available to do different types of ad hoc communication through Bluetooth.  If you’re planning on using your spiffy headset with it, though, you’ll have to wait for some software updates.

Altogether, the Neo Freerunner is an awesome phone.  They’ve put together an excellent combination of hardware, with only the software lacking to bring it to its full potential.  To some, this is a killer: to others, it’s a killer app.  As of now, if you want to buy a phone, take it out of the box, and start using it simply as a telephone, the Neo Freerunner is not for you.  Also, I should note, if you’re running a Windows or Mac computer, you may have some exceptional difficulties getting the Freerunner to interact correctly with your computer.  If, however, you’re a geeky enough GNU/Linux user, or a really dedicated Windows/Mac/BSD/etc. user, the Freerunner is the phone for you.  It’ll make you work for it, but to some people, that’s a lot of fun.

As far as software goes, help is around the corner.  Openmoko is currently working on modifying Trolltech’s Qtopia mobile phone operating system into the new Openmoko, and when finished, the so-called “August Software Update” promises much better GUI support for all the things lacking from the current software stack.  Both development versions of the ASU update and a stock Qtopia image are presently available, although I’ve been unsucessful in flashing either to my Freerunner (once again, I find documentation for the system to be somewhat sparse).  You can compare all the different distributions in this chart on the Openmoko wiki.

[Update: For anyone interested in using the Freerunner with Windows or Mac OS, Andrew has posted details in one of the comments below]