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Photo Tour of the ASU
There
is a lot of speculation about the April Software Update (ASU). Is it a
single image you install, or is it a line of development? Is it a
rebranded Qtopia or something new? How's the sounds quality? What Wifi
management tools will there be? Is there a package installer? What does
it look like?
is a lot of speculation about the April Software Update (ASU). Is it a
single image you install, or is it a line of development? Is it a
rebranded Qtopia or something new? How's the sounds quality? What Wifi
management tools will there be? Is there a package installer? What does
it look like?
I thought I'd take some time today to hopefully
answer those questions, and more importantly, show lots and lots of
screenshots, because everyone likes screenshots. :)
When you
first boot the Freerunner, the screen backlight fades in gradually to
reveal the familiar orange and black Openmoko start splash. After a few
seconds, the screen turns to the black with white scrolling text that
just about every Linux user in the world is familiar with.
Then
come the boots. As a bit of geek humor, probably chosen by Raster,
there is a pair of boots on the boot screen. A green bar slides in and
begins loading. A great example of the early stages can be found on this flash demo.
By default, the ASU image is set to a grid system application launcher.
For those uninterested in this view, there is a bit more unique take on it using the slider mode.
Atop
the action at all stages of using the ASU is Illume, which essentially
functions as the system tray and task bar. Here, you can launch the
keyboard, launch the settings panel, enter the Enlightenment settings
(note, this is slated for removal and doesn't directly affect the use
of ASU), switch to a running application or close an open application.
Let me visually cover those things, in order. First, the keyboard:
The
keyboard is a QWERTY like keyboard that has a dictionary lookup built
in. To bring the keyboard down you tap the “qwerty” area of the Illume
bar. To begun typing, simply hit a letter. To see a more complete list
of words meeting your typed characters, click the white triangle on the
keyboard. There is a shift key which displays upper case numbers. If
you look, you'll see that some keys are missing. If you make a line on
the keyboard going up or down the keymap changes to special characters
(!,@./) and numbers, making the keyboard usable on a terminal. Though,
in fairness, I didn't check to see if there are CTRL or ALT keys which
might affect that use.
The
settings panel is opened by clicking the wrench icon on the Illume
slider. In here there are settings for all kinds of things. I won't go
in depth with them all, the most “visible” is probably the option to
set the slider or icon grid launcher modes.
The
Enlightenment settings, as an E17 user would recognize, are kind of a
“left over” from the development. These settings are planned to be
removed, since the functionality of them is either irrelevant for
Openmoko or will be absorbed into other applications.
One
of the best features of the Freerunner, in my personal opinion, is the
ability to utilize GPS without a non-free driver. Because of this, a
basic GPS application has been included with the ASU. It's really very
much a placeholder or prototype now, as the only thing it seems to do
is display a map that can be zoomed or moved around and prompts that it
fails to get a GPS fix. I'm not exactly sure of the name of this
application, in all honesty. I'm used to calling it “Diversity” thought
I've also heard the name “Splinter” tossed around and I'm not sure of
what the distinction, if any, is.
The
second big hardware change for the Freerunner was the inclusion of
wifi. In order to connect to wireless networks, there is a program
called “Campwifi” that once launched, probes for networks. While not
viable in this shot, I have managed to connect to an open wifi access
point “in range” of my apartment and been assigned an IP address. I
personally have no experience with wifi at ALL aside from what I've
gleaned from reading tutorials over the last few years so I'm not sure
if some of the encryption and authentication schemes are implemented –
with only one unsecured wifi AP within range of my apartment, it's not
been an issue for me yet. Hopefully I'll be able to check that out more
as I'm able to shift away from the 1973 and towards the Freerunner as
my day-to-day phone.
Another
nifty feature of the ASU is the Assassin package manager, a GUI front
end to opkg. Once you launch Assassin, you're presented with a list of
categories to choose from, and some of those categories contain items
that can be installed. So far, there aren't too many packages listed.
Certainly far less than show with an opkg –list. It leaves my mind to
speculate as to how this is important – perhaps Assassin will present
users with action based installs (Install US Maps for GPS) or be used
for more than just software applications for things like ebooks and
ringtones. With an open platform, the mind runs amok.
Once
an application is selected, there's one big “Touch here to install”
button which is very simple to figure out what to do. Once pressed,
you're prompted again to confirm at which case the install begins and
completes.
From
the screenshots you can see I installed “openmoko-messages2”, an
application from the 2007.02 line that was based on GTK. At one point,
when the switch to Qtopia was announced, there were a lot of GTK fans
upset. It seemed to die down a little bit when it became clear that GTK
would still be usable on the phone so I wanted to be sure I got a shot
running a GTK application. It looks hideous because the GTK theme
wasn't installed, but any GTK theme could be applied and hopefully
there will be a matching one in the future. If there was any remaining
doubt, GTK is alive and well within the ASU framework.
Finally,
I'll show a few “glitches”. Firstly, the video processing on the
Freerunner is slower than the 1973 thanks to the Glamo. I found that
after a while of using the device (and with over 40 screenshots, it was
“a while”) the transitions (Illume slides down, launched applications
slide down) began getting choppy. I found reducing my frame rate to 10
fps helped this quite a bit but was still noticeable. Additionally,
NONE of the Qtopia apps would launch in slider or grid mode. Setting
the display variable I was able to launch Qtopia Media Player which
complained about lack of Qcop and then segfaulted as I closed it. But
you'll see that there are no screenshots of the Qtopia apps since they
wouldn't launch “normally” for me.
You'll see below that
occasionally applications crash. I've been shown the “Enlightenment
crashed” white box a few times, and recovery happened. Every now and
then, a half rendered Enlightenment window would pop up but not show me
anything good. I had to use my tiny screwdriver stylus to close that
box, my fingers are too big for that. Lastly, while earlier versions of
the ASU had scrollbars, this version does not. However, when scrolling
in certain areas, a distortion appears in the area where a scrollbar
would be. These, luckily, appeared in screenshots.
The
ASU, while certainly not usable as a daily phone, is certainly full of
promise! I'll be tracking this closely and writing reviews as
applications become more complete and the images become more
functional.
#2 Re: Photo Tour of the ASU
Jorge Gomez, <E-Mail> / 26 July, 5:23pm
I'm sorry, but those screenshots remind me a lot of the Zaurus interface, which looked much better SEVEN YEARS ago.
As a freerunner owner, it's very disappointing to see the platform splitting in different directions, abandoning a stack which was close to being useful, and preferring instead to release competing images, which the user is then supposed to flash looking for the desired features - exactly what Zaurus users ended up doing.
(At least my Zaurus could connect to WiFi every time, which is more than I can say for the FreeRunner).
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#1 Re: Photo Tour of the ASU
I'd like to point out that GTK apps are, currently, using the default GTK theme and font sizes, which don't go so well with the OpenMoko. It's easy to fix, although this required a little research. I've posted the solution at the bottom of http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Getting_Started_FAQ under the TangoGPS question.