Motorola is commonly known for using GNU/Linux on some of its
telephones and some vague statements of planning to use Free Software
centrally in its technology stack. This had me leaning towards
Motorola. Also, the hardware design of the folding phones is
dramatically cool, in my opinion. So when offered a Motorola V3x as my
new mobile phone in Switzerland, I immediately agreed. What a
mistake.
Firstly: Contrary to what you can find in some internet fora, this
telephone is NOT Free Software based. It runs some proprietary
Motorola operating system, which may have been built with a Free
Software toolchain, but is entirely proprietary itself. No joy
here.
Indeed, as Harald Welte explained to me, this phone is essentially
also what is inside the GNU/Linux phones of Motorola, which themselves
are like two devices integrated into one: a PDA and a telephone. The
PDA is running GNU/Linux, the telephone is running that very same
proprietary operating system, all communication happening over the USB
bus.
Indeed, that USB bus can be used to connect the phone to the PC,
and theoretically, the software running on the PDA should also run on
other GNU/Linux platforms, allowing to have the same level of
integration with -- say -- a laptop.
Noone has however done this job, and I am not convinced anyone ever
will, as the other problems of the telephone are too annoying for
anyone to invest that much time.
Here are the problems that I found impossible to resolve, some of
which made me think that I seem to be the first person to ever have
used this phone:
- Unwilling to communicate: The USB connector can
operate in two modes, as a USB memory stick, or a modem. When
connecting it as a memory stick,
- the memory of the phone is
invisible, only the memory card can be read.
- reading from the
memory card works, writing to the memory card brings massive
synchronisation issues with the Linux kernel.
Consequently
I cannot do any of the funny and wasteful things like playing with
ring tones or graphics.
Indeed, I urgently want to delete the
crappy pre-installed ring-tones and graphics, because they suck. This
unfortunately is not possible through the menu (option does not exist)
and the memory of the phone cannot be mounted.
- Unwilling to learn: The Motorola iTAP mode is clearly the
superior spelling mode, I have to say. I really like its
completion. Or so I thought until I wanted to enter a new word. I
could not believe it: iTAP mode has no way of learning new
words!
If you want to enter a new word, you have to go into
Options, go to Text Setup, select Primary
Text, go to TAP extended, select, and then go back into
the text.
You can then enter the new word with the old, "press
each button a million times" approach, and then repeat all the steps
above to back to iTAP mode. It will then have learned one new
word. Hooray.
- Alarm hell: But it gets better -- here is my favorite:
Since I travel a lot and do not feel like taking an alarm clock with
me, I usually have my mobile phone wake me. And since I am a lazy
person, I also do this at home.
If you now think "I know what
happened -- he set the phone to silent and the alarm was thus also
silenced!" you'd be wrong. That prime stupidity was committed by some
Nokia engineers, who could not concieve that anyone would want to turn
their phone silent to sleep, but be woken up at a predefined point in
time. Motorola is more stupid.
The first times, all seemed fine,
until I one day wanted to wake up the exact same time I got up the day
before, so I re-enabled the alarm. When the sun woke me up the next
day, I was very happy to not have missed a plane or train. My phone
still happily showed the alarm clock symbol, promising to wake me real
soon. As a good user, I assumed it must have been my mistake and did
not further pursue it.
Two nights later, I manually set the
alarm, and once more found the sun do the job that my mobile phone
should have done. And once more the alarm symbol was still on the
display. Asking myself what was different, I realised that I had gone
to bed before midnight for the first time in weeks. And then it made
click, both stories connected:
Motorolas engineers were stupid
enough to make the alarm DATE dependent, without displaying it, or
allowing to set it explicitly!!!
There are a couple of smaller glitches in usability, most of which
would be easy to fix -- just like the big ones -- if this phone were
actually Free Software. But of course it is not, so bugs are
impossible to fix. Just like it is impossible to do the obvious and
connect USB devices to the phone that could be used by the
phone. A USB keyboard, for instance.
And hopefully I'll be able to work off my blog-backlog in the past
weeks.
