Mobiles and I

Typical reactions about my mobile phone and I:

• 1998: Wah, you got mobile phone!
• 1999: Eh, pinjam your phone.
• 2000: What’s your number?
• 2001: Why your battery die so fast ah?
• 2002: Eh, cannot call u lar!
• 2003: Why your phone so simple one, ah?
• 2004: Eh, phone so cheap, get new one lar!
• 2005: Why don’t you ever pick up?
• 2006: So, how can I contact you?
• 2007: Why don’t you use your phone?

The thing is, I bought myself a mobile a decade ago. At the time, it was rather a novelty and I did use it a lot as I had just gone to university and the public phones there were never in working order. Then, phones became common and I realised that I began to use it less and less, as it was a device for people to get in touch with me, not the other way round. I tend to prefer face-to-face communications. Then, phones became so packed with features that I ended up buying the simplest phone on the market.

But now, I’m actually thinking on spending close to £300 for a new mobile phone (and it’s not the iPhone!). The phone that I am planning to get is the OpenMoko, a fully open sourced mobile phone. I love the whole idea of a open sourced mobile stack. It would not only be a phone to me, but a fun new toy for me to build interesting apps on. They have also worked hard to secure hardware documentation for the community. That changes the whole dynamic of the relationship.

The only problem is that it’s still in a very alpha stage. Although the hardware platform is mostly fixed, the software is still under heavy development. At the moment, it is not guaranteed to be able to make a stable call but they are constantly releasing new firmware revisions each day. I might wait till it stabilises a little and at least allows me to make phone calls and send text messages, before buying it for myself.

The hardware is quite elegant, except for one extremely rookie mistake. They must have left that part to an intern to do, or something. They had actually connected the graphics accelerator onto a slow SPI bus. That’s like fitting a Ferrari with bicycle wheels. But other than that, everything else looks quite nice. As I will be leaving the UK soon, I would need to buy this thing soon. It isn’t easily available in Malaysia.