Linux and a dead smartphone

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hi all,

The touchscreen on my four-year-old Treo has fallen over and died. The
phone is still quite functional without it, but it does miss some
important features. Worse, if the phone ever reboots -- rare, but it
happens -- it essentially becomes a brick, going into an endless loop of
trying to calibrate a touchscreen that will never respond.

I've called Rogers and their answer is to upgrade, of course. They've
suggested one of two possible replacements -- the newer Treo 680, or the
HTC S621 -- for which they've offered me an extremely good deal.

The S621 -- known in the US as the T-Mobile Dash -- has good reviews.
Most notably, it supports Wifi, and runs Skype and other softphones.
This means, at a hotspot, I have the choice of calling using VOIP or the
cell network, which I consider to be a Really Good Feature. Add
bluetooth and a good media player, and it's quite the option. The
problem is that its platform is Windows Mobile.

Do any other options exist, of GSM cellphones that can do Wifi (and run
a softphone)?

Moreover (which brings us to the TLUG relevance), does anyone here have
experience with the GPE (Linux for cellphone) platform? I've tried the
weblinks but have a difficult time finding out the status. There are
some stories of people who have made a Treo boot Linux (ie,
http://www.grack.com/programming/misc/TreoLinux.html) but I can't find
any details even about what hardware platforms are suitable for GPE.

Is anyone here involved with GPE, or at least following it more closely?
There are announcements of Linux-based Treos by years' end, but I won't
be able to wait that long. Any suggestions of other options?

Thanks!

- Evan
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 3837 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/legacy/attachments/20070507/16a408c3/attachment.bin>