Target hardware, and status

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

hi,
in http://replicant.us/supported-phones/ there was a discussion about
the phone we should support.


                                 --------
                                 |Phones|
                                 --------
Htc Dream
---------
The phone that works the best with replicant is the htc dream under
replicant 1.5(based on android 1.5), I will upload the image soon
Work is beeing done for porting it to replicant 2.2, for instance phone
calls already work with it, but not sound routing.

Some people expressed the need to support more recent or more easily
available phones.

The problem with the htcdream is that,even if I found some places in
italy where someone could still buy a new one,in a very well-known
shop(mondadori), The difficulty to find phones will increase over time.

All the core team has an htcdream but graziano(he doesn't have one
anymore).

Nexus One
---------
The replicant port sounded easy at first, but a major graphic
bug( http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=11829 ) is
preventing us from giving a decent user experience.

The rest(telephony,sound etc..) is easy but sometimes needs some
non-free firmwares.

I'm the only core person to have one,but someone on irc had interest on
porting replicant to it and has one.

Freerunner
----------
The freerunner has not been ported to replicant, altough there is an
android-on-freerunner project.

There are some majors issues with the freerunner:
 * The fact that it's armv4t doesn't help: even if the core Android
operating system works fine(which I assume it does with
andrdoid-on-freerunner) there is some apk compatibilities issues:
A lot of apk uses native code, and such native code is often compiled
for higher arm versions.
The solution is to recompile each applications.

I've a freerunner, but I don't know who else does.

Geeksphone
----------

The geeksphone is very similar to the htcdream and can still be bought.
The screen resolution is lower, and they have a different wifi chip(the
same than the freerunner which uses WEXT(wireless extensions)(not an
issue for android))
Note that there is an android project with sources for it available
here:
https://github.com/rmcc/


I do now own a geeksphone but I know someone who does and doesn't have
the time to work on it, although if I request it I would have to port
SHR(a GNU/Linux distribution for phones) on it and so have less time for
replicant.


n900
----

There is a nitdroid project
( http://wiki.nitdroid.com/index.php?title=Main_Page ) to port Android
to the n900, although there are majors issues such as not having phone
calls(beacuse they didn't integrate yet the pulseaudio library that does
audio routing)
There is also a big issue regarding source code.(the main developer told
me it was hard to build and its build was not documented, but I didn't
try)
The project also doesn't seem very freedom friendly.

I've an n900(I use it for porting SHR) but because of the lack of
phone-calls support I don't think it's worth working on it. The hardware
is also not cheap

iphone
-----
The idroid project ( http://www.idroidproject.org/wiki/Main_Page ) is
porting android to the iphones.

It seems that the iphone2g is the most suported phone and that they made
it usable. Although because I don't own an iphone I couldn't verify.

Most of the hardware seem standard(libertas,AT commands on modem
side,alsa,standard accelerometers...) which is better(no driver to write
from scratch)

I didn't check other iphone version.
I also didn't investigate if jailbreaking was hard.

I do not own an iphone/ipod

windows mobile phones
---------------------
There are many windows mobile phones, like the HD2, however I didn't
investigate it a lot and I'm unsure if Android can be booted without
haret(in other words haret can boot android from windows mobile, which
means that you have to start windows mobile first...)

The key project for that is
http://htc-linux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I do not own any windows mobile phone.

DIY-phones
----------
There is a small number of Do-it-yourself phones where the user is
expected to assemble his phone.
Examples of this include the flow 1.5
( http://www.gizmoforyou.net/site/shop/flow-g1-5.html ) or the odroid
( http://www.hardkernel.com/ ) phones with comes with android support.

I didn't investigate that. but I doubt the general public would want a
phone that they assemble themselves.


                                 --------
                                 |Status|
                                 --------

I will try to fix the routing issues with replicant 2.2 on htcdream and
am currently improving support of replicant 2.2 for the htcdream.
I am not currently working on nexusone because of the graphic bug issue.
According to Cotulla from #htc-linux who observed the same bug on the
HD2 phone while porting android on it(and before using the non-free 3d
acceleration) it would be very hard to fix,and the bug could even be
hardware.

Denis.