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nathan28
March 25th, 2011, 08:34 AM
My old carrier plan has been expired for a while now, and I've been thinking about getting a smartphone, but Ubuntu is making it hard.

Consider this my "angry man paranoid pyramid". In order of importance:

--it absolutely has to play nice with Ubuntu, in an almost Mac "just works" way. I don't need a GUI, but I do need not to spend twenty hours on google searching for packages from Slackware repositories where 50% of the dev team died during the Clinton administration.

--NO GOOGLE APPS. NO GOOGLE APPS WORK-AROUNDS. Google has enough of my personal data on file, they get no more. The line must be held. Besides, a work-around isn't a feature, it's a bug.

--task list and calendar. Must sync task list easily. CLI use and config is fine. Having to learn QT is not.

--Syncs LOCALLY via usb or bluetooth, Cloud functionality is fine but SHOULD BE A FALLBACK NOT A FEATURE. If it has a disk, my laptop has a disk, and I have a USB cable, I'm the ******* superuser, not AT&T's capped data plan requiring I beam my data to a satellite first to get it to my disk six inches away. They can't afford to sell bandwidth cheaper, but they can afford to set up warrantless wiretaps? Throttled DSL over decaying 50-year-old copper lines is "the future of broadband?" Can we just nationalize these jokers?

--physical keypad that's good
hard-coded facebook/ebay/amazon
--Does Thunderbird 3.0 w/ Lightning sync with anything?

--Oh, yeah, phone and SMS


Things that don't matter:

--screen resolution
--touchscreen or multitouch
--mp3/music/movies/games/porn
--e-books
--app stores
--gps maps
--fancy web browser
--looking cool (task lists aren't cool)
--8mpx dual-lens 3d camera


Am I being too cantankerous? All I really want is a calendar with a keyboard attached that syncs with my machine without major command-line brawling. Should I just cave in and get a droid phone? Or take out the old palm pilot IIc? Load lubuntu on a used G1 and use it as a PDA? :(

Donalt2010
March 25th, 2011, 10:23 AM
Not asking much are ya lol. As far as I'm aware there was a few users on here that were talking about creating a sync program for us droid users and Ubuntu, dont actually know if that ever took off or not. As far as syncing calender etc I'm not sure if you can with Ubuntu...well not with Android anyway not unless you sync to Google..which you dont want. As for your phone being recognised as a mass storage device by Ubuntu thats not a problem.
My opinion is to go with Android, its awesome and if you dont like the stock rom, flash your phone and use a custom rom without any of the google crap that you dont want or need. Ive currently got a HTC Desire flashed with LeeDroid. Its starting to bug me though so I'm gonna change it again to MIUI I'm thinking.

Johnsie
March 25th, 2011, 10:26 AM
I have the HTC Desire and I think it's great too. The Desidre-z has a keyboard. I think your demands are a little irrational. Why let your paranoia ruin your life?

Whatever smartphone you use there will be someone somewhere who has access to that data. Like anything else in this world, use what you have sensibly and you wont have any problems. Oh and the type of touch screen is very important, even if you have a keyboard. Capacitive is the way to go.

treesurf
March 25th, 2011, 10:27 AM
Dude, to fill all those criteria you may need to bust out an old Palm Treo. Those were great phones by the way. I didn't get an Android phone till my Treo finally bit the dust.

LowSky
March 25th, 2011, 12:00 PM
my best advice is buy an iPhone and use windows 7... that way you dont have to deal with google or "coding issues"(I never coded anything on my phone and i run a custom rom)... oh use bing.com too while your at it that way google doeant get more info on you

OR

buy a pocket calendar and a pencil and a cheap free dumb phone

AllRadioisDead
March 25th, 2011, 12:14 PM
Why are you so paranoid of Google? They have better things to do giggle at what kind of porn you watch. They're a pretty cool company that offer a lot of services for free.
I've had an Android phone for over a year now, I started with the HTC Hero and currently I have the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant. Tomorrow I'm likely picking up the HTC Desire Z.
Android is for my phone what Linux is for my computer. I love the amount of freedom it gives me over my phone. Overclocking and custom rom's are a lot of fun. No one's forcing you to use the Google apps though, you could always just not create a Google account and not use their services. Everything on an Android phone is tied to your Google account, so if you already use Gmail then Google's already got your info anyways.

AllRadioisDead
March 25th, 2011, 12:15 PM
...

anaconda
March 25th, 2011, 01:11 PM
buy a pocket calendar and a pencil and a cheap free dumb phone

LOL !!
That was the best advice ever.

I would buy nokie E7,

Or even better nokia N900 (it has linux on it (maemo) so it will work well with your ubuntu.) It is a bit old though. and too big for my taste.

MrNatewood
March 25th, 2011, 01:12 PM
Something to consider:
http://www.goodguide.com/categories/332304-cell-phones

RiceMonster
March 25th, 2011, 01:46 PM
I guess get a blackberry. I don't know how well they work with Linux, but the email on it is very good, and they have good keyboards. Also the least Google presence. If you're not going to be loading music, pictures, etc onto your blackberry, you won't have to plug it into your computer ever, so at that point, Linux functionality shouldn't even matter.

DarkTide
March 25th, 2011, 03:06 PM
I'm using HTC Desire HD. I think it's the best phone at the moment
I heard that ubuntu can be installed in HTC desire hd ???

aysiu
March 25th, 2011, 09:01 PM
I'm not sure where all this anti-Google hate is coming from. If you don't want corporations knowing your communications, a mobile phone is not what you should be getting, since AT&T will know what websites you're visiting and whom you're calling and how often. Why is AT&T more trustworthy than Google?

That said, Cyanogen has rooted roms for a number of different Android phones, and the base Cyanogen rom is functional without the Google components (which you have to add on separately if you want them).

The syncing bit will have to be up to you to figure out, though.