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View Full Version : I need a cell phone recommendation...



Keyper7
June 18th, 2008, 12:55 PM
Hello Ubuntu community! :)

I'd like to know if anyone with more experience around here can recommend me a good cell phone that satisfies the following:

1 - Megapixel camera. I'd like 2.0 but 1.3 is good enough.

2 - Works as a mp3 player and pen drive, which means I can connect it to a computer through USB.

3 - Minimum of 1GB for pictures/music (a memory card slot is good enough).

4 - Bluetooth.

5 - Cheap (I only require the previous itens and nothing else)

and finally, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to ask in this forum:

6 - I can synchronize it with Evolution in Hardy through bluetooth. It doesn't even have to synchronize everything, only the calendar is good enough.

Here in Brazil, I have mainly LG, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung phones available. I've heard that Nokia is particularly Linux-friendly.

Thanks in advance,
-Keyper7

gn2
June 18th, 2008, 12:57 PM
I bought an LG KG290 which has all the features you list and cost me (UK) £20 which was very cheap.

MaximB
June 18th, 2008, 12:59 PM
Check this out : http://www.openmoko.com

gn2
June 18th, 2008, 01:02 PM
Check this out : http://www.openmoko.com

I've yet to find one of those on sale, when you try to buy one from your link, FF throws up an error.

MaximB
June 18th, 2008, 02:14 PM
I've yet to find one of those on sale, when you try to buy one from your link, FF throws up an error.


That because you will need to add this site as ab exception (security issues), unfortunately they are sold out for the moment and I personally know a person who owns one in my county (I'm sure however there are many more like him here ;)).

Anyways they are building their code from the ground up AGAIN !
It works as it is but they say they could have done it better - and are actually working on it !
No other vendor would drop his code at this stage of the development just to "make it better".
I respect them a lot and ones they are certified here so we could make calls legally from this phone and ones a new version of their rebuilded code will come out I think I will buy iy , unless googoles phone be a LOT better then I can dream of ;)

Keyper7
June 18th, 2008, 03:03 PM
gn2, I liked your suggestion (really good looking phone!), but apparently the KG290 is not yet available on LG Brazil... :(

MaximB, I already knew about the openmoko project and I think it's a great project. For now they apparently don't offer the features I'm looking for, but I'll be sure to keep checking the project regularly.

Any other suggestions? :)

plb
June 18th, 2008, 03:16 PM
nokia e51? I'm not sure what you consider cheap but it runs for around $250 here in the states which is good I think considering the features.

Keyper7
June 18th, 2008, 03:24 PM
A direct conversion from US$ 250,00 to brazilian currency would give less than R$ 500,00, which would be expensive but almost acceptable. The problem is, Brazil has some pretty violent taxes and the price of an E51 around here is about R$ 1000,00! I'm looking for something around R$ 250,00.

There's actually several cheap and good phones with almost all features I listed here. The problem is synching with Evolution, I'm asking here because I want to hear successful stories about it. ;)

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, plb.

Keyper7
June 29th, 2008, 08:45 PM
I'm happy to announce that I recently acquired a Sony Ericsson K550i

http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/overview/k550i?cc=us&lc=en

for R$ 199,00 (less than I expected) and it seems to satisfy all of my needs, including being remarkably Ubuntu-friendly.

Bluetooth: check.

MP3 Player: check, though I still have to see how long the battery lasts.

Memory stick: check, although it's a micro card, very expensive to upgrade.

Camera: 2.0MP CyberShot... needs a lot of light for decent pictures, but that's ok. And I heard that hacking the camera driver might improve things.

Now on to the great stuff:

Phone memory / memory card recognition: perfect, with both cable and bluetooth.

Sending files via bluetooth: working great!

Synchronization with Evolution: great with opensync, except for Notes. But I don't use notes anyway. :)

Use as a remote control: Working perfectly and I already installed customized keybindings for totem and rhythmbox.

Thanks for all the help people. I really feel that the research was worthy (also many thanks to the people who mantain the device compatibility chart on opensync's trac pages).

RebounD11
June 29th, 2008, 10:21 PM
I have a Sony Ericsson K618i and it works great... except syncing with Evolution which I didn't try yet, everything else works perfectly.

The pictures are not too great but I have a friend who has a SE K850i and it works as well with my openSUSE 11 as mine... only the photos are awesome
(5 MP and many other features). I don't know if it's in your price range but these are my recommendations.

I believe any SE phone from the Cybershot series will work great with Linux.. even some Walkman phones do that (I've tried and they worked great with Linux: K750i, W800i, W660i, k608i, k618i, V630i, V640i, k800i, k810i and k850i).

Luca1963
July 8th, 2008, 07:47 PM
Hi. I read that you manage to connect to internet with a V640i.
I've tried for one month and I can't get throught.
I use Ubuntu 8.04. Can you tell me how did you get to connect ?
Thanks a lot.
Luca (l.redaelli@tiscali.it)