[General] 3G iPhone Announced

[Majed B.]

A friend of mine owns an iPhone and he's a serious Apple fanboy. He
does have Arabic support on his iPhone, using some 3rd party program.
Which brings me to a point: The iPhone stinks, but once you use 3rd
party programs (free or not), it becomes a cool "thingy" -- but a
clogged one...

You need a considerable number of mods/progs to be able to achieve
basic functionality of a phone. Why is this a big issue, to say Linux
guys like myself? Well, for Linux, I would understand lacking some
functions and the fact that someone else would add them later on, but
for Apple to release a device and a framework that lacks basic
functions is utterly ridiculous.

All my mobile phones were Nokia Communicator (9110, 9250, 9500), and I
have to say, Nokia screwed itself with the E90. I'm no longer a Nokia
dude. I'm still using the 9500 waiting for a reliable Linux device.
Unfortunately, there isn't one similar to the communicator in terms of
shape (Love the widescreen and keyboard!), which means I'll be stuck
with a PDA (unless someone could hack the 9500 and install Linux on
it!!).

I think I saw preview models of Samsung and LG phones along with HTC,
demoing Android. But I think HTC would be the better option since
their phones packs the most hardware.

Another alternative to Android, which unfortunately doesn't seem too
promising, is OpenMoko (www.openmoko.com). Their development portal
and wiki can be found at www.openmoko.org .
-- 
 Majed B.