Openmoko Linux smartphone is already on sale, but is it worth buying?

If someone else is not familiar with this wonderful gadget, then you are welcome to the official Neo Freerunner website (aka neo 1973 in its first version). As already mentioned on the hub, the official cost of the device is $ 400, in Europe there are no special problems with the purchase (in Germany it costs 320 euros). As a Linuxoid with some experience, I naturally thought about what I should buy this phone: with its characteristics and full control over the system to configure.

I was already almost placing an order, as there was a desire to look at the interface of a future purchase, especially since all kinds of emulation are well described on the site. And here I was a little surprised: after downloading the kernel, bootloader and image of the file system, after starting the emulator (by the way, the lines in the console on the screen are very nice when loading, the phone should look spectacular =)) the interface refused to respond to my actions. A little googling found out that the working version of the kernel and other system utilities are automatically pumped out, i.e. nobody guarantees its performance. I found the latest approved and working version, downloaded, installed and was even more surprised - it works.
But here doubts began to creep in: the menu does not replete with the necessary and beautiful programs and functions, it pleases only the ability to run the command line. I started to google further - and indeed, many programs are still in the status of development and refinement. And here the first reviews of foreign colleagues arrived, which can be summarized briefly like this:

A wonderful device, it has as many as two accelerometers, only no one has figured out how to work with them.

Suppose even if you do not take into account that most of the functions can only be started with a tambourine, then many users complain about simply idle calls and SMS.
That is actually the reason why I have so far refused to purchase. And it’s up to you to decide whether you are ready to spend time not recompiling the phone’s core to send an SMS to a new number that is not in your notebook =) Figuratively speaking of course, but this is not so far from the truth.