Nevermoto!

I've had it with Motorola. I was seduced by an A780, but the experience didn't live upto the seduction. 20,000 rupees down the drain in 1 year and 3 months :-(

And hell hath no fury like an evangelist who's seen the darkness, if you'll pardon the word play!

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Lessons learned:

• never, ever, buy a phone that is so badly supported! One month after the battery dies I'm still waiting for a new one. And using an old Nokia 3315 for now. [And hardly missing the A780, dammit!]
• never buy a phone designed by an American company. Their networks are so behind the times they don't even know what features to include or test! Ever heard of location info coming up as an SMS?
• the most often used features should use the least keystrokes. Redialling the last number shouldn't be FOUR key presses.
• the most often used features should be the most tested. T9 (aka "predictive text input") sucks on this thing. In many ways (doesn't cycle the first 2-3 letters if you ask it to cycle the choices, doesn't allow a space before a special character, ...)
• playing sudoku online during meetings is great, but not that important. Really!
• ditto for a camera, web browser, mp3 player, voice recording, and T9 on the dialer.

What's my real gripe? No Linux support

The Motorola A780 does not support Linux. Yes, you heard it here first!

Here's my definition of "Linux support":

The device should not create yet another Windows dependency in order to be used as intended (which in this case includes backup/sync tasks).

Any device where the CD-ROM that comes with it assumes you run Windows has failed the test.

And please ignore the few geek pages that show how to synchronise the phone data with a Linux box -- if I can't recommend it to my non-techie brother, it isn't good enough to claim "we support Linux" whatever else you may want to claim!

[geek note:] It shouldn't be that difficult to create a statically linked Qt/GTK binary with minimal dependencies that can access the device from USB and get the stuff out and in. Sort of like jpilot; nothing fancy, but functional.

Yes, the A780 runs Linux inside, which is nice, but the warm fuzzy feeling wears off very quickly after a month of using the damn thing.

My next phone will likely be a lowly Nokia 1108. Hey, it's got a flashlight attached :-)