ubuntu-ngo team mailing list archive

[Bjoern Hassler <bjoern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

<offtopic>
I hope you'll forgive me for this off-topic email - it's relevant to  
international development, but not really to Ubuntu, but I thought I'd  
try my luck anyway! Basically I am looking for people who have certain  
basic phones, and would be happy to try gmail and opera mini on that  
phone.

Here's the background: I've been trying to find the 'cheapest mobile'  
with reasonable 'email/browsing capability'. In my view that means:  
What's the cheapest mobile that can run the gmail app and Opera Mini.  
Why is that interesting for develpment? In many ways, I think that's  
the simplest way to enable basic connectivity. Of course it's not  
amazing connectivity, but the gmail app and Opera mini are pretty good  
(certainly when compared to many native apps), and they do work  
reasonably over GPRS.

Unfortunately it's not just a question of checking the phone specs -  
there are some phones that seem to be suitable on paper, but when you  
read the forums, it turns out that a particular phone doesn't run  
gmail app (or doesn't run it well). I've got a list of phones on this  
page http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/wiki/Mobile/The_cheapest_phone_with_gmail_and_operamini 
 that could be suitable (and are currently available). Of course it's  
possible to get expensive phones that do all this no problem, but this  
is about finding the cheapest one, and the following list are all GBP  
30-50 phones (that are currently available in the UK).

So - I'm looking for testers for those candidate phones, and if you  
have a

- Samsung E250
- Nokia 2630, 2760, or 2680
- LG KE970 Shine, LG KG800 Chocolate
- Sony Ericsson W350

and would be willing to install and give some feedback on gmail app  
and Opera Mini, please do get in touch!
</offtopic>

If you have another suggestion where to post this, please do let me  
know!

Thanks!
Bjoern