ubuntuone-users team mailing list archive

[Martin Albisetti <martin.albisetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/05/2010 08:09 AM, Alan Pope wrote:
> Any chance this page can get some love from the developers?

We've kicked off the public alpha to start stressing the service and finding 
out where we need to polish. Thanks for this feedback.


> My phone (Android based HTC Hero) is not listed at
> https://edge.one.ubuntu.com/phones/ - perhaps you should add a note to
> _that_ page rather than have it has a bracketed side note on
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/PhoneSync/ that iphone and android
> users might want to click one of these three links. The fact that two
> of the most popular platforms (iPhone and Android) are relegated to
> side notes rings alarm bells for me.

iphone users are in luck. There will be an "Ubuntu One" app on the app store 
any day now, so all they'll have to do is install that and punch in their 
user/password, and they're ready to go.


> On the subject of which none of them lead me to a friendly way to
> install funambol on my phone. The first two are flat out broken links
> (accept this could be a local issue) the third tells me the project
> has moved and there's no easy way on the target linked page to
> actually _get_ a released package, just an alpha version. Not sure I
> like the sound of alpha quality code monkeying with my contacts :S
>
> Looking at the alpha link I see "Latest version is Funambol Sync
> Client v. 8.5 (alpha), contacts sync for Android 2.0 only (not
> compatible with Android 1.6 and older"). The HTC Hero runs 1.6. So it
> looks like I can't install it even if I wanted to.
>
> Navigating to "Downloads" and then "I want to sync my Phone"
> https://www.forge.funambol.org/download/#phone (the direct link we
> should probably have on the wiki), I find Android only listed under
> "Latest Funambol Clients Developers-only Release v. 8.5".
>
> Furthermore I'd much prefer to install a package from the marketplace.
> Given we are often telling our Ubuntu users to use the store/package
> manager to search rather than installing debs from random sites, it
> seems somewhat crooked to ask people to do exactly that on their
> phone.

I completely agree that we need to improve the communication about supported 
and unsupported phones.
For this feature, we have decided to partner with an established company that 
has support for hundreds of phone models. It's very hard to keep up with the 
number of OSes out there, so they've built open source communities around the 
clients, which fits in well with Ubuntu.
We are not doing any upstream development on the clients, it's a massive amount 
of work due to the number of devices out there, so instead we've built all the 
infrastructure to get the contacts from mobile phones to couchdb, where they 
can be accessed and manipulated at will.
Android phones at version 1.6 are still not very well supported. There's a 
bounty[1] out there to encourage people to fix the existing bugs and finish the 
port from 2.0 to 1.6.
From the Ubuntu One team, we will provide all the support and help we can to 
further the development on the clients that are not quite there yet, but at 
this stage, we don't have the resources to do any development on the clients.



[1] https://android-client.forge.funambol.org/servlets/ProjectProcess?pageID=IHR75o
--
Martin