More review notes from testing a ZN5 camera phone

Here some more notes from testing my zn5 phone. Photos I’ve taken with it are sprinkled throughout.

• The built-in e-mail client appears not to be open source, although much of the phone is. One disappointment with the mail client is that it appears that “POP before SMTP authentication” is not implemented. Strangely, it seems to identify itself as “Moto-A760” as part of making SMTP connections.

• Mujmail is a decent, fully open source mail client that runs on the phone. It includes the basic usability touch of having keyboard shortcuts for key functions. But as a Java application, Mujmail is sandboxed, meaning it’s prevented from accessing files that it did not create, like reading or writing e-mail addresses directly back into the central address book that the phone uses. Also, because there is no way to make it the “default mail client” on the phone, the “Simple Sharing” feature to easily email a photo can’t be integrated with it. This is the java mess again.

• There reports that 8 GB microSD cards work with it, although it officially supports a max of 4 GB. Amimu’s review of the ZN5 echos the 8 GB claim, and includes many screenshots.

• I got the ability to telnet into the ZN5 working. That’s documented now on the OpenEZX wiki.

• With telnet access, in theory manually fixing the Java permissions is not particularly hard, bit I keep getting out of memory errors.

• The MidpSSH client doesn’t support ssh tunneling, but it shouldn’t be too hard to add. Any takers?

• jmIRC is tested to work as IRC client.

• I’ve now used it combination with the generic “ES-388” Bluetooth USB adapter, as a way to transfer files to a laptop running Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (Hardy Heron). It was easy enough to send or receive a single file, but I’m not yet able to browse the phone as if it was shared folder.