There is a lot of speculation about the April Software Update (ASU). Is it a single image you install, or is it a line of development? Is it a rebranded Qtopia or something new? How's the sounds quality? What Wifi management tools will there be? Is there a package installer? What does it look like?

I thought I'd take some time today to hopefully answer those questions, and more importantly, show lots and lots of screenshots, because everyone likes screenshots. :)

When you first boot the Freerunner, the screen backlight fades in gradually to reveal the familiar orange and black Openmoko start splash. After a few seconds, the screen turns to the black with white scrolling text that just about every Linux user in the world is familiar with.

Then come the boots. As a bit of geek humor, probably chosen by Raster, there is a pair of boots on the boot screen. A green bar slides in and begins loading. A great example of the early stages can be found on this flash demo.

By default, the ASU image is set to a grid system application launcher.

For those uninterested in this view, there is a bit more unique take on it using the slider mode.

Atop the action at all stages of using the ASU is Illume, which essentially functions as the system tray and task bar. Here, you can launch the keyboard, launch the settings panel, enter the Enlightenment settings (note, this is slated for removal and doesn't directly affect the use of ASU), switch to a running application or close an open application.

Let me visually cover those things, in order. First, the keyboard:

The keyboard is a QWERTY like keyboard that has a dictionary lookup built in. To bring the keyboard down you tap the “qwerty” area of the Illume bar. To begun typing, simply hit a letter. To see a more complete list of words meeting your typed characters, click the white triangle on the keyboard. There is a shift key which displays upper case numbers. If you look, you'll see that some keys are missing. If you make a line on the keyboard going up or down the keymap changes to special characters (!,@./) and numbers, making the keyboard usable on a terminal. Though, in fairness, I didn't check to see if there are CTRL or ALT keys which might affect that use.

The settings panel is opened by clicking the wrench icon on the Illume slider. In here there are settings for all kinds of things. I won't go in depth with them all, the most “visible” is probably the option to set the slider or icon grid launcher modes.

The Enlightenment settings, as an E17 user would recognize, are kind of a “left over” from the development. These settings are planned to be removed, since the functionality of them is either irrelevant for Openmoko or will be absorbed into other applications.

One of the best features of the Freerunner, in my personal opinion, is the ability to utilize GPS without a non-free driver. Because of this, a basic GPS application has been included with the ASU. It's really very much a placeholder or prototype now, as the only thing it seems to do is display a map that can be zoomed or moved around and prompts that it fails to get a GPS fix. I'm not exactly sure of the name of this application, in all honesty. I'm used to calling it “Diversity” thought I've also heard the name “Splinter” tossed around and I'm not sure of what the distinction, if any, is.

The second big hardware change for the Freerunner was the inclusion of wifi. In order to connect to wireless networks, there is a program called “Campwifi” that once launched, probes for networks. While not viable in this shot, I have managed to connect to an open wifi access point “in range” of my apartment and been assigned an IP address. I personally have no experience with wifi at ALL aside from what I've gleaned from reading tutorials over the last few years so I'm not sure if some of the encryption and authentication schemes are implemented – with only one unsecured wifi AP within range of my apartment, it's not been an issue for me yet. Hopefully I'll be able to check that out more as I'm able to shift away from the 1973 and towards the Freerunner as my day-to-day phone.

Another nifty feature of the ASU is the Assassin package manager, a GUI front end to opkg. Once you launch Assassin, you're presented with a list of categories to choose from, and some of those categories contain items that can be installed. So far, there aren't too many packages listed. Certainly far less than show with an opkg –list. It leaves my mind to speculate as to how this is important – perhaps Assassin will present users with action based installs (Install US Maps for GPS) or be used for more than just software applications for things like ebooks and ringtones. With an open platform, the mind runs amok.

Once an application is selected, there's one big “Touch here to install” button which is very simple to figure out what to do. Once pressed, you're prompted again to confirm at which case the install begins and completes.

From the screenshots you can see I installed “openmoko-messages2”, an application from the 2007.02 line that was based on GTK. At one point, when the switch to Qtopia was announced, there were a lot of GTK fans upset. It seemed to die down a little bit when it became clear that GTK would still be usable on the phone so I wanted to be sure I got a shot running a GTK application. It looks hideous because the GTK theme wasn't installed, but any GTK theme could be applied and hopefully there will be a matching one in the future. If there was any remaining doubt, GTK is alive and well within the ASU framework.

Finally, I'll show a few “glitches”. Firstly, the video processing on the Freerunner is slower than the 1973 thanks to the Glamo. I found that after a while of using the device (and with over 40 screenshots, it was “a while”) the transitions (Illume slides down, launched applications slide down) began getting choppy. I found reducing my frame rate to 10 fps helped this quite a bit but was still noticeable. Additionally, NONE of the Qtopia apps would launch in slider or grid mode. Setting the display variable I was able to launch Qtopia Media Player which complained about lack of Qcop and then segfaulted as I closed it. But you'll see that there are no screenshots of the Qtopia apps since they wouldn't launch “normally” for me.

You'll see below that occasionally applications crash. I've been shown the “Enlightenment crashed” white box a few times, and recovery happened. Every now and then, a half rendered Enlightenment window would pop up but not show me anything good. I had to use my tiny screwdriver stylus to close that box, my fingers are too big for that. Lastly, while earlier versions of the ASU had scrollbars, this version does not. However, when scrolling in certain areas, a distortion appears in the area where a scrollbar would be. These, luckily, appeared in screenshots.

The ASU, while certainly not usable as a daily phone, is certainly full of promise! I'll be tracking this closely and writing reviews as applications become more complete and the images become more functional.