Unknown Lamer's Journal: Farewell, HTC Dream

I got an HTC Dream about ... three years ago? And two days ago I was merrily using the phone when suddenly the touchscreen stopped responding. I rebooted, hoping it was Android 1.6 being lame yet again and ... where did the audio hardware go? dmesg revealed scads of i2c errors and that was that, time to get a new phone against my will. Because, honestly, I think the G1 is the best phone designed, ever. I'd really like to see a new version with an optical trackpad replacing the trackball (it got a bit less responsive after ~18 months, presumably from dirt) and a slightly larger screen... but otherwise untouched. And, since it croaked after a mere three years of being treated very well, a bit better build quality (hey, HTC, sell the design to Nokia and hit them with the cluebat to make them release more maemo devices). It was good enough for me to lay down my desire for an OpenMoko and compromise on a mostly non-free device yet again...

After a bit of searching, I settled upon this mytouch 4G slide thing. The keyboard is lame and only four rows... emacsing over ssh will certainly become more exciting. But, it was the best device under $250 (+ 24 months further enslavement to T-Mobile) hardware wise and is supported by Cyanogenmod so maybe I won't hate it too much. UPDATES TO FOLLOW (not that anyone reads Slashdot journals anymore).