Openmoko-based Linux smartphone is already on sale, but is it worth buying?

If someone else is not familiar with this wonderful gadget, then welcome to the official site of Neo Freerunner (aka neo 1973 in its first version). As already mentioned in the Habré, the official cost of the device is $ 400, in Europe there are no special problems with buying (in Germany it costs 320 euros). As a linuksoid with some experience, I naturally thought that I should buy this phone: with its characteristics and full control over the system for setting up.

I had almost placed an order, as there was a desire to look at the interface of the future purchase, especially since all sorts of emulation is well described on the site . And then I was a little surprised: after downloading the kernel, bootloader and file system image, after running the emulator (by the way, the console lines on the screen run very nicely, the phone should look spectacular on the phone =)) the interface refused to respond to my actions. A little googling found out that the working version of the kernel and other system utilities was downloaded by the machine gun, i.e. nobody guarantees its performance. I found the latest approved and working version, downloaded, installed and was even more surprised - it works.
But doubts began to creep in here: the menu is not replete with necessary and beautiful programs and functions, only the possibility of launching the command line pleases. Began to google further - and indeed, many programs are still in the status of development and refinement. And here came the first reviews of foreign colleagues, which, in brief, can be summarized as follows:

A wonderful device, it has two accelerometers, but no one else has figured out how to work with them.

Suppose even if you do not take into account that most of the functions can only be run with a tambourine, many users complain about just idle calls and SMS.
That's actually the reason why I refused to buy. And it’s up to you to decide whether you are ready to spend the time not recompiling the core of the phone to send an SMS to a new number that is not in the address book =) Figuratively speaking, of course, but this is not so far from the truth.