Buying an Openmoko Neo FreeRunner

Manfred Stienstra, 04 Jul 2008, 13:56 in web and broken, last updated 04 Jul 2008, 14:27 (edit).

Today Openmoko released the first consumer phone running the Openmoko platform, called Neo FreeRunner. According to a post on Slashdot it’s only sold to people in the United States, so I wanted to see what happened if I tried to buy one.

I started out on the openmoko.com frontpage. There is a big green box inviting me to click on it, so I do that.

Nice, a picture and specifications on one page. That’s really helpful because those are the things I look for on a product page. Now I want to buy it, so I click ‘BUY IT NOW’.

Apparently ‘now’ is a relative term. My guess is that ordering one through a distributor near me is going to take longer, so I click ‘BUY FROM THE OPENMOKO STORE’.

Ok, another product page. I notice that the top navigation changed to ‘STORE/DIRECT’, so at least I made it into the store. I notice another ‘BUY IT NOW’ link, so I click that.

Huh, what’s this, another product page? I check the top navigation to make sure I’m still in the store. I guess I need to scroll down now.

Ah, finally, an ‘ADD TO CART’ link. That usually means we’re almost there.

Unfortunately the store seems to be broken. The website informs us that someone apparently forgot to pass the variant ID, what a bummer. Maybe I should try the search next time.

Comments

  1. Menno about 2 hours later: (delete)

    You forgot to select a phone to put in your cart (radio buttons above the 'Add to cart'). After that you get a nice shopify page so that seems to be covered.

    But you're right, the whole process is not very smooth.

  2. Thijs van der Vossen about 5 hours later: (delete)

    The purchase options are ‘GSM 850 $399.00 USD’ and ‘GSM 850-10 Pack $3,690.00 USD’. It‘s safe to assume most people will want to buy a single phone, so there‘s no reason for not having the first option selected by default.

    Furthermore, it makes more sense to have two separate buttons, or a big button for buying a single phone and a smaller ‘Buy a 10-pack for $3,690.00 USD’ link below or in the sidebar.

    The biggest problem is that you have to click at least 5 times if you‘re ready to buy while you should have been able to buy the phone right from the home page.

  3. bart 40 days later: (delete)

    Did you buy one??

  4. Manfred Stienstra 40 days later: (delete)

    Nope. I had a gadget craze for a few minutes, but they failed to hook me during that time. I don't like general purpose mobile devices, so I'm not very likely to buy one.

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