Moved to: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Profiles
Profiles
A profile is a set of configurations that determine how the phone handle different events. Example of profiles include:
- Airplane profile (No radio activity)
- Night (Silent ring tone except for people on the emergency list).
- Meeting
- In business hours (People marked as business contacts get preference)
- Out of business hours (People marked as business contacts are diverted to voice mail)
Actually, this could be improved by assigning a temptive timezone to callers via the caller id, and playing an information msg about the localtime and/or localtimezone to all peoples calling from timezones further away.
This way, when traveling, I can enter the timezone, and people that do not know that I travel get a fair warning before I'm getting rung out of bed. The timezone can be computed automatically using [http://www.linuxtogo.org/gowiki/OpenMoko/ideas/SetLocalTime Set Local Time].
Additionally mobile devices routinely record usage statistics such as total airtime, number of text messages etc.
What they are missing is the ability to either alert the user that they are going over the alloted minutes or number of text messages at the time of day or for the month, or to restrict the user from going over their alloted time.
An OpenMoko could have two modes, plan and free. In plan mode, the user configures their OpenMoko with the specifications for their phone plan. In free mode, the OpenMoko has unrestricted usage. An additional setting in plan mode could describe the contacts/services that can be reached regardless of the alloted time. This way an OpenMoko is kid mode can still make calls to their parents. 911 and other emergency services will always be accessible regardless of the alloted minutes, this is either built in as part of the regional profile (which changes as one roams) or as part of the default system settings. AFAIK, calls to emergency services don't incur any costs other than service charges that are part of the cost of a plan.
Profile timeout
When you enter a cinema you want the profile to go to cinema-profile. But there is a risk you forget to turn it back to normal. So in the cinema you enable the cinema profile with a timeout for 2 hours. If you do not actively disable it again it will automatically do so after 2 hours, and go back to the profile that is normally defined for this time/place.
Identity
As discussed on P2PMobileSharing, your profile would also specify which Contact was you. So you may have a business card, personal card, or info at certain conventions/venues. This would then be the card that is shared via Bluetooth when you want to exchange vCard info with others on their mobiles/PDA's.
Location(AGPS) Dependent Profile
Automatically set certain profiles for certain areas, e.g. silent for your library/cinema or at work to your mailbox.