You are right, Julian, I was doing C-x C-d, not C-x d.
C-x d works like advertised after setting the said variable.

Maybe you can enlighten us about the list-directory-brief-switches bit?

When this project gets its homepage, we should compile that information for the benefit of the emacs using maemo community...

Still not a word from garage.maemo.org people....

Later, Ulysses