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If you want a hardware keyboard on a phone that at least has the goal of being as open as possible, you want a Neo900
http://neo900.org/
It will be able to be used with NO closed blobs on the main ARM CPU for WiFi OR cellular modem. It will also be possible to use it with no closed blobs for the GPU if you dont need 3D acceleration.

And there are hardware level security features built into the design. The cellular modem firmware has no access to the main ARM CPU, main RAM, the main filesystem, the microphone, the speakers, the Bluetooth chip or the WiFi chip so its not possible for backdoors (government or otherwise) in the cellular modem firmware to turn the Neo900 into a covert listening device or other covert device.

There are physical hardware switches to let you turn off all the different wireless devices (cellular, WiFi, bluetooth, GPS) so its physically impossible for the firmware on those things to transmit if you turn them off.

I have no association with the Neo900 project other than as someone who wishes he could afford one to replace his already-excellent Nokia N900 :)

Just pointing out that there are other "make a phone as secure as possible" phones out there and there is a way to get one that has a hardware keyboard.

You have heard of the Neo900 project, right? http://neo900.org/ Check it out. These folks are the future of mobile telecommunications, or should be.

Reportedly they've gotten PayPal to cripple that project.

Maybe Neo900 will be available then.

No, read carefully and don't spread false info! There's 64GB of *internal* eMMC, plus 0.5GB of internal NAND (mostly for N900 compatibility), AND additional external microSD memory.

If you say that Neo900 "doesn't do anything special" compared to any Android phone, you surely just don't understand what this fuzz is all about. Almost any Android phone out there is hardly comparable to a openness level of devices like Neo Freerunner, GTA04 or Neo900. The best you can get from Android devices is Replicant or some libhybris abominations, and after using Freerunner and N900 for a long time I'm not exactly interested in either.

The price is simply how development of such things divided by low production yield costs. It's as simple as that. When you're comparing something developed with external funds for a order of magnitude more people, then prices drop *very quick*.

Also, obviously you cannot "take Samsung and replace GPS to more open one". Those devices both lack basic info about what's really inside and how it's connected, reworking is *very* error prone (and producing it means REing it from scratch, which would be even more expensive than Neo900 which already used GTA04 design for some of its parts), they're not FLOSS friendly, the architecture of GSM communication often isn't even privacy friendly... heck, today even finding a device with physical keyboard would be a trouble. Your ideas are simply disconnected from reality. That's not how you make devices, especially not for such a niche as this one.

That's the level of openness and transparency that is the basic requirement of this project that differentiates it from other ones: http://neo900.org/stuff/block-...

Also, the project's take on user privacy and how a modem module will be handled is very unique: http://neo900.org/stuff/ohsw20...

And that's just early stuff. Good luck finding any other suiting phone for someone for whom this stuff is important.

"The execution" of Neo900 is a result of years of experience with real open devices like those from Openmoko and OpenPhoenux community, both as their users and makers. There's hardly any comparable hardware on the market - and virtually none that is "much cheaper", as you postulate. The closest one right now is Jolla, which is still a few steps backwards compared to what Openmoko already did years ago.

No, read carefully and don't spread false info! There's 64GB of *internal* eMMC, plus 0.5GB of internal NAND (mostly for N900 compatibility), AND additional external microSD memory.

If you say that Neo900 "doesn't do anything special" compared to any Android phone, you surely just don't understand what this fuzz is all about. Almost any Android phone out there is hardly comparable to a openness level of devices like Neo Freerunner, GTA04 or Neo900. The best you can get from Android devices is Replicant or some libhybris abominations, and after using Freerunner and N900 for a long time I'm not exactly interested in either.

The price is simply how development of such things divided by low production yield costs. It's as simple as that. When you're comparing something developed with external funds for a order of magnitude more people, then prices drop *very quick*.

Also, obviously you cannot "take Samsung and replace GPS to more open one". Those devices both lack basic info about what's really inside and how it's connected, reworking is *very* error prone (and producing it means REing it from scratch, which would be even more expensive than Neo900 which already used GTA04 design for some of its parts), they're not FLOSS friendly, the architecture of GSM communication often isn't even privacy friendly... heck, today even finding a device with physical keyboard would be a trouble. Your ideas are simply disconnected from reality. That's not how you make devices, especially not for such a niche as this one.

That's the level of openness and transparency that is the basic requirement of this project that differentiates it from other ones: http://neo900.org/stuff/block-...

Also, the project's take on user privacy and how a modem module will be handled is very unique: http://neo900.org/stuff/ohsw20...

And that's just early stuff. Good luck finding any other suiting phone for someone for whom this stuff is important.

"The execution" of Neo900 is a result of years of experience with real open devices like those from Openmoko and OpenPhoenux community, both as their users and makers. There's hardly any comparable hardware on the market - and virtually none that is "much cheaper", as you postulate. The closest one right now is Jolla, which is still a few steps backwards compared to what Openmoko already did years ago.

See also: http://neo900.org/stuff/ohsw20...

Where did you get that price from? In the online shops it says the full phone is 480 EUR: https://my.neo900.org/index.ph...

While many parts are open source, Sailfish OS is not completely free software and contains parts under a proprietary EULA.

Firefox OS is mostly open source as well but contains binary android drivers.

Without free drivers, there will always be a binary blob on your system which can then "phone home" or do other nasty things. Before a phone is created which does not require these blobs, there will be no phone completely running free software.

The openmoko gta01 and freerunner were attempts at this.

The gta04 by golden delicious was pretty good too and was able to run without any binary blobs (it was not necessary to install the binary powervr driver to use the phone normally without 3D).

The next upcoming thing is the neo900: http://neo900.org/

For a phone without "all your data are belong to us" thingys in the background check out the neo900: http://neo900.org/

The latest openmoko is a community mod on the GTA-04 called the Neo900 and should be available soon. The OSS porting of closed source components of Maemo5 and the large(useful) app collection used in the Nokia N900 is progressing. The prototype can already run Android and the other OSS phone OSs. It will switch from the OpenMoko 1-4 puck shape to using the housing and screen from the N900 with a big hardware, CPU, and memory upgrade but retaining the hardware keyboard. http://neo900.org/

It would be more useful to go the opposite way - keep Ubuntu the same, just add QWERTY keyboard to the phone. Otherwise we have to pay for our own phone manufacturing - Neo900.

Actually, there is this awesome remake of N900: http://neo900.org/ which would have plain Linux as OS and modem actually will be properly separated from motherboard, so you could be sure it is turned off when you turn it off. It will be pretty expensive though, since currently they struggle to find even 1000 buyers.

"Is" or "Will be if it ever gets off the ground"? According to the neo900 web site the estimated ship date isn't for months yet.

The Nokia N900 was a pretty nice phone, but the CPU does not really cut it any more. The http://neo900.org/ project is pretty neat idea to put a modern motherboard into it.

There's a reason why Neo900 is Neo900 and not Neo9.

It's sad that the only real chance for a nerd-friendly, hackable phone (Jolla is not open in some key respects) missed the boat.

Android is free software as well, so what? Its application in real life generally is not, and judging from how well Firefox OS is able to overcome it (hint: it isn't), Ubuntu for phones will probably just follow the same path.

"Enjoy our awesome free system, but if device manufacturer locked down the bootloader and made access to root account troublesome, then it's not our fault, but manufacturers!"

Fortunately projects like OpenPhoenux exist, Neo900 will be available in few months. Both Firefox OS and Ubuntu for phones should work on it, as well as many other distros, including standard PC ones (making Debian usable as a phone is a matter of few apt-get installs and some basic configuration); without any proprietary drivers sans GPU acceleration (but looking at Replicant 4.2 running smoothly on GTA04 without 3D acceleration, I guess you can live without it if you really care about "software purity").

While Mozilla and Canonical might be doing some good job in software development, I simply don't care about their efforts in building hardware ecosystem, as they're even not trying to hide that they're doing it exactly the same like Android one, and that's unacceptable for me.

There's no need for that.

For a site whose readership is widely associated with desktop Linux, I'm surprised to see so much interest in CyanogenMod. I loved my Nokia N900 and plan on buying a Neo900 phone both for the fact that it runs the same Debian-like system as my big computer and for the feeling of privacy (the cellular modem is separated from the rest of the system). I discovered the world of Cyanogen only after the wife bought a Samsung Android phone and wondered about its upgradeability. Compared to my own phone, Cyanogen seemed to have more of a Windows aesthetic, roughly comparable to getting one's apps from cnet or other dodgy download sites, instead of the more careful, technically detailed packaging, forums and bug reporting systems one finds from desktop Linux distros.

...or Neo900?

If the open source baseband was even remotely feasible to do, open projects like Openmoko, OpenPhoenux (GTA04, Neo900) together with OsmocomBB would already come up with 100% open GSM device. The people working on those project dream to be able to do that, but they simply can't. OsmocomBB is practically a research project, as there are no practical use-cases for it to "normal user" (in most countries it's illegal to use modem with OsmocomBB on it unless you're operating it with your own BTS-lab network you got permission to set up for development or research purposes), and it only operates on very old devices with TI Calypso, as basically all of more modern basebands are cryptographically signed (TI Calypso was also supposed to be, but for some unknown reason that feature was disabled, probably due to misconfiguration at the factory - this is the only reason OsmocomBB was possible at all).

Unless we do lots of legal lobbying and raise much more resources than a company like Canonical has (trust me, building proper 4G modem is awfully hard and expensive. You have to comply to several thousands pages of protocol documentation and pass many certifications. Canonical probably could would be able to afford producing Ubuntu Edge, but they certainly won't be able to afford the modem development), it's much more helpful to look at projects like Neo900 ( http://neo900.org/ ) which aim for the best possible separation between APE and the baseband with built-in monitoring in case you suspect modem might be doing something malicious. In my opinion, this is the proper step forward the truly free mobile devices in our pockets, not shouting and demanding open basebands (even if we all, including Neo900 developers, dream about them).

http://neo900.org/
Would you maybe want to own one? Why?

They seem to go different way than FSF does with "Respects Your Privacy" program - instead of modifying the modem to either be free or act "as a circuit", which both may be not feasible given their limited resources, they seem to go with the "sandboxing" way - giving the user a way to control and monitor what does the modem do. They want to achive the same result, but with different way than proposed by FSF. What is your take on that?

http://www.gta04.org/ or http://neo900.org/

Nokia was still making well-designed phones with full keyboards up until fairly recently, with the last holdouts in their Asha line. The X2 was very low-end but a good design (rugged as heck but tragically low onboard memory, slow processor, low-resolution camera, & no WIFI/3G), despite lackluster stats. Usability, ruggedness, & things other than "can it play [latest ad-revenue/money-harvesting game]?" or "does it [make money for] google?" is what's key.

As nice as keyboard slider phones can be, I personally think the best design is the Blackberry-style full-QWERTY bar phone with a d-pad (& a screen which can have the touch-functionality switched on & off (capacitive touchscreens can be *too* sensitive)). NEC *tried* to make an Android phone meeting some of these specs, but I understand it fell far short of expectations. I had high hopes.

The new Blackberries, & the NEC Terrain, both have full QWERTY, but lacked any other meaningful inputs than the touchscreen, like the ever-useful d-pad, which is also lacking in the HTC ChaCha/Status. Nokia made the last good phone design with their E6 (or N950/E7), but that was underpowered & had numerous flaws. So I've (personally) settled on what I consider to be the least worst phone around still, a Nokia E73. I still see people with them out & about in the world, & it works quite well for me, as my primary mobile. I can do most anything on it that I need to: I can use various social media/internet functionalities (whatsapp (which is amazing how a major company designs their software to be accessible on most device platforms, not just iDevices & Android!), facebook, synctxt, okc, goodsearch - an enlightened alternative to google, twitter, etc.) & have access to an excellent email client, Citrix support, FM radio built-in (lucky me, I live near Good radio stations), & an amazing GPS. The camera's decent, too. Sure, it's carrier-locked (T-Mobile) but it has better stats than the E72, has built-in WIFI calling & has better data/radio frequencies. It has an older processor & low ram, but I have a 64gb microSD card & if I offload messages semi-regularly it's great for intense everyday use. I have destroyed many mobiles with what I consider "normal" everyday use, so real durability is important, & lacking as a design consideration in most mobiles.

I also have an N900, & bought a spare for when I can buy the Neo900 upgrade. I think that is still too slow (1ghz processor, 1gb ram (but a good sight better than the old specs (which still work decently well)), & the 3-row QWERTY is a setback, but I can do a lot with it, & it's an amazing device in essentially every other regard (admittedly, it's not my primary mobile). The N900/Maemo was/is too touch-driven, interface-wise, &, at least in theory, a Moto Droid or some other 4+ row QWERTY slider phone (Android seems to be the only option, as I don't think anyone's making non-Bluetooth (seriously, why waste even more battery with that when you can make a battery hutch/slide-out keyboard that plugs into the microUSB port (or Lightning port on i

I hear a lot of people disparaging the resistive touch-screen of the N900, compared to the Technically Awe-Inspiring And Can't-Be-Topped (or "Apple" for short) capacitive touchscreen.

For the record, I think people just prefer the multi-touch capability of the capacitive screen. If the resistive screen could be multi-touch, then it would be okay (and much more high-res, apparently).

Well, Neo900 hardware is going to support dual-touch gestures like rotating and pinching, without replacing the original, resistive screen from N900! So you can have dual-touch on resistive. I think that addresses the complaint about resistive. Otherwise, what exactly is the advantage of a capacitive touchscreen?

http://neo900.org/

Seems like the best alternative for a hacker right now.

Chroot's still aren't as good. My N900 could run some games I made using PyGAME (all I had to do was something like sudo apt-get install python-pygame) and it was good to go - ran the game just as well as my laptop did, with acceleration. Beautiful.

Unfortunately my N900 screen broke for a second time last year, and I threaded one of the screws trying to replace it, so I too found myself looking for a replacement phone. Even with overclocking the N900 was painfully slow on complex websites, so I wanted something modern but with a hardware keyboard. I couldn't find anything except possibly the Neo900 (which didn't have an ETA at the time - and I wouldn't have been able to wait for anyway), so I decided that I would get the biggest screen I could find - the logic being that if I have to use a virtual keyboard I want it to provide an experience as close to a hardware keyboard as possible.

Hence, I now run a Sony Xperia Z Ultra with the Hacker's Keyboard. Obviously not as good as a hardware keyboard, but the screen size means the virtual keyboard can fit all keys I had on the N900 (and then some) and still have plenty of room to see the text-box I'm typing into.

The Xperial Z Ultra also has expandable storage so a chroot is feasible, and I admit I've used this phone much more than my N900 due to it being more practical for games, e-mail, taking pictures, etc. Sony also provide instructions on unlocking the bootloader. However, lacking a true GNU userland environment for the primary OS, along with lacking the ease of gaining root and lacking a replaceable battery) are things I really miss. I also hate how much of the bloatware cannot be removed, although it can be disabled. It is waterproof though, so it's got that going for it.

I nuked or disabled almost everything related to Sony and Google Play and installed F-Droid instead, and then proceeded to install Firefox Mobile, K-9 and APG, Xabber, TTRSS-Reader, VLC, Open Explorer, Barcode Scanner, Terminal Emulator, Cool Reader, Document Viewer, Aard, OsmAnd~, ScummVM, AnkiDroid, World Clock, VX ConnectBot, a few ownCloud-related sync apps... and of course Frozen Bubble, and now Android can do most of the things I would have used my N900 for.

Once upon a time, working for some Russian defense project I used there a Cellular Modem. The Modem has lots of AT commands that precisely informed about almost everything. As I know, CDMA modems have a similar set of functions.

Then, the second fact. The stingray does NOT use the same frequency as a real tower. It uses any free frequency and real credentials (If it uses the real frequency it will immediately cause lots of interference). And it should overpower the real tower since the phones connect to the most powerful tower. The Chinese cellular suppressors use the same tactic.

What does it mean: Any sufficiently opensource phone ( http://neo900.org/#main for instance) can have a software that monitors the cellular connections for anything strange and immediately report it.

Also, the encoded GSM communications become trivial if you control your phone. It does NOT protect your metainfo but there are other means for it.

There is a simple way around it. Sell some model of phones without firmware at all or with some primitive firmware with limited functionality but not covered with patents. And supply it with an URL of source code that you can compile yourself. If at least some of routers take this model (they use OpenWRT) and (in Russia - with FreeDOS) with computers - why it cannot be done with phones?

See also: http://neo900.org/#main

The keyboard has three rows because they are reusing the N900 case. It certainly beats any virtual keyboard for typing. Feel free to mod it if you want a four row keyboard - the motherboard design will be completely open.

Have you actually used the N900 touchscreen? There are many bad resistive touchscreens but the N900's is not one of them. The FAQ explains why the resistive touch screen is the superior choice for the target audience of this device. Remember that this device is not trying to compete with Android or iOS but it's aim is to provide functionality that you would find in a general purpose computer, hence multi-touch in not a priority.

According to their FAQ, the modem will support the UMTS frequencies used by both AT&T and T-Mobile in the US.

As a political choice, or long term strategic move, you might want to support the neo 900.

http://neo900.org/

Smooth upgrade. Finally!
The Neo900 project aims to provide a Fremantle (Maemo 5) compatible successor of N900, with faster CPU, more RAM and LTE modem, basing efforts on an already existing, mature and stable free platform - the OpenPhoenux GTA04.
We'll provide both complete, ready to use devices in N900 case, and motherboard replacements for your current device. Neo900 will also support all operating systems available for GTA04 (QtMoko, SHR, Debian, Replicant, ...)

..or, as mentioned below, http://neo900.org/

Speaking of which, please check out the Neo900 project.

Especially with the Neo900 project on the way http://neo900.org/

Good replacement to N900? Neo900 maybe? http://neo900.org/

Too bad Nokia quit making fun phones. The last was the N900. I'd love to have a new phone similar to that with modern specs.

It seems that you haven't heard of the Neo900 project which aims to deliver just that.