Slashdot Mirror

People are all excited about this thing, and I don't understand why. Is it the iPrefix somehow making people think this will be as big a deal as the iPod? The difference here is that the iPod came in at the beginning of a new market, while the iPhone is trying to crack an existing and highly-competitive one. And I'm just not seeing anything special.

Let's see.

It's expensive. It only works on one provider. And it's closed platform.

If it used a SIM card, and had an open API, I'd be a lot more impressed.

As it stands, I'll wait for the Openmoko.

I think he just said that he owned a GP2X, right? There'll soon be an open cell phone, and you can install Linux on an iPod, so I think he has covered all the bases.

How do they compare? Sun's system is running on the OpenMoko hardware (FIC Neo 1973), i.e., they are one and the same. You can see it clearly from the pictures: OpenMoko Neo 1973 vs. new Sun offering. Plainly this is the exact same hardware.

I wonder why that wasn't in the Summary.

The OpenMoko folks have a prototype Linux phone out to developers in some kind of alpha testing phase. They're planning a release to the rest of us some time in November(?) Be nice if someone with Sun's resources worked *with* the rest of the open source crowd. Or is this Sun thing so much better there was no point? Anyone know how they compare?

At the http://openmoko.com/ website after May 10th.

In September, http://www.openmoko.com/ will be available. I just hope my t637 survives until then.

The Nokia N800 is a pretty nifty device, a WLAN-enabled "Internet tablet" with a nice high resolution screen, running the open source Maemo platform based on the Linux kernel. Maemo has a very healthy open source developer community, and tons of the best applications have been ported to it. What is missing, however, is a GSM chipset, or indeed any non-WLAN networking capability. Nokia apparently does not want its "Internet tablets" to compete with its smartphones. I am waiting, then, for an "N1000" that combines these capabilities. Perhaps OpenMoko will be successful, but it doesn't have the WLAN chipset.

Any device that combines these three factors - open source and full hackability, phone, and regular networking - will be a killer app. Hackability does not mean that it has to be difficult to use: with a Debian-like system for software management, users can experiment with new apps easily. Of course, many of the current economic models around cell phones (ring tone downloads, background images, specialized content portals) are not really sustainable, and so the market may be biased against that innovation. But a smart company will recognize that by maintaining strategic leadership within an open source ecosystem, they will create many more business opportunities for themselves than in a proprietary, locked down market. It's too bad that Apple doesn't appear to be that smart company. I hope that Nokia is.

If people want a touchscreen phone but businesses want it secure and with the ability to add applications, might it be time for a Neo1973? Oh I think so! Why would I spend $500+ and a locked-in contract for a semifunctional phone? OpenMoko and the Neo1973 should have these headline. http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html

I expect that some of the latest phones reduce the need for a separate camera unless you are fussy about your pictures. They'll do the PDA part too. A few ebooks on your memory card will add nothing to the weight you carry. Memory cards are so cheap that you may as well carry a few. Load them up with music. They are probably cheap enough to post home loaded with pictures.

Make sure you backup the PDA and keep that separate. Can be useful if you battery runs down.

I'm still on old technology (Palm Zire 71 + Acer n35 PDAs, Samsung V200 phone and basic Canon camera), but then I don't generally need to travel that light. It would still be nice to get by most of the time with one gadget when I do travel, but it generally involves compromise. I'll probably get a all-in-one eventually. The http://openmoko.com/ looks like a possible candidate if it works out.

The initial OpenMokos have just shipped to developers. They'll hopefully be more generally available toward the end of this year. I'm excited to get one as soon as I can, and no I'm not affiliated with them - I just think they are doing some awesome work.
-N

http://www.openmoko.com/

Ok so they are behind a bit, Their page says that they are shipping this month. Unlikely, but I'll buy one of these before I'd ever buy an iPhone. If they do all the things they say they will do this phone will kick Apple's ass. The phone is called "Neo 1973" what that means I don't know.

This presentation isn't as flashy as Steve Jobs' but is has me way more interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRvtAAXTIlg

Linux Devices has a good writeup.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2986976174.html

The Company Web Site
http://www.openmoko.com/

Personally, after the initial excitement wore off, I decided to wait to see if OpenMoko's phone is going to be all it seems it could be. Apple lost me when they took a perfectly good computing device and made it phone+music player with some PDA functions tacked. Go ahead an mod me troll, but I've got a stack of apple laptops. I buy stuff for its value and Apple's stuff often packs good value. Not the iPhone though -- I don't see the value there.

http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html
http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html#pictures

which is a truly open platform based on all GPL'd software.

The first hardware using OpenMoko, the Neo1973 Smartphone by Taiwan's FIC, will be available to the public soon.

http://planet.openmoko.org/

Walter.

http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html
http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html#pictures

which is a truly open platform based on all GPL'd software.

The first hardware using OpenMoko, the Neo1973 Smartphone by Taiwan's FIC, will be available to the public soon.

http://planet.openmoko.org/

Walter.

Apparently Slashdot's "plain old text" now actively strips out HTML tags? Bad Slashdot. Bad.

I meant to say something like: "Looks like we already have something...."

I'm not really sure an "open source" phone is possible. These things are too miniaturized to be able to build in your garage. There are guys out there who build their own GSM phones, but these things are not something you can carry around in your pocket.

Hopefully, Open software for phones will fall a "build it, and they will come" path. Coming from the US, I hate how every phone is branded to a particular company. You have to jump through hoops to unlock it to use with another provider, if it's even possible at all. The phones are almost always crippled, too - Verizon disables a lot of the Bluetooth functions on their phones unless you pay to unlock them. If you want a new software Feature X on your phone, you pretty much have to throw it out and buy a new one with Feature X on it. Buying a phone is a game where you have to choose between what you want and what you can live without. Choose carefully, because you're going to be stuck with the phone for two years unless you want to pay $500 for it to go month to month. It's total bullcrap.

It'd be really nice if companies would start rolling out phones designed to work on an open platform, like what FIC did with the Neo1973.

http://openmoko.com/

The Neo1973, will be released with its own software, OpenMoko, but is designed to be completely open, so I assume you could strip OpenMoko off and put GPE/LiMO/Slackware/Whatever on there if you wanted to (well, maybe not Vista).

Also, as this comment points out, service providers can't control what people use to connect to their network -- if you've got a T-Mobile SIM card, you can pop it into any GSM phone and dial away.

Hopefully once the software is there, handset manufacturers will start realizing that this is a low-cost way to sell some powerful, hassle-free handsets and we'll start seeing more PC-style handsets on the market soon.

And then there's OpenMoko.

How many open stacks do we need?

The LiMo Foundation
OpenMoko
The GreenPhone

... and join us on IRC at freenode #OpenMoko. (Don't ask "When can I get it?" on the channel, just type "counter" for the countdown to the various development and release dates.)

It's your world, if you want it to be. :-)

... and join us on IRC at freenode #OpenMoko. (Don't ask "When can I get it?" on the channel, just type "counter" for the countdown to the various development and release dates.)

It's your world, if you want it to be. :-)

How many hours will it take those of us with openmoko phones to add support for DAVE?

Hmm... the specs here: http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html list the following, stopping short of the Bluetooth line
Hardware

Bluetooth must be a recent edition since this page http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2986976174.html says that Bluetooth and WiFi will be included in a follow up model.

As of December, it seems the BT status was unknown http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2006 -December/000929.html

I'll be crossing my fingers

What makes you think this thing will be running a Debian based system?

This OpenMoko presentation specifically refers to apt-get...

That's fine, if that's what the expectations really are; but the Slashdot submission makes it sound like the people behind the phone think they can take on the world. So please, seriously - tell us WHY anyone outside the "live open or die" community will care?

The price of your Sony Ericsson example is without the discount from your cell phone company for signing a 2 year contract. According to Macworld, "Apple has no plans to release a version of the iPhone without a service contract or one that is unlocked." The prices announced for the iPhone include a 2 year contract. As for the Windows Mobile phones, you're just wrong.

If you want a phone with a comparable screen resolution (480x640 compared to iPhone's 480x320), try the Neo1973 OpenMoko phone, available in February 2007, priced at $350 unlocked. (It even has a touchscreen)

Or you could just admit that people who buy Apple want to pay more than they have to for a computer/music player/phone.

1) 3G is a BIG DEAL...Wake me when iPhone supports it... or when it actually manages to download an entire web page, whichever comes first.

I'll set your alarm clock for next year, then. The iPhone is starting out with EDGE, but the next one, for the European market, will have 3G. The 3G argument is FUD.

2) Closed platform. Hello? What? ... My phone also contains a couple of hacked together apps of my own that use the (admittedly piss-poor) data connection to grab Internet data while I'm on the road that's useful to me.

Yeah, a lot of third party apps are piss-poor. That's one of the reasons why I got rid of my Treo. It crashed all the time. Even my Sony-Ericsson has recently started acting strange, and I don't have any third party apps on there! I'm guessing Cingular pushed a bogus update.

The point is, the more weird software you put on a device, the more likely it is that the device randomly turns into a paperweight. We have no idea how restrictive Apple intends to be about third-party software (by which I mean software developed by third parties and offered through Apple's site to install on the iPhone). Apple doesn't have a track record in this area. Could be good, could be bad. Maybe the iPhone is visible as a hard drive, and you just have to copy the software to the right folder.

But even if Apple completely locked in the software, I can still see where they are coming from. The iPhone is a purpose-built device. It should perform that purpose. If third-party apps interfere with that purpose -- and evidence suggests that they usually do -- I don't have a problem with restricting them. Obviously, opinions will differ on this, and you make good points.

It becomes a choice between stability and extra features. Which would you rather have?

3) Dumb Phone at a Smartphone Price. What does the iPhone do that my wife's Motorola SLVR doesn't? Do I hear crickets?

Usability. It really is a feature. A very important one, and one that has to be applied throughout every other feature offered. As a Mac user, you ought to understand that. The iPhone looks like it will be dead-simple to use.

The only thing the iPhone has going for it is eye candy... and that will get old really quick.

What eye candy? I saw large, clearly labeled buttons. Those are functionally useful, because they are large and clearly labeled. I saw flick scrolling. Functionally useful, because it is fast. I saw the scrolling bounce at the end. Functionally useful, because if it just stopped, it'd jar you and you might try to flick again. I saw touch-based pan-and-zoom. Functionally useful, obviously the best way to do it. Tilt sensor, functionally useful, because it saves adding one more control to the screen. The only thing I'd classify as eye candy is that cover flow thing. Jobs made a big deal out of it, I'm like "whatever." But that was it.

Oh wait, it has color graphics and semi-transparent overlays. Is that what you meant? But so does everything else, including the OpenMoko. Actually, I just saw some OpenMoko screenshots, and it doesn't look half as clean as the iPhone. Lots of gratuitous reflections and other busy elements -- I'd certainly consider that eye-candy. Not something you want to deal with when on the go, which you will be if you are looking at your phone at all.

I've mentioned it twice; the OpenMoko platform is going to give this phone a run for its money. It's going to be available before the iPhone and will be an extensible and open platform. I for one will be buying one of the first-gen devices because I want to develop for it. It doesn't have the camera, or the tilt sensors... neither of which are things I need anyway. It'll be the first of many devices based

How about http://www.openmoko.com/.

Check out FIC's Neo1973 as an open alternative to iShackles. Coming to the US in February 2007! It runs the 99.99% open source Linux OpenMoko platform based on OpenEmbedded. A good hardware comparison between the iPhone and Neo1973 is linked here.

Following the mailing lists on the OpenMoko site, it looks like the Neo1973 is highly competitive with the iPhone. The Neo has a much better screen and a better processor. Plus it's completely open sourced except for a couple of device drivers (cellular and bluetooth?). You can write your own programs in whatever language and load them on your own phone yourself. Python, Ruby, Perl, C/C++, and so on. There's even a current effort to get J2ME working. And there will be a community site sponsored by FIC where people can share or sell applications and others can download them.

Personally, with nearly the same hardware abilities and the ability to write your own software, I see no reason to get a locked down iPhone. Sure, the iPhone comes with 4-8gb of space, that's the big difference in hardware, but it also costs $150-$250 more on top of a 2-year contract. So it seems that difference is a wash. (A 2gb microSD costs ~$60 USD from NewEgg.)

Say all you want about the software, if I'm going to carry around a something bigger than a Razr it better be a full blown computer. Not a crippleware 'phone.'

http://www.openmoko.com/

The OpenMoko phone/PDA/whatever will be with us in a couple of weeks, and that does everything you want.

Links: OpenMoko; pics and details. It will be out soon, at $350. Basically it's a GTK+-based smartphone (as opposed to the Greenphone which is Qt).

2007 looks like an interesting year for smartphones: the iPhone on the one hand, and OpenMoko and Greenphone for open Linux-based platforms on the other.

The obvious answer to iPhone closedness is OpemMoko's openness. Vote with your dollars: go buy an OpenMoko when they hit the market in a few months. http://openmoko.com/

The iPhone won't even be available for months, but in the next couple of weeks you'll be able to get an FLC Neo1973 that runs a totally open Linux based OS and does 99% of what the double the price Apple phone does and lets you sign up with ANY provider, not just the ones Apple blesses.

Lots of the iPhone features will be available this month on the FIC Neo1973 Smartphone. It is also an open platform.

http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html/

This seems good for the upcoming OpenMoko-based ARM smartphone; although the project emphasizes native app development, fact is, there's a lot of mobile Java apps floating around. So once this is ported to OpenEmbedded/Moko, it should boost the platform's usefulness for many users.

So thanks, Sun, for this Christmas present. (Now just waiting for the phone to actually come out... :)

OpenMoko is coming out with an open source phone in the next month or so. Good stuff. Read up on it a bit and subscribe to the mailing list. As someone who used to develop software for small devices, this is like a dream come true.

http://openmoko.com/

Who would of thunk it??

And, http://openmoko.com/files/OpenMoko_Amsterdam.pdf for the initial presentation of this device.

http://openmoko.com/

Who would of thunk it??

And, http://openmoko.com/files/OpenMoko_Amsterdam.pdf for the initial presentation of this device.