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More detailed hardware description here.

Everything else I have seen seems to imply the Phase01 handsets will have AGPS as well. I am not sure about how functional the current software stack is, but the chip is present in the device. As far as I'm concerned, the Phase02 device is a dream come true. My only request for Phase03 and beyond is a slightly more compact iPhone-ish design i.e. bigger screen, less frame, and thinner shell. I assume any change in casing will also add a camera of some sort as well, but other people probably care about that more than I do. And of course obligatory ram and cpu bumps for any new hardware.

If I had a GSM provider I would have ordered one half an hour ago. Unfortunately I'm CDMA and I have calculated it will be extremely costly for me to switch because it is a shared plan.

PS. Although the iPhone has a beefier CPU, it is wasting those cycles on shitty Javascript. The OpenMoko has the sexy benefit of running native apps which makes a pretty big difference in most cases.

Whatever happened to the agps the wiki says it was http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Hardware:AGPS , was this dropped or just no longer mentioned?

Just find someone with bad credit!

Personally, I'll be holding out for an open source, open hardware phone. Looks much better for me. Cheaper, And built in GPS. Compare for yourself.

Just find someone with bad credit!

Personally, I'll be holding out for an open source, open hardware phone. Looks much better for me. Cheaper, And built in GPS. Compare for yourself.

http://www.openmoko.org/ A truly free phone, Really open sourced, Debian based (like in apt-get install whatever)

Will they start selling bandwidth to device we own instead of renting locked up box to sell us crappy features one by one? As if we couldn't code an irc client ourself...everyone does that in high school! :P Once more, now is the time to support the OpenMoko Project and the upcoming (on the 9th) OpenMoko [SC]ells Or any other similar projects but i didn't find many ... :( !

I think you'll find an OpenMoko linux mobile+wifi phone is a "true hackers dream device", not an anaemic locked-down lump like an iphone.

Go and help real projects like OpenMoko instead of crappy consumer-whore oriented product like the iPhone...

Sorry, "our product" is a telemetry box. I am completely unaffiliated with FIC and OpenMoko. We're using GSM/CDMA modules not chipsets, so I'm not sure how that impacts on certification either.

According to this post, more OpenMoko devices will be coming out next year, but no details on what they will be.

"Too expensive, too locked down." Well, one for two ain't bad. From the OpenMoto site (for the mass market version):

"We will sell this device through multiple channels. Direct from openmoko.com, the price will be $450 for the Neo Base and $600 for Neo Advanced."

Not much of a price advantage, although discounts and subsequent costs are unknown.

I agree with you about the lack of third party access, although access to the source code while nice is not of great importance to me. YNMV.

"... if I upgrade any time soon it'll be to the FIC product."

Anyone interested in this phone should review the FAQ. The current time table is for the mass market phone to ship in October.

An interesting project. I hope they pull it off.

SteveM

"Too expensive, too locked down." Well, one for two ain't bad. From the OpenMoto site (for the mass market version):

"We will sell this device through multiple channels. Direct from openmoko.com, the price will be $450 for the Neo Base and $600 for Neo Advanced."

Not much of a price advantage, although discounts and subsequent costs are unknown.

I agree with you about the lack of third party access, although access to the source code while nice is not of great importance to me. YNMV.

"... if I upgrade any time soon it'll be to the FIC product."

Anyone interested in this phone should review the FAQ. The current time table is for the mass market phone to ship in October.

An interesting project. I hope they pull it off.

SteveM

The NEO1973 is arriving July 9th. At least, the early-bird version is, without WiFi. The WiFi, official version arrives in October.

I'm pretty damned happy. I've been waiting a long time.

Your link should have pointed to the openmoko wiki.
Potential iPhone buyers should give this page a glance, a better screen and more storage space through microSD cards( 8Gb microSD cards will be released soon and who's willing to bet that in two years time the capacity of microSD reachs 32Gb,

Your link should have pointed to the openmoko wiki.
Potential iPhone buyers should give this page a glance, a better screen and more storage space through microSD cards( 8Gb microSD cards will be released soon and who's willing to bet that in two years time the capacity of microSD reachs 32Gb,

Sounds like you want a FIC NEO1973. According to Sean Moss-Pultz in his most recent announcement, the consumer model due in Q4 this year will include wifi.

It's almost fully open. As in, everything is open except the AGPS daemon, which you don't need for GPS, just AGPS.

And it'll only be $450, for the phone itself. No contracts required.

Sounds like you want a FIC NEO1973. According to Sean Moss-Pultz in his most recent announcement, the consumer model due in Q4 this year will include wifi.

It's almost fully open. As in, everything is open except the AGPS daemon, which you don't need for GPS, just AGPS.

And it'll only be $450, for the phone itself. No contracts required.

I've been looking for a new all in one mobile phone and to be honest the iPhone doesn't cut it for me and neither does the Nokia N95 (although it comes close). Then I stumbled across the soon to be released Openmoko Linux based and open mobile phone. Although the first released model (second model should have WiFi) lacks Wifi it will have bluetooth and a lcd screen that blows the one offered by the iPhone out of the water. The phone will be completely (well as much as it can be) open source so all the FOSS games and applications can be ported over if need be and anyone can develop applications without having to jump through a complex licensing scheme. If your patient wait till 2008 for the GTA02 model that should blow your socks off.

There is Openmoko. I really don't care about CDMA though, I have better choices amongst GSM providers with no lock-in. Welcome to the rest of the world.

I thought getting an iPhone might be interesting, but to be honest the barrage of media coverage has been *so* excessive I'm already sick of the damn thing and it hasn't even been released!

So, the answer would be no.

When the iPhone will be finally available on this side of the pond (Europe), perhaps I (and other people) will have been using the OpenMoko/Neo1973 for some time:

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973

Walter.

---
Linux on a PowerBook - great thing.

I thought getting an iPhone might be interesting, but to be honest the barrage of media coverage has been *so* excessive I'm already sick of the damn thing and it hasn't even been released!

So, the answer would be no.

When the iPhone will be finally available on this side of the pond (Europe), perhaps I (and other people) will have been using the OpenMoko/Neo1973 for some time:

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973

Walter.

---
Linux on a PowerBook - great thing.

(Hint for the clueless: The NEO1973 is the first open cell phone, early developers already have the phones in their hands, mass production scheduled for September 2007. Open Moko is the linux based distro that runs on it...)

Open Moko blog roll

Open moke wiki

(Hint for the clueless: The NEO1973 is the first open cell phone, early developers already have the phones in their hands, mass production scheduled for September 2007. Open Moko is the linux based distro that runs on it...)

Open Moko blog roll

Open moke wiki

Unfortunately, T-Mobile doesn't allow use of Sidekick plans with anything but the Sidekick... whatever will I do when I get a Neo1973 from the openmoko project?

I'm looking forward to the Neo1973... my ability to bend the phone to my will is more important to me.

Please hand in your geek card: FIC neo1973 is the OpenMOKO free-as-in-gplv2 handset.

While the consumer Neo1973 phones aren't shipping, calling it vaporware is a bit of a stretch, there are a healthy number of developer units out there, including some that are near-identical to the pending commercial release hardware. Read carefully at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973 and you'll see that the phones are being produced by FIC , a fairly large Chinese electronics manufacturer who initiated the project. The software stack (a nice scalable gtk on linux environment), while missing some applications and features, is basically complete, and can be run in an emulator on the PC or on a few ARM platforms which are currently available. So. Its' not quite shipping yet, but a hefty Chinese corporation is vested in the project, and a truly impressive amount of work is already done and out there to look through. Weather either platform (iPhone/OpenMoko) takes off depends on the market, and its too early to say if either one has a chance of long term success. Who knows, one of these things might actually make me decide my featureless clamshell could be improved upon. (also remember, the US cellphone market is not in any way representative, and the phone market in Asia is far larger and more diverse than in the US or even Europe.)

Oh, I'm sorry, you couldn't figure out whether or not that blog is real, so obviously it must be a fake. See http://planet.openmoko.org/

Not only does this product not exist yet, its not even designed. Its still TBD

At this point, we should tell you why we chose the name "Neo1973." "Neo" means new. Dr. Marty Cooper (the inventor of the mobile phone) made the first call ever in 1973.

We believe that an open source mobile phone can revolutionize, once again, the world of communication. This will be the New 1973.

This device is far more deserving of any such hype. It has bluetooth, a GPS receiver, wifi, twice as many pixels on its touchscreen, and it runs on an entirely free platform (which is thus open for third party devevlopment). All of this for $350, with no service contract.

While it's not Apple it's the not Microsoft either. This may give you some faith in starting a revolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo1973 http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973 I know it's ugly, but I did say it's not Apple!

Come on - It's an Apple product. That means looks over function. It means proprietary city. Is anyone really that surprised?

The bottom line cell phones are just expensive paperweights you can make phone calls on without an open platform (or at the very least, a common platform) to run software on. What is the point of spending money on games/apps for your phone with the next one you get probably won't be able to run them?

That is why I am anxiously waiting for the Neo1973 running OpenMoko. The OS runs on a Linux kernel with telephony services running on top of it. Apps run on GTK and so you can run and develop apps natively in your X11 session. The hardware itself works with GSM networks (quad band), and has integrated bluetooth, GPS, Wifi, and a 2.8" touchscreen. Since everything is open source on it, if it doesn't have all the software capabilities the iPhone does, it can be made to have them. And at half the cost. Not to mention it's not married to any cell network, unlike the iPhone.

If the Neo1973 is as awesome in the flesh as it looks on paper, it will revolutionize the cell phone industry.

Come on - It's an Apple product. That means looks over function. It means proprietary city. Is anyone really that surprised?

The bottom line cell phones are just expensive paperweights you can make phone calls on without an open platform (or at the very least, a common platform) to run software on. What is the point of spending money on games/apps for your phone with the next one you get probably won't be able to run them?

That is why I am anxiously waiting for the Neo1973 running OpenMoko. The OS runs on a Linux kernel with telephony services running on top of it. Apps run on GTK and so you can run and develop apps natively in your X11 session. The hardware itself works with GSM networks (quad band), and has integrated bluetooth, GPS, Wifi, and a 2.8" touchscreen. Since everything is open source on it, if it doesn't have all the software capabilities the iPhone does, it can be made to have them. And at half the cost. Not to mention it's not married to any cell network, unlike the iPhone.

If the Neo1973 is as awesome in the flesh as it looks on paper, it will revolutionize the cell phone industry.

I'm not sure, but I think FIC is only responsible for the hardware? This site has more info. I would like a camera and led flash on it.

Here are some specs on the phone:

Physical Dimensions
  * 120.7 x 62 x 18.5 mm (4.75 x 2.44 x 0.728 inch)
  * 184 +/- 5 g (6.5 ounces)

Hardware
  * 2.8" VGA screen
  * 266 MHz Samsung Processor
  * 128MB SDRAM
  * 64MB NAND FLASH ROM
  * GSM/GPRS
  * Bluetooth
  * GPS

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:Neo1973_Har dware

And here's the newest news. The second generation will have the following additional specs.
-400MHz Processor
-a 2D/3D-Graphics Accelerator
-256MByte of Flash Memory
-WiFi
-updated battery: 1700mAh
2 Accelerometers.

Apple's iPhone has slain the competition before it has even hit the market

Will either, for instance, offer the freedom to develop for the platform that developers enjoy with the iPhone?

http://openmoko.org/ is the site for the software running on that FIC phone. It's quite a nifty project. The wiki also has pictures of the insides of the phone if you are into that sort of thing. :)

But ... those girls don't wear cases. You can see their bare circuits! -- Bender

OpenMoko is the name of the operating system and platform. The initial phone model that will use it is the Neo1973. That isn't a brilliant name either, but at least it's better than OpenMoko!

Word has it that the company making that phone -- FIC -- is already a big manufacturer in China, despite the fact that not many people have heard of them in the US or in Europe.

I know Apple is all trendy and hipster-friendly, but I'm much more excited for the OpenMoko platform.

I for one, am absolutely sick and tired of having to struggle with cell phone UIs written by corporate cell software fashionistas who must actually get some sick thrill from knowing all the frustration their work product will cause.

Free your Phone!

http://www.openmoko.org/

I just wanted to point out: why does nobody else provide this? A separate bootable partition can be added to (almost) any mass storage device and boot on (almost) any (modern) computer. There's no magic in here (just a LiveUSB distro), so why is this device presented as a revolution ? The same will come within OpenMoko, discussion is open: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Wishlist:LiveUSB_dis tro

When the iPhone eventually hits the major Asian markets, some other manufacturers like this one

http://www.myiphone.com/will-the-real-iphone-pleas e-stand-up-25709.php

will have their third or fourth generations out ;-)

I will probably be going for the Neo1673 and OpenMoko platform:

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page

And as an alternative there is OpenMoko which, of course, runs Linux and is complete open.

The phone displayed is the FIC Neo1973 and was designed as part of the OpenMoko open phone project. Developer versions of the phone will be available shortly.