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Linux Powers Motorola's Smart Phone
An anonymous reader writes "Motorola unveiled the A760 at CeBIT and claims the handset is the first in the world to blend the open source operating system with Java software. As well as Linux, the A760 has onboard a camera, diary, e-mail program, MP3 player, speakerphone and colour touchscreen."
Sadly, even if it runs linux on the
inside, there is no reason to believe
that developers get any access to it
(although that would be very nice if
they did).
I've worked on the A720 and the A830
Motorola phones, and none of the underlying
system was exposed.
The Symbian Quartz platforms are even
worse. Even as owner of the phone you
can't put anything on them; everything
must be signed by either Motorola or
the mobile operator. This is because
there is no security model in the OS,
so any code on the phone has to be completely
trusted (like active-x), and they didn't
want worms to be a problem.
Hopefully the design on a linux phone
could be more nuanced...
In all the excitement of releasing this new modern wonder to the world the motorola engineers have announced that there is no "phone call making capability".
A motorola spokeperson was quoted as saying "Well we were so happy to see useless features in a phone, we forgot to add the basic features of the phone, jokingly we're going to change our slogan from 'Hello Moto' to 'HELLO?? MOTO?? CAN YOU HEAR ME AT ALL??'. Seeing as Verizon Wireless is one of our largest purchasers we feel they'll get the joke too."
When asked whether or not the phone would be able to make and receive telephone calls the spokesperson replied, "What, you have email and linux, what more do you need in a phone, this is the phone of tommorrow, today."
In similiar news: Nokia has announced that they will be making the "Microwave Phone" that will combine cellphone technology with burrito cooking power. Sure to be a hit for everyone who thinks their cellphone should do more than just be a phone.
And in not so similiar news: 1337 h4x0r5 from around the world have announced that they are happy to see that they'll be able to run their scripts from a cell phone and be able to '0wn j00' when they're out on a date. One 1337 dud3 was quoted as follows; "Like if I ever get out of the house and like see a girl and like go on a date with her and like she doesn't hit me or nothing I can like 0wn a box tellin the world how I loves her and stuff it will be like the best thing in the world for getting me like laid because like I don't think like I will ever get laid."
So Everyone seems to love this new modern 'Swiss Army Knife' of the telecommunication tool belt!
FYI: The phone does make calls, that was meant to be a joke ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
"There is no one operating system that is perfect, you have to be involved with all of them,"
Motorola spokesman
I can see the support calls now.
It's pretty obvious, really. I don't know why so many clueless people always keep asking "why Linux, why Linux?" everytime it is used on an embedded device when it's already not only a proven technology, but *the* de-facto standard.
In 4 years I promise you that there will be only few CPU-using appliances which are not using Linux. There will be a lot of non-Linux PDAs because of backwards application compatibility, but other than that finding a non-Linux system will be the exception.