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Motorola Launches A760 Linux and Java Smartphone

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the phoning-home dept.

securitas writes "Motorola launched its A760 Linux and Java smartphone in China today. The dual-mode GSM/GPRS phone uses a version of MontaVista Linux, Motorola's i250 chip for communications, Intel's 200 MHz PXA262 chip (based on the XScale PXA250) for computing with 256 MB RAM, and software that includes a personal information management application, digital camera, a video player, MP3 music player, and an instant-messaging tool. The A760 is the first of Motorola's Linux-based phones. Eventually Motorola plans to use Linux in most of its phones."

6 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why Intel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I find it even more ironic that they would go with MontaVista when they own Metrowerks who has their own embedded linux.

  2. Uses Linux, but does not expose it by mparaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Motorola's own page for the product does not even mention that it uses Linux. I doubt they'll officially support people trying to get a root shell prompt on it.

  3. Re:Why Intel? by Glock27 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I find it odd that Motorola, a maker of embedded microprocessors, would go with an Intel chip.

    Yes, that is fairly strange. The low-power PPC chips are pretty nice.

    However, the phone unit is most likely autonomous (and much more powerful than the chip unit, which may be sold and is unprofitable). Intel most likely had the best prices and specs (or convinced someone of that), and Intel got the deal.

    Its really the way to do things, if you end up with a better phone product. If not, well...

    --
    Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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  4. Nice win for Linux, but what does it really mean? by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I find the proliferation of Linux-based devices interesting. It would seem to suggest a growing base of devices that will attract application developers and create more reasons for both users and platform manufacturers to adopt Linux.

    But I wonder if a common kernel is sufficient from the perspective of the end-user. In particular, I wonder how compatible the various flavors of Linux are when it comes to GUI-based applications that most people want to use. Unless all these various devices can run some common GUI, most of the real applications that people want to use will will be impossible to port between all these devices or hard to use if they get ported but use different interface guidelines.

    Perhaps the volume of devices running Linux is less important than the volume of devices running a standardized UI layer and set of interface guidelines on Linux.

    --
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  5. Linux in a phone? by teamhasnoi · · Score: 4, Funny

    I heard they still can't get the sound to work.

  6. Linux is almost irrelevant here by BriSTO(V)L · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everyone (at the time of reading) seems to be stuck on the linux-ness of this phone, with spurious speculation about gcc, bash etc. But the point is that the software development platform for these things will be: 1) Java 2) Not controlled by Microsoft or Symbian or Palm 3) See (1) etc... It may well indicate a new platform for open source software development, but it is not going to look much like any current paradigm, I suspect. Also, the 2 parts (phone and "computer", for want of a better word) will be highly separated to avoid people writing software to "adjust" their phone bills.