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China Launches Linux-Based Smartphone
An anonymous reader writes "This news item at LinuxDevices provides photos and specs of a new Linux-based smartphone being launched today in China. The device, called the E2800, sells for about $600, and targets business users, offering PDA functions, touch-screen, handwriting recognition, a camera, and memory expansion to 512MB through an SD memory card, the article says. The device's manufacturer is a Shanghai company named E28. The E2800 is a 900/1800MHz, GSM/GPRS class 10 device based on dual ARM9 processors, running embedded Linux with a 2.4-series kernel. Other recent Linux-based mobile phone announcements have been Japan's NTT DoCoMo's 3G phones and Motorola's A760."
Retail for $600 in China!! From the country that can't afford to purchase software and piracy so rampant you can buy any piece of software on the streets for $5. Yes, I'm sure this will do quite well.
China still has some problems, but it seems they are on the path of improvement. Compare that to the US where I constantly feel we are on a declining path to destruction...
So what do you suggest - not carry any technology news that concerns China? Mentioning their abysmal human rights record every time they are mentioned?
/. mentions Sony? Oh, and for all of the above we can certainly bring up the dismal record on fair trade with the third world.
In all fairness we should be doing the same for everyone else as well: mention the thousands of suspected Al Qaeda people imprisoned in the US without a trial or defense attorneys whenever there is a story on Intel or Microsoft; mention the lurking racism and attacks on immigrants throughout much of europe whenever Nokia or an european Linux distro is mentioned; bring up Japans xenophobia and unresolved wartime issues whenever
As for Steve Jobs enriching himself - well, he is welcome to it. That is what the relevant licenses allow, after all. If you have code that "Steve Jobs used to enrich himself" and you are not happy about it, then you should perhaps have released it under a different license?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You don't understand China. They don't operate like other western countries. They have huge manufactoring plants that can produce any (and I mean ANY) kind of item or device they can imagine (or, more typically, that they can get ahold of and copy). Patents don't mean jack to them. They'll hapilly copy something invented in USA or europe and produce it much cheaper. Then when consumers want to buy, who do you think they'll buy from? The originall seller, or the chinese? Money talks, bull^H^H^H^HBerne Convention walks, my friend.
Note the edges of the screen people, how did the display become so square, while the screen itself isn't? Even more blatant, why should the phone have an oval outerlid that would, apparently, only shows a grey box-like icon?
Something's not quite right here, methinks.
More than mere navel gazing.
Maybe you just need to stop being so cynical. Tonight I've been reading (for homework) papers on AIDS clinical trials. These are on the incredible advances in HIV fighting methods since the 1980's. Where was this research conducted? The USA. Who published these papers? The New England Journal of Medicine. What company made the wonderdrugs to increase AIDS survival so drastically. GlaxoSmithKline, a USA company. Now that's just what I did tonight, an incredibly small portion of all the cool R and D going on in this country. It seems to me the US is still a pretty decent place to live, but I suppose since China is putting Linux on a phone that it's on the 'path of improvement'. Now I'm not blindly cheerleading for the USA, but really, open your eyes. There are tons of opportunities for you in this country, why don't you use some of them?
The chinese government isn't even evil.
When you start talking about how evil the Chinese government is that just opens you up to fall for propoganda when a war against China is getting pushed in the media.
China has a completely different history and culture than the West.
When people talk about Falun Gong without understanding the history of sects and cults in China they always make errors comparing it to the western Church.
Also Chinese people don't hate their own government. Neither are they brainwashed to love it. They know it has room for improvement, at the same time they don't wish to be "liberated" or any shit like that. China isn't nearly as "totalitarian" as people claim it is. With over a billion people you just can't in practice be very authoritarian. Also, you think the FBI, CIA and NSA don't watch everything going across the wires in America?
There are many many more differences. Anyways to jump on China and it's government as evil just becuase it isn't the same as the West is just not realistic. You can't measure China with the same stick you use on Western countries, and vice versa.
I'm sure the same also holds for muslim countries...
P.S. the US has the most people in prison per capita of any country...and most are non-violent offenders (i.e. drugs) With a prison population that giant you have to ask who's the authoritarian one? With laws like Californias "3 strikes law" that sends a petty theif to jail for 25 years I have to say I don't find America to be any big bastion of "justice".
As cool as it is, these stories lost relevance when IBM put Linux on a wristwatch.
I guess you don't realize the complexity difference b/w a wristwatch and a Smartphone. Or the economic value. Linux in a wristwatch is a fun hack - Linux on a smartphone is a potentially disruptive technology.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Is this just simple racism or is it some kind of fear complex?
It's the racist, fear complex of anti-american success stories.
God thanks, china has enough military power to ensure that things will stay this way. After you've understood the nature of this american complex it's pretty entertaining - for a foreigner who knows the world from a different view than CNN's.