Slashdot Mirror
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."
Do they make the source code available?
Dont be too hasty to judge. China includes places such as Hong Kong, a place I lived for several years. I can personally vouch that they usually have new technologies two or three _years_ before America. America has only recently gotten into the cellphone fad, yet almost everyone had a cell phone in china a couple years ago. When you speak of China, you must remember the large land mass it controls: Shanghai and Beijing and Hong Kong are still huge consumer-ridden industrialized areas.
Stuff that Matters? No.
As cool as it is, these stories lost relevance when IBM put Linux on a wristwatch.
Whatever it is I'm complaining about, I'm sure the Republicans did it. This is
How the fuck was that insightful?
;-)
Ok mods how about this.
I imagine in the future we will be using...um...future things that are more futuristic than now. I forsee people using things that are futuristic. !!! I can tell the future I can.
First off, even if you put an Athlon 3200+ in a phone it's still a phone. You can't type at it and unless it has 99% voice recognition [for entering text] it's useless. Well actually more than that. Have you ever tried to read C source out loud?
I actually forsee a small market for these devices. I mean sure PDAs are trendy but they're not as popular as laptops or desktops. At my college way more people have laptops because while they're a bit bulkier they do have keyboards, guts and large monitors [my 14.1" laptop monitor is HUGE compared to a 2.9" or whatever the avg. PDA has] that make using the computer less than painful.
What will catch on are lighter laptops. If Compaq made my laptop in a "less than 7lbs" model I would be very very happy. However, I'm willing to carry it around [well it's not that heavy anyways] considering I get a nearly 100% sized keyboard, 14.1" screen, 768MB of ram, 60GB of disk, an Athlon-M 2400+ [barton!], 2USB, 1394, Ethernet, serial, parallel, PS/2, svideo, VGA ports, a floppy drive and a DVD-CDRW drive....
That's a bit more than in the avg 600$ PocketPC device...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
They have very substantial requirements.
Its gotta fit in the palm of your hand, not a laptop.
Its gotta work real time - when it rings and you answer it, you don't wait for processes to load or having it boot.
The thing's gotta run all day at least of nonstop run on a set of batteries!
I don't know just how they pulled this off... as I have always custom programmed my realtime embedded stuff - usually in 68000 assembler. Sometimes Atmel AVR, but damn near always in assembler. Using custom design, I can design for very low power consumption, but doing so really makes way for a lot of upfront investment in design time.
Running a 2.4 kernel. In your hand. All day. On internal batteries.... I am definitely impressed.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
The Chinese are evil? That implies that the entire race of human beings who scrape food off the ground are somehow inherently "evil". As for the Chinese government vs. the American government, the similarities abound. One of the big hype words I hear alot coming from people describing China is "Communist." Although in practicality Communism (or Marxism) has nothing to do with popular opinion of Communism, the colloquial meaning of the word has come to be something like "Kills people for speaking out, is against 'freedom'". I hate to break the news, but the USA has its fair share of anti-sedition laws, take the Patriot Act for example. It is currently legal for the US government to accuse someone of being a terrorist and lock them away without trial. (Communist "witch-hunt" trials in the 1940's anyone?) Who's to stop the government from saying comic books are a "terrorist-like" medium and banning them? Anyone protesting could be called 'unpatriotic' and thrown away. To be honest, I am glad that China is developing into a new research/technology center. They have started to contest and challenge already implemented protocols/standards in America and Europe, and to that end I commend them. We shouldn't just write them off because they are "evil" because, folks, AMERICA also has its share of corruption. Modern-day capitalistic China is beginning to grow, and these new product lines and recent announcements are only the beginning of it.
The news story reads:
A Chinese company based in Shanghai named "E28" has quietly been selling Linux-based smartphones in China since August,...
So, how is this "China", the country launching a product? It's a company doing the launch, and quietly at that. When Cisco releases a new product, do we say "The United States Launches..."?
I suppose slashdot editors see product lines as the new arms race, where products created in a market are attributed to the country as a whole.
"dual ARM9s..."
... does that mean the kernel is SMP? Do the ARM9s support it natively, making the kernel think it's only one processor?
So, someone tell me
Does uCLinux support SMP? (Next on the SMP docket: UserModeLinux... whee!)
Why is it that every time a Chinese company does something the slashdot article begins with "China does Blah-blah-blah... plop."
You know, there are over a billion people in China. I'm sure many of them even have some small ammount of autonomy from the evil borg communist collective that americans seem to think dominates them all. Is this just simple racism or is it some kind of fear complex?
If you were talking only about patents, why bother mentioning the Berne convention? As I pointed out, patents are a bad example to use for reason I gave. Discussing differences in methods of copying is hardly evidence that the problem is worse in China or in SE Asia for that matter. They've been getting tougher, the problem is that unless you crack down on the poeple running the operations they just set up shop again, kind of like on P2P / IRC in the US.
US doesn't manufacture the phone?!? The #2 handset manufacturers in the world is called Motorola and it is an US company!!! Motorola has been #1 handset vendor in China for the past 10 years and it was passed by Bird this year.
Most Chinese phone vendors still rely much on the Western companies including Motorola to provide components and software for phone. Motorola has been doing good business on this.
The launch of E2800 by E28 is a threat to Motorola because it will potential cut into a big software/components market now dominated by Motorola!.
Japan makes most cellphones for domestic use and the launch of Chinese phones have no impact on the Japanese vendors!
While the average mainland Chinese is very poor, I think you're missing the fact that there are a lot of "nouveau riche" in China who want to buy the most expensive phone out there in order to impress their friends. Whenever you buy something in China, one of the first questions is, "How much did it cost?" and more expensive is better.