Review Of Linux-based Motorola A768i

Eugenia writes "MobileBurn published a review of Motorola's A768i, the Linux-based smartphone that employs a PDA-style form factor. It may not have much in the way of photo-taking abilities, but the A768i might be the thing for business users as it excels in the phone/messaging category."

Comments

At CeBit this year ..

[torpor]

.. I saw a Motorola Linux phone that really had me drooling - it was just a simple "bar of soap" form-factor, no keys, one big O-LED display on one side of the rectangular black plastic form, and when you hit the On button, the whole thing lit up.

It was running Linux, only the guy demo'ing it wouldn't really let me play with it too much .. he did show me some videos on it, and demo'ed the voice-recognition features, which seemed pretty workable. But, alas, it doesn't look like Motorola are releasing this one too soon .. anyone know of the "bar of soap" Linux phone from Mot?

Predecessor

[obeythefist]

I have the A920, a very similar Symbian OS 3G phone from Motorola. It's excellent in terms of design and functionality (a bit low on battery life with the 266MHz CPU in it, but that has been fixed).

For someone like myself who loves and uses gadgets but can't justfy carrying a seperate PDA, MP3 player, cell phone, camera... the smartphone is the only serious choice. Having one that runs linux instead of Symbian can only be an advantage.

Lockdown

[tomalpha]

I'd love to know exactly how well this Linux phone is locked-down to prevent tampering and "copyright abuses", or another way, how easy it will be to write cool hacks for it myself.

Will they release a tool-chain? Will every piece of software have to be certified before use (as most network operators seem to like). Will it be hackable like the Linksys Wireless routers

Am I being naive and engaging in wishful thinking?

Re:Lockdown

[hazard]

Indeed, I hope that Motorola is smart and will release a toolchain which would allow to build native applications (not just Java stuff).

Make a tri-band GSM Linux phone with ssh client and VNC client, and I'm your customer.

Re:Lockdown

[Tim C]

Will every piece of software have to be certified before use (as most network operators seem to like).

I've not had a very wide experience of installing third-party software on 'phones, but with my old 3650 (on the O2 network in the UK), it would warn me if the app wasn't signed, but was perfectly happy to let me install it anyway. I see this as a good thing personally - a rogue app could quite easily run me up a huge bill by dialing out and/or sending text messages to premium sevices, which would not be cool...

Of course, there's no guarantee that a properly-signed one won't do that, but you'd hope that there's more to getting is signed than just buying a certificate, and that there's a certificate revocation mechanism in place. (I know, all probably wishful thinking...)

Re:Messaging?

[Realistic_Dragon]

Orange in the UK used to offer free 0800 28.8k/sec access to the internet (via some service like OneTel).

A month before GPRS was lauched this was increased to 35p/min, and GPRS was advertised as being '35 times cheaper than dialing up'.

Anyone else remember the first BT GPRS tarrif that could cost you £114/min if they actually delivered on their advertised data rate?

Now at least you can buy unlimited GPRS from some suppliers in the UK (for around £50/$80mo) but it's a damn sight more expensive and not as quick as (HS)CSD used to be AND they have the unmitigate d gall to cap use at 100mb in their AUP! Bastards through and through. I await the revolution when they are first against the wall (well after Old Bill and patent lawyers of course).

Business Phone without a key pad?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the use of receiving emails if you can't reply to them? And how are you going to do it without a keypad? Annoyingly slow. Much prefer a Treo for that task.
Now, I wonder how much of the sources for the phone Motorola actually discloses? I could imagine that part of this must remain unmodifiable simply to retain its phone license...

Symbian or Microsoft?

[DLR]

Quoth yon article: In terms of operating system choices, Motorola definitely chose the road less traveled for the A768i. The obvious choices in the market are the Symbian OS and, of course, Microsoft.

While I'll grant you that Linux is certainly "...the road less traveled..." for smartphones they didn't even mention PalmOS? I know (and am very disappointed) that there are few enough of them out there, but PalmOS is such a strong player in the PDA market that I can't figure out why there aren't more Palm based phones out there.

Re:Motorola and Linux - when?

[Erwos]

Would you be willing to pay a thousand bucks for it?

Even the A768i is still running for $400 or so on eBay. Retail, it's going for about $600.

Adding all the stuff you would want, qa'ing it, and then redesigning the hardware to accomodate would push the price to at least $800. What's worse is that you'd still have anemic performance, and battery life would get worse due to the additional memory and larger display.

This is not to mention any potential size or interface issues.

-Erwos