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?

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.