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Trolltech Woos Developers with 'Open' Linux Phone
An anonymous reader writes "Trolltech, best known for its Qt graphics framework and toolkit that form the basis of KDE, will ship the Greenphone, an open Linux-based phone in September. The working GSM/GPRS mobile phone features a user-modifiable Linux OS, and is meant to jumpstart a third-party native application ecosystem for Linux-based mobile phones. Users will be able to re-flash the phone with modified Linux-based firmware, via a mini-USB port. The device is based on an unspecified Linux kernel along with Trolltech's Qtopia Phone Edition (QPE) application framework and mobile phone stack. Gosh, this has gotta be the perfect phone for KDE lovers!"
Cool! Can it run Skype?
-- Cheers!
Sounds like a nifty gadget. I want one, really. I'll take a dozen if they'll work with my provider. I break phones on a regular basis :(
Problem is, I just don't see these taking off. The big boys (Cingular/Verizon/Sprint) aren't going to want something like this on their lineup. What they'll see when they look at it is a massive increase in support calls as people flash their phones with something they downloaded of the interweb only to find out it's essentially spyware for a phone. The ability to flash a cell phone is downright frightening when I think about the sheer number of users I support who aren't capable of selecting the correct printer 30% of the time.
If these phones make it to market, expect to see the package offerings somehow disable their flash ability, or at least make it difficult to flash the phone and risk rendering it useless. That would be entirely too much of a headache for the providers.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Funnypics
Kphone is the name that KDE users will mostprobably call it, not Greenphone. Greenphone is GNOMEish.
Keep adding to this.
Automatic encryption of calls.
Powerful scripting: at [date], call [number], playback [message1], record [message2]...
Lots of games.
It does run Linux!
blow your mind already
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
From TFA: The Greenphone appears to be a working GSM/GPRS mobile phone
However, the important (and missing) bit of information here is, which carriers will let you use it? Around here (Arizona, USA) its all but impossible to get a carrier to take a phone you didn't purchase from them, even when it is locked up and in essence still 'owned' by them.
Who's going to let me use a phone they not only aren't making a profit from, but don't control and can't use as a lock-in tool to increase the hassle factor of changing providers? No one, and this device, for as cool as it is, will be useless as a result.
By all means though, if you can find evidence anywhere that any US carrier will accept this phone without 6 months of battle against staff trained to say it is "not compatable with our network"; I'd really love to be wrong.
~Rebecca
All the comments about carriers not supporting it, or not feeling like they will start selling seems to be missing the point. The phone's primary purpose is to be sold as a development environment, along with Qtopia a license to spur development of 3rdbased party applications to run on Linux mobile devices. Trolltech does not appear to have any desire to partner wtih Verizon, or Sprint or anyone to sell this to consumers. Maybe I am wrong, but this is how I read it. It is called the Greenphone because that fits nice wtih Trolltech's marketed image they have been building over recent years.
It would not be hard to make a program for a device like this that talked to a GPS receiver. I bet there are several compatible programs already out there that could be ported over.
Funnypics
Answer: This phone isn't intended for commercial use. It sales will be limited. It is intended to allow developers to create content so that when real phone manufacturers consider QPE there is a suite of software to make it competitive.
Comment: Carriers won't allow this phone on their network.
Answer: It is a GSM phone. If it is certified, it will work on GSM networks.
Comment: Users will screw up their phone reflashing it.
Answer: It isn't intended for the average Joe cell phone user, it is intended for developers.
Comment: "Jack of all trades"
Answer: For a development platform having all the functionality you may need to test against is critical. Actual real world usefulness, not so much. This phone could be considered as a piece of test equipment, the fact that it looks like a phone is probably just to spur innovation.
Or are you one of those "backwards" users stuck using CDMA and thus (in North America and most other CDMA-using places (except Korea)) locked by phone and provider?
One of GSM's major features (and less so in Korea) is that your subscriber info is stored in a tiny chip. That chip came on a credit card sized piece of plastic a la a "smart card" (if you've used GSM phones in the 90's, you'd know that there were phones that accepted the entire card as is). That chip enables you to take it out of your current GSM phone, buy a new phone (unlocked or same carrier), stick the chip in the new phone, and voila, you have a new phone, with your existing subscription info!
And look, you can get those 10 phones for $1 contract deals and use those chips in different phones than what was provided (depending on the provider, this route may be more economical than just buying the activation kit).
This is one reason why I went GSM looking for a new phone - so I can use it with my phone, but then stick it in a PC card modem when I wanted to use it with my computer. One subscription. Two devices. Only one can be used at a time, of course, but I have the freedom to change phones willy-nilly, or in this case, surf the web using the modem's faster GPRS modem. (The provider can tell, since the IMEI number changes, but there's little they can do).
Korea is special for CDMA because they force CDMA providers to do the same thing ("RUIM" cards) but in North America, most CDMA phones are locked and activated by carrier. But from what I can tell, Cingular and T-Mobile both provide GSM service, and thus would work just fine.
All you have to do is make sure the phone supports the frequencies of your local area. "Quadband" phones (850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz) work pretty much anywhere. Triband phones are often 900, 1800 and 1900 and work in most places in North America (850 being the old AMPS frequency, and isn't in widespread use where a Triband phone will leave you stuck vs. a quadband phone).
For those of us whose German is rusty, I google-translated the page the Parent links to:
Trolltech places Linux mobile phone for developers forwards [updated]
Linux Anwendungsentwicklern for mobile telephones was missing so far a suitable hardware environment for the continuous tests during the development phase. At this gap to close Trolltech presented now the Qtopia Greenphone. Mobile phone is offered as part of the Qtopia Entwicklungsumgebung of the Norwegian enterprise and should be available starting from September for a price of presumably approximately 690 US Dollar. Trolltech is above all admits for the platform-spreading C++ Framework Qt, on which for instance the Unix/Linux Desktop KDE develops, and which development environment Qtopia for mobile devices.
In the package with the Qtopia Phone edition of the Trolltech SDK is to help that mobile phone to clearly shorten the development cycles for arbitrary uses of business applications up to plays. The Greenphone is equipped, among them also in addition with the today usual functions of a Smartphone a camera. Mobile phone can be taped over a mini USB haven directly with applications, which is Linux Kernel pre-installed.
The Greenphone is manufactured by Trolltechs Chinese partner Yahua Teltech. It is equipped with a dual core XScale processor with 312 MHz clock frequency of Marvell (before times Intel) and the baseband processor BCM2121 von Broadcom. Beside 64 MByte RAM 128 MByte Flash memory and a MiniSD Karteneinschub are available. The Touchscreen display offers QVGA dissolution. Beside GSM and GPRS the Greenphone supports also WiFi and is prepared owing to SIP middleware also for VoIP telephone calls.
Trolltech owes to manufacturers such as Motorola, ZTE and Cellon that world-wide already approximately 4 million mobile phones were sold, which are based on Qtopia. With the Greenphone, which is to become only the first model in a whole row, the Norwegians want to further set the spreading in motion of Linux mobile phones. Last Trolltech had announced in May in addition to aim at a stock exchange quotation which was in the meantime carried out.
Ok, I want one. I don't care if its meant for the "masses" or not.
:)
Trolltech is making a smart move here. Once these phones are sold out, and nerds everywhere are hacking on it, they'll have a ton of good software to choose from when they start pushing their stack onto the major carriers.
Here's what I want:
1. Apt. I want to fire up a telephone version of synaptic (on my phone and/or my computer) and have debian style repositories to pick and choose from for software.
2. Real calendar/todo/whatever syncing with Evolution/Kontact. My current Sony/Ericsson Z520a can do this pretty well over bluetooth with multisync, but its not perfect, and the native PIM software on the phone blows goats.
3. Nethack. Had to say it
4. SSH - no nerd is complete with a ssh terminal in front of them at any time. Sadly, that includes me.
5. A stable API for companies like Opera, Yahoo, AOL, etc. to port their software to.
6. Push style email would be nice, but then Trolltech would get sued, a la RIM.
Think this makes it a phone for supper geeks.
PENGUIN: It's what's for dinner!
Good point. I have a similar situation, but after messing around with Skype and such, I found that using a dial-around service is so cheap (6c/minute to most of Europe), and much easier, so I use that. It does require a landline though.
From Reuters:
Trolltech offers fully reprogrammable mobile phone
By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Norway's Trolltech AS (TROLL.OL: Quote, Profile, Research) has demonstrated the first fully reprogrammable mobile handset to help phone designers innovate as fast as their counterparts in the personal computer industry have done.
A major divide that separates PCs from mobile telephones is that while designers can freely reprogram a computer's software, most of a phone's functions are fixed at the factory.
"(Independent) developers are having a hard time figuring out how to participate in the mobile phone market," Benoit Schillings, Trolltech's chief technology officer, said in an interview after a news conference to unveil the phone on Monday.
Trolltech, the world's top supplier of Linux software for mobile phones, said it will offer a mobile cameraphone running on the international GSM/GPRS standard it calls Greenphone.
Trolltech's phone is priced at around $690 and comes with all the software and source code necessary to develop a complete mobile phone model, including core Linux operating system controls, a phone dialler, address book and camera application.
The phone is not aimed at consumers, but would allow a wide audience of designers to create new features for future mobile phones.
While the Greenphone, which is due out in September, opens up the field of mobile phone development to small design firms and individuals, it gives large organizations a fully functioning test environment with which to develop new models.
"This industry is in a deadlock over how to make new services evolve on mobile handsets," Schillings said.
FROM GAMES TO INSTANT MESSAGING
Trolltech aims to encourage everything from games to business-level applications to teen instant message devices to be developed using the open design of the Greenphone kit.
A corporation could find it economical to develop a custom phone for say, 1,000 employees, then take the design to a contract manufacturer who would build the phone using standard hardware components according to the design, Schillings said.
Trolltech, which held its initial public offering early last month on the Oslo Stock Exchange, supplies Linux mobile phone software controls to companies such as Motorola Inc. (MOT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the biggest seller of Linux-based phones to date.
The company also supplies a variety of Chinese and Taiwanese electronics manufacturers including Wiston Group, Compal Electronics (2324.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), ZTE (0763.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), China Techfaith (CNTF.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yuhua Teltech, which will build the Greenphone.
Linux is an open-source software system that has been gaining ground among electronics makers seeking common ground among the patchwork of hundreds of different phone designs that have fragmented the industry.
Phone makers have designed 40 models with Trolltech software, resulting in 4 million phones sold globally to date.
Gosh, this has gotta be the perfect phone for KDE lovers!
OK. Now I understand that people generally consider apps written in GTK to be gnome apps, but pure Qt apps stand out like a sore thumb on a KDE desktop. Qt is merely the foundation that the multitude of KDE technologies is built on. In fact, about the only people that use KDE that care much about Qt are the developers. Even most of the default Qt widgets are extended in KDE. This phone does not use KDE. It does not use kparts, kio slaves, knotify, or any of the other technologies provided by KDE from the perspective of the end user or the developer.
To summarize, Qt != KDE. This is not a KDE lovers phone.