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Linux Cell Phones Coming Q1 2007
eldavojohn writes, "Prepare to salivate. D-Link has announced plans to put an unlocked Linux phone on the market in early 2007. Some features: Dual-mode WiFi and GSM/GPRS. Up to 24 MB of memory for user file storage, such as music and videos. 2-inch, 176 x 220-pixel color display. Opera browser. Email client. 3.4 ounces (95 grams). Tri-band (900/1800/1900) GSM radio — meaning it should work with any GSM-GPRS SIM card, including pre-paid SIM cards as well as those from traditional GSM service providers. Will it really be this easy to wean myself from the Microsoft mobile teat?" The phone is expected to list for $600.
Up to 24 MB of memory for user file storage, such as music and videos.
24MB of memory? That's about 4 songs or a 1/3 of a music video.
That doesn't sound too appealing.
Aero
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Where on that page does it say anything about Linux?
I hate printers.
That is one ugly phone
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Hmm... d-link... would that be the company that recently tried to claim the the GPL was invalid in a german court case? Yeah, can see Linux fans climbing all over each other to buy stuff from this company...
I also recall D-link being in the press recently for configuring their hardware to synchronise to someone's private timeserver, costing the individual running it several thousand in bandwidth fees.
At one point I'd have said D-link were a quality brand. Now I'm not so sure...
To my knowledge, you can install whatever you want on the pda/smartphones from the bignames.
Not on a Sidekick, that's for damn sure. And the phone's software is always crippleware -- crippled Bluetooth, no wifi, no provisions for wifi. Extra software is always absurdly expensive.
But this is Linux, which gives you control of the phone's hardware and the ability to run anything you damn well please on it.
I kind of can't believe someone has actually done this. If D-Link actually gets this thing out the door I'll be shocked -- and more shocked if carriers don't ban the thing from their networks.
+++ATH0
A COMMON STANDARD is the requirement by Europe, and then only on the 900MHz, and after it became defacto on 1800MHz, on 1800MHz too. GSM was the standard that was picked by the operators. GSM was not pushed by any governmental organization, it's a flat out lie to imply that it was.
Any state government in Europe can also make available other frequencies for mobile phone service running whatever services operators want. Indeed, that's how 1800MHz came about - because Britain opened up that frequency for operators to use. Both operators chose, off their free will, without even having to pick a common standard, GSM. Had they, and the dozens of operators that followed, picked something else, that'd have resulted in a different environment.
You can gloss over this as much as you like. You can say that because governments told operators they had to choose a common standard, that it's some kind of terrible crime against the holy goal of free marketism. What you can't say is that GSM specifically received government support.
Quite the reverse. The only standard I see being given mandated government support is IS-95, which the US government has done - often to the detriment of US interests. When IS-95 was pushed on the Chinese by the Clinton administration, the fall-out was immense, with the Chinese Government deliberately using it as a weapon against the US's attempts to deal with human rights violations. Qualcomm's lobbying, and the US government's incompetent caving in to such lobbying, has probably actually ensured many human rights abuses couldn't be prevented.
Yet, despite this well documented support of IS-95 by governments, for some reason it's the Europeans who get it in the neck. Because the European community had the audicity to want to replace the situation where the entire community had half a dozen or so incompatible analog standards with no roaming with a situation where someone could at least buy a phone that was guaranteed coverage anywhere in the area.
Oh the humanity!
BTW Vodafone experimented with a version of GSM that used the same air interface as IS-95 in the mid-nineties and ended up rejecting it, not because of politics or legal reasons, but because Qualcomm wasn't able to come up with a system that worked well for them. Nothing stopped them from running it, any more than anything stops European operators from implementing GPRS, EDGE, or UMTS.
FWIW, CDMA is not a standard anywhere. It's an air interface technology. You might just as well argue that "Packet switching" or "Plastic buttons" is a standard.
IS-95, which is what you meant, is not the de-facto standard in the US. The biggest operator in the US is Cingular. Cingular operates a GSM network. GSM has many other operators, including T-Mobile, some of Alltel (in the old Western Wireless regions), and various regional operators. And before adding up customer figures, remember that only half of Sprint's customers use its IS-95 network.
It is a flat out lie to argue that 90% of US users use IS-95. I would be surprised if IS-95 is used by more than 45% of US cellphone subscribers.
Secondly, the fa
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