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A Truly Open Linux Phone
skelator2821 writes to tell us about the debut of the OpenMoko, a Linux phone with GPS that is open from top to bottom. The device is set to debut to developers this month for $350, according to the article, but there is no detail on how to get your hands on one, and no link to the manufacturer (FIC). From the article: "This is the first phone in a long time to get us really interested in what it is, what it isn't, and the philosophy behind it. The philosophy is the thing that makes Linux great... it is really open. It runs the latest kernel, 2.6.18 as of a few weeks ago, and you can get software from a repository with apt-get."
I doubt very much that carriers will be friendly towards open,hack-by-anybody, phones. Most/all carriers require all kinds of certification & testing before they allow vendors to hook up a phone to their network. They also don't like time wasters trying to hook up low volume/low profit phones to their networks. The testing can cost a big bunch of dollars -- ballpark $250k. Now if Joe hacker wnats to spend that, and he can convince the carrier he's going to sell many thousands, he's welcome. Otherwise, at least some part of the phone firmware will be locked down and tamper proof to keep ceritication valid.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is a joke, right? The drivers are probably the most important part of any piece of hardware, so calling this thing "open" but keeping drivers proprietary is ridiculous.
Yeah, and I am to buy a Linux product from you? Dream on...
if(!at_home && distance(get_current_location(), get_house_location()) lessthan FIFTYYARDS) ) {
FILE* mail = openMailStream(girlfriend@house.com, "Hi honey!");
fprintf(mail, "I'm home!\n");
closeMailStream(mail);
at_home = true;
}
... can be found on Linux Devices: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2986976174.html and also http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7056478804.html
I don't care about the camera. I never seen much of a point to a camera phone. Makes about as much sense as a mp3 playing bathtub, which I am sure somebody somewere made.
Sure it's convient, but so what?
And your absolutely wrong about not having enough memory. It takes miniSD cards and has 128 megs of RAM. Right now I have 2 1gig miniSD cards and a 128 meg SD card. Also you can buy up to 4gig MiniSD cards.
So frankly with miniSD slot your disk space is practically UNLIMITED.
For instance many possibilities:
* Go the 'Slax' route. Slax is a customizable Live Linux cdrom. It has various modules that you can use that you can add-on applications and other things to a already existing live cdrom. You can do this because the modules are compressed read-only file systems and you use UnionFS to mount them over the existing file system transparently. You can mix and match applications in that manner.
You can do the same thing with this. No problem.
So other possibilities.
* Remote X11 applications. Need I say more? (and yes NX compression will make them perfectly usable)
* Simple games.
* VoIP.
* remote access of systems through a veriaty of means such as voice command, terminal, tones.
* 266mhz CPU is fast enough for video.
* GPS kicks-ass. Interact with other GPS systems and keep track of things via GPSD and such.
* secure encrypted file systems for passwords and other sensitive information.
* stream audio
What this thing is is a Linux PC that fits in your pocket. Pretty much anything you can do with a PC linux box you can do with this thing.
This thing literally kicks the shit out of any sort of propriatory hardware phone you can think of. Even with out the camera. The possiblities are endless.
Pretty much any 'phone made in the last five years is a good 'phone. There are some exceptions, but not many. Once you've got the 'good 'phone' part solved, the question is 'what can we do with all the spare CPU power we have on this machine?'
An address book is obvious; you need to store 'phone numbers anyway, so it's not much of a stretch to store the rest of the contact information. Add in IrDA or Bluetooth so you can trivially send vCards to other people and it's a useful feature. If someone asks for a friend or colleague's contact details you can hand them a virtual business card.
Since you need to sync the address book with a computer, you may as well sync calendar information as well. I have my 'phone with me more often than my computer and so being able to have calendar alarms on the 'phone instead of the computer is great.
A camera? I wasn't convinced by this one until I got a camera-phone. I hadn't owned a camera for quite a while and didn't see the point in getting one. But then I found out that having a camera that took reasonable (2 megapixel - not fantastic, but not bad) quality pictures in my pocket all the time meant I actually used it.
A media player would be useful for the times I don't want to carry my iPod, except that the included headphone have sharp corners which hurt my ears and Nokia insist on a proprietary headphone socket.
I can't remember what other features my 'phone has, but if they don't take up any UI space (and they don't, since I have a set of shortcuts to the features I actually use) then they don't bother me. Mass production brings the price down.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
First of all, the Carriers have little choice here. Fully functional Reference kits are available in the under $1000 range. For GSM, you can get them for about $200-300. These are the kits that companies who build cell-phones use to jumpstart their designs. So what's a Carrier going to do? Outlaw these? And kill development for cell-phones? I don't think so.
The most they might do is to tighten down on the registration. But that involves overhead and hassle. Unless these kits prove to be an issue, it's not going to happen; at least not with the GSM market. And not worldwide.
You are also wrong about the "time wasters" who supply low volume and low profit phones. What the Carriers want (at least some of them) is to sell the airtime. Some of these Carriers really don't care where it goes, as long as they get paid for it.
There's a whole resale market here which underscores the point. You want to to become your own cell-phone company? You can, if you have the money. And if you don't think *those* resellers are hungry, you're kidding yourself.
I admit that as far as the standard view about "time wasters" goes (for the big companies) you are correct. And it's explicitly been this attitude which has severely hindered innovation in the cell-phone market. There are a plethora of uses for small markets. Some of the hungrier carriers fully realize this, and are supportive of anything which will make them money.
Finally, the lockdown on GSM transceivers is a bit silly. The interface is extremely simple; it's a variation of the old Hayes Modem interface. I kid you not. "ATDT....". There's even an Open Source Project for this. Here's the link:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libgsmc
Finally, there's even a group dedicated to a fully Open Source phone. Namely, the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club. They are having a meeting tomorrow night in San Francisco. Here's a link to their mailing list archives:
http://telefono.revejo.org/pipermail/svhmpc_telefo no.revejo.org/
Check out the list, and the information on various associated websites. There's really a groundswell building in this area. And those Carriers which close things off are going to miss an opportunity that their competitors are actively interested in.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
This is hilarious. The original post contains three facts, one of which is simply wrong (there is a memory card socket) one of which is irrelevant (no headphone jack, but it supports bluetooth headsets, which are better) along with one assertion (not enough memory to be an mp3 or video player) which is either a conclusion based on the wrong fact or a ridiculous assertion that 128MB is too small to fit a player into.
So basically, the post contains 75% misinformation, and the information it does contain is painfully obvious.
And it's still +5 insightful.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
It can do ANYTHING, because it runs Linux. It's GSM so it can send and receive text messages like anything else. It can do web browsing, IRC, VOIP, whatever else you want, because it runs Linux.
What else are you looking for? What can your "cheap candy bar Nokia" do that this can't?
The reason this will be outlawed by cell phone carriers is precisely because it can do anything... because it runs Linux. Anything that loosens their ironclad control over handsets is verboten.
+++ATH0