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OpenMoko Schedule Announced
levell writes "The schedule for the OpenMoko, an open source, Linux-based Neo1973 smart phone was posted to the community mailing list by Sean Moss-Pultz this morning. On Feb 11, free phones will be sent to key community developers and the community websites/wiki/bug tracker will be available. Then on March 11 (the official developer launch) we'll be able to buy an OpenMoko for $350. After allowing some time for innovative, slick software to be created there will be a mass market launch at which point Sean hopes that 'your mom and dad will want one too.'"
Moko has an unfortunate homonym “moco”; if it manages to live that one down, however, here's hoping it has ssh.
Why is the interface design always sub-par on these things? I don't care how many neat features you have if the interface is hard to use or text that is difficult to read my mom and dad are never going to want one - and neither will I.
Just FYI, at the moment only Cingular and T-Mobile will be able to support the phone in the US at this time.
The website states the following:
First one? I beg to differ. Should I point out Trolltech's Qtopia Greenphone? I believe it precedes OpenMoko by a considerable notch.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I rely on EDGE for high speed access throughout most of the West (US) and a large part of the East that I visit (Poland, Switzerland, India). This phone looks nice, but no EDGE means antiquated technology.
That, by itself, makes it a non-starter.
Okay, I grok the "Open software uber alles" mentality; it's certainly a valid point of view, but of course that's a very VERY tiny market. Reading through the linked post, however - which is just a mailing list submission - I don't really see why anyone would think there'd be any mass market appeal at all regarding this project.
That's fine, if that's what the expectations really are; but the Slashdot submission makes it sound like the people behind the phone think they can take on the world. So please, seriously - tell us WHY anyone outside the "live open or die" community will care?
#DeleteChrome
I only read the top level article (no links) and came away with the distinct impression that this is some marketing luser's idea of how to tap into the OSS market. The high sounding goals alluding to open source philosophies together with an unrealistically compressed roadmap smells fishy. They've got nothing to lose and maybe they will sell a few $350 phones after the second month of the roadmap. If it really goes well, they will get a lot of free coding expertise from the OSS community.
I'll admit the whole area of mobile, hand-held computing is one of my many areas of ignorance. With that in mind, please excuse me if I'm off-base.
I, for one, welcome our new anus-secks having overlords!!!!
It looks a bit like Qtopia... but very much more slick than the version I have on my Zaurus. To be honest I was happy enough with that, this new version should cause some envy.
Slightly off topic, but on the subject of small media devices, the Penny Arcade comments on the iPhone/Zune are worth a look as they can pretty well be considered trendsetters for the market of people willing to spend lots of money on things that go beep:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/01/15
I had hoped that there at CES I would have an opportunity to use the Zune's social features - its "higher brain functions," as I put it - but I was only there Thursday, after the place had largely thinned out. Near the Microsoft booth I was happy to see many devices speaking wirelessly - so many I had to scroll! - until I realized that they were named after genres, and were (in fact) the display units, which added greatly to my shame.
[snip some context]
The iPhone has the hardware to make file sharing possible, though I doubt their arrangements with license holders allow for it. Even so, I'm not sure they would investigate this. My experience argues aggressively against it.
Maybe such things would work better with an open platform, so that lots of device manufacturers can implement it. Certainly in Europe the density even of iPods isn't high enough to make sharing interesting... but mp3 playing cell phones and other mp3 players of all types are probably at greater than 1 per person by now. Can't think of any better place to start working on a system than an open cell phone platform.
Beep beep.
Explicitly free (modifiable) device with integrated GSM functionality available for development prior to launch. Please point to equivalents? Or, I suppose that if you could, you already would have in your post.
The mono was announced almost a year ago with the multi-touch gesture support and the look of the phone. Unless Apple had a leak it is actually more probable that they stole the design of this phone...
"Moco" (pronounced the same as "moko") means "booger" in Spanish. Will this alienate international users, or will it open up a new market for cell phones for those in need of a decongestant?
Okay, I'm a complete doofus when it comes to phone standards. If I end up roped to a cellphone, I leave it off unless I want to make a call, and then I turn it off again. I don't know what the different networks are, and the idea of "quad band phones with wifi and bluetooth" just makes me want to ignore all manner of phone technology for another year. Somehow in the case of phones, each sufficiently advanced technology just seems to make it less and less like magic.
That said, if I wanted a phone like this OpenMoko, and I was thinking of using it in the USA and Japan (for example), what carrier must I sell my soul to, and what web/email/pots things can I do with it in both areas?
[
I have no idea what that means, so I'll take your word that that's a new thing. They probably should have said that in the article header for non-cell phone developers (like myself). To me, it looks like just another cell phone gadget.
the only way to get the functionality and openness of openmoko is to use a linux device like a laptop or nokia tablet or sharp zaurus and use a GSM modem adaptor (eg an audiovox or enfora CF modem and cf-pcmcia adaptor). the end result is quite a lot bigger than the 'moko.
there were hopes for the iPhone to be somewhat more open and for a full SDK to be available, but Steve Jobs nixed that one.
apart from reasonable success with the HTC Universal smartphone and other devices to which linux is being ported (usually without any help from the hw vendors), there's NOTHING competing in this space.
imagine the scene...
quick, ring the police. hold on whilst I just run "apt-get install policedb ; X=`gpsget location`; gsmsms send $LOCALPOLICE $X"
I don't really see why anyone would think there'd be any mass market appeal at all regarding this project.
[snip] So please, seriously - tell us WHY anyone outside the "live open or die" community will care?
Au Contraire, everyone cares -- because the wireless companies have such control that the current offerings in the phone industry really suck.
Witness the current excitement over the iPhone -- it's one step closer to actually doing something really useful with all the processing power of the phone in your pocket, and people are going wild over it. Sure it's not open by any means, but the whole "open" thing means that everyone will now get the chance to try to realize their own version of a useful mobile computing device.
The weekend before the iPhone came out, I was seriously considering getting a PSP just to have a small portable wireless browsing device, but the thing was dog-slow and I couldn't enter text in any decent fashion.
My Verizon phone has bluetooth mangled on it so that I can't transfer pictures and ringtones on it, though I can use it as a wireless modem through bluetooth, which rocks. I just don't want to have to carry my Macbook around just to check bank balances and email when I am traveling or running errands. The more competition is in this space, the more we will genuinely get useful devices, not just the tiny mobile versions of the black AT&T phone (with camera) that most people have. I would buy the iPhone even if it didn't make phone calls.
Apple sees this need, and everyone is wildly excited about it. The "open" phones will be the competition that helps make the next generation of cellphones truly useful
The OpenMoko is a GSM phone. The only primary networks using GSM in the US right at the moment are Cingular and T-Mobile. Verizon and Sprint/Nextel are CDMA...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Why are you on /. then? "I have no idea what that means" LMAO
I think that's wrong. From the specifications, it looks like it's a GSM phone (they don't specifically say it's GSM nor do they say which frequencies it's radio supports) from the fact they say it supports GPRS.
As a result, it should work on *any* of the GSM carriers in the US that support the frequencies it uses. Let's assume for a moment it supports at a minimum 900/1800/1900 (hopefully 850 too) - like most tri-band devices do.
Take a look here. According to GSM world there are quite a few GSM carriers in the US. That list seems to exclude Unicel, which is actually a fairly large company in it's own right. Most of the carriers do support the 1900mhz band at a minimum though there are a few 850 only carriers.
I don't think the OM has multi-touch support because there is a different bit of hardware required to make it work -- which I think Apple has the patent on.
+++ATH0
You're reading Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters
OpenMoko is an open phone, which means you can tweak it anyway you want, program and install anything you want, pretty nerdy don't you think?
download and burn linux with one click on windows
It's a little too orange for me, but other than that it looks well-thought-out and attractive.
+++ATH0
But can it run Linux?
The only problem is that there is no wifi and probably won't be for a long time. The openmoko crew refuse to implement it cause there's no chip that comes with open driver as of today and there isn't any on the horizon.
One of the greatest advantage of having an open phone is so that you can install a SIP phone on it and use it when there's a wifi connection available which is almost everywhere these days (at work, at home, lots of public places...). When there's an open phone that comes out with wifi integrated I'll be the first to get it though.
download and burn linux with one click on windows
It's GSM Quad Band. http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2986976174.html
Sounds great, shame about the WiFi.
Your average consumer might not need WiFi on their phone, but I think it is very important for the slashdot/techie/FLOSS crowd. The main reason is that we want to be able to bypass the cell network whenever possible to avoid paying. WiFi is free and plentiful for me at home, at work, and in many other places, whereas cellular bandwidth is slower and much more expensive. For syncing, downloading music, uploading pictures, and VoIP, WiFi is a requirement for my next phone.
Um, 1 month? Seriously, 1 month? Available to developers less than a month from today and for exactly 1 month before official launch? I bet this has about as much backing as that green phone. On the other hand, any competition for the Apple iPhone is good competition.
Consider this product dead already in any spanish speaking town.
Uh .. why not make it vi based while you at it ?
What a piece of junk.
(Cingular is now part of the revenant AT&T. Ma Bell has risen from the grave.)
I can think of a big motivator for T-Mobile to pick up on OpenMoko, or whatever they're going to eventually call this thing when the marketers get through with it. AT&T will have iPhone and be the only people with iPhone. T-Mobile will have what to counter it? Crackberry? Sidekick? Please.
OpenMoko looks really, really REALLY good. It has a SCARY resemblance to the Apple device, which was supposedly kept under wraps with double-secret super NDAs. It is not uber-powerful, but it is powerful enough. And it is expandable with memory cards, something Apple has decided not to do with iPhone.
T-Mobile has a very strong motivation to get behind OpenMoko and push really hard. And hey, I think the OpenMoko will look as good in magenta as it does now in orange. (Grinning, ducking and running...)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
LGPL software is not about free and open source software, its really about proprietary software! Companies want you to think that using LGPL software like GTK+ makes them open source, but it isn't true. They don't give back to the community! The Lessor GPL allows companies to build proprietary software and to rip you off! Which do you want more of? Free and open source software? or commercial, proprietary software? If you are really for free and open source software, you would use only GPL software like Qtopia! LGPL is not about free and open source software!
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
You know, there are all kinds of geeks. I happen to have little to no interest in cell phones.
> Let's assume for a moment it supports at a minimum 900/1800/1900 (hopefully 850 too) - like most tri-band devices do.
If I'm not mistaken, it's actually quad-band.
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If they want "innovative, slick software", why are they turning to the open source community?
First parsed as "Moloko." Just the sort of phone to take to the Korova Milkbar...
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
For one, why does the display always have to be 'on top of' the keypad? You have to hold the thing with both hands, or nearly drop the phone while reaching for the * 0 # keys. Instead, flip it around so the display is *below* the keypad. Go on,try it with your own phone, right now (just ignore for now that your keys will be upside down):
-- One-handed typing will be much easier, as you can hold onto the phone more firmly while typing. Also note how the 'thigh' of your thumb will not obscure the display.
-- Two-handed speed-texting will be much more 'private' because your thumb's thighs will keep your display hidden from everyone but you (the teens will love this!).
For another, who the hell decided that a phone's keypad should be the inverse of a standard numeric keypad??!? That's just plain daft! Not so long ago, some phones were one way, some the other; but then some moron decided that the One True Way was NOT the way of every single keyboard. What?!?! That makes no sense!
How about that? Who will be the first to implement that? And, will they be able to patent it, now that it's described here?
"Good news, everyone!"
My last two T-Mobile phones were unlocked phones purchased elsewhere. I had no trouble getting T-Mobile to help me configure them for T-Zones Internet access and voicemail.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
What are Nokia using in the N800? Presumably that must have an open driver, otherwise Nokia would be violating the GPL by shipping the systems with the proprietary driver linked to their Linux kernel...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Small phones are no use if you want to do anything interesting with them. If you only want to phone your girlfriend, then fine, get a totty little device. But if you want to present or work with data it's useless. And increasingly as we move into location-aware, network connected devices there is a huge number of applications which just weren't possible before. I've moved from a Sony-Ericsson P910i to a Hewlett Packard IPAQ 6515 - the Sony-Ericson is bigger than OpenMoko, the IPAQ a lot bigger. Why? Because to run real applications you need more screen real estate (and the IPAQ has built-in GPS, which I need for the applications I'm building, but so does OpenMoko). 640x480 pixels is great news. Open API is even better news. I will definitely be playing with one of these, and soon.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Not sure how I got modded up; I was definitely wrong as several people pointed out. The SDK is available through GPL.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
i hear people preaching about open source, open standards and how its evil to charge people for software and such.... i wonder if these phones/pda's are being sold for cost...
portfolio
Does it support that new-fangled touch-tone dialing, or is it standard rotary?
That said, I'm with Cingular, and I just purchased a Blackberry Pearl. Hands down the best phone I've ever owned. I can do anything with it, as far as putting various media on it and watching/listening to it. Cingular doesn't restrict me. Not only that, but there's a rather large Blackberry developer community out there that provides a large amount of software to run, albeit not free or even cheap.
If the Openmoko can get a lot of developers writing for it, I think it'll have a chance. At this point anything said about the iPhone is really hearsay, but if Apple/Cingular choose to restrict what software you can/can't put on it I think it'll have a much harder time than Jobs thinks. The whole point of a smartphone is to add useful software. And we all know useful is subjective.
The biggest missing bit according to the linked spec page is bluetooth. Wi-Fi would be nice for surfing at higher speed, but no bluetooth is hard to understand. This makes syncing more difficult, no wireless headsets.
In theory someone might be able to cobble up something to the USB ( if it supports host or on-the-go ), but that would be pretty clunky. A tiny micro-sd adapter maybe?
It's hard to imagine the hardware being built with 640x480 screen, GPS and no bluetooth.
The green phone is meant ONLY as an SDK. This is a device that is made for mass production. FIC is a hardware company, so it seems the general story was (I have been following the openmoko for a while) that they felt that their expertise was better spent making a decent piece of hardware and letting others make the software. About time someone "got it," software authored by hardware manufacturers are generally almost 100% certain to suck.
It also supports windows mobile, as apparently FIC has a "two-OS"-support policy. And something about the Chinese market or something.
From TFA:
FIC Neo1973:
* 120.7 x 62 x 18.5 (mm)
* 2.8" VGA (480x640) TFT Screen
* Samsung s3c2410 SoC @ 266 MHz
* Global Locate AGPS chip
* Ti GPRS (2.5G not EDGE)
* Unpowered USB 1.1
* Touchscreen
* micro-sd slot
* 2.5mm audio jack
* 2 additional buttons
* 1200 mAh battery (charged over USB)
* 128 MB SDRAM
* 64 MB NAND Flash
* Bluetooth (2.0)
The GPL edition of Greenphone explicitly excludes the telephony components (as well as some others).
... but not as an open phone.
So yeah, you can use the Greenphone as a fully open PDA
In contrast, the OpenMoko FIC Neo1973 is a 100% open phone, as well as being a PDA, GPS, media player, etc etc. The phone section is completely programmable using AT/modem-like commands, generated by any program that you care to run on it.
But for a wifi alternative, you can use an alternate firmware on certain wifi access points that have usb ports on them, and plug in a usb bluetooth adapter for bluetooth networking.
:P
Which wifi access points can run a Bluetooth-LAN gateway if you plug a Bluetooth dongle into them? I keep on hearing rumours about them, but I've never found one advertised or I'd have bought it. As far as changing the firmware goes, unless it's vendor firmware so that it's supported, that's pie in the sky for 99.9% of the population.
The closest thing that's fairly widely available is a Bluetooth access point, and there aren't a huge number of those, fewer than half a dozen overall and only a couple of those have consumer-level prices like the D-LINK, and they're never in stock at the major consumer outlets either.
So please let us know about wifi access points with built-in Bluetooth stacks and just needing a USB dongle.
Perhaps FIC should make such a dual-mode access point.
Well indeed Qtopia is free, but it's not free phone software, because the GPL edition of Greenphone specifically excludes the telephony components. So, your beloved Qtopia is emasculated by Trolltech licensing into being just a PDA framework, if you want to use free components alone. You have to abandon GPL purity and use their non-GPL telephony interface code to phone out on the device.
In contrast, OpenMoko on the FIC Neo1973 is 100% an open phone platform, with the telephony entirely under the control of your own or community code, not FIC's --- the phone is managed and programmed through AT/modem-type commands generated by any arbitrary programs you chose to run, or indeed write your own.
And of course you can run Qtopia on this phone as well
Since you are the one stressing about GPL purity, OpenMoko should be a big deal for you, whereas Greenphone and Trolltech should be on your blacklist.
But that doesn't stop it from still being sold out. An there are more english speaking people than spanish speaking people in the world.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
If I bought one of these things, how would I persuade a US cell-phone company to let me use it? This has sorta been a major barrier in the past. Our cell-phone companies here generally only permit their own locked-down phones, and do everything they can to prevent software developers like me from adding our own stuff to the phone. If I had a guarantee that I could actually use the thing as a cell phone (voice + data), I'd jump into the development right away. But I don't see any clues so far as to how I'd go about making sure that it would actually be usable where I live.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I can think of a big motivator for T-Mobile to pick up on OpenMoko, or whatever they're going to eventually call this thing when the marketers get through with it. AT&T will have iPhone and be the only people with iPhone. T-Mobile will have what to counter it? Crackberry? Sidekick? Please.
OpenMoko looks really, really REALLY good. It has a SCARY resemblance to the Apple device, which was supposedly kept under wraps with double-secret super NDAs. It is not uber-powerful, but it is powerful enough. And it is expandable with memory cards, something Apple has decided not to do with iPhone.
T-Mobile has a very strong motivation to get behind OpenMoko and push really hard. And hey, I think the OpenMoko will look as good in magenta as it does now in orange. (Grinning, ducking and running...) I think that is the funny thing. Apple may have indirectly played into people's hands here. As a Canadian, I really don't expect the iPhone till about Feb/June of next year for the Rogers/Fido Wireless Network (same thing that they did with the iPod, about a year between US and Canadian releases). ALP seem to be trucking along with the only thing that might save that MASSIVE Palm market with Palm Inc looking for something new to their smartphone development. OpenMoko continue to impress me... sounds like some fun little toy to play with and develop on, plus I have a bit of a feeling that a few big cell-phone companies may be keeping an eye on it, more or less to hop right in and built a phone biased on it. Motorola continue dependence on linux for cell-phone development, with another phone out there, The 'I-think-I'm-Hot-Chocolate' RIZR Z6. And then there is the Pearl line from Blackberry, the likely hood is that RIM will continue to fiercely continue marketing and development of this line and with the cell-industries habit of copy-cats that do really well for themselves amiss the originator... Blackberry will survive and stay within the consumer market for a while.
And there is the Multi-touch, the one bit of tech that Apple doesn't own completely (if at all). There are a few other companies out there that produce multi-touch components that happens to be outside the control of Apple Computers Inc/Apple Inc. OpenMoko discussed this for a moment recently, there seem some work towards a Multi-touch driver for the Neo (through, it might see Neo's next generation phone than the current one)... Personally I think that another company willing to jump on board OpenMoko that is working on a multi-touch device may help it along very nicely.
But all in all, Apple may have changed the way the industry works, but just not as Apple themselves might have expected. I more or less guess that the industry will quickly change around Apple, which it has a habit of doing anyway, in such a manner that it might render the iPhone irreverent. I am sure this is one of the main reasons that Apple has desperately voiced that the iPhone is a closed and rather controlled development when it come to the third-party development and software, as a means of a tie-in.
That is my thoughts on this.
The OpenMoko has a higer resolution display, but also a physically smaller one. For some things, this is nice, but at these sizes (3.5" vs. 2.8"), the raw numbers will mean alot to people -- the OpenMoko display will feel much smaller.
The OpenMoko takes memory cards, which will make it cost roughly as much as the iPhone for less storage, but there's hope that that will improve over time. Saying that the iPhone has a larger built-in memory capacity is a tiny bit disengenuous, since the OpenMoko has approximately `none'. Having been stuck in that boat already by the Nokia 770 internet tablet, I can tell you that micro-SD is a PITA.
The iPhone uses USB2.0. The OpenMoko uses USB1.1, so it will be far slower to get data onto it.
The OpenMoko does not appear to have a bluetooth radio (not %100 sure about this, but I didn't see it). I don't know how anyone would manage to put out a US$350 featurephone without at least support for headsets (and thus handsfree car sets). Probably I'm wrong about this and the final version will have bluetooth support.
The OpenMoko has no WiFi connectivity, so you'll be stuck with the GSM radio. I know that everyone prefers not to have phones locked to networks, but the way networks get lock-in with `standard' systems like GSM is to make the data protocols proprietary. The OpenMoko as a GSM phone will be able to make calls and send/receive SMS messages, but the iPhone will also be able to use Cingular's data protocols to send multimedia messages, browse the web, send/receive email, etc.
As it is now, the OpenMoko does not seem like the phone+computing device I'm looking for, and this makes me sad. With the specs as listed, I'm hoping that the newer Nokia 800 Internet Tablet (which also runs linux, but likely not quite as `open') will fit my PDA/computing device needs, even though it would have to be combined with a phone. Those of you who are more interested in `One Device' than `Connected PDA' can work on the OpenMoko, and hopefully someday we can meet in the middle.
It's all about the applications. So yeah, you'll look sexy and be popular at the country club with your trendy faddish iPhone, but if you want to use the best and most current apps, you'll need something that is ... yes I'll say it .. OPEN.
What's to stop you from using a $20 usb to wi-fi adapter until wifi is included in the device? I'd duct tape one to the back for the extra functionality...