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The Rise of the Linux-Based Cellphone
mrscotty99 writes with a link to a Linux.com article about the rising star that is the Linux-based cellphone. Author Murry Shohat argues that the transformation of the cell into a mini-PC this summer is a landmark opportunity for Linux. Apple's offering and Motorola's US launch of the RAZR2 V8 (a linux-based device) may be heralds of great things to come for a new OS frontier: "In the cell phone market, consumers will pay for content, and corporations need to deliver secure content to applications in the palm of employees' hands. These trends suggest products that are simultaneously more functional and less expensive than a Treo or BlackBerry and more secure than an iPhone. MontaVista Software claims to have deployed Mobilinux on more than 35 million mobile devices worldwide. CEO Tom Kelley says, 'Linux is growing rapidly on mobile devices because of its solid reliability, its great flexibility, and because it accelerates the development cycle.' Vendors using or contemplating the use of Linux for mobile devices unanimously point to the operating system's footprint, memory usage, and fast growing ecosystem of developers producing software for graphics, multimedia, connectivity, and security." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by SourceForge.
http://openmoko.com/
- Touchscreen
- WLAN
- completely open
- A-GPS
You don't have that many OS choices when developing a cellphone.
Obviously, you can go with a market leader like Symbian and Nokia's S60 software stack to get something out the door in a hurry.
Alternatively, you can pay a bunch up front to get the hardware working with Linux, but the benefits are a royalty-free OS license.
You could always ask Microsoft for some help, but your fast time to market and full-featureset come at the price of outrageously powerful hardware requirements.
Finally, you can go with BREW, Qualcomm's stripped-down, barebones OS.
Each OS has its benefits and tradeoffs. Linux's benefits are code "ownership" and full source access, not to mention a well-known API and a large pool of developers. The major tradeoff that I've seen is the enormous latency in normal usage. A keypress takes a significantly longer time to process on a Linux phone than on, say, a BREW phone or an MS Smartphone.
There's a lot of growth to come in the cellphone market, so Symbian has a long fight against these up and comers. And there really isn't anywhere for anyone (excluding Symbian) to go but up.
Personally I find this announcement much more interesting and relevant to the goal of getting Linux on the mobiles. In short: Trolltech has made available the telephony service, DRM and SaX available under GPLv2, thus making Qtopia Phone edition completely free. Besides, they have ported Qtopia to Neo 1973. This is most certainly very good news!
.. and its a really, really great device even though the developer version is missing a few things (accelerometers, WLAN) .. there is really nothing quite so fun as being able to write software for your own cell phone, and do things that just wouldn't be possible elsewhere.
..
I'm looking forward, for example, to having my own answering service onboard with a user-selectable set of recordings to playback (IVR-style application), and some music-making apps are on the horizon as well
Lovely bit of gear; I will definitely upgrade to GTA02 when its available, too.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
About ten years ago encryption was much more in vogue than it is now. The geeks who were the elite of the Internet even so late widely had PGP keys and sometimes went to key-signing events. Publishing on public applications of cryptography was vast: O'Reilly had a PGP guide and Bruce Schneier's great Applied Cryptography appeared. PGPfone and Speakeasy promised to give us secure voice communication.
Now look at what has happened. Today's geeks rarely show interest in GPG, even when they rave about other free software achievements. Figures like Bruce Schneier chose to focus on other aspects of computer security, and O'Reilly doesn't publish anything to show your average computer-literate fellow how to secure his communications. PGPfone was never maintained, and nothing appears to have come to replace it, even in bold new apps like Ekiga. And the web of trust has stagnated because (reliable) key signings are rare.
Your idea of a GPG-capable phone is something I find cool, but sadly encryption no longer captivates people like it once did.
You might find useful information (concerning the first OpenMoko compatible phone) on this page : http://wiki.openmoko.org/index.php?title=Neo1973
The end user version is the one named "Phase 2" (GTA02, "Mass Market").
Allong with hardware specs, you'll find there an estimated timeline :
* Sep 20 - GTA02v3 design finalised.
* Oct 20 - GTA02v3 design produced, and shipped to qualified developers.
* Nov 20 - GTA02v3 design verified through testing by developers.
* Dec 10 - GTA02v3 produced in moderate volume
* Dec 20 - GTA02v3 goes on sale
* Dec 25 - GTA02v3 arrives