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Linux Crashes the Mobile Party
superglaze writes "ZDNet.co.uk has a fairly comprehensive feature on the progress being made by Linux for cellphones. Seems a pretty consumer deal for now, but there are some interesting hints of Linux eventually challenging Windows Mobile and Symbian in business use. The article also seems to suggest that the two big groups pushing mobile Linux could be amenable to a merger due to common interests."
One page print version of article, rather than 4 ad-loaded pages.
Here are some smart phones running Linux.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9423084269.html
Personally I don't care too much what the OS is so long as it works well enough and lets me get my email too.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The OpenMoko platform is looking like a good bet for a Linux-based phone/pda platform. ARM-based, iPhone-like touchscreen and a nice development kit available. It's due in Oct/Nov I beleve.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
You can do that and much more with an Openmoko-phone http://openmoko.org/. Admittedly the software still needs quite some time to mature but it definitely will open great opportunities.
One of the more interesting developments following the release of the Sun UltraSPARC T1 & T2 chipsets under the GPL has been the S1, a single core implementation of the T1, which combined some other other GPLed hardware can be built as a RISC based system on a chip. It has massive potential as a powerful, low wattage processor that could compete with ARM and Intel in the portable device marketplace. It might be a couple of years in the future but I think it has the potential to be a competitor. It should run Solaris and BSD as well as Linux.
You can already do this with a Symbian based phone (assuming your network operator hasn't blocked the port)
http://s2putty.sourceforge.net/
Windows mobile is the biggest sham ever. There, I said it. Lemme explain...
At my job everyone used to have blackberrys w/ Nextel. Their data network at the time sucked big time (may or may not still be the case). So as the phones aged and everyone got tired of Nextel, we switched to Cingular. I'm not 100% sure why we changed the phones, but a few Windows guys started looking at Windows Mobile based phones. The key features for this were suppose to be
* Since it's Windows, there is a huge array of applications
* Since it has Internet Explorer, we can use all of our websites and IE quirks
* Since it's Windows and windows has a standard API, our windows programmers could write programs for it
* Basically every advantage you can think of for a full blown version of Windows compacted into a phone
Well we got them. Started using them. Crash. But not a normal crash. Remember, these are phones. So you'd spend the whole morning wondering why you haven't gotten any calls yet and it turns out the phone froze. This is completely unacceptable for a phone. I got used to checking my phone every hour to make sure it didn't need to be rebooted.
But heck, rebooting a phone every once in awhile isn't a huge deal to be able to use almost every Windows application ever! Out of all the smartphone OS's I've dealt with, in reality, Windows Mobile has the least amount of quality applications available for it. A lot of standard things everyone did on the Blackberry's were lost simply because there was no Windows Mobile equivalent program. It turns out most developers have no interest in porting their apps to Windows Mobile. Why not? Well this brings me to the next point...
We've had these phones 2 years, and not a single one of our Windows developers has written a program for it. Why? Because touting it as anything like regular Windows development is a flat out lie. Writing programs for a mobile phone is nothing like a traditional application. They couldn't use many/most of their normal development tools. Writing for limited hardware is a whole different ballpark. Microsoft tried to take their traditional developers and throw them into the mobile phone arena, and those developers simply aren't equipped to do it, and get discouraged and don't write anything for the platform.
Every advantage that relied on the fact "it's basically Windows" went right out the window because, in reality, it's nothing like desktop versions of Windows. We were left with an experience that was significantly worse than the Blackberry's. So guess what? We're getting rid of thousands of dollars worth of phones because the experience truly is that bad. We're going back to Blackberry.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
You can use kagu music player that works with a2dp bluetooth audio. I don't know about headsets (for voip), haven't really been too interested in that, although I know that it's coming. Sound quality is very good with a2dp, and avrcp (remote control) works fairly well with kagu too.
Actually the OpenMoko (aka FIC Neo1973) has the following new additions to hardware on the upcoming Consumer Edition (aka GTA02):
* 802.11 b/g WiFi
* Samsung 2442 SoC
* SMedia 3362 Graphics Accelerator
* 2 3D Accelerometers
* 256MB Flash
* 1700mAh Battery
* Faster CPU - S3C2442/400
* LEDs illuminating the two buttons.
Do you really need a multi-touch screen? Not really. Maybe if you want to sit there and play video games... but that's the only practical use I can see in it.
Most people who are looking at purchasing an OpenMoko phone, are not looking for flashy high-speed bullshit. We want something we can actually use. Most of us are hackers, and that is the need this phone is trying to fill. I want a phone I can build a simple app on for simple things. I'm sorry, but the only reason the iPhone has such high-end hardware, is because it requires the resources for it's bloated software.
Please, for the love of 'steve', quit trolling.