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Openmoko's Open Source Phone Goes Mass-Market

Posted by timothy on from the long-may-it-wave dept.

nerdyH writes "Openmoko has begun shipping its Linux-based, open source Neo Freerunner phone to five newly announced distributors, in Germany, France, and India, says the company. The Neo Freerunner features an open hardware design, and a Linux-based operating system that users are free to modify. The project originally hoped to produce a mass-market offering last October. The $400 Freerunner will remain available direct, online, too. A 2.5G GPRS/GSM phone like the original iPhone, it boasts a 500MHz processor, WiFi, 3D accelerometers, a 4.3-inch VGA touchscreen, Bluetooth, and built-in GPS."

7 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. DIE LIBERALS DIE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    n/t

  2. Okay...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's specs are more like last year's iPhone, it costs twice what this year's iPhone does and it lacks all the cool functions. And yes I know about the contracts and kick backs yadda yadda. The point is it costs more does less but gee it's open source. Not seeing the ground breaking. It's not the first so it's just an expensive open source iPhone clone.

  3. Re:'Merica by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Don't celebrate too soon. OpenMoko are recalling the Neo Freerunner because engineers forgot to add the ability to make voice calls on these gadgets.

  4. Re:ugly... and a really bad name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    well nobody with the money to buy this phone speaks spanish so what's the problem

    it's not like you guys are going to stop drywalling and reproducing long enough to buy anything but the nearest tracphone at walmart

  5. Yuo 7ail it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    confirmed that *BSD eVeryday...We towEl under the

  6. Re:Some Experience by berating · · Score: 0, Troll

    Okay, fanbois just called in to mod the post down:
    http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-June/019880.html

  7. Re:Mod parent fanboi down by berating · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's interesting that my *point* was that the software is unfinished, and known to be unfinished, and your response was to point out to me where the software doesn't support the *hardware* you're claiming the Freerunner doesn't have. The point being is that there *is* already a hardware, namely the Neo1973 and nobody has ever really used it as a phone. The same goes now for the next iteration. Due to the change to ASU nobody really tested it. IMHO the GTK apps were quite usable but let me give you one example: you can't send SMS with more than 140 characters. It just silently fails (this is software, not hardware). If the Openmoko developers had ever used it as their daily phone than this bug had been fixed in 48h. Same goes for the headset: the GSM modem radiates into it and on the callee will hear loud GSM noise. Again nobody ever tried it. Same goes for the GPS. And for the Neo1973 still after half a year nobody found the time to recompile it to get rid of the braindead, flash space wasting chroot. Not to speak of this ridiculous EULA. Show me any GPS where you first have to download a driver from the web in order to make it work.

    I'm pretty sure I would have heard about that battery issue. I have heard the opposite of what you're claiming, though - reports were that the Freerunner in suspend mode (which WILL wake on calls; it's really like what a normal cell phone does after X minutes of inactivity) lived for > 24 hours, and looked like it would work for a week based on battery levels. If you are bitten by this:
    http://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1024
    then it will eat battery even while suspended.

    And AGPS does bring the TTFF down to 5 minutes, but only if you are located in perfect conditions.

    In fact I would like the project to succeed. But it seems the focus is only on reinventing the wheel with ASU. Many many developers have angrily left.