Slashdot Mirror
Openmoko's Open Source Phone Goes Mass-Market
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."
That's so last century.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
That's about all I have to say... 2.5G... if not for that I'd keep my existing iPhone but because of it I'm upgrading next month.
So blatantly I have no real need for a phone, why do they all have to be so gaddamn expensive? I can't afford much more than £5 a month for calls, will the open-ness and WIFI-ness of this phone allow me to say, use my internet (which I already pay for) to make phonecalls? (for free)
What's with the 2.5G? Did n't the Iphone get absolutely slammed for the lack of it, something that British (european) users apparently Have To Have? Given that this is a french phone and not a US thing, surely it would come with the usual standards.
Also, can I ssh into my computer and restart my webserver, motherfucker??? :)
I iz American. I can has OpenMoko?
translation: When is US getting sweet, sweet OpenMoko goodness?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
For an open hardware project, they're making fantastic progress. If you want 3G, offer to help. I'm not saying you shouldn't expect great things from a project of this sort (look at Firefox, it's turned out fantastically well), but you need to give a little to get a little (a la public broadcasting).
3G was never planned for this version and even subsequent versions only may get it thy can get buy it in low volume and can write/publish it with GPL'ed driver (if necessary for 3G module). Same goes for a lot of other things that your run-of-the-mill phone boasts. Most chip-makers wont even talk to you if you want low volume + open specs/drivers.
WIFI wouldn't have been included if they didn't find an appropriate chip (for mobile phones) with open drivers etc. or at least the possibility to write an open driver with NDA'ed docs.
Can you set up the 3d accelerometers to do gesture-based calling? Because I can think of a few gestures I'd like to associate with some jerks I have to call on a regular basis.
stuff |
The linuxdevices story is wrong, see http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA02
Indeed, 400MHz 2.8in screen.
Further, the linuxdevices story doesn't say they have begun shipping, it says that they have announced distributors who they will ship to. The only thing they've begun shipping is contracts and red tape.
nerdyH, you're a fucktard.
I can't wait, I've developed _serious_ blueballs waiting for this thing. Lets see... www.openmoko.com... store...
Invalid security certificate? D'oh!
Hope that gets fixed soon too. wasn't there a discussion about that recently?
More music, fewer hits
Its a phone. Yah, lots of new wiz bang features, most of which the average person won't ever use. Most of the rest will be used a handful of times by someone to show off how advanced their PHONE is.
If I wait a year, I'll get the equavalent of this model for free with a new service contract. Even then, I won't be using most of the functionality.
The most I can ever see being useful in a phone is email, gps and voice calls. Even then, I think you'd need to be traveling for work to actually use those features enough to pay for them.
But what do I know? I live in a van down by the river.
A couple of 30-somethings embark on the ultimate roadtrip
I'm really considering buying a Neo Freerunner. At 300 euros it's reasonably priced.
Some improvements I'd like to perform to it that a normal phone does not have:
- depending on who's calling perform any of these behaviors:
* ring, vibrate or ignore the call
* answer the call with a dynamic or static message for example where i am (coordinates or city name), why i'm not answering (eating, sleeping, meeting)
* install an operator menu ("Jos is in a meeting, i'm openmoko his assistant. do you want to make an appointment for him to call you back?"
- record my accelleration and position all day (because i can)
- switch an annoying caller to a signal of strange noises or a helpfully scripted assistant or a nice song to put them on hold with
- put a filter on incoming and outgoing sounds to give them echo or change the pitch
- record every call i make
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
look at Firefox, it's turned out fantastically well
Yes, but it took ten years.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I too only use a low level voice phone Nokia (1100) and have no use for a fancier phone. You can still get low-level phones for pretty low cost new, and almost free on eBay etc.
But at least I can appreciate that there are other people out there who actually have a lifestyle/usage pattern that fits better with a more sophisticated phone and have the money to spend on it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is similar to why the XBox 2 is called the Xbox 360, because it "sounds" better than the PS3 according to soccer moms
In that case, the iPhone 3G is doomed.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
here are teh REAL specs from openmoko's website:
* 2.8" VGA TFT color display
* Touchscreen, usable with stylus or fingers
* 266MHz Samsung System on a Chip (SOC)
* USB 1.1, switchable between Client and Host (unpowered)
* Integrated AGPS
* 2.5G GSM â" tri band (900/1800/1900), voice, CSD, GPRS
* Bluetooth 2.0
* Micro SD slot
* High Quality audio codec
Note that it has a USB 1.1 (slower transfers) and is triband (no 850 for north america)
Also the article points to a meaningless page with no real info. Here is the actual page for openmoko.
And the official site still says that its not released. The whole submission looks trollish to me.
http://www.openmoko.com/products-neo-base-00-stdkit.html
Detailed hardware specs:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_Hardware
- old TI GSM modem, recamping once a minute(!) to the mobile station, eating battery like crazy and very unreliable. A TI engineer asked me if they (openmoko) got the chips for free, as they are so ancient - no EDGE, GPRS w/ 2KB/s. Openmoko is likely the last buyer.
- audio quailty on the headphone is lousy due to a hardware bug - as mp3 player useless
- headphone only mono. i.e. only one side works
- headphone unusable for making phone calls due to EM-interferences
- no bluetooth headset support
- no bluetooth keyboard support (dropped since last version)
- graphics sluggish and even slower than Neo 1973 despite 2D accel chip
- GPS has >10 minutes TTFF - yes, in 2008 where every cheapo GPS gets a fix in 45secs
- developer community alienated by Lauer & Co. GNOME knew why they kicked Rasterman out.
- so called ASU software is pre-alpha and reinventing the wheel once again
Unless your company pays for it, don't buy it.I wouldn't be surprised if it was illegal under that new legislation the current crop of fascists wants to enact. This thing sounds like it was made for card-swapping and flexibility.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Apart from the corrections everyone's made, the FreeRunner will allegedly go on sale July 4th (we'll see) and yes, I'm getting one. I don't have a phone now, because I despise the lock in and ridiculous pricing of US carriers/plans. Of course, I still need to get a plan of some kind, so that'll be the $100 PAYG T-Mobile, which at 1000 minutes, might even last me all year.
There's a 10 pack group buy, which is 10% discount and includes some extras. If you add tax and shipping that comes to about $400 even each:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GroupSales
Clearly this phone is evolutionary rather than revolutionary and it's obviously not for everyone, but it's a good step. That it's a portable Linux device with GSM and WiFi, for my own needs, however is a compelling reason to get it.
For me the killer feature is the openness of the platform (datasheets for almost all of the modules, the ability to completely brick it and then restore with JTAG, etc). I'll forgive a lot of flaws in order to support that philosophy.
You seem to have some misunderstandings about the expected state of the software, and you're conflating software & hardware issues.
The software is absolutely not ready for production, and no one is saying it is. I do think the new architecture at freesmartphone.org is going in the right direction, and it sounds as if it already supports stable calling.
That's a software problem, it _will_ be resolved soon.
PS: just ordered Moko.
You can't really expect custom hardware design for a small number of customers to be cheap?
Everybody see's it as an iPhone clone because it has a touch screen, accelerometers, etc.
The reality is this phone is aimed at a completely different market than the iPhone. This phone is aimed at those who value open source software / hardware, whereas the iPhone is aimed at the 'Cool' sector.
I am going to be getting one later in the year when my current 3-year contract runs out. I am tired of locked phones with disabled features for the benefit of the phone company. To me the ability to control my own phone is more important than having a few extra bells and whistles like the iphone.
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
No it will not unless Google will recompile most code, because Android requires a ARMv5 cpu and this release is ARMv4. It would have been nice if they designed it with a Android upgrade in mind and designed the Freerunner with a ARMv5 chip.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner_GTA02_Hardware
http://benno.id.au/blog/2007/11/21/android-neo1973
Okay, thank you for your fanboi insight's. There are 1500 more of your kind on the mailing list. But last not least: how many developers have jumped your train? The answer is: zero. Nada. Even a developer who worked for Openmoko said on his blog -ironically being spread via planet.openmoko.org- he would never buy it.
Now go and spend your fanboi money if you really have to.
"developer community alienated by Lauer & Co. GNOME knew why they kicked Rasterman out."
WTF? One thing to say here. No one kicked me out of GNOME - get your history right. Do your research. You demonstrate some serious ignorance here. I chose to not contribute anymore due to GNOME going one way, and me going another. I had plans for E and they had plans for GNOME as of course "GNOME needs no window manager. it can work with all of them!". Check your history mate.
Thanks for registering your account now for some trolling fun.
--------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------------
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 hardware is there. The software to support that hardware is unfinished. If you're testing things using the ASU, you're crazy.
BTW, I'v owned a Neo1973 (the dev release predecessor to the Freerunner) for about six months, so I'm not talking totally out of my ass here. I have not done any testing with Freerunner, all I'm going on there is what I see in the mailing lists & chat room.
Honestly, I'm somewhat disenchanted with OpenMoko right now. Ceasing support for the GTK platform to work on ASU was a phenomenally bad idea. However, the fso release sounds very promising. The project is very young, and already provides stable calls with suspend/resume on call.
Regarding the headset, it sounds as if you got a bad one. I would report it and ask for a replacement.
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.
GPS has been an issue, and honestly I've heard reports both ways - people saying they get the behavior you got, and others saying they get a fix in 2 minutes (which is still crappy) when they're standing still outside. AGPS will improve those fix times.
Honestly, all this sounds like you just want to bitch. Anyone who had enough info to know where to purchase one of these should have known that the SOFTWARE IS NOT READY. I have never seen you or your complaints in irc or on the mailing list, so I can only speculate that you have no interest in solving problems, just bitching about them.
What you're thinking of was SD. It was limited to 2GB by FAT16. ,a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card#SDHC">SDHC could support up to 2TB using FAT32, but it is artifically limited to 32GB.
Windows puts an arbitrary limit on FAT32 volume size creation of 32GB, but it will happily read any sized FAT32 partition, all the way up to 2TB.
I have a feeling the SDHC folks decided to not exceed 32GB so people wouldn't call and complain when trying to format their new SDHC cards directly in a computer. It's unfortunate that Microsoft pulled this bullshit, because otherwise we wouldn't need yet another format upgrade in the next few years.
I'm actually curious about what format the next version of SD will use. Will it be exFAT (vista and xp)? Will it be ext2 (has a windows driver)?
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.