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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 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.
I iz American. I can has OpenMoko?
translation: When is US getting sweet, sweet OpenMoko goodness?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
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.
Given that you've talked on the phone less than a minute a day for the past 9 years, I'd say you're probably better off just working out a schedule with the pizza guy instead of always just phoning him up and saying "the usual". Though it might be useful to have one around for 911 in case your hermit beard gets caught in the blender or something.
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.
- 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.Close, but those are the specs for the Neo1973, the free runner specs are here:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner
(added wifi and faster cpu)
Further details here:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner_GTA02_Hardware
I agree - the submission is bad... there's no mentioning of the phone being for sale on http://openmoko.com/ - just a "coming soon" note.
TC - My Photos..
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.
Didn't the Iphone get absolutely slammed for the lack of it
Sure, but the IPhone is a highly hyped product, so it has to be appropriately buzzword compliant. Any poor IPhone user would get the lack pointed out to them; instant put-down for the device-chic.
The OpenMoko is a different field entirely. For most prospective users there simply is no feature that carries a higher importance than freedom, nor are there many alternatives with that essential feature. I have no interest in the iPhone with or without 3g; it's even more locked than many other phones.
And no, for the more pragmatic crowd, 3g isnt something you really have to have on your phone (especially not if you have wifi). 3g is more useful as a modem for a small computer like the eee; it's nice to have when you have the UI to fully utilize more bandwidth intensive applications.
Also, can I ssh into my computer and restart my webserver,
The more interesting question is, can you ssh into your phone and restart the webserver you're running there?
It is still in coming soon status at http://openmoko.com/
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
"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.
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