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Openmoko Phone Not Dead After All

Posted by timothy on from the tut-mir-leid dept.

In response to the report I posted a few days ago that the Openmoko FreeRunner phone had been discontinued, Pat Meier-Johnson writes on behalf of Openmoko to say that this isn't so. "Some bloggers have been misinterpreting a presentation by Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz last week in Switzerland to think that the company is getting out of the phone business. That's not true. In fact, the Openmoko FreeRunner (their current model) is alive and well. (Also in Switzerland, Sean announced another project — not a phone — that they are calling 'Project B.' No details yet.) The next version of the phone, codenamed GTA03, has been suspended and there were some associated layoffs, but the GTA03 was in constant flux as a design. So the company is being prudent and focusing on the FreeRunner which has lots of open source community and most recently, embedded developer support." Glad to hear this, because the FreeRunner is an interesting phone.

1 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Re:But does it make calls yet? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1, Redundant

    For me the question is how 'locked down' Android is.

    Google is touting it as an open-source platform. However, as we saw last week about tethering, Google and device makers may be beholden to the interests of service providers.

    I am not interested in an Android Market, to rival the iPhone. Google is barely less 'inherently evil' than Apple. :)

    The best chance of an open software platform for a phone is for manufacturers to all jump on the Android bandwagon but allow 'unlocked' phones to be bought in stores as with traditional GSM phones. Then if the hardware specs are well known and documented, we Slashdot readers can reflash the phone with our embedded *bsd/Linux distro of choice. If Android truly is open source, one should be able to load Dalvik in userspace.

    The issue with Openmoko is that it's selling you a device from a niche manufacturer which could go out of business at any moment. Instead, let Google define a standardised hardware platform and cross our fingers the software is fully user replaceable! Whether manufacturers allow this...