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Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
adeelarshad82 writes "Truly open-development, open-source phones like the Nokia N900 will never hit the mainstream in the US because wireless carriers in the country hate the unexpected, writes PCMag's Sascha Segan. The open-source philosophy is all about unexpected, disruptive ideas bubbling upwards, and that drives network planners nuts. So, you get unsatisfactory hybrids like Google Android, which uses some open-source components but locks third-party developers into a crippled Java sandbox. The bottom line is that while Linux the OS, the kernel, and the memory manager are attractive to phone manufacturers, Linux the philosophy — and users banding together ad hoc to create new things — is anathema to wireless carriers."
Whether or not the N900 reaches iPhone numbers is irrelevant to the fact that it will stand in computer history along with the Kaypro II, PDP-11, SORD IS-11, Altair 8080;
I don't care if AT&T likes it or not.
If you actually get your hands on one, you will understand that it feels good to actually own something, and not pay to carry the wireless equivalent of a cable box.
If people in America were "customers" and actually were allowed to decided what they wanted, and not "consumers" to be culled by the wireless carriers, then the N900 would on it's merits be the best selling mobile computer of all times.
Does anyone really like the fact that all you can get from the big wireless carriers is what they want you to have, and not what you want?
Those that go out and buy an N900 will understand.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
As always, follow the money.
However, there's more to it than that. You should have said American wireless carriers. European wireless carriers don't get to play that game, nor do South American carriers, nor Asian carriers. So really the PCMag columnist is pretty myopic. The utterly bizarre wireless market that exists in the United States is nearly unique in the world, and the majority of the world's population lives somewhere else. Open source phones will do just fine because there are great big markets for them on every continent except North America. And since it's not like the Nokia N900 or any of its components are manufactured in the United States, the greedy graspy control freak US carriers can't affect it in the slightest.
Here you go. A port-o-rotary for $200. They provide full source and schematics. You can even buy a 6000mAh battery to run the thing for weeks and you don't have to deal with any PDA functionality. Any more complaints?
Radios are expensive. The only reason phones are cheap is because they're heavily subsidized or because they're a simple little phone produced a million at a time from a small handful of highly-integrated mixed analog/digital ASICs. "Open-source" devices are small-run devices with hopelessly obsolete radio hardware because it's all they can get documentation for and manufacturers aren't looking to release their secret sauce to just anybody.
And on top of all of this, most of the open-source types are desktop or server programmers. On the desktop, you don't have to think about low-power code. Everything changes when you're running off a battery. There just isn't the expertise there (yet). Having said all this, I love my rooted T-mobile G1. I built a scratchbox environment for it and ported a few important CLI tools and it's now perfectly capable of being all the pocket Linux machine I need and it's not very difficult getting Debian running on top of the Android environment.