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OpenMoko's FreeRunner Rises From the Ashes
ChristW writes "Remember OpenMoko's first free and open source phones, the GTA-01 and GTA-02 (also called FreeRunner)? There is a new project called Phoenux. The German company Golden Delicous is building a new main board (called GTA-04) for the GTA01/02 case. The new hardware features a DM3730 (800 MHz) processor, a GTM601W UMTS (HSPA) module, and lots more." Would you pay extra for a phone that comes with a Debian build?
Everyone's already moved on to A9 based SoC's for things. If they'd consider an A9 based SoC (Something like the OMAP4 in the currently MIA Samsung Galaxy Nexus, for example...) for the OpenMoko platform, it might be a gem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Sorry not really.
Get an HTC HD2. It runs linux with a little hacking as well as Android, WM6.5, WP7, and probably AmigaOS..
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
A friend gave me the Neo FreeRunner a long time ago. The graphics chip in combination with the display really killed the device. It's insanely slow, which I assume scared a lot of potential developers away. I hope this new version will be more balanced.
c++;
Yes, if it doesn't have CarrierIQ
I'd pay more for a phone without CarrierIQ
Queue the Apple law suites in 3-2-1...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
is the radio firmware still open?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem is that it has to be something that I can let other people use, I had a hard time communicating with my friends who used FreeRunner before things got as stable as they are now.
maybe with a better processor, and at least a Gentoo build, maybe an OpenBSD build.
>Would you pay extra for a phone that comes with a Debian build?
Yes. If I had the extra money, I'd get one even if it couldn't make phone calls or hold a charge for half a day. Just for the potential of it being able to actually reasonably be used as a phone. If it couldn't reach that, I'd find some other use for it, as it still would be a pocket sized debian box with a built-in screen.
When the first(or second?) one came, I wanted one, but also needed a working phone, so I got the less cool and free n900 was more of a sweet-spot of usability and gnu/linuxiness.
Has the freerunner become reasonably usable as a phone yet?
I really liked the Maemo OS. It was very open, and worked like a normal Linux system. Android looks very unappealing in the way it replaces pretty much all of the base system and requires coding specifically for it.
So I'd be quite willing to support a project along these lines, so long a few minimum requirements are fulfilled:
1. It's usable. Not necessarily 100% polished, but at a minimum boots up, charges, and makes and receives phone calls, with acceptable performance and no random crashes.
I considered getting a Freerunner back when it was new, but it I needed it to work as a phone, and the state at the time seemed to involve things like the inability to charge the battery if it was ever fully discharged.
2. It works like a normal Linux system. I want something like the N900, where I can compile, debug and run programs just like on my own box.
The stupid thing about the original FreeRunner was that it only did GPRS, when everything else did UMTS. For a programmable smartphone, not having a decent speed data connection made it pointless.
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I'm surprised that anyone honestly believes a substantial number of people want this product. Are there a few hobbyist geeks out there who would die for it? Sure. Are there very many of them? No. Will most people EVER be interested in something like this? No freakin' way. If they're doing this as a hobby, well, live it up. If they're under the delusion that it matters, they're out of touch with reality.
Sweet now I can hit pedestrians in a car on my phone, while hitting pedestrians in a car because I'm on my phone! Oh... motherboard... darn.
~nostrum
At 666 Euros they can keep it too.
If they are not replacing the screen, just the board, then I think they are wasting their time. Based on how awkward the FreeRunner is with regards to the shape and size of the screen (480x640), they will never be able to compete with any recent Android or iPhone model.
Since they stated it will be using the same case, they are really limiting how much they can do for the FreeRunner.
Johnkoerner.com
Why are all the free/open hardware devices so underspeced? The reason I never bought a neo during round 1 was because it was GPRS only, no 3G even when plenty of other phones were coming out with 3G. The n900 looked fantastic, but for the lousy processor (800Mhz vs 1Ghz as standard for other smart phones). Seriously, if you're expected to pay $400, which was roughly what the neo 1773 cost when it first went on sale (not 100% sure, but I remember thinking "Fuck! That's expensive") then provide up to date hardware.
On top of running debian and being fully open source (well, maybe not the hardware and all the firmware) it seemed fully functional and had great hardware. I still preferred Android because in spite of being less open, it allowed for easier development and I found it more exciting.
It's a shame maemo (or whatever they call it these days) is not going to take off, because it actually looked pretty good, had very good performance, and was very hacker-friendly. Really sad :(
OpenMoko has the flaw (and benefit) of being fully open source to the hardware. Thing is, if they are not going to produce millions, cost is going to be very high. Maybe if they focused on porting maemo and did sell millions.. but I'm not sure millions of people would see the benefit of running open source hardware, for the same reason most don't care if the software is free or proprietary. I think nokia with the n900 and Android with the nexus phones have done a great job of providing a nice trade-off between openness, usability, and popularity (who would have thought the year of the linux smartphone was so nigh! ;) )
Have you checked out the N9? The top-selling, currently highest rated smartphone? It fixes all of the N9 slowness and has awesome specs.
As somebody who has used freerunner since 2008 daily I can say that for me the largest problem is the lack of stable touchscreen friendly FOSS applications. For example I'm currently using the debian "dates" package as my calendar but that is going to be removed since upstream has abandoned it ages ago. I can't take the calendar from meego since it does not come with source code. I could take the android calendar but unfortunately after that it'd be difficult to run non-android applications. Perhaps Tizen will write me an HTML5 calendar application that I can then use with chromium? Unfortunately chromium is not very touchscreen friendly either. There is the chromeTouch extension but it does not come with a free license (I mailed the author in 2010 but got no reply).
"The German company Golden Delicous is building a new main board (called GTA-04)"
The next thing you know, an Indian company named Granny Smith will be building a new main board called AngryBirds-Cupertino....
I'd pay extra for an open phone, provided it did two things reliably - make calls and receive calls.
I was excited by the OpenMoko project, and I am still grateful for what they have provided to the community (among other things, the Computer Aided Design models for their phone case are still the best open source CAD models I know of). I even got my hands on a Neo1973 as a physical example of (some of) those CAD files, for reference. I have never seriously considered trying to use it as my primary phone, however.
Personally, I'm less concerned with "smart phone" features - my main phone is still the "old school" style without a touch screen, internet, or all of the features we commonly associate with things like the IPhone. That makes me a fairly good candidate for an open phone, so long as it can do phone calls well - the stability/in-development status of the rest of the "smartphone pacakge" wouldn't bother me so much. But it *does* need to do phone calls. Decent charging behavior would also be a plus.
If they can focus on and deliver those key things for the "next" version of the OpenMoko, I'm definitely going to be interested. Fingers crossed...
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
It seems like you feel that people using n900 are just spotty teenagers with glasses with no friends but their computers. It's not about being proud, but about having the tool that you need. I well understand that a Debian based phone might not be useful for the masses, but it's the right tool for me. I *NEED* some of the features that are in it, like git (we store/share our company passwords using that), networking tools (I built myself mtr), a real ssh client with ssh key support, and many more. I don't need them because it's "cool", or to be "proud", I need them for my WORK. Oh, and I don't use the n900 as a phone, because it's a really crappy phone that is so slow that you can actually miss phone calls (and because of obscure contracts that I would force me to overpay to do both 3G and phone calls over here), and I rarely start the messaging stuff because it makes the phone horribly slow.
So I wouldn't pay more for a phone that comes with Debian (since I already own one), unless it is ALSO a decent phone, which might be the issue here with the FreeRunner too.
Thanks to the FSF they have decided that somehow the device will be more Free if they add extra hardware to remove the ability load your own firmware for the wifi. I'd rather they threw the wifi chip away and use a worse chip which requires no non-free code or just accepted you need the non-free firmware, don't up the cost to embed the non-free firmware into the board itself and then pretend it doesn't exist, it's just dumb.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Using a full Debian operating system for your *work* has nothing to do with being a fanboy. I fully understand that some people might like the latest fart app, but please in your turn, understand that it might not be everyone's need. And yes, being able to have all the GNU tools IS important and very convenient. I do care my phone runs a full GNU based OS when I'll find my way in with ssh, openVPN, mtr, git, etc. By the way, in my case, I don't even use that device as a phone, just as a tiny laptop that fits in my pocket, and that appears to also have some phone functionality.
Do you remember those time ? pple use to make demos instead of webpages and the h2h (hand2hand) was the internet ...
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You do know you are on slashdot, right? News for nerds? I mean, I assumed nerds are interested in what OS their devices have, and what they could potentially hack/extend them to do.
The freeRunner comes with a closed source baseband because of legal/licensing issues. In other words: It's /not/ a free phone.
The Nokia N9 runs debian already and it's a damn fine piece of hardware :)
Plus, getting SSH root is as simple as checking "developer mode" in the settings pane... (The password is 'rootme'.)
because I'd spend more time trying to get it to work and trying to fix it after updates broke it than I would spend actually using it.
Would you pay extra for a phone that comes with a Debian build?
I would pay extra for any phone that allows to run wireshark on the GSM or 3G stack.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Is the N9 an open hardware platform?