Slashdot Mirror
Neo900 Hacker Phone Reaches Minimum Number of Pre-Orders For Production
First time accepted submitter wick3t writes "The Neo900 fundraising campaign has already achieved the milestone of 200 pre-orders which means that mass production is now feasible. This follows a successful first prototype that was showcased at the OpenPhoenux-Hard-Software-Workshop 2013. Their next target is 1000 pre-orders as they aspire to reduce the production costs of each device."
For those not familiar, the Neo 900 is an offshoot of the OpenMoko GTA04 designed for use in the popular Nokia N900 case (and, yes, they're fixing the weak usb port).
but there can't be another smartphone, it's economically impossible!
homebrew kickstart makes a lot more sense to me than slave labor and litigation.
Why does this phone get produced but the Ubuntu Edge doesn't?
I've been following this very, very, closely. I adore my N900...I just wish it was a little closer to my beloved Debian than it is...not to mention with the closed source UI code replaced with open code. I was tempted to do some of that work myself (and/or join some of the people doing similar things), but it was hard to justify the time cost on what is essentially a dead piece of hardware.
...with the potential for new devices however....things become a lot more interesting.
Personally, I never really bought into the Meego changes...I felt too much of Maemo's "Debian" roots were lost thanks to the merge with the more Redhat-based Moblin, and I'd be much more interested in going back the other way, though the developers working on the continuation of Meego (Nemo et al) have done amazing work, cumulating in Jolla's new phone running Sailfish. I concluded (as, it seems, have many others) the best approach for my aims was to take the working Maemo 5 system and slowly rewrite the closed components one by one whilst simultaneously separately rebuilding the foundations on top of a more standard Debian base, essentially so you can have operational testing of things like communications features much quickly. There's been a lot of good work by the Maemo community to this end.
All in all, very exciting. I'm hoping to order a couple of boards to revitalise a damaged spare N900 I have here, and if it works out well, my main one too :)
Boo.
My slashdot sig was once, "2010: The Year of Linux on the Phone". That year saw many new phones running Android and a few other Linux OSs, remarkable advancement from Android 1.5 to 2.2, and a huge increase in Android users and percentage of smart phones. Android is now past 80% of smartphones and climbing. I used to have an Android decal on my car, but I took it off because it was too mainstream. It was like saying I supported computers. I hope we have more competitors in this space, like Sailfish, but we are way past the year of Linux in your pocket.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
but will it work with my family's ATT wireless plan?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Screw the desktop, 2014 will be the year of Lunix in your pocket!
Well Linux as a hosting OS hidden behind the actual OS visible to the user and most developers, Android. Not Linux as an end user OS that users interact with and developers target.
My how the goal posts have been moved.
Because Ubuntu Edge cost four times as much? $625 was a lot to spend on a product that hadn't even been built, especially from a company that has no previous record when it comes to hardware.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
... we are way past the year of Linux in your pocket.
A Linux that Android users neither see nor use, a Linux that most Android developers neither see nor use. Linux is just hosting the Android environment.
I think it just depends on how much effort you want to put into misusing it. Penguins are birds that swim you know. Its all about adaptability and willpower.
I am all for open hardware but I guess I would just root a cheap popular android phone, then load whatever variety of rom I that fit what I wanted. Also, a problem I see if since it's a keyboard phone, why only 3 rows ? Ive always have phones like that myself, and still do, but I always look for 4 rows, full number & letter keys.
Can't buy this for the same reason why I didn't buy the n900, the terrible resistive touchscreen. It was a terrible choice, as all the android and iOS devices of note were capacitive at the time.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
they might have a shot with 20k, but 200 is ridiculous.... it's closer to the sample size that one would use for for pre-production testing.
Is it going to come with the classic Nokia ringtone?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
Agreeing with much of what you're saying, with one niggle: http://boygeniusreport.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/mobile-os-share-nov13.png
the world moved on. When the N900 came out, it was one of the best phones available, both in package and in software. But it has been over four years now. The world has moved on. It has moved on to slimmer phones, larger screens, not to mention better touch screens (yes, I have used the N900, and the screen is way worse than the touch screen of my Galaxy Nexus). I type faster with Swype than I ever did with the QWERTY-keyboard, the screen is better, it fits better in my pocket, it is lighter, etc.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
Phase 1: ? (done)
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit !
That graph includes tablets; I was referring to just phones, being that the subject was on pockets.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I remember a few years ago I said (on Slashdot) that soon the only open computers would be expensive niche products from tiny companies...it's now true for mobile devices. How long until the rest of computing follows?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A Freedom Computer does not need more than a 68000 CPU, 1 Mbyte of RAM. It will run a USENET reader, a cipher engine, a secure text chat application and it will display images. The Atari ST could do all of this 20 years ago.
Now, we are pursuing the Golden Cages of Air Force Security Service General Clapper* ??? 1.5 GHz processor, 2 Gbyte RAM and a high-speed modem for NSA perusal. Fuck that !
*Read about these guys at the 6994th Security Squadron Website. These folks are addicted to Electronic Snooping. Google, Facebook, Whatsapp are just the latest cages General Clapper and General Alexander have set up for you Sheeple.
There never were open mainstream mobile devices.
They were common until the iPhone came out. PalmOS was a closed-source OS but you were free to run anything you liked on their range of devices. Same with Windows Mobile and Windows CE. The only "walled garden" mobile OS that existed before iOS was Symbian.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Go home, NSA drone.
That market share graph is only true in the USA. World-wide Android owns over 80% of the market share.
Apple, it seems, is mostly an American-only obsession.
If one is serious about a FOSS "Freedom Computer", you should look at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. While the board itself isn't free or open by most means, the project as a whole is a testament to what can be achieved provided willing and capable individual are involved.