"According to current calculations, the cost of the motherboard should be somewhere around 990 EUR. The cost should go down as more people place pre-orders. The complete device will cost about 150 EUR more, depending on prices and availability of N900 spare parts."
Holy cow, freedom (at least partial freedom) comes at a seriously hefty price. That's five times the cost of a half-decent Samsung Galaxy (S4 or S4 Mini, not network-locked), where I'm from.
That's what it costs when you are unable to mass produce. The cost estimate is based on the production of 500 devices only which in turn was based on the number of donations over 100 EUR. The Neo900 is as close to freedom and privacy as you're going to get at this moment in time. If you're comparing this to a Samsung Galaxy then it looks like you don't understand the reasons for why the Neo900 is being built.
And for 1GHz, 1Gb RAM, 0.5Gb storage. That's not even close to the spec of the above Samsung.
You are incorrect on the 0.5GB storage. The Neo900 will be at least as feature complete as the N900. This means that it will have at least 32GB eMMC storage plus mircoSD expansion. Otherwise it will have 64GB if they are able to source the part. The 512MB refers to the SoC's NAND (double that of the original N900).
Pay five times the cost, get less back, and the possibility of component shortage making repair/replacement impossible.
The cost estimation page (which you appear to have read) indicates that they have considered failure rate and will be sourcing additional components to account for repair/replacement. This contributes to the overall cost of the device.
How do this stack up against the $9 CHIP project, etc. with its processor? I can build a GSM "phone" with Wifi, SD, touchscreen etc. from Arduino shields for way, way, way less than this costs on top of that.
I'd love to see you do that. I'll be the first in line to purchase one.
I mean, for God's sake, they've bothered to put IrDA and FM radio on it!
These are available on the original N900 and I still find them incredibly useful. To remove these would be a regression.
Niche doesn't even begin to cover it. When you're more expensive than Apple, and can't do anywhere near as much, you know that you're onto a loser.
Can't do nearly as much? Are you serious? I'm still using my N900 from 2009 because they is no other mobile phone available that what the N900 can do. Basically it's a full Linux computer in your pocket with a hardware keyboard and stylus for precision. I even have it dual booting with Debian.
Go and buy an Apple if you feel it's appropriate to compare it to one but please stop spreading misinformation on stuff that you are not interested in.
It's no wonder I rarely visit Slashdot these days posts such as yours get modded +5 Insightful.
I'm not apologising for Nokia, in fact I have no interest in them, Blackberry nor any other corporation for that matter. What failure is there to excuse? The backers of this project want the device to be built for their own personal use. It's a niche product, there's no other agenda. Now that the 200 pre-orders milestone has been met, the devices will be built so this project is already a success.
The primary reason why it's resistive is that they are reusing the screen from the N900.
I wouldn't refer to the N9's screen as a rectification. A resistive screen is a good choice for an Internet Tablet and a capacitive screen is a good choice for a smart phone.
IMHO, a resistive screen plus stylus is the better choice to replace a desktop mouse in a mobile device that aims to be a fully functional computer.
It might be different from the typical Android vendor but the Neo900 is not aiming to be an Android replacement.
Have you ever tried running normal Linux tasks on Android such as compiling a C program, "ssh -X", running strace, etc.? Ever tried running X11 or Wayland instead of SurfaceFlinger? I think you'll find that Android's environment is not very well suited for these kind of tasks. Google's chose to use Bionic libc making Android makes it largely incompatible with the desktop and server Linux we know and love. Firefox OS is based on Android and also uses Bionic libc. Most regular Linux apps require extensive modification if you want to build them to run Android. These same apps can be recompiled for Debian ARM or Maemo 5 with little or no modification at all.
Of course if Android is your thing, the Neo900 is expected to run the Replicant variant which is already running on the GTA04 that it is based on.
The price of motherboard without the case expected to be in the 500-700 EUR range. Yes it's expensive compared to devices of similar specifications but that's due to the low production volumes. That's the price you must pay if you want a fully featured Linux computer in your pocket.
If you think you can compare the Fairphone to the Neo900 then you have failed to understand the concept behind the Neo900. The Fairphone is just another Android phone. The Neo900 is for people who are fed up with the closed, walled garden approaches of Android and iOS and want the power of a general purpose computer in their pocket. The device is expected to ship with Debian GNU/Linux with support for Maemo 5 coming later when it's ready. The hardware keyboard and stylus also help to give it that desktop feel.
That's "mass production" as in producing in bulk, i.e. not producing one-off prototypes which is very expensive. 200 devices is the minimum they need to produce the boards in bulk. This is a niche, community project aimed at FOSS and/or open hardware enthusiasts who want the flexibility of a general purpose PC on their mobile phones. There are many of us so these numbers are to be expected.
The keyboard has three rows because they are reusing the N900 case. It certainly beats any virtual keyboard for typing. Feel free to mod it if you want a four row keyboard - the motherboard design will be completely open.
Have you actually used the N900 touchscreen? There are many bad resistive touchscreens but the N900's is not one of them. The FAQ explains why the resistive touch screen is the superior choice for the target audience of this device. Remember that this device is not trying to compete with Android or iOS but it's aim is to provide functionality that you would find in a general purpose computer, hence multi-touch in not a priority.
I consider myself to be very fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience such a wonderful operating system. I'm probably very young compared to most VMS system managers, my first experience of VMS was about 7 years ago. My first impressions were that it seemed quite antiquated (mostly due to the lack of a modern shell) but as I began to learn more, it became a breath of fresh air compared to anything I had ever used. I began to discover features, flexibility and power that make other modern operating systems seem primitive. I can only hope that it will now be open sourced as it would a great shame to loose such a unique operating system that offers so much that others don't.
So Google suck in various OEMs and open source enthusiasts, release two major upgrades and still not release the source code? I'll stick with MeeGo/Mer/Tizen, etc. thank you very much.
Actually development is very active and a webOS update for the TouchPad was released just today. This is better support than most Android OEMs who seldomly release any OS updates.
Seriously? Nokia's bad application design has nothing to do with touch screen usability. The beauty of the N900 is that it sets no limits to what you can do and you can easily use the command line to do everything. If you don't like Nokia's alarm application, install cron and use that.
The magic happens in the byte code to byte code recompilation. Basically this means Android uses java's byte code as an object format. So unless there is something magical about providing interoperability and compatibility, which are absolutely, legally allowed, I'm not sure what Oracle is complaining about.
From what I understand, Google's patent infringements do not relate to the use of Java as a language or Java byte code to Dalvik conversion, but mostly relate to the general use and implementation of a virtual machine in general..NET and its CLR do not use the Java language or require byte code conversion from Java yet Sun/Oracle still collect licence fees Microsoft due to patent infringements. To quote James Gosling from a recent interview:
Microsoft.NET just smears over a huge pile of Sun patents. When they did the.NET design, they basically cut and pasted from the Java spec. The way that they did CLR, you know they swizzled the way the instruction set went but the way this thing really operated, they exercised essentially no creativity when coming up with.NET. They've done some things since then that have been kind of good but as part of the various court cases we ended up with this rather odd patent deal with them that involved them paying us fairly tasty amounts of money. And I'm sure that the lawyers looked at the Microsoft numbers and said, yeah I want that from Google.
I personally prefer the direction Intel was going with Moblin/Meego to Android. I wonder if this means Intel is going to leave Meego development up to Nokia?
I suspect both MeeGo and Android x86 are just part of Intel's plan to drive the Atom market. At the end of the day, they probably don't really care what OS is running on it.
Life is really too short to be idealistic about freaking phone apps.
I agree, but that's the reason I chose not to buy an iPhone. My N900 which runs Linux allows me to install anything I like, and with Easy Debian installed I have access to thousands of ARM Linux apps. So far, I've been able to take the source and build anything I've needed that's not available in the repositories.
Nintendo should do this too or risk losing their status as the leader of hand-held gaming. People already carry mobile phones on them wherever they go and many do not want or would prefer not to carry a second device for gaming. It would make sense to release two versions of the device, one with phone capabilities and one without as there is still a market for children and others who do not want a new phone. My guess is that Sony's offering will be PSP Go compatible.
Where they went wrong was by reusing the Chrono Trigger brand to create what looks like a new Chrono Trigger titled game. If the mod was made so it did not try to be "Chrono Trigger", there would have been very little Square Enix could have done about it as it would be all original content. There isn't a lot of work to do (compared to what they've done already) to get it to this state.
Exactly, but they don't even need to redo the game-as-a-binary from scratch. They could release the whole thing as a patch for the original Chrono Trigger ROM image which would contain nothing but original content. I'm not a lawyer but they possibly would not even need to redraw the sprites if it is done that way.
It should have been obvious this would happen. A few years back Square shut down a 3D Chrono Trigger remake project.
Assuming they did not rip off too much, they should just rename the game, characters, locations, redraw the character sprites so they bare no resemblance and then release like that. If they are still not happy and are feeling daring, they can later "leak" a patch which changes everything back to as it was originally intended.
5) Apps that rely on the system time may break.
6) Any network apps may time out or break.
I tend to have several remote connections open and if these are going to time out with hibernatation I'll loose most my work anyway so I might as well shut down properly.
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That's what it costs when you are unable to mass produce. The cost estimate is based on the production of 500 devices only which in turn was based on the number of donations over 100 EUR. The Neo900 is as close to freedom and privacy as you're going to get at this moment in time. If you're comparing this to a Samsung Galaxy then it looks like you don't understand the reasons for why the Neo900 is being built.
You are incorrect on the 0.5GB storage. The Neo900 will be at least as feature complete as the N900. This means that it will have at least 32GB eMMC storage plus mircoSD expansion. Otherwise it will have 64GB if they are able to source the part. The 512MB refers to the SoC's NAND (double that of the original N900).
The cost estimation page (which you appear to have read) indicates that they have considered failure rate and will be sourcing additional components to account for repair/replacement. This contributes to the overall cost of the device.
I'd love to see you do that. I'll be the first in line to purchase one.
These are available on the original N900 and I still find them incredibly useful. To remove these would be a regression.
Can't do nearly as much? Are you serious? I'm still using my N900 from 2009 because they is no other mobile phone available that what the N900 can do. Basically it's a full Linux computer in your pocket with a hardware keyboard and stylus for precision. I even have it dual booting with Debian.
Go and buy an Apple if you feel it's appropriate to compare it to one but please stop spreading misinformation on stuff that you are not interested in.
It's no wonder I rarely visit Slashdot these days posts such as yours get modded +5 Insightful.
I'm not apologising for Nokia, in fact I have no interest in them, Blackberry nor any other corporation for that matter. What failure is there to excuse? The backers of this project want the device to be built for their own personal use. It's a niche product, there's no other agenda. Now that the 200 pre-orders milestone has been met, the devices will be built so this project is already a success.
The primary reason why it's resistive is that they are reusing the screen from the N900.
I wouldn't refer to the N9's screen as a rectification. A resistive screen is a good choice for an Internet Tablet and a capacitive screen is a good choice for a smart phone.
IMHO, a resistive screen plus stylus is the better choice to replace a desktop mouse in a mobile device that aims to be a fully functional computer.
It might be different from the typical Android vendor but the Neo900 is not aiming to be an Android replacement.
Have you ever tried running normal Linux tasks on Android such as compiling a C program, "ssh -X", running strace, etc.? Ever tried running X11 or Wayland instead of SurfaceFlinger? I think you'll find that Android's environment is not very well suited for these kind of tasks. Google's chose to use Bionic libc making Android makes it largely incompatible with the desktop and server Linux we know and love. Firefox OS is based on Android and also uses Bionic libc. Most regular Linux apps require extensive modification if you want to build them to run Android. These same apps can be recompiled for Debian ARM or Maemo 5 with little or no modification at all.
Of course if Android is your thing, the Neo900 is expected to run the Replicant variant which is already running on the GTA04 that it is based on.
The price of motherboard without the case expected to be in the 500-700 EUR range. Yes it's expensive compared to devices of similar specifications but that's due to the low production volumes. That's the price you must pay if you want a fully featured Linux computer in your pocket.
If you think you can compare the Fairphone to the Neo900 then you have failed to understand the concept behind the Neo900. The Fairphone is just another Android phone. The Neo900 is for people who are fed up with the closed, walled garden approaches of Android and iOS and want the power of a general purpose computer in their pocket. The device is expected to ship with Debian GNU/Linux with support for Maemo 5 coming later when it's ready. The hardware keyboard and stylus also help to give it that desktop feel.
There are many of us so these numbers are to be expected.
Whoops. That should read "There aren't many of us so these numbers are to be expected."
That's "mass production" as in producing in bulk, i.e. not producing one-off prototypes which is very expensive. 200 devices is the minimum they need to produce the boards in bulk. This is a niche, community project aimed at FOSS and/or open hardware enthusiasts who want the flexibility of a general purpose PC on their mobile phones. There are many of us so these numbers are to be expected.
The keyboard has three rows because they are reusing the N900 case. It certainly beats any virtual keyboard for typing. Feel free to mod it if you want a four row keyboard - the motherboard design will be completely open.
Have you actually used the N900 touchscreen? There are many bad resistive touchscreens but the N900's is not one of them. The FAQ explains why the resistive touch screen is the superior choice for the target audience of this device. Remember that this device is not trying to compete with Android or iOS but it's aim is to provide functionality that you would find in a general purpose computer, hence multi-touch in not a priority.
Too bad Nokia quit making fun phones. The last was the N900. I'd love to have a new phone similar to that with modern specs.
It seems that you haven't heard of the Neo900 project which aims to deliver just that.
I consider myself to be very fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience such a wonderful operating system. I'm probably very young compared to most VMS system managers, my first experience of VMS was about 7 years ago. My first impressions were that it seemed quite antiquated (mostly due to the lack of a modern shell) but as I began to learn more, it became a breath of fresh air compared to anything I had ever used. I began to discover features, flexibility and power that make other modern operating systems seem primitive. I can only hope that it will now be open sourced as it would a great shame to loose such a unique operating system that offers so much that others don't.
The architecture of the V1280 is sun4u, not sun4v. Logical Domains are not supported on sun4u processors.
So Google suck in various OEMs and open source enthusiasts, release two major upgrades and still not release the source code? I'll stick with MeeGo/Mer/Tizen, etc. thank you very much.
Actually development is very active and a webOS update for the TouchPad was released just today. This is better support than most Android OEMs who seldomly release any OS updates.
Seriously? Nokia's bad application design has nothing to do with touch screen usability. The beauty of the N900 is that it sets no limits to what you can do and you can easily use the command line to do everything. If you don't like Nokia's alarm application, install cron and use that.
The magic happens in the byte code to byte code recompilation. Basically this means Android uses java's byte code as an object format. So unless there is something magical about providing interoperability and compatibility, which are absolutely, legally allowed, I'm not sure what Oracle is complaining about.
From what I understand, Google's patent infringements do not relate to the use of Java as a language or Java byte code to Dalvik conversion, but mostly relate to the general use and implementation of a virtual machine in general. .NET and its CLR do not use the Java language or require byte code conversion from Java yet Sun/Oracle still collect licence fees Microsoft due to patent infringements. To quote James Gosling from a recent interview:
Microsoft .NET just smears over a huge pile of Sun patents. When they did the .NET design, they basically cut and pasted from the Java spec. The way that they did CLR, you know they swizzled the way the instruction set went but the way this thing really operated, they exercised essentially no creativity when coming up with .NET. They've done some things since then that have been kind of good but as part of the various court cases we ended up with this rather odd patent deal with them that involved them paying us fairly tasty amounts of money. And I'm sure that the lawyers looked at the Microsoft numbers and said, yeah I want that from Google.
I personally prefer the direction Intel was going with Moblin/Meego to Android. I wonder if this means Intel is going to leave Meego development up to Nokia?
I suspect both MeeGo and Android x86 are just part of Intel's plan to drive the Atom market. At the end of the day, they probably don't really care what OS is running on it.
Life is really too short to be idealistic about freaking phone apps.
I agree, but that's the reason I chose not to buy an iPhone. My N900 which runs Linux allows me to install anything I like, and with Easy Debian installed I have access to thousands of ARM Linux apps. So far, I've been able to take the source and build anything I've needed that's not available in the repositories.
Twenty bucks says you're converting from DOS line endings (\r\n) to Unix line endings (\n).
There, fixed that for you.
Nintendo should do this too or risk losing their status as the leader of hand-held gaming. People already carry mobile phones on them wherever they go and many do not want or would prefer not to carry a second device for gaming. It would make sense to release two versions of the device, one with phone capabilities and one without as there is still a market for children and others who do not want a new phone. My guess is that Sony's offering will be PSP Go compatible.
Where they went wrong was by reusing the Chrono Trigger brand to create what looks like a new Chrono Trigger titled game. If the mod was made so it did not try to be "Chrono Trigger", there would have been very little Square Enix could have done about it as it would be all original content. There isn't a lot of work to do (compared to what they've done already) to get it to this state.
Exactly, but they don't even need to redo the game-as-a-binary from scratch. They could release the whole thing as a patch for the original Chrono Trigger ROM image which would contain nothing but original content. I'm not a lawyer but they possibly would not even need to redraw the sprites if it is done that way.
It should have been obvious this would happen. A few years back Square shut down a 3D Chrono Trigger remake project.
Assuming they did not rip off too much, they should just rename the game, characters, locations, redraw the character sprites so they bare no resemblance and then release like that. If they are still not happy and are feeling daring, they can later "leak" a patch which changes everything back to as it was originally intended.
I agree. To add to that list:
5) Apps that rely on the system time may break.
6) Any network apps may time out or break.
I tend to have several remote connections open and if these are going to time out with hibernatation I'll loose most my work anyway so I might as well shut down properly.