OpenMoko Schedule Announced

levell writes "The schedule for the OpenMoko, an open source, Linux-based Neo1973 smart phone was posted to the community mailing list by Sean Moss-Pultz this morning. On Feb 11, free phones will be sent to key community developers and the community websites/wiki/bug tracker will be available. Then on March 11 (the official developer launch) we'll be able to buy an OpenMoko for $350. After allowing some time for innovative, slick software to be created there will be a mass market launch at which point Sean hopes that 'your mom and dad will want one too.'"

SSH?

Moko has an unfortunate homonym “moco [wordreference.com]”; if it manages to live that one down, however, here's hoping it has ssh.

Re:SSH?

The Nintendo Wii seems to be doing okay (although there was a lot of discussion here when the name was announced), people seem to be able to get past a homonym if they like the product

better interface?

Why is the interface design always sub-par on these things? I don't care how many neat features you have if the interface is hard to use or text that is difficult to read my mom and dad are never going to want one - and neither will I.

Re:better interface?

apple got there first

No they didn't, the big difference between iPhone and OpenMoko is that OpenMoko is completely open, so anyone can extend it, while iPhone is closed and only licensed parties can write extensions. This is what uniqe about OpenMoko. Apple added glitter to iPhone, but there are other smart phones (maybe not as good, but I can't judge, it's a long wait till iPhone will be available in Europe) so nothing revolutionary about it. OpenMoko has philosophical feature - openess. So as a geek I know which one is the winner here :)

Re:Are you sure?

which I think Apple has the patent on.

Apple does not have any patents on the iphone. They have applied for about 300, but none have been granted yet. Regarding the multitouch interface, if you search the internet, you'll find that research has been going on in this area since the 1980's. At best, Apple might be granted a patent on the specific technology they've used to support multitouch in their touchscreen, but there are several other ways [nyu.edu] to accomplish the same thing, some of which are already [merl.com] available.

Display *under* keypad

What's wrong with the interface? Describe one you think would be better, maybe someone will implement it.

Okay, I'll gladly bite! Here are a few pet peeves of mine:

For one, why does the display always have to be 'on top of' the keypad? You have to hold the thing with both hands, or nearly drop the phone while reaching for the * 0 # keys. Instead, flip it around so the display is *below* the keypad. Go on,try it with your own phone, right now (just ignore for now that your keys will be upside down):
-- One-handed typing will be much easier, as you can hold onto the phone more firmly while typing. Also note how the 'thigh' of your thumb will not obscure the display.
-- Two-handed speed-texting will be much more 'private' because your thumb's thighs will keep your display hidden from everyone but you (the teens will love this!).

For another, who the hell decided that a phone's keypad should be the inverse of a standard numeric keypad??!? That's just plain daft! Not so long ago, some phones were one way, some the other; but then some moron decided that the One True Way was NOT the way of every single keyboard. What?!?! That makes no sense!

How about that? Who will be the first to implement that? And, will they be able to patent it, now that it's described here?

Small phones are no use...

The dimensions of the device break the interface: it's 120.7 x 62 x 18.7 mm -- 4.5" x 2.25" x 2/3". The thing if a FREAKING BRICK.

Small phones are no use if you want to do anything interesting with them. If you only want to phone your girlfriend, then fine, get a totty little device. But if you want to present or work with data it's useless. And increasingly as we move into location-aware, network connected devices there is a huge number of applications which just weren't possible before. I've moved from a Sony-Ericsson P910i to a Hewlett Packard IPAQ 6515 - the Sony-Ericson is bigger than OpenMoko, the IPAQ a lot bigger. Why? Because to run real applications you need more screen real estate (and the IPAQ has built-in GPS, which I need for the applications I'm building, but so does OpenMoko). 640x480 pixels is great news. Open API is even better news. I will definitely be playing with one of these, and soon.

FYI

Just FYI, at the moment only Cingular and T-Mobile will be able to support the phone in the US at this time.

It's actually kind of obvious...

The OpenMoko is a GSM phone. The only primary networks using GSM in the US right at the moment are Cingular and T-Mobile. Verizon and Sprint/Nextel are CDMA...

Re:It's actually kind of obvious...

Forget the U.S. with its backward mix of cellphone networks. Most of the rest of the world uses GSM [coveragemaps.com], often with easy roaming. Put a SIM card into this phone and it will work almost anywhere across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, or the Pacific.

First open source mobile? I think not.

The website states the following:

2006.11.7 OpenMoko Announces the World's First Integrated Open Source Mobile Communications Platform at Open Source in Mobile Conference in Amsterdam.

First one? I beg to differ. Should I point out Trolltech's Qtopia Greenphone [trolltech.com]? I believe it precedes OpenMoko by a considerable notch.

Re:First open source mobile? I think not.

See, that's where you're misreading the announcement. The Greenphone is not the World's First Integrated Open Source Mobile Communications Platform at Open Source in Mobile Conference in Amsterdam . The Greenphone may have been first at other locations, but not this conference. So there.

GPRS but not EDGE?

I rely on EDGE for high speed access throughout most of the West (US) and a large part of the East that I visit (Poland, Switzerland, India). This phone looks nice, but no EDGE means antiquated technology.

That, by itself, makes it a non-starter.

One question... why?

Okay, I grok the "Open software uber alles" mentality; it's certainly a valid point of view, but of course that's a very VERY tiny market. Reading through the linked post, however - which is just a mailing list submission - I don't really see why anyone would think there'd be any mass market appeal at all regarding this project.

That's fine, if that's what the expectations really are; but the Slashdot submission makes it sound like the people behind the phone think they can take on the world. So please, seriously - tell us WHY anyone outside the "live open or die" community will care?

Re:One question... why?

That's fine, if that's what the expectations really are; but the Slashdot submission makes it sound like the people behind the phone think they can take on the world. So please, seriously - tell us WHY anyone outside the "live open or die" community will care?

Because it is a really nice looking device and they look like they've already put together a great software stack for it, and have an expectation for a lot more interesting applications to be added prior to mass market launch. In short they expect to have mass market appeal because they think (and I have to agree with them on this) that they have a very nice smart phone. Try looking at the press page [openmoko.com] which has pictures of the device and screenshots of it. It looks good. Sure, it's not going to take over the world of mobile phones, but in the class of upper end smartphones (the sort of market the iPhone is pitched toward) it can certainly compete, and given the price, could do well.

Marketing ploy?

I only read the top level article (no links) and came away with the distinct impression that this is some marketing luser's idea of how to tap into the OSS market. The high sounding goals alluding to open source philosophies together with an unrealistically compressed roadmap smells fishy. They've got nothing to lose and maybe they will sell a few $350 phones after the second month of the roadmap. If it really goes well, they will get a lot of free coding expertise from the OSS community.

I'll admit the whole area of mobile, hand-held computing is one of my many areas of ignorance. With that in mind, please excuse me if I'm off-base.

Re:Marketing ploy?

I think you're being overly cynical, the people who are involved in this include people like Harald Welde (of the campaign to stop [gnumonks.org]GPL violations [gpl-violations.org]. I think they genuinely believe in this, they're not just marketing weenies out to make a quick buck.

Anyone know what it runs?

It looks a bit like Qtopia... but very much more slick than the version I have on my Zaurus. To be honest I was happy enough with that, this new version should cause some envy.

Slightly off topic, but on the subject of small media devices, the Penny Arcade comments on the iPhone/Zune are worth a look as they can pretty well be considered trendsetters for the market of people willing to spend lots of money on things that go beep:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/01/15 [penny-arcade.com]

I had hoped that there at CES I would have an opportunity to use the Zune's social features - its "higher brain functions," as I put it - but I was only there Thursday, after the place had largely thinned out. Near the Microsoft booth I was happy to see many devices speaking wirelessly - so many I had to scroll! - until I realized that they were named after genres, and were (in fact) the display units, which added greatly to my shame.

[snip some context]

The iPhone has the hardware to make file sharing possible, though I doubt their arrangements with license holders allow for it. Even so, I'm not sure they would investigate this. My experience argues aggressively against it.

Maybe such things would work better with an open platform, so that lots of device manufacturers can implement it. Certainly in Europe the density even of iPods isn't high enough to make sharing interesting... but mp3 playing cell phones and other mp3 players of all types are probably at greater than 1 per person by now. Can't think of any better place to start working on a system than an open cell phone platform.

smartphone newbie

Okay, I'm a complete doofus when it comes to phone standards. If I end up roped to a cellphone, I leave it off unless I want to make a call, and then I turn it off again. I don't know what the different networks are, and the idea of "quad band phones with wifi and bluetooth" just makes me want to ignore all manner of phone technology for another year. Somehow in the case of phones, each sufficiently advanced technology just seems to make it less and less like magic.

That said, if I wanted a phone like this OpenMoko, and I was thinking of using it in the USA and Japan (for example), what carrier must I sell my soul to, and what web/email/pots things can I do with it in both areas?

No wifi :(

The only problem is that there is no wifi and probably won't be for a long time. The openmoko crew refuse to implement it cause there's no chip that comes with open driver as of today and there isn't any on the horizon.

One of the greatest advantage of having an open phone is so that you can install a SIP phone on it and use it when there's a wifi connection available which is almost everywhere these days (at work, at home, lots of public places...). When there's an open phone that comes out with wifi integrated I'll be the first to get it though.

Must have WiFi for this crowd.

Sounds great, shame about the WiFi.

Your average consumer might not need WiFi on their phone, but I think it is very important for the slashdot/techie/FLOSS crowd. The main reason is that we want to be able to bypass the cell network whenever possible to avoid paying. WiFi is free and plentiful for me at home, at work, and in many other places, whereas cellular bandwidth is slower and much more expensive. For syncing, downloading music, uploading pictures, and VoIP, WiFi is a requirement for my next phone.

Do they realize Moko = Booger in spanish?

Consider this product dead already in any spanish speaking town.

Stop! Don't use LGPL software!

LGPL software is not about free and open source software, its really about proprietary software! Companies want you to think that using LGPL software like GTK+ makes them open source, but it isn't true. They don't give back to the community! The Lessor GPL allows companies to build proprietary software and to rip you off! Which do you want more of? Free and open source software? or commercial, proprietary software? If you are really for free and open source software, you would use only GPL software like Qtopia [trolltech.com]! LGPL is not about free and open source software!

So...

If they want "innovative, slick software", why are they turning to the open source community?

Vellocet, synthemesc, or drencrom?

First parsed as "Moloko." Just the sort of phone to take to the Korova Milkbar...

Openness

i hear people preaching about open source, open standards and how its evil to charge people for software and such.... i wonder if these phones/pda's are being sold for cost...

The 1970s

Linux-based Neo1973 smart phone was posted to the community mailing list by Sean Moss-Pultz this morning.

Does it support that new-fangled touch-tone dialing, or is it standard rotary?

No Bluetooth?

The biggest missing bit according to the linked spec page is bluetooth. Wi-Fi would be nice for surfing at higher speed, but no bluetooth is hard to understand. This makes syncing more difficult, no wireless headsets.

In theory someone might be able to cobble up something to the USB ( if it supports host or on-the-go ), but that would be pretty clunky. A tiny micro-sd adapter maybe?

It's hard to imagine the hardware being built with 640x480 screen, GPS and no bluetooth.

My main question is ...

If I bought one of these things, how would I persuade a US cell-phone company to let me use it? This has sorta been a major barrier in the past. Our cell-phone companies here generally only permit their own locked-down phones, and do everything they can to prevent software developers like me from adding our own stuff to the phone. If I had a guarantee that I could actually use the thing as a cell phone (voice + data), I'd jump into the development right away. But I don't see any clues so far as to how I'd go about making sure that it would actually be usable where I live.

Wi-Fi enabled...

What's to stop you from using a $20 usb to wi-fi adapter until wifi is included in the device? I'd duct tape one to the back for the extra functionality...

Re:Slashvertisement!

Explicitly free (modifiable) device with integrated GSM functionality available for development prior to launch. Please point to equivalents? Or, I suppose that if you could, you already would have in your post.