The Death of the Greenphone

phobos13013 writes "Trolltech announced this week that they will discontinue development on their Greenphone platform. The Greenphone was advertised to be the first phone with a user-modifiable environment. Trolltech CTO Benoit Schilling stated that they are not really a hardware company and so will focus their efforts on FIC's Neo 1973, now available. However, Schilling hinted at a future Wi-Fi-enabled endeavor (possibly a VOIP phone)."

This article is not a Troll

TrollTech still throws me off and makes me think its fake, but the Greenphone did sound really neat.

Re:This article is not a Troll

Trolltech is the creator of the QT toolkit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit) [wikipedia.org]
Which is what KDE uses.

Bummer

I was pretty excited about this project after reading about it in Linux Journal a couple of months ago. Too bad that it won't see the light of day.

Maybe OpenMoko can fill the void left behind...

Re:Bummer

It's a bummer in several ways. First, we geeks don't get hard-ons for crappy hardware (as the poster below suggests). Sleek advanced hardware, totally open for us to explore while trying to change the world, however, gets my blood going. When the hackers cracked the iPhone and put some of the best software management tools I've seen in place, without even a damned header file... that was cool.

I own an NEO1973. I'm glad to support the project, and desperately hope that it will succeed. Here's something I read today from the OpenMoko mail list: "The Neo is, was, and will be, a product for geeks and therefore never was intended to be a mass market product. Geeks do not look at fancy glamour but for useful attributes." I have no idea who this guys is talking about. I'm about the biggest geek I've ever met (yeah, I know some of you are bigger :-) but what the hell?

The NEO1973 battery is tiny, screen too small, touch capabilities poor, integration level low, plastic instead of anodized aluminum, and worst of all... there's not the same kind of inspired software leadership. The community wants to build the world's best phone, but a guy like Linus is required to lead the effort. I think the OpenMoko guys have incredible vision, but not the complete vision, and the leader needed make it succeed is currently missing. Get the right guy involved, and they could change the world... crappy hardware and all.

Re:Unfortunately, you're right

OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did.

The Greenphone didn't fail, because it was never meant to be anything but a development platform to fill the void while there was nothing else good out there. Now that there are other open phones, its job is done. Aside from the sensationalized headline, this really isn't news at all.

iPhone the first UNIX phone?

iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone

I think you don't need to say *NIX anymore. OS X Leopard 10.5 is certified UNIX, and as the iPhone is based on OSX, isn't the iPhone the first UNIX phone?

even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.

I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers.

Re:Unfortunately, you're right

OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did. There is no leadership behind the project, no vision, just a bunch of well-intentioned geeks who want to make something cool. With no cohesive plan, though, the Neo1973 will never succeed.

1. If OpenMoko doesn't succeed, it will be largely because of posts like the above. Enough negative sentiment will doom any project, however cool.
2. OpenMoko isn't a product, it's a platform. Sure, the Neo1973 [openmoko.com] isn't the all-time ultimate mobile phone - it's a development platform. That's why in addition to the pre-built phone you get a development board you can house in your own enclosure with your own battery, screen, and other hardware bits. If you don't like Neo1973, build your own phone round the platform.
3. When I first started using Linux in 1993, doomsayers were saying it was obsolete [oreilly.com] and would never fly. Guess what? They were wrong.

I'm not saying OpenMoko is the world's ultimate phone project. Of course it isn't. But it's a good, big start, and it deserves support. If you don't support it, don't complain if, in ten years time, all you can get are closed, proprietary phones [apple.com]you can't even load your own software on.

You know, I'm getting old. I belong to a generation which, when someone gave us cool hardware, we grabbed and built cool software on top of it. Now, if it isn't all pretty and polished right out of the box, it gets condemned as rubbish. Guess what? Linus Torvalds was just a college kid when he wrote the first kernel. His professors didn't even rate him as very good. Certainly no-one thought he had leadership potential. And as for a cohesive plan, his cohesive plan was to build a scheduler which could schedule two tasks.

Stuff happens. It will surprise you. OpenMoko may, indeed, not be a great success. But if it's a bit of a success, other people will be able to come along and build on it - it is open source [opensource.org]. In fact, that's already happening - that's what this story is about. The GreenPhone is not 'dead', it has mutated. Instead of building their own hardware platform, the Trolls [troll.no] are developing the 'green suite' on the OpenMoko platform. [zdnet.co.uk] So you can still have your greenphone - the only thing is, it will be black and silver, or white and orange [openmoko.com].

Shouldn't be a surprise

Really, look at the demographics. Who buys all those pink iPods? Teen girls. The kind of people that spend all day talking and texting on their phone. Who gets a hard on over linux? Introverted geeks. The kind of people that want pizza delivery robots so they can avoid all human contact.

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise

Who buys all those pink iPods?

idk my bff jill?

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise

Lets all just keep our sox on. U do lk 2 b angry alot. Y dont I c f I cn talk you down. k?

Peace out.

Ooh, I didnt like that popping sound. r u ok?

Odd

It would appear that they'e sold out of phones.

And yet they're quitting development?

DOES NOT COMPUTE!

They'll be back, I think, with something else. There's plenty of reasons for a corporate entity to want to provide customized phones to its employees, or to give them out as a promotion, or stuff like that.

It's too cool a gadget idea to throw away.

Geek-friendly

It is a common misconception that these phones can't be economically feasible because only a small number of 'geeks' will use them. Yes, I would like a 'geek-friendly' phone, but more importantly, I want a 'developer-friendly' phone. One with a nice API to access bluetooth and wifi capabilities.
When that happens, the general non-geek population benefits due to the availability of quality software that will run on the phone.

So, step 1: make the phone easy to use
Step 2: make the phone customizable
Step 3: make the phone developer-friendly
Step 4: let me use the same API for different phones; I'm sick of recoding half of my program to make it compatible with a different phone!

Is it just me?

Or does anyone else think this would be a great way to spy on your kid, your spouse, etc.. I wonder how many techie nerds bought this out of jealousy or fear... Why couldn't you program this open-phone to auto pickup from a certain number, disable the speaker, and transmit audio? All without a single ring, vibration, or visual cue.

$700 for a phone? Screw that.

I thought apples iPhone was insane at $500, and this thing is/was $200 more than that? No wonder it was a failure.

The $300 neo 1973 replacement is still a bit steep for me, but at least it's in the ballpark.

Re:$700 for a phone? Screw that.

Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?

It was never meant for consumers, and the fact that it works as a phone is purely secondary to its main function of providing a test bed for developing mobile phone applications for Trolltech's platform. Comparing it to consumer, mass market phones doesn't make any sense.

Re:$700 for a phone? Screw that.

Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data. I don't care HOW customizable it is... a phone that only supports GPRS is a paperweight

I think you still don't understand. Developer platform doesn't mean "phone marketed towards the developer/geek market" it means "device that developers use to test their software on". It's really only that, and the lack of EDGE is not really an issue (unless the network speed is crucial to your testing).

Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux

Trolltech is hugely supportive of Linux (sponsoring developers to work on X, KDE, and freedesktop.org projects like harfbuzz), and the Greenphone wasn't a failure so finding a scapegoat isn't necessary.

Neo 1973

Has anyone gotten to play around with or develop for the Neo 1973?
I like the idea, but I need to play with a phone before I buy it.

I wonder how hard it would be to adapt a NEO 1973 to VOIP. It's got USB, but I don't think it could handle a USB NIC.

Editor

http://www.copyblogger.com/5-common-mistakes-that-make-you-look-dumb/ [copyblogger.com]

Neo1973

Is this thing available? The website says that I (the consumer) should come back in October. I guess I will check again in 5 days
but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.

In the Year 2000

Assuming we all had Neos with mobile broadband access and TrixBoxes(Asterisk) running at home what would the future look like? Open Source VOIP? Would we have something like email addresses instead of phone numbers? FYI, my biggest IT coup was installing asterisk at work and having it email everybody voice messages as email attachments. Best bang for your buck if you're about to ask for a raise.

Who knows?

Just an observation, Perhaps they're scrapping this idea to focus on the next line of UMPC/phone/you-name-it Computers, that are getting smaller and smaller (PicoITX anyone?) as time goes on. At least this would seem, IMHO, a better direction for such future portable devices than focusing on just the phone portion of development.

do it right or don't do it at all

The Neo runs X11 on a 640x480 screen and allows multiple toolkits to run on the same screen. If TrollTech wants to run in that environment, that's good.

On the other hand, if they are going to port Qt/Embedded and try to take over the phone, like they have done on other phones, they should forget it; those attempts at monopolizing the platform are unwelcome.

Overall, I'm kind of doubtful that TrollTech has much to contribute anyway. Devices based on Qt/Embedded have had lackluster commercial success, and the platform has serious usability problems in my opinion. Maybe the company should stick to writing toolkits and leave the end user experience to people who have more experience with that.

Not only did I worry about ICANN and others

ripping off potential site names, I DO grouse (privately, usually) that a topic I submit is instead posted by someone else. I am pretty sure I submitted it to slash, but someone else gets credit. I suppose Slash only wants stories by non-controversial or non-looney types.

My submission/post, at 12:36 on Thursday:

"
TrollTech's GreenPhone discontinued...
[ Edit | Delete | 0 Comments | #185749 ]
Thursday October 25, @12:36PM
User Journal
Nothing emotional or rhetorical in this story submission. But, I did not see this coming. However, according to the article:

"Despite the announcement of the discontinuation of its flagship mobile phone development platform, the company also announced that the mobile phone would be superceded by a number of new devices, including that of portable media devices and additional mobile phones, although the new models are to be distributed by third-parties."

More at:

http://linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=613&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 [linuxformat.co.uk]
"

Re:Trolltech's Canopy

This was never true, and is even less so now: http://kdemyths.urbanlizard.com/myth/60 [urbanlizard.com]

Re: This plus QT are going nowhere

nice try

Oh good, cynicsreport got credit where credit is due: ''Score:3, Insightful''

Re:Trolltech are their own worst enemy

Every software has bugs.

The engineer responsible sometimes has to evaluate the problem to see if it really is a bug. and yes, bugs have to be prioritized.

Not sure who you were talking to sales or marketing people, but if you were actually talked to the software engineers, I would be surprised that you got that response.