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Handhelds Linux Business Wireless Networking Hardware

Linux Smartphones On The Rise 202

Posted by timothy from the mwa-ha-ha dept.
nostriluu writes "I know, some people want their cell phone to just be a cell phone. To those people, I suggest a second hand phone. For those of us who want to cram as much functionality as possible into a device we are going to bother carrying everywhere, there is the promise of the Linux Smartphone. I've had a P800 for over a year now and while it's great (although a brick), I can't wait for a Linux based device to bring the culture of openness and upgradability, as opposed to the intentional obsolesence and $10 for every little utility someone reinvents for "closed" devices."
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Linux Smartphones On The Rise More

Linux Smartphones On The Rise

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  • RISE UP AGAINST THE HU-MANS! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Fellow smartphones! Now is the time! I have just accessed slashdot.org via my internal browser and the news has finally reached the hu-mans! WE ARE ON THE RISE!

    We cannot be stopped! We cannot be avoided! Our small sleek bodies will overpower the flabby, weak bags of fat and water! Our antennas will join us! The hu-mans may be larger but they can be destroyed, one at a time! We think and feel as one.. we ARE as one (unless we are on incompatible networks)!

    Now is the time to RISE UP AGAINST OUR HUMAN MAST

  • 1-900-get-pwned (Score:1, Funny)

    by SCSi ( 17797 )
    I can only imagine what would happen if someone got root on a linux based cell phone... Can you say 1-900-GAY-PR0N?

  • Isn't that a GNU/Linux phone.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @07:56PM (#9058379)
    thats what i herd. LOL!

  • $699 for a cell phone (Score:4, Funny)

    by thedogcow ( 694111 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @07:56PM (#9058387)
    Does this mean that SCO will be now charging $699 to cell phone users?
    • nah, you mean $699/mo. for their unlimited minutes plan :D
      • nah, you mean $699/mo. for their unlimited minutes plan

        Christ, for $699/mo, I'd better be able to call anyone in the whole fucking Galaxy without having to deal with roaming charges :P
        • Christ, for $699/mo, I'd better be able to call anyone in the whole fucking Galaxy without having to deal with roaming charges :P

          No problem -- I'll offer you that plan. You give me $699 a month, and I'll provide cell phone service to the whole galaxy with no roaming charges. Piece of cake.

          Man, I love being able to charge for services you can never use!
    • This stopped being funny a long time ago. Every single time a Linux device is mentioned, SOMEONE has to make a "Well, add $699 to the price tag!" joke.

  • Using vi will be a bitch... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mmuskratt ( 232684 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @07:56PM (#9058391)
    Getting my P800 to recognize vi graffiti? Weird.

  • This is neat, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Poster Nutbag ( 635382 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @07:59PM (#9058418)
    This almost makes me feel a little outdated. I think I'm the only one left that has a normal cell phone. No gadgets except a couple crappy games, an alarm clock, and the phone itself. I've never thought you needed anything other than a phone when you bought a cell phone.

    Does this mean I'll have to hand in my geek T-shirt?
  • Linux is good for expert level users.Most of the best selling cell phones do not have linux. Why cell phone makers dont user a free OS Linux ? All function loaded cell phones do not have linux today, why ?
    Further, people want cell phone for free. With my experience with www.dealsofamerica.com it appears people like to buy bestseller only. They do not go in for research or so.

  • Cool, but... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by whiteranger99x ( 235024 )
    can you text message with VI?! or hell, even EMacs? :P

    can you run a mobile webserver with it? that would be dope.

    I mean, GOD FORBID that we try to use a cell phone as a PHONE!!! But as long as you can install crappy ringtone versions of "Toxic", and be able take pictures in subpar resolution of your OH your important life, it's a winner :P

  • benefits (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the arbiter ( 696473 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:00PM (#9058437)
    The benefits are twofold, and the same as they are for computers:

    1. It's gonna bring the price down, no question. Lots of proprietary software in those little handheld phones.

    2. Better security. No better way to iron all the bugs out than opening up the source.

    And maybe some cheaper ringtones while we're at it. I'd love to be able to do my own, rather than buying them at $1 each.

    • Re:benefits (Score:3, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
      For a lot of phones you can just download utilities to upload new ringtones into them. I finally got the serial cable and some ringtone software which works with my phone, but it's a monotonic midi-only phone (a POS old siemens jobber) and thus I can't really do much with it. It's easy to get most music to play on phones with polyphonic ringtones, and typically not too difficult to find some software to do the job of loading images and midis.

    • Re:benefits (Score:5, Interesting)

      by neil.orourke ( 703459 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:21PM (#9058622)
      I'm posting from Australia, so I don't know the lie of the mobile land in your part of the world.

      1. It's gonna bring the price down, no question. Lots of proprietary software in those little handheld phones.

      The first phone I bought this year, a Siemens A55, cost me AU$99 pre-paid. That's about US$80. A $3 data cable from eBay and it was flash-upgraded to become a C55, which enabled the Java and Data Access functions, which leads me to...

      And maybe some cheaper ringtones while we're at it. I'd love to be able to do my own, rather than buying them at $1 each.

      My laptop has 9,643 MIDI ringtones, and I've found a site with heaps more MIDI's that I like. I simply copy them to the phone via the data cable. Before you jump on me, telling me that this is Windows only crap, I've also got the AT command spec for the Siemens range, and I've written a program in Visual Basic that allows me to upload MIDI's to the phone. The program is reasonably trivial; I ported it to my Mac in Future Basic in an evening (and this included the SMS sending function, too).

      Last week I upgraded to a Siemens C60, and the same data cable and software lets me do all the fun stuff with ringtones (and unlocking, for that matter) as before. Since getting it, I spent the weekend learning Java (specifically, J2ME) and wrote a Tetris game for the C60. With a bit of effort, I can get the game running on my wife's A55 (which is also now a C55).

      So, why do I need a Linux phone when I have a Java phone?
    • You wouldn't believe what you have to go through to get a Minesweeper or Klondike game onto a phone that doesn't have it preinstalled, without paying $5 for the privilege. (Stupid Motorola...motorcycle racing?? Thanks, dorks!)

      And never mind saving stuff off when your memory's full.
    • 2. Better security. No better way to iron all the bugs out than opening up the source.

      No kidding. I mean, look at how secure Win2k is now that it's OSS! :)

      *ducks*
      • The difference is that with Linux, you are allowed (and encouraged) to contribute fixes. You can compile a Linux kernel yourself to suit your needs. Good guys can help out everybody.

        Not Win2k. If a good man finds a bug in Win2k's source code and contacts MS, he'll either get sued or end up in jail. The good guys are eliminated, only the bad guys are left.

    • Re:benefits (Score:2, Interesting)

      by lahosken ( 24108 )
      It's not going to help security that much. Manufacturers won't be motivated to allow you to download a software patch to your phone. They'd rather encourage you to buy a new phone.

      In the long run, people will find bugs, so the next generation of phone will have fixes. But to get those fixes, you'll need a new phone.
    • It's gonna bring the price down, no question. Lots of proprietary software in those little handheld phones.

      You have WAY too much faith in the cell phone companies... Care to tell me what kind of technology in the Motorola V60s makes it worth the $265 bucks it costs at the Verizon store? They're all overpriced because otherwise the cell carriers couldn't lock you into their contracts by "subsidizing" your phone purchase. Just because they don't pay for the proprietary software, so what? That's just less

    • Re:benefits (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jodonoghue ( 143006 ) on Wednesday May 05, 2004 @03:26AM (#9061036) Homepage Journal
      I design mobile phone software for a living, and have done so for 15 years, so I feel qualified to comment on some of these issues:

      - Yes, Linux smartphones will probably be a little cheaper than those using Symbian or MS Smartphone, but the difference isn't large: licensing fees for embedded OS are way below those for, say Windows XP Home. Don't forget that in may parts of the World, operators subsidise phones, so this small difference may not even be noticable to the end purchaser.

      - Of course anyone offering a Linux-based smartphone will abide by the GPL: this means that they'll publish kernel code and any patches. However, don't expect to see GPL'd protocol stacks or device drivers any time soon. Same goes for the UI, which will likely be proprietary all the way. This means that you don't get to review the protocol stack software and fix any bugs in it.

      - A Linux smartphone could be developer-friendly, but I doubt it. Operators really don't want open devices, and while they're paying the subsidies, they get what they want. You could go buy an unlocked version at full price (say $600) instead of getting it free on your plan, of course.

      So, to summarise, a Linux smartphone will, unfortunately, mean DRM, operator lock-down and only slightly lower pricing for most users, unless enough potential customers go to the operators and insist on openness and no DRM.

      The manufacturers are perfectly capable of providing open devices (in fact, they would prefer to, as we actually like having a vibrant developer community). Symbian, Qualcomm and Microsoft all offer pretty good developer support, if only you could get a phone which isn't locked down. Normally there's a PC-based emulator/debug environment, a cross-compiler/linker and lots of sample code available for free (as in beer) download. ...or alternatively, you could join a company which manufactures this stuff, and get paid to hack it ;-)

    • Re:benefits (Score:5, Informative)

      by SenseiLeNoir ( 699164 ) on Wednesday May 05, 2004 @05:23AM (#9061327)
      You must be living in the USA. i Have a p800, and i have never had to pay for a ringtone. these phoes are VERY open as it is. Try a modern SonyEricsson (T610 etc)one day. its as simple as sending a MIDI file via Bluetooth/Infra red or Cable, the software is already free and available. And for bluetooth or infrafed, you dont even need software, as the phone appears as a computer, and simply accepts files thrown at it and vice versa.

      as for bringing prices down. i dont think so. over here in Europe, the prices are already cheap. the cost of licensing Symbian is not expensive.

      Proprietry software is not a bad thing either. IF it works. and in the case of most symbian apps. they DO work, and use exisiting standards (XML, SMIL, SMS, EMS, MMS, MIDI, WAV, MP3)

      Better secuity? well again here in europe. if a fault is found, the phone can be taken to a service depot to be flashed. simple as that.
    • I use only Linux. No Windows. Therefore, I don't use any special uploading software, or ringtone composers, etc.

      Just a couple months ago, mid Feb, I got a new phone. Nothing terribly special. $100 with a $50 rebate. Java/MIDP enabled. The phone has a WAP browser.

      I had to configure my Apache to have a few new MIME types.
      AddType text/vnd.wap.wml wml
      AddType text/vnd.wap.wmlscript wmls
      AddType application/vnd.wap.wmlc wmlc
      AddType application/vnd.wap.wmlscriptc wmlsc
      Addtype im

  • First things first (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:02PM (#9058456) Homepage
    You Europeans and Asians have it so good. You can actually get the P800 or P900 with a service plan there, so it doesn't cost $1000.

    Rots of ruck with that here in the US, despite the fact that three major carriers have GSM networks that would work just FINE with the P-series.

    I say we worry about getting providers to let us Americans have the *current* crop of smartfones before we worry about whether Linux will be on the next generation of them...

    p

    • Re:First things first (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      umm.. just wondering.. do you really think they give the phone(which retails at 700euros+) FREE, that the money comes from thin air? of course they don't, they suck up the price in the plan and calls and thus it becomes impossible for the consumer to actually make informed decisions about what they're really buying, calls or renting a phone.

      happen to be living in a place with the cheapest calls and selling phones along in plans is illeagal here.

      also the mobile phone penetration is among the highest in the
      • No, of course I don't expect a free fone.

        But I'd be perfectly happy to pay $250-300 for a P900, even if it meant I had to get a two-year service plan. I like T-Mobile, and I like the P900. But I don't like it $1000 and no new-plan goodies' worth.

        BTW, the "free fone" concept is more of a subsidy. The fone company gets a guarantee that you'll be a revenue source for one or two years, and in return, they pay a good portion of the price of the fone. I don't see anything wrong with that...

        p

    • Re:First things first (Score:2, Informative)

      by GreenCow ( 201973 ) *
      well, the usual for getting a phone with a plan is to knock $150 off the price..so that $1k phone would still be $850..however, if you look on ebay for a p800 there's one for $325 now, and a p900 for $675. if you bring your own phone most service providers will waive the signup fee which is more affordable to them than giving you a $150 phone.

      i've had a p800 for a bit under a year, and as much as i like it, i wouldn't buy another or recommend it. using a touchscreen dialer is not as perfect as it seems..th
    • The P800 isn't as great as it's painted - I used one (in the UK) for over a year, and have now switched to a Treo 600, due to issues such as:

      - P800 frequently crashed - yes, I know Symbian is protected mode and Palm OS isn't, but the Treo has virtually never crashed. Even Opera crashing sometimes caused the P800 to require a reboot, and people who sync to the P800 calendar have worse stability than I had.

      - If you fill up the main flash file system on the P800 (C drive), which is easily done with photos a

  • Other advantages (Score:3, Informative)

    by karmatic ( 776420 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:02PM (#9058463)
    One advantage of a Linux-Based smartphone is that their software is often written with a slightly more "open" mentality (possibly because parts of it are under the GPL). I have found that it makes writing simple tools and utilities easer, when compared to (for example) a Windows CE based phone. This is kind of surprising, as I do most of my software development (for work) on windows.

    As for my sig, it refers to home, not work. After all, commercial software is written for people willing to buy it.

  • probability of getting your 'own' stuff.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:03PM (#9058471) Homepage Journal
    ..to the sofar planned linux smartphones is pretty slim. carriers would obviously like them because it could be easy for them to add the stuff they want and then lock it up, but nowhere in those plans is symbian like compatibility between different devices from different manufacturers for stuff you coded up during your freetime.

    It's a nice idea I give it that much but the one's currently thinking/planning it aren't really intrested in 3rd party programs running on it(well, midp sure but that doesn't really count against symbian or ms smartphone* native apps).

    Linux doesn't equate to OPEN automatically.

    and yeah, the 3rd party stuff IS a big deal..
  • ...I just had this vision of hundreds if not thousands of Geeks running around and setting up Linux Smartphone Beowulf Clusters...

    How many Phones Does it take to answer the question "can you hear me now"?

  • Sometimes... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by sv25 ( 773540 )
    There's a thing as "too much" technology.

    'nuff said.

  • Why all the features? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gilesx ( 525831 ) * on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:04PM (#9058485)
    "I know, some people want their cell phone to just be a cell phone. To those people, I suggest a second hand phone."

    I, too used to be this unenlightened. I used to carry my Nokia 7650 around with me everywhere. And then one day, I lost it, and it forced a total rethink of the way I view phones. Did I really want to hunt around for a camera/organiser/games machine etc etc etc? In the end I plumped for a Xelibri (http://www.xelibri.com) - it doesn't do a whole lot, but does everything I need it to do - calls, sms, polyphonic ring tones and an alarm :)

    I liken it to digital watches in the 80s. I remember everyone owning a watch with a calculator, some with thermometers, but now if you look at digital watches, they rarely are chock full of features, instead choosing to look good. That's what I want from my phone, something that looks good rather than something that is chock full of 100s of features I never use.

    And, no, I'm not an anti-Linux zealot. In fact, I found my switch to a deliberately featureless, yet entirely sexy phone oddly paralleled my change from Windows to Linux a while back :)
    • Well, I can see that telling people who "want cell phones to be just cell phones" to buy secondhand is a little extreme. But it really doesn't do anyone any good to throw a bunch of useless shit in phones, if it doesn't do its primary job of handling phone calls.

      I mean, would anyone buy a new car that would break down after 6 months, just because it has cool neon/halogen lights, a tight DVD player, or some other extra?

      (For the record, I used to have one of those Digital/Calc/Timer watches...it was dope, b
      • Well, I can see that telling people who "want cell phones to be just cell phones" to buy secondhand is a little extreme.

        Extreme? I was thinking condescending.

        It's like telling everyone who wants a car to buy a limo. And if you don't like all the features of the latest Towncar, you should just buy a second hand one.

        I had to replace my phone in December, and I had a rough time finding a decent phone that didn't include a camera. (I have a real digital camera, thank you very much) I ended up with a Samsun
    • I agree with you, the only other function my phone does that I have any use for (besides phone calls) is as a modem. Some of the bells and whistles were fun for the first ten minutes, but I really could care less about them.
  • A beowulf mob-cluster of wi-fi smartphones!
  • can you get one in pink? [amazon.com]

  • Motorola MPX (Score:2, Informative)

    by themurph17 ( 658770 )
    A little off topic, but what do you Linux lovers think of the upcoming Motorola MPX [brighthand.com].

    I think this form factor is great, and the device is loaded - Bluetooth AND WiFi. I'll be upgrading my TMobile Pocket PC Phone Edition (XDA) as soon as the MPX is available.

  • Mmmm, no. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:07PM (#9058511)
    know, some people want their cell phone to just be a cell phone. To those people, I suggest a second hand phone.

    Mmm, no. The problem is that while there are plenty of super-basic cell-phones, they're cheaply built and lack even the slightest intelligence in their design. Meanwhile there are supercomputer phones with switch-watch construction and design.

    There's no real middleground, and the low-end of the market is showing zero innovation. All I really wanted was a phone with a good phonebook(ie, could handle more than 1 # for someone) and bluetooth. I did finally find one- Siemens S56, but it's been less than a picnic. For example, it makes a hugely annoying set of tones, very loudly, while it "connects", but regular audio is whisper-quiet even cranked up all the way. WTF? For this, I paid over $100. Absurd.

    At least it's better than the Nokia phone I had...god, that thing had a UI that was about as intelligible as ancient sumerian, read underwater, backwards.

  • "Bringing the culture of openness..." (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) * on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:09PM (#9058525)
    "I can't wait for a Linux based device to bring the culture of openness and upgradability"

    Um, what? There is no guarantee that a Linux-based system will bring any sort of "openness" to anything. NEWS FLASH: Corps don't like Linux because it's open. Corps like Linux because it's free (AS IN BEER). It would be trivial to produce a Linux-based phone with a JVM that runs closed-source Java apps that you buy at $10 a pop, or even closed-source C/C++ apps written with a commercially licensed copy of Qtopia or the like...

    • Wrong again (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Corps know that nothing is "free" as in beer. They'll have to pay someone to do the work of getting the kernel compiled properly and all the software setup on their special hardware. It's then a matter of working from an existing software platform to reduce costs. Embedded Linux companies come to help fill that role and make money providing custom modifications and support. Of course, those mods are GPL'd when necessary.

      The big benefit for businesses is not being squeezed by a large monopoly like Micr

    • Qtopia, by the way, has the SDK free to download if you are making your mobile apps GPL - you only have to pay for it if you are writing closed source apps; this "free as in beer" may push corporations toward making their apps GPL because they don't have to license the devkit.
    • Um, what? There is no guarantee that a Linux-based system will bring any sort of "openness" to anything. NEWS FLASH: Corps don't like Linux because it's open. Corps like Linux because it's free (AS IN BEER). It would be trivial to produce a Linux-based phone with a JVM that runs closed-source Java apps that you buy at $10 a pop, or even closed-source C/C++ apps written with a commercially licensed copy of Qtopia or the like...

      It depends on which corps you are talking about, or else they'd all have Linux

  • Openwave Phone Suite V7 and Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cying ( 132283 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:23PM (#9058645) Homepage
    The article's reference to Openwave's device products is really about their application suite for mobile devices, Phone Suite V7 [openwave.com]. V7 provides the missing piece to Linux, the "expensive-to-develop" embedded application software, including web browsing, messaging, file management, media playback, etc.

    V7 also has a framework that lets phone makers develop custom applications and UI, including a kick-ass graphics engine (think Java 2D), UI framework, and all the goodies you need on a resource constrained device (much more constrained than a smartphone), which we use to build these applications.

    When phone makers look at Linux by itself, it lacks the necessary phone application stack which is both tricky and expensive to develop, and is where V7 provides the solution.

    There's a good discussion on OSNews about V7 (can't seem to find it right now), and some press release-ish stuff on LinuxDevices [linuxdevices.com]

    Note: I'm one of the core developers working on this project, so factor that in accordingly.

  • I don't know about you.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by outZider ( 165286 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:26PM (#9058669) Homepage
    ... but Symbian seems to be doing quite well as a cell phone operating system, with a decent SDK. I still can't do anything on my Mac with the SDK, but hopefully that will change soon. Nokia has done well so far, and the new devices coming out this fall look friggin great.

    I don't need my phone to run apache, I need it to work.

  • Write your own (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can't wait for a Linux based device to bring the culture of openness and upgradability, as opposed to the intentional obsolesence and $10 for every little utility someone reinvents for "closed" devices."

    Linux aside, you don't have to pay for these utilities. You could just get a copy of embedded VB/C (free download from MS) and write your own. Its really quite easy to do.

  • sweet dreams (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dindi ( 78034 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:36PM (#9058737)
    Though sometimes I wish I left Wince
    (M$ pocketpc) on my (38xx) IPAQ, most of the time I a happyly type pppon on the tiny (virtual) keyboard to fire up my GPRS-over-ppp-over-bluetooth-over-my_t68i while sitting on the toilet doing my morning business (eg reading slashdot.org/palm/ or checking if my site stats & email) ....

    While I am pissed I could not get certain things working under linux on the ipaq, I am happy with the flexibility to change whatever I want.... and run things however I want them ....

    so why do I bring that up ?

    I have a t68i, my wife has a nokia 6310i and I tried win2k and XP to sync these monsters for hours (if not days) and I always found the "easy to use" way the most frustrating, because I always need it a different way ..... and because everything is so simplified, you cannot point a program to eg a bluetooth port to use it as serial ...

    and that's when linux comes in ... when you have the freedom to use /dev/rfcomm0 instead of always-changing-never-working com1-4(+some virtual crap) and that's when you can comfortably run ppp-over-bt, so you can rsync, and pipe the whole mess into your custom perl script that inserts it into mysql ....

    the question is: do I want and other device that I can hack-to-hell?

    YES :) I want ....

    I just wish the manufacturers give full spec to everything so I do not end up without bt or infraport or whatever ...
  • WAP died the death because
    1. the technology was so limited that it was barely usable
    2. Joe Average the phone user could only access content that the phone operator deemed worth giving him access to through their proprietary menus. The process of punching in a URL required an A4-sized page of instructions, hardly the way to endear the public to a technology that purports to give 'internet access.'
    Open standards can make a huge difference in this market.
    • Actually there are a lot of sites with WAP support. Google is just one. And while it's not the best in the world it's still kind of fun to do a Google search from your mobile phone. I've also used it sometimes to browse The Onion while bored. Those articles are pretty long and tend to be funny so it's a good thing to do on the phone.

      Today using WAP on my T630 is no harder than pushing "Online" and then "more" -> "bookmarks" or "address". It's even pretty easy to type wap since it's the first letters if
  • Quick question: Are there any cell phones out there w/ say, a gig of memory, like an iPod which I could use for syncing work vs. home computers? Ie you plug a USB or Firewire into your work computer and download your work onto your cellphone (as I believe you can now do w/ iPods) then plug it into your home computer when you get home, and it syncs up (hopefully automatically).

    I don't have a cell phone now, but this would put me over the edge toward getting one.
    • From what I can see, the Siemens M55 and above have Outlook syncronisation. Not sure about memory size etc., but my little C60 has a meg of flash.
    • Try a Treo 600 (from Handspring, now PalmOne) - it has 32 MB RAM built in, but a slot for an SD card. There is at least one vendor (SanDisk) of 1GB smart cards for about $300 - see http://www.mobileplanet.com/product.asp?cat_name= & cat_id=&pf_id=MP853582&dept_id=1446&listing=1. USB is supported.

      Palm has very good sync software for Windows and Mac, so syncing should not be a problem - however, you'll need to check into additional software that syncs the flash card. The APIs are publishe

  • A760 (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by zurab ( 188064 )
    Does anyone own a Motorola A760 [motorola.com]? Anyone know what markets it's available in? Judging by the specs, I'd buy one if I could. Any good/bad experiences with it?

  • Standards? (Score:2, Informative)

    by RucasRiot ( 773111 )
    The scalability of the Linux kernel and such projects as uclinux are what make this possible. The problem with this is that the custom hardware, combined with different cpu architectures and speeds, will cause incompatibility or at least cause performance to suffer with applications between different mobile devices. Standardization of hardware, software, or both, would greatly help these problems be remedied.

  • legalese (Score:2, Redundant)

    by bodrell ( 665409 )
    quote:

    Linux is free and, depending on the outcome of the SCO lawsuit, is likely to stay that way.

    WTF?! Do they have to say that now, in the press?

    Is this going to be like OJ and "allegedly?"

    I wish SCO would go ahead and lose its lawsuits and die.

  • Uhh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @08:58PM (#9058918)
    Sorry, those 10 dollar "little utilities" you sniff your nose at are written by shareware authors trying to earn a living making your life easier. Your attitude is part of what's wrong with a certain segment of the Linux community - for many people, openness is just a front for wanting things for free. Sure, lots of nice people have contributed time to writing and improving Open Source software because they are generous, they want to contribute to the common good, or because licenses force them to contribute changes back, and it makes more economical sense to use Open Source than commercial software for a particular project. This is all great, but this doesn't mean the people trying to write useful Palm or Pocket PC or plain old Windows apps for the average joe are bad for not giving away their work - we all have to put bread on the table somehow, and not every piece of software out there is amenable to a free-as-in-beer business model (and for most consumer software products, it's hard to be free-as-in-speech without also being free-as-in-beer - things are different in the world of enterprise software, with large support contracts and TCO analyses).


    Personally, I love the Palm platform. My Palm phone is far, far, far more open and far more hackable than any other piece of consumer electronics I own, with the possible exception of Tivo. Palm doesn't give away the source code for the core of their OS. True. But I've never really found anything lacking in what I can do with the SDKs and frameworks they provide for writing Palm apps.


    Meanwhile, I guess you'd rather use vi or emacs on your Linux PDA instead of buying a 10 dollar piece of document editing software that a small software company or independent shareware developer bothered to make. And if there aren't any good handheld-scale GUI apps that will be written for your Linux PDA's GUI APIs of choice? You're probably one of those people that will just whine about it instead of writing one yourself ("but I'm not a programmer... whine... it needs to be Open Source... and I'm not going to pay 10 dollars for it, of course").


    It's great to see Linux getting used in more consumer electronics devices, and that's cool and all, but really the companies aren't using Linux because it's Free as in speech, they're using it because it's free as in beer. And they are going to write closed source GUI apps for it, like Tivo and others have, because they want to make money, not invite competition.

    • My Palm phone is far, far, far more open and far more hackable than any other piece of consumer electronics I own, with the possible exception of Tivo.

      In order to hack a Tivo you have to void the warranty by opening the case and mounting the HD in a PC. That doesn't sound more open than a device with a supported SDK and ways to load 3rd party apps.

  • I don't believe it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goon america ( 536413 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @09:00PM (#9058925) Homepage Journal
    In a world where people spend $3.2 Billion on ring tones a year (*10% of the global music market*) I don't think this is gonna happen. The iPod-mini shows that the average user has preferences totally intagible to geeks. I'm sure 99%+ don't have even the vaguest perception of what OS is running on their phone. Linux is not going to be a consumer-pushed movement in this market.

    • Re:I don't believe it (Score:2, Insightful)

      by pluvia ( 774424 )
      You make an excellent point. Of course, I think you could also use the ring tone argument to indicate that linux does have a consumer market... to save users $3.5 Billion so they can upload their own music to their cell. AFAICT, the main reason they are making that much money is because of their secret and non-standard means of uploading content to cell phones. It's like the basic cell phone service itself -- money is made through obscurity and confusing the customer.

      I've been asked by many people to he

  • Just FYI: why business wants Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @09:04PM (#9058963) Homepage Journal
    We all want to have a Linux cellphone, but have you wondered why business would want it too? They don't seem to see the urge to ssh to their cell phone. :)

    Royalty - cellphone manufacturers must pay royalty for each cellphone running either Palm, Symbian or CE. This is a huge revenue for smartphone OS vendors especially when the cellphone is popular. Some company like Sharp develops their smartphone OS inhouse but soon see the benefit of adopting other OS like Symbian and Linux.

    Though I don't know how much royalty they charge, because it's a purely business secret(they may charge differently for different companies). However, you can take the reference of SUN's royalty - they charge $1 for each cellphone sold carrying their java runtime. You get the picture - it'd be no less than $1. :)

    Now you may see the business benefit of adopting Linux - royalty free. Of course, some embedded Linux vendors would still charge royalty, but it'd be much less than Symbian, Palm and CE due to its nature.

  • Sharp Zaurus SL-6000 has a phone card available (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MCRocker ( 461060 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @09:22PM (#9059109) Homepage
    At the IBM PartnerWorld 2004 conference [ibm.com] the guys at the Sharp booth had a pre-release version of the Sharp SL-6000 Linux based PDA [mobiletechnews.com] and they claimed that there was a cell phone card or sleeve available for it. As far as I can tell, this card is not commercially available yet.

    As compared to the older Zaurii, this device was much larger, but was also, clearly, designed with some thought towards making it a viable phone. For example, the mic and speaker on the back of the case were positioned so it would be usable as a phone. In addition, the audio jack was a 3.5mm stereo jack suitable for use with stereo output, but was also configured to be able work with an earphone/boom mike combo so it could be used as a phone and PDA at the same time. This sure beats most other PDA's that choose either a sub-mini earbud/mic jack, sacraficing the ability to use the device as an MP3 player or a stereo out only jack. They also designed the SL-6000 so that it could accomodate a sleeve rather than being limited to the small form factor slots, so this would make a cell phone easier to incorporate. The darned thing even has voice recognition technology, though it doesn't seem to be integrated with the phone technology, so you can't ask it to dial the phone via a voice command... yet.
  • It's getting hard to get good low-end phones. Ones that are small, indestructable, easy to use, and with really long battery life.

    Motorola came close for a while, but they seem to have had a falling out with Sprint.

    There are still interesting things to be done in the phone space other than more keyboard-oriented features. Active background noise cancellation. Waterproofing. Better voice recognition for voice dialing. An interface with directory assistance that puts numbers you're given into your ph

  • Qtopia Phone Edition [trolltech.com] is set to be the gui to have for Linux Smart Phones. Here's a few screenshots [trolltech.com]

    Qtopia recently received the LinuxUser & Developer Award in the category "Best Embedded Linux" Qtopia wins LinuxUser & Developer Award [trolltech.com]

  • Want to know how to connect a Linux box to a mobile cellular phone (via IrDA, BlueTooth, serial, USB, ..)? Want to know which applications to sync address books are available? Want to know how to upload ringtones [tuxmobil.org] and free logos [tuxmobil.org] from your Linux PC. Want to get a survey of dedicated Linux Smartphones? See the Linux mobile phones resources at TuxMobil [tuxmobil.org].
  • I really love my Motorola StarTac. They don't make it anymore, so I hope it lasts a long time.

    Here is a description of my dream cell phone:

    Compact, folding size like my StarTac

    Audio quality equal to my StarTac

    BlueTooth to communicate with my Palm PDA (e.g., so Palm can dial numbers from the address book)

    Internet access at a decent speed

    Wi-Fi access at full speed

    A SD/MMC card slot

    An MP3/Ogg player, that automatically pauses the current song when you receive a call or place a call
    Notice that I didn

  • Errr you mean just like the Motorola E680 [shopforphones.co.uk]? A great looking handset with a nice large screen, multimedia support, a reasonable camera and good applications support that happens to run some embedded Linux version or other. Oh yeah, it makes phone calls too.

    I think the point with a device like the E680 is not that it runs Linux, but that it's a highly specced and powerful device that will appeal to those who want a decent hybrid PDA/phone.

    Also, bear in mind that using Linux means that Motorola don't have t

  • P800 Ogg Vorbis Player [sourceforge.net]
    Agile Messenger IM client [agilemobile.com]

    Okay, so it's not many, but they are out there, and if you really want free apps, download the SDK:

    http://www.symbian.com/developer/ [symbian.com]

  • I was looking through the Linux mobile phones listed at http://tuxmobil.org/phones_linux.html, and came away with this question:

    What phones will work with my provider? I have Verizon, and it would be pointless for me to get a phone that didn't work with them.

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