Openmoko's Open Source Phone Goes Mass-Market 247
nerdyH writes "Openmoko has begun shipping its Linux-based, open source Neo Freerunner phone to five newly announced distributors, in Germany, France, and India, says the company. The Neo Freerunner features an open hardware design, and a Linux-based operating system that users are free to modify. The project originally hoped to produce a mass-market offering last October. The $400 Freerunner will remain available direct, online, too. A 2.5G GPRS/GSM phone like the original iPhone, it boasts a 500MHz processor, WiFi, 3D accelerometers, a 4.3-inch VGA touchscreen, Bluetooth, and built-in GPS."
Neo 1973 (Score:3, Funny)
'Merica (Score:5, Funny)
I iz American. I can has OpenMoko?
translation: When is US getting sweet, sweet OpenMoko goodness?
3d accelerometers, gesture calls? (Score:5, Funny)
Can you set up the 3d accelerometers to do gesture-based calling? Because I can think of a few gestures I'd like to associate with some jerks I have to call on a regular basis.
Indubitably, morons (Score:4, Funny)
The linuxdevices story is wrong, see http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA02
Indeed, 400MHz 2.8in screen.
Further, the linuxdevices story doesn't say they have begun shipping, it says that they have announced distributors who they will ship to. The only thing they've begun shipping is contracts and red tape.
nerdyH, you're a fucktard.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Given that you've talked on the phone less than a minute a day for the past 9 years, I'd say you're probably better off just working out a schedule with the pizza guy instead of always just phoning him up and saying "the usual". Though it might be useful to have one around for 911 in case your hermit beard gets caught in the blender or something.
I guess I'm not geeky enough (Score:3, Funny)
Its a phone. Yah, lots of new wiz bang features, most of which the average person won't ever use. Most of the rest will be used a handful of times by someone to show off how advanced their PHONE is.
If I wait a year, I'll get the equavalent of this model for free with a new service contract. Even then, I won't be using most of the functionality.
The most I can ever see being useful in a phone is email, gps and voice calls. Even then, I think you'd need to be traveling for work to actually use those features enough to pay for them.
But what do I know? I live in a van down by the river.
Re:3d accelerometers, gesture calls? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:At least its not called "Neo1973" (Score:3, Funny)
This is similar to why the XBox 2 is called the Xbox 360, because it "sounds" better than the PS3 according to soccer moms
In that case, the iPhone 3G is doomed.
Re:crippeled bluetooth (Score:3, Funny)
That's a software problem, it _will_ be resolved soon.
PS: just ordered Moko.