No Camera???

[Doug Sutherland]

I do tech support for phones and I assure that there are many 
people who don't care about cameras. I knpw because they 
say exactly that "I don't need a camera". However, based on 
the number of mms messaging, and problems with this I see,
they certainly are popular with a lot of people. 

Lack of a camera will not doom a phone. Although it is now
becoming hard to find one without camera, most have very 
pitiful camera that take lousy pictures. I have one that takes
great pictures, but it's made to specially be a phone blended
with camera (sony cybershot) and it works very as a camera
and less well as a phone hehe.

I can't say that Neo is for non techies. An open source linux
based phone where you can compile your own kernel and 
can get a JTAG adapter for flashing ... for non techies? This
is not for non techies. It could have been but then it would 
not even be released until the software was fully cooked 
and idiot proofed, and they probably wouldn't be talking 
about tons of new features. 

Also, knowing what I do about how phone providers work
and how they deal with phone firmware, branding, security,
authentication, etc ... You will not see a phone like this sold
by a major provider. Not in a fully open source form. They 
will not allow that. There are many reasons for this which I
will not mention, if you don't know them then you don't 
understand the phone industry. There are sales oriented 
reasons, security oriented reasons, and branding reasons.
A fully open source phone is a provider's nightmare. That
does not mean they won't sell to users, but it does mean 
that providers won't buy them to sell to you, not unless they
can erase the flash image, provide their own, prevent the 
JTAG access, and many other things ...

   -- Doug