Entry level Ubuntu smartphone

Timo Jyrinki timo.jyrinki at gmail.com
Fri Jan 4 16:03:55 CET 2013


2013/1/4 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns at goldelico.com>:
>>> The OpenPhoneux should not be tied and favour one specific OS. It
>>> should be and remain open to run everthing!
>> I meant only branding. Like putting a sticker with Ubuntu Logo on
>> back/front of the phone. For me it was obvious, that the phone itself
>> would remain open - sorry if I was not clear enough :)
>
> No worry - but then we have to put a lot of stickers on it or people start to think that it is only for that one OS, although it isn't.

I think there is something to this idea here, and my thoughts are more
related to different ways OpenPhoenux products could be branded or
marketed than any technical aspect. I could envision other retailers
that would do the marketing effort / extra polishing into a more
"complete" / _slightly_ broader target market out-of-the-box product.
So built on GTA04, the most open phone platform out there, running the
best free software UX that exists (when such exists and is ported),
ready to use right away. Kind of like what Openmoko Inc did in its
time. They did pretty good marketing, even a little too good for their
own good considering the actual problems as a phone in first years.

As a small example, Pulster seemed to have a try at a consumer
friendly GTA04 simply by buying 10 full GTA04:s ready to use and then
re-selling. I could easily see also myself in the group of people that
orders something that needs zero additional work and is on stock, if I
didn't already have a GTA04 (for which I had the motherboard switch as
a service).

With the current small screen the future free UX:s (Ubuntu, Mer's Nemo
& Firefox OS?) are challenging possibly. Although since we've
resistive screen the small size of objects can be partially fixed by
promoting it as a small pen usable device - like Galaxy Note but tiny
<- oh see, marketing! "It's really like a smaller, sturdier Samsung
Galaxy Note" ;) On the other hand, both the UX:s and fitting them onto
GTA04/OpenPhoenux will take until end of the year easily, at which
point there might be advances in possibilities of having somewhat
newer case/screen options.

-Timo



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