How about a slim Openmoko design?

[Dev Anand]

I think by
"Slim Design = " EDCability" ( and currently lack of features)"  I may
have *mistakenly* suggested that I would be happy with a compromise on
features. No, quite on the contrary what I wanted to suggest was to
have all the features in as small dense elegant package as possible.
But, definitely not at the cost of removing features. Lack of features
is what makes a phone boring after some time.

Since the hardware is also open, I don't think it will be long before
someone may actually come up with some interesting case designs.
Looking forward ....


On 8/23/07, Shawn Rutledge <shawn.t.rutledge at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think "less PDA" is the wrong direction to go with this product.
> Future versions ought to be more iPhone-like in form factor (as slim
> as they can make it, and frameless or at least nearly, with a high
> ratio of screen real estate to overall size).  As for hardware
> hacking, I doubt that most of us are going to be really changing out
> chips or soldering the board anyway... we just need schematics (for
> understanding) and easy access to JTAG.  That can still be
> accomplished with a compact design.
>
> A lot of people say they want a "plain old telephone" without so many
> features, but it doesn't seem very interesting to me, and I'm not sure
> if they really want that either... or this idea just comes out of a
> frustration with current UI's.
>
> Such a phone could also be an open-source project, but it would tend
> to be completely different.  E.g. there is no point in using Linux for
> that, when a simpler microcontroller with simpler all-in-one firmware
> would suffice.  (And you would get incredible battery life with that
> approach, too.)  I think a different company ought to try that, but
> there is no point in having the OpenMoko resources being spread
> thinner by trying to do both.
>
> For applications like web browsing and email and GPS navigation, you
> need as much screen real estate, resolution, memory and processing
> power as you can get.  But the content itself is way more important
> than the eye candy.  It's still good to simplify the UI as much as
> possible, but not by removing features.  I don't actually talk to
> people that much; probably more of my minutes are used by GPRS than
> voice (or at least it will be that way, when I can get a phone on
> which browsing becomes more worthwhile than it has been on my A1200).
> So I'm one class of users.  Then there are the professionals that do
> need to talk to a lot of people, and therefore contact management
> features are very important; but they also could make use of all the
> PDA and Internet features.  The third class would be people who just
> use a phone for talking, some of them need it to be rugged, and they
> don't care about the other features (construction workers, plumbers
> and other service people, and people who are put off by ever having to
> learn anything new).  A smart phone of any kind is not for them, and
> there is hardly any point in trying to adapt it to satisfy them, IMO.
> They are also not likely to care if it's open-source or not (because
> they don't need any applications - just a dialer and a contact list).
>
> On 8/21/07, "Jørgen P. Tjernø" <jorgen at devsoft.no> wrote:
> > Perhaps not as much processing and features, but more of a phone, less
> > of a PDA (actually, less of a Smartphone too?).
> > In any case, I guess that'll be something we won't see until well beyond
> > 2007. :-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenMoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>