OM future

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:57:38 +0100 "Pietro \"m0nt0\" Montorfano"
<monto84 at gmail.com> said:

> Hi lists,
> hoping that some official OpenMoko employee is still reading this ml i'd
> like to know which are the plans for the future. There will be a GTA03??

bwahahahahahhaahha heheheheh. you didnt read this list a year or so ago? gta03
was canned? along with most of the company? (or they quit before that). you
missed that bit?

if you are after a gta03/4/5 from openmoko... you are barking up the wrong
tree.

> If so are you working on it? So, the FR is a good thing, now it's 2
> years old and you know, it has its problems (1024, buzz, glamo,...) so,
> i'd like to look forward and get a new wonderful device like this.
> So any news??

openmoko as morphed in a much smaller version of itself and does wikireader.
as such openoko no longer has the money or skills to do phones. it struggled
to manage the freerunner, and that was a every low-tech phone. to do a phone
that is competitive with todays offerings from apple, nokia, htc, samsung, etc.
etc. - you need big money and lots of people. LOTS. just the money to license a
3g module design alone is non-trivial. you are talking  ballpark $1000000 on
the table (setup license fee for example) just to begin thinking about it - not
to mention needing the skills/people. then there is the rest of the
supply-chain that needs big money and volumes to get what you want. also
needing to do your own modem stack. this is how the big boys do it - thats
why they can cut costs per unit for 3g to a small amount - openmoko can't do
this. yes - u can get modules. they are big (physically and thus make the phone
bulky) and expensive per unit. we are not even discussing the SoC's which don't
come cheap for a modern one (cortex-a8 etc.) unless you buy in volume, and gps,
wifi, screen etc. - the list goes on. 

your best bet is to get either an android pone and try and get normal linux
onto it *or just begin loving android), or get a nokia n900 (though my
experience is that its a pile of junk - as i sit here now with my n900 having
bricked itself spontaneously over a week ago, so i'm without a phone, 6000km
from home, not to mention that windows 3.1 seems like a paragon of stability
and solid performance compared to the n900 - the n900 would literally crash and
restart the whole ui very few minutes or sooner at times, but it'd do this at
least 5-10 times per day at a minimum). or maybe a palm-pre and hack away at it
with the webos-internals guys as its pretty much openemebdded under the hood
just with palm's webos windowing system ui layer concepts vs x11 like openmoko
and n900.

or... you wait a little bit and see what's around the corner and brewing... and
trust me... stuff *IS* brewing at much bigger device makers than openmoko ever
was - who have the money and people to pull it off. keep your ears peeled.

-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster at rasterman.com