[GTA04] When is the next and more powerful openmoko releasing

[W. B. Kranendonk]

> > - besides Vietnam, Czech is another country that can
> provide moulds at competitive prices
> > 
> > Cases like that of the Freerunner, with more than one
> plastic, need more than one mould per piece. To say more of
> the price, it is necessary to have the design available.
> The
> 
> Maybe you can ask your friend if he has some contacts to
> Czech companies (which would be EU
I will probably meet him next weekend and ask. I will let you know.

> have the CAD files of the original Freerunner.
On the wiki, of course. I had a closer look at the exploded view of the FR/Neo; there's an awful lot of layers involved. Three(!) just for the backplane, that's about three times as many as I expected two days ago :-/
The image even seems to miss the outer cover of the middle part (the rubbery layer on top of the casing that holds the bulk of the phone and the buttons and such)

> > most affordable option he says, would be to reuse
> Openmoko's mould if it is available.
> 
> Yes, I discussed that approach with Sean for quite a while
> and his team worked
> heavily on it (TNX :). But they don't own or have the
> moulds in their hands.
"Funny" how those things go... They'll be in FIC's hands then, I'd guess. They do not seem to be in phone/MID business anymore so there's no competitive (dis)advantage to worry about, and even if they were, I can imagine they'd start all over and design something different. Meaning those moulds are gathering dust somewhere on a shelf. Well, just pondering; it doesn't get us closer to a case ;-)

Best regards,

Boudewijn