Article: What happened to real open source phones?

[Iain B. Findleton]

The article pretty well sums up my experience with the GTA02, although I 
certainly have no regrets about buying one. All things considered, the 
idea of the machine was great, but it is really unfortunate that the 
performance, stability and general quality of the applications was 
somewhat below expectations. In particular, the glamo chip was a 
disaster for any advanced use of the screen resolution available, and 
the battery life issues made it not much use unless plugged into a power 
source.

I hope that the GTA04, when it gets fully shaken down, will address at 
least those 2 issues. For the applications I would like to implement, 
more memory, performance that at least resembles a 500 Mhz laptop, 
although most phones now are dual core 1 Ghz chips, and excellent 
WIFI/GSM functionality would be critical. In terms of additional 
features, an IRDA facility, and geo-environment sensors (temp, pressure) 
and compass would be nice.

Whatever the outcome of the GTA04 project, I support the effort and even 
if its another hobbyist toy, I will likely find it interesting.

While I don't use the GTA02 as a regular phone, its in regular use for 
software development and for GPS applications. For some reason, I have 
yet to get stable and reliable information out of the accelerometers, 
but even they are useful for some purposes.

Unfortunately, I feel the struggle for a Linux phone is pretty much 
submerged by the Android phenomenon, which is in my opinion, too bad. 
Phone hardware that ran linux out of the box would be wonderful.



Niels Heyvaert wrote:
> Hi all,
>  
> To those of you who didn't see summary flying by on Linuxtoday.com, there is recent article published about the Openmoko:
>  
> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/mowi/article.php/3931296/What-Happened-to-Real-Open-Source-Phones.htm
>  
> I'm sure that after reading the article, you'll have the urge to react.
>  
> At least I know I did ;-)
>  
> Regards,
>  
> Niels.
>
> --
> Microsoft gives you windows, Linux gives you the whole house. 		 	   		  
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>   


-- 
------------
Iain B. Findleton
514-457-0744