quote:
While Canadian telcos are still dragging their feet in following the U.S. example of making cellphone data fees more competitive, the U.S. telcos are about to scratch each other’s eyes out after the arrival of Linux-based handsets.There have been a couple of Linux-based cellphones before, notably one created by Trolltech, which was bought by Nokia. The Openmoko Neo Freerunner, however, much delayed but now due to be released in April or May, is currently the only cellphone covered by the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 licence, which covers “free” software. And now Openmoko is raising the ante not only by offering a free operating system and software, but is its handset design as well. Openmoko has posted the computer design (CAD) files on its website and people are invited to muck about with them to make personalized cases.
But don’t get too excited: You’ll need a 3D printer, which runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and expertise well beyond the average geek’s. If you go to a commercial outfit, it will also be expensive, and require customers to order lots of about 5,000 before professional 3D printing companies will pay attention. So yes, it’s a bit of a gimmick, but I can see large corporations creating their own branded cellphones.
The Neo Freerunner will be enabled with Wi-Fi, meaning it will not require a service provider at all when within reach of a wireless hotspot either at home or at work. And that includes making Voice over IP (VoIP) phone calls. When not in range of a hotspot, users can opt to use their telco accounts (the Neo is designed to run on a GSM SIM card). It will also have a global-positioning service chip inside, so that users will be able to connect to a satellite directly, and not use GPS as a costly subscription from a telco.
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posted 04 March 2008 11:42 AM
