Trolltech will ship an "open" Linux-based phone in September. The "Greenphone" features a user-modifiable Linux OS, and is meant to jumpstart a third-party native application ecosystem for Linux-based mobile phones.
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Member since:
2005-11-05
Smart move Trolltech! I guess that means they are feeling the heat from all of the /Nokia/Maemo/OpenHand work on embedded gtk and realize it's time to work a bit harder.
With big companies like Motorolla shipping most of their new smart phones on the Linux platform, is this the tipping point?
Linux makes sense for a market like mobilephones and small handheld devices. How much would a copy of windows CE one one of those cost the hardware vendor?
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I guess that means they are feeling the heat from all of the /Nokia/Maemo/OpenHand work on embedded gtk and realize it's time to work a bit harder.
Sorry, but I doubt anyone is feeling the heat from those things. They're very scarce, few people buy them, at best they're a beta test model for Nokia thrown to the open source community and they're not mobile phones. I don't see any Nokia phone I buy using GTK, sorry.
This is about phones.
Member since:
2005-10-19
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It's never going to be ready for general consumption. The phone's part of a development kit. It's a 'reference platform'.
Anybody who is going to want to sell a Linux phone is going to have to design their own variant, get an ODM to manufacture it, and, if they want to ship it in the US, get the FCC to approve it.
And the US carriers aren't going to let an unlocked version of it onto their nets anyway.
Member since:
2005-12-31
And here we go, I just was waiting for this. So after the open console ( the gp2x) here goes the open cell phone.
I'm a bit disappointed it is not a clamshell ( hey tastes are tastes 
) and a bit surprised about the fact it is sold with a GTK kit.
I wonder if it will be sold only to developer or such.
Anyway it goes, it will be a wonderful laboratory. I hope they wont ask 400 euro that for now...
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2005-12-01
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2006-01-03
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2006-05-09
The linuxdevices article talks about it having WiFi but Trolltech doesn't list that as hardware feature. If this has WiFi as well as some sane way to listen to MP3, I absolutely must have one 
If it doesn't, maybe one can use those ultra tiny MiniSD WLAN cards from Spectec? (pending someone writes drivers)
Edited 2006-08-15 09:09
Member since:2005-12-01
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2006-01-06
. I only wish that price would be resonable... don't want to spend fortune on something that can be pick-pockeded from me 
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2005-07-19
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2005-08-12
Don't even care thats its gree, I kinda liek the green color...if this really has wifi and vopi support..it would be a awesome piece of hardware .I dont be developing any apps, but I would love to have one,and being that im with cingular and its GSM, u could just drop in your sim card and go.if the "hit' isnt some outlandish price. I may have to pick up one on principle alone!
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2005-10-11
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2006-05-09
http://www.qtopia.net/modules/devices/ has some more info on this. Still doubting if this really has WIFI onboard (it'd be a killer device if it has).
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2006-05-08
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2006-05-11
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2005-07-10
I was just having a conversation the other day about how awesome it would be to have an open, linux-based mobile phone to develop for. We concluded that it probably wouldn't happen because mobile carriers are all about locking down their networks. This is the problem with developing for the Hiptop/Sidekick for example. I'm very happy to be proven wrong.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:2006-02-15
Probably. Cell phones are often dual-core (or at least dual-processor) with one processor managing the radio and the other doing everything else. There are a lot of reasons for this. It makes regulatory compliance easier. It makes it easier for radio makers to keep the proprietary bits proprietary. It makes the OS design simpler, since the hard-real time bits go with the radio and the rest is just another multithreaded multimedia os.