OpenMoko: Not a variation of sudoku
07:26, July 9th, 2007 by hecatomb | Posted in gadgets, hardware, mobile, software, techI’ve been following this project for awhile, and it’s finally getting ready to roll out. This will be excellent competition for the iPhone, but unfortunately will probably never catch on outside niche nerd groups.
OpenMoko is basically a unlocked (can be used on multiple carriers, not locked to just one provider) GSM phone that runs on a modified Linux stack. From both a developer and user standpoint, this will give much more freedom on what software can be used on the phone (the iPhone is fairly locked down.)
Now, the Neo1973 (the first “mobile” phone was successfully tested by Motorola in 1973) model phone does leave a bit to be desired in physical design, but for $300 (and if we actually had GSM support here) I’d probably pimp it just because of the open capability; some initial downfalls are the lack of WiFi and only has USB 1.1, but this IS a developer release. The final release (whenever that may be) will be much more promising.
You can read more about it here.