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The Death of the Greenphone 121

Posted by CowboyNeal from the we-hardly-knew-ye dept.
phobos13013 writes "Trolltech announced this week that they will discontinue development on their Greenphone platform. The Greenphone was advertised to be the first phone with a user-modifiable environment. Trolltech CTO Benoit Schilling stated that they are not really a hardware company and so will focus their efforts on FIC's Neo 1973, now available. However, Schilling hinted at a future Wi-Fi-enabled endeavor (possibly a VOIP phone)."
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The Death of the Greenphone More

The Death of the Greenphone

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  • This article is not a Troll (Score:3)

    by Traxton1 ( 154182 ) <Traxton1.yahoo@com> on Thursday October 25, 2007 @09:02PM (#21123147)
    TrollTech still throws me off and makes me think its fake, but the Greenphone did sound really neat.
  • I was pretty excited about this project after reading about it in Linux Journal a couple of months ago. Too bad that it won't see the light of day.

    Maybe OpenMoko can fill the void left behind...

    • Re:Bummer (Score:5, Interesting)

      by smilindog2000 ( 907665 ) <bill@billrocks.org> on Thursday October 25, 2007 @09:21PM (#21123347) Homepage
      It's a bummer in several ways. First, we geeks don't get hard-ons for crappy hardware (as the poster below suggests). Sleek advanced hardware, totally open for us to explore while trying to change the world, however, gets my blood going. When the hackers cracked the iPhone and put some of the best software management tools I've seen in place, without even a damned header file... that was cool.

      I own an NEO1973. I'm glad to support the project, and desperately hope that it will succeed. Here's something I read today from the OpenMoko mail list: "The Neo is, was, and will be, a product for geeks and therefore never was intended to be a mass market product. Geeks do not look at fancy glamour but for useful attributes." I have no idea who this guys is talking about. I'm about the biggest geek I've ever met (yeah, I know some of you are bigger :-) but what the hell?

      The NEO1973 battery is tiny, screen too small, touch capabilities poor, integration level low, plastic instead of anodized aluminum, and worst of all... there's not the same kind of inspired software leadership. The community wants to build the world's best phone, but a guy like Linus is required to lead the effort. I think the OpenMoko guys have incredible vision, but not the complete vision, and the leader needed make it succeed is currently missing. Get the right guy involved, and they could change the world... crappy hardware and all.
      • OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did. There is no leadership behind the project, no vision, just a bunch of well-intentioned geeks who want to make something cool. With no cohesive plan, though, the Neo1973 will never succeed.

        iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone -- even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.

        • Re:Unfortunately, you're right (Score:5, Insightful)

          by pherthyl ( 445706 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @10:24PM (#21123903)
          OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did.

          The Greenphone didn't fail, because it was never meant to be anything but a development platform to fill the void while there was nothing else good out there. Now that there are other open phones, its job is done. Aside from the sensationalized headline, this really isn't news at all.

        • iPhone the first UNIX phone? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by rvw ( 755107 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @03:59AM (#21125953)

          iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone

          I think you don't need to say *NIX anymore. OS X Leopard 10.5 is certified UNIX, and as the iPhone is based on OSX, isn't the iPhone the first UNIX phone?

          even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.

          I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rbanffy ( 584143 )
            "I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers."

            That's one thing. And I commend Apple for opening it up for 3rd party applications.

            The remaining problem (worth fighting Steve Jobs himself) is that people want to use it on networks other than AT&T. I live in Brazil and, if I were to use an iPhone, I would first have to crack it. I don't like the idea. It's a GSM phone after all - people should be able to use it with whatever SIM card they want.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dwater ( 72834 )
            > I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers.

            Well, Steve said that, but he previously said he wouldn't. Why should we believe him now?

            I say just wait and see, then believe it when it happens.
          • Signs are not looking good for opportunities for the little guy to develop applications for the iPhone. This means open-source software goes out the window -- unless we continue to hack the thing.

        • Re:Unfortunately, you're right (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Simon Brooke ( 45012 ) <stillyet@googlemail.com> on Friday October 26, 2007 @04:02AM (#21125969) Homepage Journal

          OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did. There is no leadership behind the project, no vision, just a bunch of well-intentioned geeks who want to make something cool. With no cohesive plan, though, the Neo1973 will never succeed.
          1. If OpenMoko doesn't succeed, it will be largely because of posts like the above. Enough negative sentiment will doom any project, however cool.
          2. OpenMoko isn't a product, it's a platform. Sure, the Neo1973 [openmoko.com] isn't the all-time ultimate mobile phone - it's a development platform. That's why in addition to the pre-built phone you get a development board you can house in your own enclosure with your own battery, screen, and other hardware bits. If you don't like Neo1973, build your own phone round the platform.
          3. When I first started using Linux in 1993, doomsayers were saying it was obsolete [oreilly.com] and would never fly. Guess what? They were wrong.

          I'm not saying OpenMoko is the world's ultimate phone project. Of course it isn't. But it's a good, big start, and it deserves support. If you don't support it, don't complain if, in ten years time, all you can get are closed, proprietary phones [apple.com]you can't even load your own software on.

          You know, I'm getting old. I belong to a generation which, when someone gave us cool hardware, we grabbed and built cool software on top of it. Now, if it isn't all pretty and polished right out of the box, it gets condemned as rubbish. Guess what? Linus Torvalds was just a college kid when he wrote the first kernel. His professors didn't even rate him as very good. Certainly no-one thought he had leadership potential. And as for a cohesive plan, his cohesive plan was to build a scheduler which could schedule two tasks.

          Stuff happens. It will surprise you. OpenMoko may, indeed, not be a great success. But if it's a bit of a success, other people will be able to come along and build on it - it is open source [opensource.org]. In fact, that's already happening - that's what this story is about. The GreenPhone is not 'dead', it has mutated. Instead of building their own hardware platform, the Trolls [troll.no] are developing the 'green suite' on the OpenMoko platform. [zdnet.co.uk] So you can still have your greenphone - the only thing is, it will be black and silver, or white and orange [openmoko.com].

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by simong ( 32944 )
            The OpenMoko software is more important than the hardware. The Neo1973 is open hardware designed to a specification, but won't ever be a successful commercial product because no phone company is going to subsidise it. There is a bullet to be bitten, that there are few smartphone platforms that are open enough to match the aspirations of OpenMoko, but I can see it being ported to other smartphone chipsets such as those used by HTC or indeed non-dedicated chipsets like the OpenSparc S1 [sunsource.net]. It wouldn't surprise m
          • You've made some good points... I certainly intend to support the project, and I've got the hardware and a strong desire to code for it. The NEO1973, and probably even it's successor (code named the GTA-2), probably will never sell in volume, because we geeks willing to pay more for a device that is relatively poor hardware for the money are few and far between.

            But, as a poster above points out, OpenMoko is the important part here, not the NEO1973. We can forget about poor hardware if the software platfor

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by g4sy ( 694060 )

            You know, I'm getting old. I belong to a generation which, when someone gave us cool hardware, we grabbed and built cool software on top of it. Now, if it isn't all pretty and polished right out of the box, it gets condemned as rubbish.

            My problem with the Neo1973 (I have one) is not the fact that it's not polished out of the box. It's the fact that it doesn't work with any GSM service in my area. Even though I was mislead to believe that it would work with the GSM services in my area. So now I'm wondering, is it worth my time to develop shiny software for this phone when I can't use it because the hardware is non-functional (and I can't make it functional). Further, there is no word, whisper or mention of if it will EVER work with GSM85

          • Enough negative sentiment will doom any project, however cool.
            Yeah, I'd hate for OpenMoko to die the same death that MS Windows did.
          • ... but in any case having to do with the cell phone industry in the United States, the overwhelmingly safe bet is always the pessimistic one when it comes to consumer rights and putting power in the hands of the consumer.

            The industrial design is bad, there is no leadership and it will probably never get better. I hate it, but it's true.

        • OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did. There is no leadership behind the project, no vision, just a bunch of well-intentioned geeks who want to make something cool. With no cohesive plan, though, the Neo1973 will never succeed.

          iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone -- even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.

          FIC (a multi-billion-dollar Asian company) is behind OpenMoko and the Neo1973. I know some of the OpenMoko employees via IRC (and even from before they joined OM) and I know they do have indeed a "Vision", and a mighty cool one at that.

          Mark my words: The Neo1973 is not the last gadget we will see from the OpenMoko folks, they have mid- to long-term strategies. Also they are set to build a truly open phone with OSS drivers for every component (excluding the GSM modem of course). The next revision of th

        • The Greenphone was not a failure. Stopping selling something does not mean it is a failure at all. In fact, it was a success.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by torpor ( 458 ) *
        I also have a neo1973, and am thoroughly enjoying the geek factor - just this week I got it an Apple wireless keyboard for it, set up and running, and I have to tell you all that there is nothing quite so fun as sitting somewhere, hacking code on my phone, using the phone itself. Python+neo1973+apple bt keyboard == the coolest godamn bit of hardware in the room, and I've got tons of stuff in here .. from BeBox to SGI to Access Music to .. well, lots of stuff.

        And yes, there is hardware in front of me that h
      • Astroturf or troll or karma whore? I can't decide.

        Obviously these aren't your real thoughts.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Svartalf ( 2997 )
        The NEO 1973 is a first cut. Nokia, however, seems to be reaching in the same direction. IF
        they have open drivers for the WiMax hardware and Sprint does the right things in securing
        their G4 network they're building right now, we'll have EVERYTHING you're talking to in the
        smartphone through the G4 capable version of the N810.

        As for the comment about us "not looking at fancy glamour but for useful attributes," heh
        I think he's missed the cluetrain there. I want BOTH, thank you very much. Nokia seems
        to have

  • Shouldn't be a surprise (Score:4, Funny)

    by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @09:07PM (#21123207) Journal
    Really, look at the demographics. Who buys all those pink iPods? Teen girls. The kind of people that spend all day talking and texting on their phone. Who gets a hard on over linux? Introverted geeks. The kind of people that want pizza delivery robots so they can avoid all human contact.

  • Odd (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kingrames ( 858416 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @09:15PM (#21123277)
    It would appear that they'e sold out of phones.

    And yet they're quitting development?

    DOES NOT COMPUTE!

    They'll be back, I think, with something else. There's plenty of reasons for a corporate entity to want to provide customized phones to its employees, or to give them out as a promotion, or stuff like that.

    It's too cool a gadget idea to throw away.
    • The business suits don't know what the world "cool" means in terms of their bottom line.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phobos13013 ( 813040 )
      Dont worry, the SOLD OUT likely means the community that bought them all up will make sure the longevity of this phone persists similar to the persistence of the Zaurus users who still have pkg sites available for both Qtopia and X environments. Though, I guess it does depend on how many phones it takes to officially sell out (200 or 20,000!)

      Regardless, yea, it may not be for the masses, there IS more than a significant market for this, and yes, i think the Neo is the next step for this. It just takes at

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by darthflo ( 1095225 )
      It's sold out because it was very probably only made in a very small edition. It's intention from beginning to end was to be a development platform, not an actual product. With the Neo1973/OpenMoko, people opening up iPhones and similar stuff, Trolltech seems to regard the chain reaction they intended to start as either started or unstartable (my money's on the former). No reason to go on, let the actual hardware guys handle it.
    • Trolltech is not stopping developing the Greenphone, nor stopping developing Qtopia.

  • Geek-friendly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cynicsreport ( 1125235 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @09:23PM (#21123363) Homepage
    It is a common misconception that these phones can't be economically feasible because only a small number of 'geeks' will use them. Yes, I would like a 'geek-friendly' phone, but more importantly, I want a 'developer-friendly' phone. One with a nice API to access bluetooth and wifi capabilities.
    When that happens, the general non-geek population benefits due to the availability of quality software that will run on the phone.

    So, step 1: make the phone easy to use
    Step 2: make the phone customizable
    Step 3: make the phone developer-friendly
    Step 4: let me use the same API for different phones; I'm sick of recoding half of my program to make it compatible with a different phone!
    • Good vision... will Google share, and promote it? A bunch of super-business-savy guys like the leaders at Google just might agree with your vision... and they're in the right spot to profit from it. Apple recently announced that in February they will ship a development platform for the iPhone, opening it up for the world to hack. Some speculate that this is in response to the backlash to iPhone firmware 1.1.1, which blocks 3rd party hacked software for most people even today. Others at OpenMoko may fear
      • Right. Google's the biggest threat to Apple's "dominance" (aka a lot, but all those "cool types" who bought the iPhone to "be cool" won't care. Right.
        • Right. Google's the biggest threat to Apple's "dominance" (aka <1% of market share) in the "mobile computing space" (aka cell phones). It's not BlackBerries, Treos or the usual WinMobile-PDAs every serious business-type user uses and it's obviously not Nokia with it's giant market share and multimedia-friendly "mobile computers". Also LG/Prada, Versace (IIRC they're trying to launch something like the LG/Prada phone, might be another italian fashion brand, too.) may well be more exclusive by a lot, but a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MadJo ( 674225 )
      Missing step 5:
      Step 5: Profit!

  • Is it just me? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by bradcb212 ( 1141199 )
    Or does anyone else think this would be a great way to spy on your kid, your spouse, etc.. I wonder how many techie nerds bought this out of jealousy or fear... Why couldn't you program this open-phone to auto pickup from a certain number, disable the speaker, and transmit audio? All without a single ring, vibration, or visual cue.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why couldn't you program this open-phone to auto pickup from a certain number, disable the speaker, and transmit audio?
      Morals?
    • Why don't you do just that with an iPhone, Neo1973/OpenMoko or any Symbian-based phone (that's just about each and every Nokia out there and lots more)?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grommit ( 97148 )
      Offtopic be damned.

      No, it's not only you. Unfortunately, there's plenty of controlling jackholes that don't trust their wives. Please do your wife/children a favor and tell them that you're a dirtbag that doesn't deserve her and she should leave.

      Ugh, thinking of spying on the one person in the world that you're supposed to trust more than anybody else. How the hell do you sleep at night? Oh, that's right, you probably don't. You're probably rummaging through your wife's stuff looking for.. something.
      • Dude... I agree with what you're saying. I don't have a wife or kids. Maybe I should put "hypothetically speaking" in big capital letters for you next time. I was just proposing that there's probably people doing that already... Lighten up... I'm not asking for help in building a "prove my wife is cheating on me" kit... And for the record, people hire private eyes all the time for this kind of thing and for good reason. Are you proposing that every man that's done that and caught his wife in the act is in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      Why couldn't you program this open-phone to auto pickup from a certain number, disable the speaker, and transmit audio?

      It's not any different from any other phone, so yeah, there's nothing to stop the phone from being able to do that. What's great about a phone running Free Software, is that the owner of the phone gets to choose whether or not it has that "feature," rather than the manufacturer or a government. [news.com]

      If you want it, you can have it. If you don't want it, you won't have it. You, rather than som

  • I thought apples iPhone was insane at $500, and this thing is/was $200 more than that? No wonder it was a failure.

    The $300 neo 1973 replacement is still a bit steep for me, but at least it's in the ballpark.

    • Re:$700 for a phone? Screw that. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pherthyl ( 445706 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @10:28PM (#21123935)
      Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?

      It was never meant for consumers, and the fact that it works as a phone is purely secondary to its main function of providing a test bed for developing mobile phone applications for Trolltech's platform. Comparing it to consumer, mass market phones doesn't make any sense.
      • It was never meant for developers, either. For ${deity}'s sake, it only supported GPRS. Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data. I don't care HOW customizable it is... a phone that only supports GPRS is a paperweight. Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux, or the niche market, or its price, and totally overlook its REAL failure -- its lack of support for at least EDGE.

        • Re:$700 for a phone? Screw that. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pherthyl ( 445706 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @01:02AM (#21125147)
          Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data. I don't care HOW customizable it is... a phone that only supports GPRS is a paperweight

          I think you still don't understand. Developer platform doesn't mean "phone marketed towards the developer/geek market" it means "device that developers use to test their software on". It's really only that, and the lack of EDGE is not really an issue (unless the network speed is crucial to your testing).

          Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux

          Trolltech is hugely supportive of Linux (sponsoring developers to work on X, KDE, and freedesktop.org projects like harfbuzz), and the Greenphone wasn't a failure so finding a scapegoat isn't necessary.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

            Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.

            The "KDE Myths" page, should be more upfront and less marketing speak, the truth is that many people simply don't care about restrictions to closed software development. The original Qt licenses were absurd, today's is at least as legal as the GPL. Unlike Redhat, Sun, Netscape, or other FOSS-positive compani

            • Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.

              You're confusing mutualism with parasitism. Of course Trolltech benefits from having KDE use their toolkit. They get free testing and bug reports from hundred of OSS devs. KDE benefits as well, because they get an excellent C++ toolkit without having to waste time developing it themselves. Given the complexity

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by FireFury03 ( 653718 )
          it only supported GPRS. Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data.

          Errm, I might.

          I mean, of course I want UMTS, but at the moment there are no open platforms that support it - the Neo1973 is GPRS and GSM only and I'm seriously considering getting one. To be blunt, I'm sick of crappy closed devices that aren't developer friendly (and in the case of my Symbian UIQ phone and VxWorks phone, totally unstable even when you're using the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by richlv ( 778496 )
        well, if i remember correctly, they charged for the sdk. which probably killed a lot of enthusiasm from the oss crows. now, what i really hope for - that openmoko and the associated devices will be both very geek friendly and very user friendly, thus making it an ideal device to get for me and to recommend for everybody else.
        • The phone came with an sdk. You could download the SDK for free, as well.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by richlv ( 778496 )
            when the phone came out, there were a lot of materials about this - a quick search reveals only comments right now, but searching more would turn up much more.

            from a comment :
            http://lwn.net/Articles/248819/ [lwn.net]
            "Too bad that quite a few components in the Greenphone SDK are proprietary. That makes it almost useless as a developer's toy."

            if i remember correctly, they opensourced it when openmoko started or something - but the community desire to hack on it was seriously reduced by keeping sdk closed. imho :)

      • Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?
        I do understand that, I just don't think it really matters. If the developer version cost $700, how much was the consumer version of whatever this thing would become going to cost? Does the developer version have a whole lot more hardware that the consumer version doesn't? Or did they just price the developer version really high to try to re-coup costs? I didn't see any target prices for the consumer level version, so I'm only
        • If the developer version cost $700, how much was the consumer version of whatever this thing would become going to cost?

          There were never any plans for a consumer version. As a developer, you're not buying the Greenphone to develop for some future iGreenPhone, you're buying it to develop for either your own device (before the hardware is ready) or for other open phones based on Qtopia.
          • That makes a little more sense, though it still seems like a strange idea. I assumed "developer edition" meant it was for software developers, not hardware developers.
    • The Greenphone program was not a failure, it was a success. It did what it set out to do. Trolltech never was going to release this to the consumer mass market. It was developers only.
  • Has anyone gotten to play around with or develop for the Neo 1973?
    I like the idea, but I need to play with a phone before I buy it.

    I wonder how hard it would be to adapt a NEO 1973 to VOIP. It's got USB, but I don't think it could handle a USB NIC.
    • The Neo 1973 GTA02 (the 'mass market' version) has built in b/g Wifi. ;-)
      More info:
      http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973 [openmoko.org]
      • Except that the GTA02 doesn't exist yet. Even the hardware specs aren't set in concrete.
        • Actually it does exist. However it is currently only in prototype form -- a few have been made going to key developers who are putting it through its paces to see if any final hardware bugs are found, before the production run starts.

          If no showstoppers are found in the current prototype run, then production should ramp up and they should be available by December. Of course that could slip again if major problems are found (which is a good thing -- I don't want broken hardware, I'd rather wait an extra mon
          • You probably are correct. Only thing is that the website (last I looked) had some discussion about selecting/changing some particular chips (can't remember what function - possibly the WiFi module).

            I check the site every now and then, as I'd like to purchase a GTA-02. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way of even pre-ordering one. I reckon if they put up a pre-order website which took a small deposits for each pre-order, then they'd get a pretty good picture of the purchasing demographics of the
            • They aren't doing that great of a job keeping the website up to date -- the people running this are new at this type of activity (FIC normally sells to OEMs an resellers, not directly to end users). From following the mail list, I'd say December (or possibly January).
              The main things that have been added:
              Faster CPU
              WIFI
              Different GPS chip
              They also had to take out one of the speakers to fit the WIFI chip (the GTA-01 had stereo speakers).
              My biggest issues with the Neo 1973 are that it has very few external butt

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by physicsnick ( 1031656 )
      If by 'play with it' you mean play with the interface, then you can install OpenMoko on all sorts of phones and PDAs to try it out. Just yesterday I installed it on my Palm T|X. If you don't have a compatible touch-screen PDA, you can always virtualize it on your desktop using something like QEMU:

      http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/OpenMoko_under_QEMU [openmoko.org]
    • It _is_ a USB NIC. That is, when you plug it into your PC via USB, it charges and also comes up as a USB network interface... It's a really neat platform, though not very consumer-ready. The next version has about twice the clock rate and some other nice improvements, and that one could probably be used as a pretty good phone as well as a development platform.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by torpor ( 458 ) *
      I've been playing with the neo1973 for a couple months now and I must say its a wonderful environment. This week I got it set up with bluetooth keyboard support, so now I can code 'on-the-go' .. having onboard python is exceptionally cool for a phone, and its really just a 'normal' linux system for me now, with the advantage that it has a big fat connection to the phone network for connectivity ...

      The OpenMoko development scene has its pros and cons, but for the most part its a very active community and ha
  • Is this thing available? The website says that I (the consumer) should come back in October. I guess I will check again in 5 days
    but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by FireFury03 ( 653718 )
      is this thing available? The website says that I (the consumer) should come back in October. I guess I will check again in 5 days
      but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.

      Current estimates [openmoko.org] suggests the Neo1973 GTA02v4 (the production version) will be shipping at the end of December. But I think all bets are off as to whether the software will be of "production quality" by then (whatever "production quality" means these days

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Rhaban ( 987410 )
        If current estimates suggest it will be shipping in december, I think one can reasonnably suppose the next delay is scheduled for the end of november.

      • But I think all bets are off as to whether the software will be of "production quality" by then (whatever "production quality" means these days - every production phone I've owned in the past 5 years has been an unstable piece of crap anyway).


        Follow the meta bug for getting the Neo release ready here [openmoko.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lixee ( 863589 )
      The Website hasn't been updated to reflect problems the project has encountered. Expect the GTA02 to be available by December.

      http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Talk:Neo1973 [openmoko.org]

  • In the Year 2000 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @11:30PM (#21124451) Homepage
    Assuming we all had Neos with mobile broadband access and TrixBoxes(Asterisk) running at home what would the future look like? Open Source VOIP? Would we have something like email addresses instead of phone numbers? FYI, my biggest IT coup was installing asterisk at work and having it email everybody voice messages as email attachments. Best bang for your buck if you're about to ask for a raise.
    • What would the future look like. I mean come on, can't you guess ?
      #asterix. luser001: it's not working can someone fix it ?
      #asterix. luser002: it's not working can someone fix it ?
      #asterix. luser003: it's not working can someone fix it ?
      #asterix. luser004: it's not working can someone fix it ?
      #asterix. luser005: it's not working can someone fix it ?
      #asterix. luser006: it's not working can someone fix it ?
      #asterix. luser007: it's not working can someone fix it ?
      #asterix. luser008: it's not working can someon
  • Just an observation, Perhaps they're scrapping this idea to focus on the next line of UMPC/phone/you-name-it Computers, that are getting smaller and smaller (PicoITX anyone?) as time goes on. At least this would seem, IMHO, a better direction for such future portable devices than focusing on just the phone portion of development.

  • do it right or don't do it at all (Score:3, Interesting)

    by m2943 ( 1140797 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @07:08AM (#21126963)
    The Neo runs X11 on a 640x480 screen and allows multiple toolkits to run on the same screen. If TrollTech wants to run in that environment, that's good.

    On the other hand, if they are going to port Qt/Embedded and try to take over the phone, like they have done on other phones, they should forget it; those attempts at monopolizing the platform are unwelcome.

    Overall, I'm kind of doubtful that TrollTech has much to contribute anyway. Devices based on Qt/Embedded have had lackluster commercial success, and the platform has serious usability problems in my opinion. Maybe the company should stick to writing toolkits and leave the end user experience to people who have more experience with that.
    • On an embedded device, you aren't going to want more than one toolkit, because there isn't enough space.
      and by the way, it's spelled 'Trolltech'.

      So, you are saying the Motorola's Linux phones are lackluster commercially. Actually, their Linux phones are some of the most popular they sell.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by m2943 ( 1140797 )
        On an embedded device, you aren't going to want more than one toolkit, because there isn't enough space.

        That's a self-serving attempt at justifying monopolization of the market. It's also bullshit. First of all, these devices have plenty of room. In addition, Troll Tech has no problem shipping Java toolkits, they just don't want competing native Linux toolkits. Finally, not all toolkits are as bloated and slow as Qt; some toolkits are smaller than Qt's notepad application.

        So, you are saying the Motorola
  • ripping off potential site names, I DO grouse (privately, usually) that a topic I submit is instead posted by someone else. I am pretty sure I submitted it to slash, but someone else gets credit. I suppose Slash only wants stories by non-controversial or non-looney types.

    My submission/post, at 12:36 on Thursday:

    "
    TrollTech's GreenPhone discontinued...
    [ Edit | Delete | 0 Comments | #185749 ]
    Thursday October 25, @12:36PM
    User Journal
    Nothing emotional or rhetorical in this story submission. But, I did not see th

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