04 July 2008

OpenMoko To Release an Open Source
Linux Based Smartphone Today!?!

OpenMoko has announced plans to launch the Linux-based FreeRunner mobile phone on July 4. The highly-anticipated open source handset will be distributed through OpenMoko's web-based store and will begin shipping on July 7.

The FreeRunner will also be available from several vendors in Europe and India.

OpenMoko has put a huge effort positioning itself as the open source leader and to bring the first truly "free" Smartphone and release it before Google or Nokia!

Google has brought together more than 30 cellular and wireless industry partners in the Open Handset Alliance to design and build open mobile devices based on the open source Google Android platform which is delayed once again?

Needless to mention Nokia's decision to purchase the rest of Symbian, make it open source and finally offer it for free. It is complex process and Nokia expecting the first Symbian Foundation phone for about two years which is to late in my personal opinion. Especially considering that first OpenMoko's handset is available right now and Google is planning to release the first Android based phone before the end of this year!?

Anyway, the FreeRunner, which is designed from the ground up as a hackable and open device, was first unveiled in January at CES. It is the successor of the Neo1973, OpenMoko's first handset. Unlike the Neo, which was primarily intended for an audience of developers and hardcore enthusiasts, the FreeRunner is aimed at the broader consumer market.

In order to ensure that it would be able to provide basic phone functionality at launch, the developers backpedaled on their GTK+ strategy and adopted some Enlightenment E17 technologies and parts of Trolltech's Qtopia platform.

The result is a more complete and responsive environment that mostly works in its current state. In the future, they will likely be leveraging the lightweight E17 components more pervasively throughout the environment. In addition to enabling users to build applications with an impressive variety of toolkits and programming languages, the underlying platform itself can be modified, improved, or even replaced with something completely different.

The FreeRunner, which is priced at $399, will be available with either 850MHz or 900MHz tri-band GSM support. The device offers a 400Mhz processor, 2.8 inch VGA touchscreen with a resolution of 640x480. It also includes WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, two accelerometers, 128MB of SDRAM, and 256MB of storage.

Although the versatility of the device makes the FreeRunner an exciting product for programmers, the lack of 3G support will most likely be a deal-breaker for many mobile phone users. I suspect that, instead of being adopted as a personal smartphone, the FreeRunner will primarily be used as a development tool for prototyping Linux-based mobile phone software platforms.

The FreeRunner will offer application developers some really intriguing possibilities. I'm personally looking forward to porting some of the tools and utilities I've made for my Linux desktop computer with Python and GTK+. There is also a lot of room for innovative platform development. For instance, KDE developers are already working on making porting KDE 4 run on the device.