Thursday 12 July 2007

Neophone: New Open Source Cell Phone

Now there's an open source cell phone! OpenMoko is the software project (see their wiki page first; their home page is restricted); the hardware is custom-made by FIC. The phone runs Linux, has GSM, GPS, and a UI. It will be shipping soon to developers and aims to be on sale in a retail products in October of this year. US$350 gets you an unlocked GSM phone.

The OpenMoko FIC Neo1973 is the world’s first Linux-based open source mobile phone, it’s open source so it’s easily upgradable with new firmware.

The Neo1973 features a 2.8-inch (480×640) touchscreen display, Samsung s3c2410 SoC, a Global Locate AGPS chip, 128MB SDRAM, 64MB NAND Flash memory, and a microSD card slot.

Comparison between iPhone and the Neophone: The Neo slightly longer and wider but is 7mm thicker, weight wise 135g iPhone but 184g Neo. Wireless phone carrier locked at Apple but not on Neophone and although there is no camera in the Neo, iphone uses a non replaceable battery but neo uses replaceable batteries. More detailed comparison here.

The iPhone launched june 28 Neophone launches October 2007
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