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User-modifiable Linux phone ships
linuxdevices.com — Trolltech is shipping the Greephone, its open, user-modifiable Linux mobile phone aimed at helping developers write applications for or modify components in its Qtopia Phone Edition (QPE) software stack. Additionally, the company has quietly released a GPL-licensed "community" version of QPE.
deviceguru- 431 diggs
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- cyberchucktx, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Wow. This looks like FUN! Now if there's only a way to connect a reasonably-priced 800x600 micro-display ...
- bsolidgold, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3Looks great... if you want to fork out the $bling$ for it...
- craftyguy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4The design is great, and puke-green color is not.
- kidtux, on 10/12/2007, -7/+7I was just about to click on the digg button untili read the price of $700. With a price tag like that I don't see this taking off.
- oGMo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Eh maybe not but this is basically an unlocked "developer phone" anyway. Hardware devkits usually cost, and how many phones do you see that run linux, QPE, and you can basically hack down to the hardware? Not many. And this one even looks kinda cool.
However, I'd like to see actual spec sheets for the hardware. It looks cool, but what does it have under the hood? - Sutoka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9That $700 is for the devkit, which isn't that bad.
- seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@oGMo:
The older linuxdevices article has more info: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8030785497.html
As an aside, I would love to get one of these. Unfortunately, I have neither $700 or the programming skills to get the full use out of it.
I think Trolltech is making a good move here by selling an actual device that folks can hack on. I'd love to see some sort of apt repository to get all the cool OSS software that can be ported to this platform and made useful. - wbagdon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2once a wireless carrier offers this there will be mad rebates just like every other phone. Chill out!
- oGMo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Eh maybe not but this is basically an unlocked "developer phone" anyway. Hardware devkits usually cost, and how many phones do you see that run linux, QPE, and you can basically hack down to the hardware? Not many. And this one even looks kinda cool.
- Langford, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Very cool, but $700? Ouch!
I will just have to keep an eye on it until the price comes down.- PowerCow, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2how about with a 5 year contract?
lol damn need to get the carriers on this thing or it will never come down in price.
Demand the option to but this phone from your carrier, tell them you will switch to the first carrier that gets it.
- PowerCow, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2how about with a 5 year contract?
- drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Ya its not as if the technology in it is better then phones under $200 these days. The price however is $700. So maybe more details on the dev kit would be better marketting cause right now they are focusing on the phone itself and its features which shouldn't cost that much.
- gharding, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3The software might be free, but christ, the phone sure isn't. Cue Microsoft's TCO report.
- hchaudh1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Its a phone with the devkit. If carriers take it up, it will get cheaper. "Cue" the Motorola Razr. Its free witha contract, but without, its $375. That's a bit much for a really crappy (slow) phone.
- 7thCommander, on 10/12/2007, -7/+6It's a nice idea but $700 is totally stupid and cannot be justified. There's much better causes one could spend that money on. A phone is for making calls and texting, for other features it's better to get a PDA/laptop/media player.
After getting sick and tired of phones that kept adding more and more features I didn't want that that drained the battery I decided to get a £20 Nokia 1110 from eBay and haven't looked back since. It needs charging once every two weeks instead of every 2-3 days and has much quicker software than any colour screen phone.
Until battery technology improves there's little point in trying to do anything fancy with mobiles.- jnderose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Dear god this is so worth it.
$700 for an open mobile development platform? I'd pay it in a heartbeat.
It's not targetted at end users for making calls and texting, it is targetted at developers.
Different market. Carriers subsidize the cost of end user phones, if you can make a case to a project manager, odds are your company will subsidize this one.
The people that need this phone probably will have some one else laying out the $700 and the idea is to use it to fast track software development. RTFA! This phone is a tool for developers. There is another linuxdevices article where the CTO of trolltech emphasizes the toolkit more.
The dev kit is free if you use open source licenses, and the phone is only being sold as part of a devkit. Sign me up! - bits&bytes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4if you would take a minute and read the article you will find that this phone is not aimed at you(the average user). And another thing- "Trolltech had not finalized pricing as of publication time."
- dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"After getting sick and tired of phones that kept adding more and more features I didn't want that that drained the battery" thats the reason I still have and use daily my Nokia 3310
The linux phone is a nice idea, but it HAS to cost FAR less than you could buy a laptop or PDA for.. Having SSH(d) on a phone could have it's uses, and if it had wireless, being able to tell theres an open WAP nearby before diging out a laptop would be usefull.. I can also think of.. less legal uses if the battery is decent enough, leave it connected to a company network, and with some kind of connect-back shell, it would make a neat phsyical trojan (Much like the "Creeper Box" in one of the chapters of "Stealing The Network : How to Own a Continent" book, but with everything on the mobile phone)
- Ben
- jnderose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Dear god this is so worth it.
- BionicBeefpile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5As commenters in previous threads about this phone have said, it's a dev kit.
FTA: However, availability is limited to licensees of QPE 4 SDK (software development kit).
$700 for a dev kit isn't all that expensive.
I'm sure they aren't expecting to succeed commercially with a $700 phone, and that the price will come down when it is available for the public.- bits&bytes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3thank you for being rational
- ki1022, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0I thoguht linux was supposed to be free. How come you have to pay so much money for licenses to modify your own phone?
- jnderose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you would prefer it to be free, modify it using the free as in beer and free as in freedom open source toolchain.
Then you are only paying the unsubsidized cost for hardware. Linux is free, innovative hardware costs money.
If you would prefer to develop commercial software, pay for a commercial SDK.
Their model is very fair and very flexible, which you would notice after thoroughly reading the article and perhaps following a link or two. - silverstrike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4lets try a simple analogy:
If someone is giving away cars, does that imply people who recieve a free car never have to buy gas again? - gmillerd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Its not to modifiy your own fone, its to develop a phone. Its a develop kit for making your own phone product. But you knew that already you troll *****.
- seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To clarify jnderose point:
Trolltech has a dual-licensing model for their QT libs. Generally, if you produce Open Source software, you can use their libs at no charge. If you produce proprietary software, you are required to buy a developers license. I think that's what jnderose was getting at when he said "flexible". I *think* that the same goes for Qtopia, but I'm not too sure on that one, and am currently too lazy to go searching on their site.
- jnderose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you would prefer it to be free, modify it using the free as in beer and free as in freedom open source toolchain.
- rickbauls, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://rickbauls.googlepages.com/linuxphone.jpg
- seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hopefully that isn't a mockup. When I first heard about this phone, ssh was the first thing that came to mind.
- rickbauls, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually, to criticize my own work here....
[nerdy] I took a screen shot of Gnome terminal, which uses gtk, to make the fake image and the os on the phone uses QT.[/nerdy]
The image is just meant to be a joke. The idea of having to set up the phone through pppconfig is just ridiculous. I really would like ssh on the phone though. - popfrogs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@rickbauls:
Little known fact: the sidekick2 and sidekick3 both have a Terminal app available for download. It's a nice little ssh client that works as expected. A little on the slow side, but usable in a pinch. - seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0hehe, the pppconfig thing went right over my head. I was thinking it was for bluetooth DUN or something similar.
Either way, I'm sure that ssh will be among the first tools ported to that phone. Hopefully, the keyboard doesn't suck too bad.
- audiofish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Do we get airsnort for GSM / GPRS / 3G then? It'd take ages to type in a command on a phone keyboard!
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Oh for gawdssake. This was on the front page four days ago with 1134 diggs:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/First_fully_programmable_Linux_phone_w_PICTURES- argotechnica, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Just shows how hot this topic is?
- argotechnica, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Awesome, but... I'd spend $700 a little differently.
$250 for a used Motorola A780. The still-young OpenEZX project (http://openezx.org/) is developing FOSS for Motorola's Linux phones, for although it's focused on firmware, "userspace may follow later on." (For a video about the project, see: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/events/768.en.html)
$350 importing an ImCoSys smartphone (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4475809720.html). I don't know anything about developing for it, but the ImCoSys can otherwise explain itself. GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Quadband GSM, SD reader, Linux 2.4.20...
With the remaining $100 I would bid on this bootleg Star Wars Stormtrooper: http://cgi.ebay.com/Star-Wars-Bootleg-Stormtrooper_W0QQitemZ290028397837QQihZ019QQcategoryZ2475QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem - smellinator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can't believe there's no Z on the phone! How can I text a Z to someone?
- Xhargh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I was on a Qt Quickstart last week and got the possibility to play with the Greenphone for a couple of minutes. My colleagues said my eyes were sparkling when I did - it must have been love ;-)
- xtalman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Does this phone have the 850 mHz band? Otherwise it can't use a lot of the cell phone coverage in the US.
- nukem996, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0wow I really hope Verizon gets that phone. Hell id even switch phone companies to get it.
- Morbuto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0A number of people said they'd like a phone with ssh. No need getting an expensive phone like this for that.
ssh can be had on just about any Java-enabled phone: http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/ Works pretty well too...
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