news.com.com — Trolltech announced the Greenphone, which is thought to be the first fully reprogrammable Linux phone. CEO Haavard Nord says, "It's kind of mind-boggling for developers, everybody usually wants to protect the software in their phone, but we want to let the developers experiment and innovate."
Sep 8, 2006 View in Crawl 4
motangSep 9, 2006
I think it looks pretty cool, but it is a bit expensive though! Well just have to wait and let the price come down. Hopefully it will catch on, and more manufacturers would adopt this type of cell phone.
llornkcorSep 9, 2006
you could. But then you would loose GSM capabilities, and heaps of other functionality. Not to mention using a inferior toolkit to develop with.
rivviepopSep 9, 2006
@kindermachtI guess it depends what you consider copious. A Moto V360 is running about $100 (give or take) on eBay that does everything we're talking about except for the vcards, unlocked and unbranded - it's a solid, great phone (I have one). I personally use an E50 (awesome, awesome phone) right now that is about $300 to the door on eBay. Compare these to the non-subsudized price of any phone from a carrier (i.e. you walk into the store and buy it, no contract extensions or upgrade) and you'll find they charge you on average $150 to $250 for any given handset with the features crippled -- any Samsung is a good example of a phone that's always destroyed by carrier branding/limitations.So you know, your mileage may vary. I consider the $350 to the door (paid CA tax, sigh) I spent on my E50 to be an acceptable dollar figure for a phone that has the breadth of features it contains, considering it's an S60 device as well. The GreenPhone has about the same set of features, minus the 850MHz, so what would you expect to pay for it as a released product some day down the road?
radu79Sep 9, 2006
That's true to some extent, but given the hardware limitations it's kind of hard to run, say, KDE or Blender on it.Yes, one program for one Linux phone will work on Linux phone, but so will one written for SmartPhones, because SmartPhone is a standard (a subsection of WinCE).
83457Sep 10, 2006
twtmc, that was solved....oh....about 20 years ago (keylock)
zannethSep 10, 2006
I thought the phone looked really cool. Green is a neat color.
strdSep 10, 2006
Actually N70 one of the last opened Symbian phones. N70 have Symbian 8.0a, which is the last open version of Symbian OS. Starting form Symbian 9.1 Symbian introduced mandatory Symbian Signed. Only application signed by symbian appointed test-houses allowed to be installed. There is an option for "self-signed" application, but it's limited and require developer to jump through the loops. Symbian 9.1 effectivly killed symbian freeware and open source community
elroySep 10, 2006
the extent to which your phone is crippled depends on your provider. the GSM providers (cingular & t-mobile) let you use whatever you please. i'm using the panasonic x800, an asia-only nokia series-60 clone. 100% isync compatibilty over bluetooth, free ringers (it uses wav files), and a great form factor. camera blows but it's good enough for drunken photos (does anyone use their camera phone for anything else?)
benplautSep 10, 2006
WiFi sucks battery, and would cell providors really support a phone that lets people have free (3rd party) VoIP half the time?
hiroSep 10, 2006
I'm a long term Smartphone user but even I'd buy one of those, as long as it was available in other colours, had WiFi, a 2MP camera, Outlook synchronisation and the interface was brought up to the standard of WM5. After that, the expansion capabilities are endless
dirtylobsterSep 10, 2006
I've been waiting for this since the first cell phones came out! Great news!! DUGG!!
ljuvefreyaSep 10, 2006
Its common in europe that you get your SIM card from one provider and buy a stock phone in a shop. Some providers offer packages or customized phone, but at least here you buy your phone like you buy other electronic articles. It also means that there's less emphasis on provider when you use mobile services, but on the phone manufacturer/model, and since most phones run Java and can show pictures and play most music formats and show Real, h264 or 3GP movies and streams, its usually not a problem.
tangentialSep 14, 2006
Actually, one of us trolls is working on doom over bluetooth :D Clustering... of a sort ;)