The problem with the lofty goals of OpenMako is the fact that most phone companies run and hide from the words 'open' and 'free'. After all, they're a business and these are the last things on their minds. Proprietary, closed source, all of these help them lock in customers and creates a brand awareness that only serves to help them find and retain customers, whereas with an open platform, everything is open and people can choose without fear of losing compatibility. But nonetheless, the next hardware capable of running OpenMako, codenamed the GTA02, is already scheduled to ship next month. A quote from the website:
Intended use and users
The Neo FreeRunner is a GNU/Linux based touch screen smart phone aimed at general consumer use as well as GNU/Linux desktop users and GNU/Linux software developers.
General phone users will eventually appreciate the high spec and performance of the phone and the wide range of free and custom software packages that you are free to install to make the maximum use of the hardware for your particular needs. It will not be suitable for end users at release. Note that software tweaks and improvements will continue after launch as both the Openmoko team developers and the wider linux community work together.
GNU/Linux users and software developers will appreciate the total freedom they have to use and design software for the FreeRunner
The specs share some features with the previous Neo1973 such as:
- A very high resolution touch screen (1.7" x 2.27" - 43mm x 58mm) 480x640 pixels
- 128MB SDRAM memory to allow operation of many applications at once
- Internal GPS module for map and tracking programs
- Bluetooth for local data exchange
- Physical appearance will be the same as the Neo1973. See openmoko.com for more.
Additional features:
- 802.11 b/g WiFi for fast web browsing and data transfer
- A faster 400Mhz processor (up from 266MHz)
- A hardware Graphics Accelerator chip allowing the acceleration of a limited set of operations.
- Unfortunately, this is on a shared slow (7M/s) bus with the SD card.
- 2 3D accelerometers so that the phone can know its orientation for example switching to landscape mode automatically
- 2 LEDs illuminating the two buttons on the rim of the case (one bicolor [blue|orange] behind the power button, 1 unicolor [red] behind the aux button)
- Tri-band GSM and GPRS for North America (850/1800/1900 Mhz) and the rest of the world (900/1800/1900 Mhz)
- USB Host function with 500mA power allowing you to power USB devices for short periods (will drain the FreeRunner battery faster)
