OpenMoko FreeRunner Linux phone to launch on July 4

[Daniel ~]

Written by Daniel
Thursday, 03 July 2008

OpenMoko has announced plans to launch the Linux-based FreeRunner mobile phone on July 4.

By Ryan Paul | Published: July 03, 2008 - 08:57AM CT

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.

[Frontpage....]

[robbie]

Bout time! I saw that at SCALE back when I went a few months ago. I'll post up some pix.

On a side note, DO NOT power the sucker off!!! It does take a while for it too boot.

[dsio]

I just bought me a new phone. 3 SkypePhone (basically a simple 3G phone with heavily integrated Skype support). Only had it for 12 hours but surprisingly pleased with it for a cheap unit. The free skype calls (no data charges no call charges, completely free) are a big plus since everyone I work with use Skype religiously, uni professors use skype alot, and even our very own Larry the Cable Guy in Missouri uses it (good for ~4AM post July 4th party wakeup calls).

Will do me nicely until either a high end Android phone, or another interesting item (No iPhone please) comes along.

[Áedán]

No 3G, no EDGE. Just 2.5G and WiFi. That's a shame for a phone that's launched in 2008.

How's the latency on the 3 network? That's the thing that's put me off using VoIP over UMTS networks thus far, Skype or otherwise.

[dsio]

It hasn't been an issue thus far, skype calls are more or less the same as voice calls, just that here at least you can't always get 3G zone coverage which is required to use Skype.

[funnyperson1]

Originally Posted by Áedán

No 3G, no EDGE. Just 2.5G and WiFi. That's a shame for a phone that's launched in 2008.

How's the latency on the 3 network? That's the thing that's put me off using VoIP over UMTS networks thus far, Skype or otherwise.

Yea the lack of 3G and Edge kills it. Not only does that suck for the end user, but I don't see a healthy development environment for a $400 phone without those capabilities. Why develop software that nobody's ever going to use? Now if the LiMo platform does end up becoming popular this could be a nice development platform. However with Android coming and Symbian being open sourced, simply having an open-source platform is not enough to win over the geeks.

[robbie]

When I was there, google was on the other side of them. I asked about Android and made mention that there is an open source phone that they could use why don't you use them? The guy said..... "I can't comment on that at this time.... basically... we'll see."

So yeah... they are in bed together!!! (still looking for those pix!)

[Áedán]

I don't know what the effect of providing Symbian under the Eclipse License will be. Symbian has it's own interesting quirks, but was designed to run on devices with very limited memory. (For example, running Opera in 16MB of RAM) This isn't something that Linux has ever really had to deal with; RAM on embedded devices tends to be hard limited (no swap file), so the OS and applications have to handle running out of memory gracefully.