very interesting. Keep us posted on your progress.
thanks
Ann Richmond
Michael Sokolov wrote:
> Hello fellow LUGers,
>
> This is a follow-up to the conversation I've had with David, Trevor and
> Jeff at the last RCLUG meeting. At that meeting I had expressed an
> interest in getting a totally open source phone that runs bare Linux,
> not Android, and David said that he was interested in that too. Well,
> I've done some research on this topic, and I've got some findings which
> might be of interest to others.
>
> First, some background info. The first noteworthy point is that I am
> looking for a *cellphone*, not a PDA, not a mobile Web terminal and not
> a WiFi VoIP thingie. I need a phone that does two things first and
> foremost:
>
> * Make and receive plain old-fashioned voice calls on a cell network;
> * Send and receive SMS aka text messages on the phone's cell number.
>
> In other words, a plain old-fashioned cellphone, what you call a dumb
> phone. But I want it to be open source so that I can make it do its
> "dumb phone" function in my own unique Michael-Sokolovian manner.
>
> There are plenty of "smartphones" out there which claim to be open
> source, but no open source dumb phones that I knew of (well, read on).
> Hence my thought of taking an open source "smartphone", ripping out all
> the useless battery-eating "smart" features and reducing it to an open
> source dumb phone.
>
> So I had been looking into the claims of open-source-ness on the part of
> various generally available "smartphones", reading people's stories
> about replacing their phone's official OS (be it Android or Weendoze
> Mobile or whatever) with something more hacky and unofficial, more along
> the lines of what I want, and evaluating whether or not that approach
> would be likely to work for me.
>
> The central issue for me is that the only part of the phone I really
> care about is the cell radio interface, the one that makes and receives
> plain old-fashioned voice calls, not VoIP, not WiFi, none of that other
> cheesy stuff. And that is of course the most closed and proprietary
> part of any phone...
>
> Enter the Openmoko project: www.openmoko.com and www.openmoko.org. What
> these guys have made is a real phone (a real physical product) which
> they categorize as a "smartphone" (although its hardware capabilities
> lag behind a bit compared to what most of you would probably call a
> smartphone) and which I see as being considerably more open-source than
> anything that's available in the realm of "mainstream" phones:
>
> * Rather than impose one standard distro like Android and say "you are
> on your own if you want something else", they actively encourage the
> buyers of their phone hardware to experiment with different distros
> or create their own.
>
> * The bootloader on the phone (U-Boot) is specifically designed to allow
> easy loading of arbitrary kernel and root file system builds in a
> fully blessed manner: you are NOT a "bad boy" if you do this. They've
> even added extra hardware to the phone just to facilitate easy
> "unbricking" if you've "bricked" your phone by replacing its U-Boot
> image with something that doesn't work.
>
> * They have published almost complete hardware schematics for the phone.
> Unfortunately these schematics are redacted in that the GSM (cell
> radio interface) block is shown as a black box, but even with this
> redaction that is still a heck of a lot more than what's available for
> any of the mainstream phones. Samsung, Nokia etc can claim all they
> want that they make "open source" Android or other "Linux-based"
> phones, but I've never seen even partial hardware schematics for any
> of those phones. (I would love to be proven wrong on this though!)
>
> Now on to the thorny part: the cell radio interface, the most secret and
> proprietary part of any phone - how have the Openmoko folks handled this
> issue? It looks like the makers of the GSM chipset they've used (TI
> Calypso) have allowed the Openmoko folks to use their chipset and
> provided the necessary documentation only on the strict condition that
> it does NOT become part of the open source work, i.e., stays under NDA.
> Unfortunately those folks seem to be unlike me in that they aren't
> willing to f**k and break the NDA immediately upon receiving possession
> of the ware, so they (the Openmoko.com company) have implemented a
> compromise solution instead.
>
> The compromise solution consists of sequestering the non-free part (the
> GSM cell interface block) behind a well-defined interface. Specifically,
> the interface between the Calypso GSM chipset and the rest of the phone
> (the open source part) is a serial port that carries data traffic (SMS
> and GPRS) and control commands/status in a standardized format defined
> by GSM docs 07.05 and 07.07 (which are public documents), plus a voice
> codec interface.
>
> That brings us to the actual cell capabilities of this phone. First of
> all, it's GSM, not CDMA: that means that users in the USA-occupied
> territories will need a SIM card from T-Mobile or maybe AT&T, but not
> Verizon or Sprint. That's no problem for me personally because I like
> T-Mobile. However, those who like fancy data services will be
> disappointed to learn that the Calypso chipset is *just* plain GSM, no
> UMTS/3G, and not even EDGE. In other words, just classic cellular voice
> calls (9600 bps codec), SMS (text messages) and GPRS.
>
> I'm hoping that T-Mobile allows basic IP access over GPRS. Sure, it
> would be slow as molasses (slower than land line dial-up), but remember,
> I'm looking for a *phone*, not a Web surfing device. The only reason I
> want any IP-over-cellular capabilities in my phone at all is so that my
> phone can pull the contact list from my own UNIX server, as well as send
> archival copies of all sent and received SMS messages back to the same
> server. This is such a miniscule amount of data (well below one KiB)
> that it should be OK even over something as slow as GPRS.
>
> The Openmoko phone hardware (Neo FreeRunner) exists in two different
> versions: one with 850/1800/1900 MHz GSM bands ("USA" version) and the
> other with 900/1800/1900 MHz bands ("European" version). Unfortunately
> the 850/1800/1900 MHz version appears to be unobtainium: all distributors
> who actually carry orderable Neo phone hardware are located in Europe,
> and they only have the 900/1800/1900 MHz version.
>
> At first that was rather disappointing, but then I remembered my old
> Motorola V66 phone. My significant other and I have just switched from
> Verizon to T-Mobile a few days ago; she had been with Verizon for ages
> but I used to have a T-Mobile phone before switching to Verizon to be on
> the same plan with my S.O. My old T-Mobile phone was a Motorola V66, a
> classic "dumb" phone. Despite being dumb and having no EDGE or 3G
> capabilities, it had a basic "mobile web" browser feature, which is what
> gives me hope that I should be able to get onto an IP network over GPRS
> with T-Mobile.
>
> And guess what, according to the available documentation V66's GSM bands
> are 900/1800/1900 MHz, just like the "European" version of the Openmoko
> phone. Unfortunately I don't have a way to test the V66 right now even
> though I'm back on T-Mobile and have a SIM card: I still have the V66,
> but it's dead (won't turn on and won't take charge). I've ordered
> another hopefully-good V66 from Ebay, when it arrives I'll give it a
> spin. But I had been using that V66 up until some time around May 2009,
> i.e., only 2 y ago, I frequented the same geographic areas which I
> frequent now, and I never had any problems with coverage: it must have
> been working fine on the 1900 MHz band. Let's just hope that T-Mobile
> hasn't dismantled that 1900 MHz GSM coverage in the course of last 2 y.
>
> Assuming that 1900 MHz GSM coverage is still available in the areas I
> care about, it seems that this Neo FreeRunner from Openmoko would be my
> ideal phone. It's basically like that good old Motorola V66 with an
> added Linux front-end. That Calypso GSM chipset they are using for the
> cell bank-end is actually capable of fully controlling a simple "dumb"
> phone all on its own, and it was the Openmoko folks who have configured
> it to serve as a back-end to something else (Linux in their case) rather
> than stand-alone. I don't know what chipset is inside the V66, but even
> if it isn't the same Calypso, it must be something very similar in terms
> of capabilities, which is why I can view Openmoko's solution of Calypso
> back-end + Linux front-end as being effectively equivalent to putting a
> Linux front-end on the V66 which I'm very familiar and comfortable with.
> I'll be writing my own software stack for the Linux part of it.
>
> Oh, and for those of you who like this new-fangled 3G/4G stuff, they are
> working on a new similarly open phone with an OMAP processor and a UMTS
> back-end - but that's still under development.
>
> MS
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>
--
Ann Richmond
----------------
Randr Inc
951-369-3427
951-787-8683 Fax
www.randrinc.com
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