Re: OT: Nokia expects open source developers to accept things like DRM, commercial IP rights, and SIM locks.

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 14 June 2008 10:50:12 Federico Lorenzi wrote:
> This has been beaten to death in previous threats. You are not getting
> the phone for free, you are merely paying for it in your contract.

With most carriers I know, you actually do get it for free in a sense because 
you would pay as much for the contract without the phone (I generally take 
whatever phone they offer and sell it). So in a way, the phone is free to me 
unless I would have otherwise gone for another contract, of course.


It is definitely true for subsidized SIM locked PrePay phones where you would 
pay the same rates if you brought your own phone. The operator would be 
pretty dumb to subsidize a phone, not get any contract income and let you use 
it on whatever network you please. 


> South Africa has a nice system here. Sure you can get a phone on
> contract, for free, but that phone is not restricted in anyway. 
> If you want to use it on a competitors network, fine, as long as you keep
> paying your contract or pay cancellation fees, they don't care.


Same in most European countries. The locked phone with contract is mostly an 
US phenomenon. 



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Re: OT: Nokia expects open source developers to accept things like DRM, commercial IP rights, and SIM locks.

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 14 June 2008 03:24:25 Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen wrote:
>   A lot of people look for the worst in others, and i try to generally play
> the other side. Look in the snip i did above, and try to read what else the
> guy is saying: He doesn't like DRM in principle, but realise that the
> carriers like it enough that if Nokia's handsets did not support it, they
> wouldn't do any business (they make a LOT of money through subsidised
> handsets). This is something people might have understood here as well, if
> they had attended Knut's talk at FOSDEM this year, where he tackled the
> subject as well. It was a rather enlightening talk for a large number of
> the attendees as i remember it.

One of the statements is:
"We want to educate open-source developers. There are certain business rules 
[developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], 
SIM locks and subsidised business models.”"

Now I dislike DRM as much as the next guy, but if it's only for content sold 
by the network operator, I could not care less. Who wants to buy 3EUR 
ringtones, anyway? IPR obviously need to be respected, otherwise the GPL 
itself becomes void, too. 

As for SIM locks and subsidised business models, it seems like a valid trade 
off to me. Get a phone much cheaper than it would cost on its own but only 
use it on our network. As long as there are unlocked version of the same 
phones available, I guess I just don't see the issue. Denying the possibility 
of such arrangements actually impairs the freedom of the end-user as well. 
Namely the freedom to buy a somewhat restricted product at a much lower 
price. 



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Re: resolution preferences??

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 10 June 2008 02:45:20 Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> lots of devices out there with the same specs - or much better. 800x480
> @3.2" or even 2.8" are out there and selling. on shelves - from major
> manufacturers.

Show me one with GSM and Linux.



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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 09 June 2008 02:56:22 Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> wouldn't be usable or possible without vga. that is what i asked. i want a
> use case for vga. not just a "it looks a bit nicer".

Try browsing the web in a QVGA window sometimes, IMHO it's an exercise in 
futility no matter if you try to relayout the site a la Opera or zoom like in 
the S60 browser. 

VGA is not be ideal either, but approaching useable on many sites as you at 
least stand a decent chance of seeing the entire width of the main content 
pane at once.



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Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 08 June 2008 14:23:29 Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> 500k+ are the order sizes. often in multi-millions. that is what they
> "start" dealing with. it's like going to cost-co who sell beer by the case
> and going "but we only want 1 bottle!" (sorry - buy the case, or go
> somewhere else). :)

So there are half a million Pandora consoles in the making right now?



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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 07 June 2008 00:19:27 Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> > I.e. the problem should be solved by a faster processor with better
> > GPU rather
> > than challenging and and trying to redue user's expectations. Can you
> > build
> > container trucks smaller because then they need much less parking space?
>
> but when it has been determined that your cpu is not changing - and there
> are no other gpu options to improve things... you only can change
> resolution or speed. which is more important?
>

Resolution is far more important. And graphics performance will hardly be 
worse than on GTA02, anyhow.

If you go QVGA, you're competing squarely against Moto MING and the like. At 
that point only the most hardcore "gimme OPEN"  crowd (which I estimate to be 
pretty small) will care about GTA03.







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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 06 June 2008 13:15:10 Tom Cooksey wrote:
> binary blob driver. Who knows, maybe samsung will even let you write an
> open source driver? (Don't think the s3c6410's 3D core is a PowerVR, seems
> to be something different?)

I doubt it; IIRC they just removed a lot of specs from their site  a few 
months ago. So they are going towards more CLOSED if anything.

Agreed on the CPU being too slow. I would like to see something a lot closer 
to what Pandora is doing (except for the stupid form factor) for GTA04, IOW 
WVGA driven by a OMAP34XX or possibly MSM7201A.


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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 06 June 2008 13:11:32 Justyn Butler wrote:

> To touch on Gabriel's comment, WVGA would be the same resolution as
> the Nokia N800 series but in a more compact screen.
> With that resolution perhaps the GTA03 would start tapping into other
> unexpected markets - for example some of the people who like the
> internet tablets and also eee-PC type devices. It would contribute to
> an incredible portable web-browsing experience (which is what those
> other devices are designed for, and why they sell) but in the GTA03 it
> would be built into your phone (which makes it the most portable of
> all).
>
Amen to that. And while we're at it, lets not forget QWERTY :P



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Re: GTA03 case should incorporate stylus holder

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 05 June 2008 16:38:46 Ron K. Jeffries wrote:
> Can the revised case for GTA03 *please* be designed
> to hold a stylus?

+1

Just having one does not mean OM has to use it. Frankly, I'm not really 
convinced by the whole finger keyboard stuff.


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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 06 June 2008 09:09:55 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> IMHO, reducing any Openmoko device to QVGA will be the end of the
> Openmoko project. And I have business reasons to wish that OM
> survives...

Agreed. The display is the ONLY thing in GTA02 hardware that is remotely 
current (In fairness, so is the AR6K but the feature it offers is just basic 
these days, too).

Even HTC's new CONSUMER phone (Touch Diamond) is VGA!



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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 05 June 2008 14:32:14 rakshat hooja wrote:

> The N95 is also good when you look at it on its own and one has no problems
> reading anything but when kept next to the Neo 1973 and Sharp 903 one can
> tell the display is not in the same league. (the Sharp is also visible in
> the sun though I dont think its trans-reflective)

My vote is squarely with VGA preferably WVGA, the web is just barely useable 
on VGA and not much use at all on QVGA.



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Swiss Group-Order

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

Some time back (March or so) I had offered to organize a Freerunner group 
order for Switzerland. At the time, most people were expecting a late 
April/early May shipping date which would have fit my schedule pretty well. 

But as we all know, that date slipped; right now it looks like late June could 
be met.

Unfortunately, I will be abroad for a month starting late June so obviously I 
will not be able to relay any packages in that timeframe. I'm deeply sorry.


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Re: 2.5mm or 3.5mm

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 30 May 2008 08:18:16 Joerg Reisenweber wrote:
> Hi community!
> A short poll: on a future GTA0x (>2), would you prefer to have
> A) "standard" 2.5mm headset (mic+phones) connector, where you have to buy a
> cheap adapter if you want to use your "old" headphones, (the way like it's
> for GTA01/02)
> or
> B) classic 3.5mm headphones "Walkman(R)" connector, where you have to DIY
> an adapter for any standard cellphone headset? (or does anybody know of
> 3.5mm headSET standards or adapters?)
>
3.5mm


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Re: Freerunner and external Display

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 06 May 2008 22:00:50 Flemming Richter Mikkelsen wrote:
> (My second idea is to simply create a BT2VGA adapter. I will try this
> first. It will only be usable for still images, but it would be just for
> fun. But first I need some time...)

There are ready made WLAN to VGA adapters for presentations.

http://www.lindy.co.uk/80211g-wireless-vga-projector-server/32499.html

is the first I found but I'm sure there are cheaper ones, also.


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Re: Stylus Recommendation

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 05 May 2008 15:37:17 David Samblas Martinez wrote:
> Hey I like it too!!
> It can act as dirty protection for the usb connector.

Or it could yank it right out of the case if you're not careful...


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Re: GTA04::HW::input::joystick - MPU/MCU saves power and provides extra I/O

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 04 May 2008 11:21:18 Flemming Richter Mikkelsen wrote:

> If it will not be added, will there be enough free and available
> GPIO pins so that we may add it our self?
>
I think there should be an open way to add hardware extensions anyhow. Maybe 
GPIO, maybe USB,  maybe full size SD or even CF slot (one can dream :). In 
any case, accessible and preferably with some way to attach "modules" to 
it... Or something like the iPaq extension sleds of old. An open phone makes 
a lot more sense when you can add to the hardware, as well.

In case of the joypad, maybe some sort of cover that can interact with the 
phone would be useful (others would add a QWERTY cover maybe, I know I'd 
think about it..?). 



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Re: 10 PACK UPDATE!!!

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 26 April 2008 01:12:52 David Samblas Martinez wrote:
> We maybe must stop this or freerunner will be the first mobile phone with a
> PARENTAL ADVISORY tag in its case. :) 

That would make it sell like hot cakes, I'm sure.


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Re: Switzerland - group order

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 25 April 2008 09:52:24 Andre Timmermann wrote:
> > Right now I'm not sure about the current status, prices, delays and
> > payement arrangements. Would be nice to get more info from the one who
> > will pass the order ;)
> Good point. Who will place the order?

If payments can be settled in advance (I don't want to get stuck with 4000USD 
worth of Neos :P), I would volunteer to order an initial 10pack.





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Re: Openmoko strives for openness (smedia glamo)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 02 April 2008 11:07:47 Andy Green wrote:
> There's a 6) I thought about, AFAIK it could theoretically anyway be
> possible we can write detailed header files for an open driver which
> contain register and bitfield enums and comments for the 3D unit.  If we
> did write our own we would certainly have to do this anyway and
> presumably it is okay by whatever agreement exists (but surprises are
> the norm here).

How about the 7) developer to become a new OM "employee" and thus gets access 
(unpaid intern or something like that, if nothing else) to the OM license?


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Re: Wrist Computing

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 30 March 2008 04:56:53 Lally Singh wrote:
> Thinking of something like:
> http://www.eurotech.com/EN/products.aspx?pg=Zypad%20WL%201000&pp=Wearable%2
>0Computers&pc=411&pid=260
>
> I'd love a little wrist mount for an openmoko phone.  It'd be a
> wonderful place to mount it in GPS mode when on a motorcycle.
>
I don't know about you, but I would want the GPS to live in the middle in 
front of me, not on my wrist which is pretty much out of my normal field of 
view on a motorbike...


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Re: Price of the Freerunner published?

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 21 March 2008 11:01:37 Andy Powell wrote:

> Actually the best way to handle that is to buy currency at a fixed,
> guaranteed price. ukforex (no affiliaton) do this sort of thing. I don;t
> understand why more people don't do it. If you're importing stuff on a
> regular basis it just makes sense..

That just moves to problem to the question of "when should I enter the 
forward". 



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Re: Future hardware options

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 20 March 2008 23:13:59 Andy Green wrote:
> Agreed here... the main constraint will be that if we want the display
> active, we need to have the main CPU up to generate the video.  But I am
> hoping we will be able to pretty strongly in most cases have the CPU
> power acting in sync to the LCM backlight power, in terms the CPU goes
> into its lowest power standby mode as soon as the display is not lit, a
> tap on the touchscreen or whatever else you would use to get the display
> lit again also wakes the CPU.


Well with a transflective display you could do some data display even without 
powering the backlight. Many phones do this to display time etc, that would 
be very useful to have in my view.


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Re: FreeRunner delayed a further 6 months?!?!??

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 16 March 2008 19:57:50 Michael Shiloh wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm trying to get some sort of a concrete update from the team in
> Taiwan. I'll let you know as soon as I do.
>

Maybe while you're at it, some information about the future direction of the 
interface stack would be nice. I'm putting together bits and pieces and I 
think I fathom what is planned but some statement would be nice.

Thanks,
Gabriel



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Re: MiniOne

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 06 March 2008 09:57:22 Mario Wewer wrote:
> Hello community,
>
> does anyone of you already have a "Meizu MiniOne" Phone?

You mean it's *not* vapor ware but actually for sale?


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Re: Community update: Regarding Neo FreeRunner pre-orders

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 25 February 2008 23:48:14 Tilman Baumann wrote:
> > Well, I live in Belgium and I can assure you that sales tax here is 21
> > % as opposed to Germany's 16 % ...
>
> 16% Not anymore... :(
>
> But as afar as i know, you can sell inside the EU to other EU countries
> and tax where they buyer lives.


If I'm not totally mistaken, inside the EU sales to private consumers are 
taxed at the tax-rate of the seller's location.


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Re: Request for assistance: Need a wiki page for buying and selling GTA01

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 18 February 2008 07:48:29 Ted Lemon wrote:
> I'd be tempted to sell my Neo if I felt like there was some security
> to the transaction, because right now I'm not finding time to focus on
> hacking it, so the wait for the next model isn't a hard one for me.
> But the transaction security issue is a tough one - how do I know that
> the person to whom I ship my Neo is actually going to pay for it, and
> how do they know that they're actually getting a working Neo?
>
Use Ebay, transactions using Paypal are insured up to some rather high limit 
(I think it depends on the area but can range from 500 to 2000USD).


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Re: Videos and pictures of Neo FreeRunner at CES: (was: Re: community update, Thursday, January 10, 2008)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 11 January 2008 21:21:41 Michael Shiloh wrote:
> Hi Lon,
>
> Will from our office pointed me at these, but that was yesterday and
> apparently even more have appeared:
>
> http://gizmodo.com/341755/openmoko-neo-freerunner-linux-smartphone-hands+on
> http://takezero.net/3g-and-mobile-news/hands-on-with-fics-openmoko-powered-
>freerunner-2 http://youtube.com/watch?v=SZsps3bj6yE

So can we please get that all black Neo? Looks a lot nicer than the 
black/silver :P



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Re: Community update, January 2, 2008

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 03 January 2008 05:51:06 Michael Shiloh wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> Next week at CES we will formally preview GTA02 to the public. We are
> doing this at an invitation-only media event, and not the general show
> floor.
>
Any chance to see a video of that event? Maybe even in decent (i.e. better 
than Youtube :) quality?

Great news in any case!




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Re: Case Schematics

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 26 December 2007 21:11:18 Michael Shiloh wrote:

> Yes, I'm afraid we are not able to open source the schematics. I think
> Harald or Werner explained this in a post somewhere - I'll see if I can
> find it.
>
> The main reason IIRC is that some of the chips came with NDAs that
> prevent us from doing so.
>
You have chips in the case? oOOOo


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Re: End-User Release????

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 16 December 2007 01:30:15 McCreery, Lee CTR DISA wrote:
> Is there an ETA for the end-user release?  I lost my phone over the weekend
> and need to purchase a new one.  I have been following this project for
> months and would like a NEO, but I can't wait a month.

If you need a phone, get a cheap GSM one. Neo isn't entirely ready for mass 
market. And most likely won't be in a month, either.


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Re: Compulab EM-X270 Wireless PDA Module

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 05 December 2007 13:07:11 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> handling cost, credit card processing cost, etc. And finally some
> compensation for the time we spend doing this instead of other
> things. The largest single cost component is the German VAT of 19%.
> If you are ordering from outside Germany there are options that we
> ship with no VAT (i.e. 545,38 EUR).


Does this include a case for the phone? Also at what number of units does the 
price drop to say 400EUR outside Germany?


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Re: need someone to develop this....

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 01 December 2007 08:34:08 GWMobile wrote:
> I don't think discussing this here would be considered an open
> disclosure.
> Talking on a finite list or limited membership with moderation and thus
> controlled membership is not necessarily open disclosure and not the
> same as a public printing therefore I think it would still be
> patentable.

You are aware that most mailing lists are archived and indexed by Google, 
aren't you?

By every sane meaning of "public", this is public.


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Re: Can openmoko and FIC help the Redux model 1?

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 28 November 2007 23:41:11 andy selby wrote:

> I left a message on the blog to contact Sean (hope that's alright), I
> should have mentioned something about enlightenment on the neo because
> they seem to like iPhone like eye candy.

Aren't they in essence describing a stripped down N800?


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Re: GTK vs QTopia vs Android -

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 21 November 2007 18:13:15 Lorn Potter wrote:
> > First Qtopia is not open enough,
>
> I guess you didn't read that Qtopia Phone is completely  GPL, lock,
> stock and barrel.

I guess you didn't read AVee's mail very closely. Seems to me that he was 
mocking that complaint, not making it.



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Re: GTK vs QTopia vs Android -

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 19 November 2007 14:54:09 Marcelo Lira wrote:

> Yes, GPL guarantees that, but a library in GPL is not that useful for a
> developer that sometimes have to do closed source apps. And please don't
> start with the "I will not help anyone developing closed source" discourse,
> since a number of free projects contributors have to do this, support
> themselves with the money earned so they can continue contributing. 

If you make money from development, the license costs for Qt don't seem very 
high.



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Re: Gphone and 850, perspectives

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 07 November 2007 20:02:47 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> Just needs a plastic case (plus stylus) case. Everything else is
> available (charger, battery, etc.).

Well if someone can provide a complete unit that boots into OpenMoko for 
~500USD (and can make use of WiFi), I'll likely buy it. Plus points if it has 
QWERTY or a somewhat decent cam :P

> > possible form factor (3.5" VGA with little bigger case).
>
> Software: Why not OpenMoko or Qtopia or QuantumSTEP? It seems to be a
> quite small step.
>
> CompuLabs already provides Angstrom (previously called OpenZaurus). See:

Didnt know they had Angstrom for it. That sure helps. But how do you get 
Angstrom onto the board? Do you need JTAG for that? Or can it boot from SD or 
USB the way it's shipped?




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Re: Gphone and 850, perspectives

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 07 November 2007 18:23:18 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> > Problem is I dont want to buy a lot of  $750 US units if I could
> > just develop on e.g. gphone or iphone which will be way cheaper.
>
> You need not buy many units yourself - there is an idea for a group
> purchase. So if you can convince (many) others so that it goes beyond
> the order quantity of the next price scale it can go down to less
> than $600.

Even then, unless someone turns this in a complete phone, quite some bit of 
engineering will be needed to turn an SBC plus touchscreen into a proper 
phone... Not to mention software support for it. But I'd sure love the 
possible form factor (3.5" VGA with little bigger case).

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Re: Community Update

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

The Global Locate device does a lot of GPS processing on the HOST CPU
which is why it REALLY needs that driver to work.

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Openource handwriting recognition

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

I believe this merits some very in deep looks: 

http://risujin.org/cellwriter/

(via http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/2007/10/30#cellwriter)


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Re: Exact release date of GTA02v4?

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 25 October 2007 22:07:52 Michael Shiloh wrote:
> As others have said so eloquently, we are doing our best. We are far
> from perfect, but we are trying.
>
> My personal goal is to continue improving both the quantity and quality
> of information that I bring from the company to you.


This is a (nearly) perfect explanation of what's going on. Store it some place 
safe, you'll need it again. If not with GTA02 revision then surely with 
GTA03!


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Re: Any update for the October release?

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 21 October 2007 08:31:27 Fred Janon wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I know everyone is working hard on the project, I just wonder if there is
> any update on the new version originally planned for October? 

Yes, that was moved back to December a while ago. 


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Re: Bi-weekly OpenMoko community update

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 13 October 2007 07:05:19 Michael Shiloh wrote:

> We're very happy with the u-blox/Atmel ATR0635 GPS Receiver, and thus
> have made the decision to use this chip.

So does this mean we now have GPS hardware that outputs NMEA on a serial port 
(or something similar) without having to run a closed source daemon?


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Re: NYTimes article regarding GPhone being an "open-source" alternative to Windows Mobile.

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

> 1) http://www.osnews.com/story.php/18720/Trolltech-Ports-Qt-to-Windows-CE

I know, hence the reference to S60 not Windows Mobile.


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Re: NYTimes article regarding GPhone being an "open-source" alternative to Windows Mobile.

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 08 October 2007 17:53:20 Peter Pearson wrote:
> Does this make any sense?
>
> Surely they can't hope to support *every* hardware device supported by
> Windows Mobile.
>
Suppose Google actually wrote a phone *environment* instead of a whole OS 
(well, they may have a Linux stack for custom designs, still) aroud Qtopia 
core, that would work? Especially if/as/when Trolltech ports Qtopia to S60...


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Re: New TOP SECRET OM device??

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 05 October 2007 20:35:13 Michael Shiloh wrote:
> I know that to some extent the community tries to infer as much as
> possible out of every word we utter and picture we show because we have
> not been good at getting information to you. Again, my job is to improve
> this, and I really intend to make this better.

So what is HXD8 all about :P

SCNR




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Re: Update from OpenMoko

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 28 September 2007 10:42:09 Michael Shiloh wrote:
> three prototype runs to test various subsystems. Our best case analysis
> of the schedule indicates that GTA02 will be ready for shipment to end
> users in early to mid December.


May I suggest taking pre-orders to get some idea of what volume will be needed 
upon launch? After waiting this long it sure wouldn't be nice not to get one 
because they are in short supply!
 



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Re: At the risk of being flamed : State of software

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 28 August 2007 17:05:20 Attila Csipa wrote:
> On Tuesday 28 August 2007 16:39:54 Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> > No they didn't. But TT employees keep pushing the idea at the very least.
> > This is their good right, but I reserve mine to call them on it ;)
> Can you give some references on this (just out of curiosity) ?

Look around, there's TT employees in this very thread (not overly pushing it, 
but at the very least, TT seems interested in OM)... And occasionally some 
remark spills onto PlanetKDE.


> an end-user device, for which they apparently hope to get commercial
> interest from mobile phone vendors (in which they admittedly haven't been
> all that successful as of yet).

Exactly, but partly because of a chicken&egg issue which they could perhaps 
tackle with an OpenMoko port of Qtopia...


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Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 25 September 2007 20:14:36 Carlo E. Prelz wrote:

> properly express my mental patterns. C++ did not cut my cake. No need
> to repeat the experience. I already know how to write what little user
> interface code I need to write, either in C or in Ruby, with
> GTK. Luckily I do not need to meddle with micro$oftland.

If I'm not totally mistaken, Qt does have Ruby bindings. I know it has very 
good Python ones.

I suppose it's a matter of taste, but trying to shoehorn OO into C is a horror 
to *me*.


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Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 25 September 2007 14:23:24 Steven Le Roux wrote:

> Ok, I am not a developper, but, I think the accelorometer has the goal to
> provide a good video rendering.

Nitpick: An accelerometer measures physical acceleration and enables things 
like the Wiimote. What you're thinking of is a (graphics) *accelerator*.



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Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 25 September 2007 11:18:39 Dani Anon wrote:
> Just for the record, those are tablets, that weight more (i.e: they
> have more battery life thus power) that can take such overhead. N800
> doesn't even have phone functions! Do you know about any linuxphone
> with X?
>

According to Wikipedia, N770 has an ARM926TEJ @250MHz which should be about in 
the same ballpark as GTA02, so no, that's not faster. And in fact, they have 
to drive MORE pixels on their screen. 

The [EMAIL PROTECTED] in N800 is faster, I'll grant you that.




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Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 25 September 2007 09:51:42 Lorn Potter wrote:
> > but I have reasons to believe that a) I should have
> > to learn to code in a totally different environment, and b) that
> > environment would require coding in C++. Both things are not desirable
> > for me.
> fair enough reasons here.

Which leads to the question whether you can use PyQT or maybe Jambi with 
Qtopia?




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Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 18 September 2007 22:58:00 Lorn Potter wrote:
> > Not X11 like all other systems. This has better performance and is in my
> > eyes the perfect solution for embedded devices.
> There is no great performance difference between x11 and fb.
>
As long as X11 renders to FB, that's true. However, with the GPU in GTA02 that 
may not be true at all as in fact, Mickey mentioned on IRC yesterday that fb 
operations may well be *slower* on GTA02 than on GTA01.

I don't know enough about the differences between Qt and Qtopia (aside of the 
fact that Qtopia draws to the fb directly), but if Qtopia app scan run on Qt, 
we might well end up seeing that on GTA02 as Qt/X11 will get the GPU 
acceleration for "free"? At that point, GTK and Qt(opia) could happily 
coexist like they do on the desktop.




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Re: OM Camera - a new angle

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 18 September 2007 20:12:04 Ian Stirling wrote:
> I'd want several megapixels, ability to take at least several second
> pictures, for use around dusk.
> Optical zoom would be a big plus.
> LCD size not hugely important.
> Wifi and bluetooth would be a big plus.
> USB-host too, to enable printing directly to devices, or offloading a
> few pictures to someones memory card.
>
> Have you seen the price of decent wifi enabled network cams?

For my uses, a cheap one would be plenty, but I don't want it to be a security 
hole in my network...  Ideally it could do [EMAIL PROTECTED]@30fps, too. I can 
do 
without the Bluetooth.

If it was a digital pocket cam rather than a cheap network cam, I definitely 
want optical finder, optical 3x (or more) zoom with decent optics, at least 6 
megapixels and very short time from hitting button to actually making picture 
(the delay disturbs me rather badly on my trusty old Powershot).

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Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 19 September 2007 10:28:55 Jonathan Spooner wrote:
> I didn't realise Qtopia was */proprietary/*

It's no longer, it's fully GPL now.

>  comments on preferring QT for the quality docs and IDE.  I'd rather
> plug away at developing in GTK than that.

Well if you want X11, Qt should run on the Neo just fine...



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Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 18 September 2007 18:00:51 Giles Jones wrote:
> Typically the argument for QT is ease of programming, there's a good IDE
> called KDevelop. GTK's argument typically is that it's GPL and faster.

Actually. GTK's argument is that it is LGPL and thus free for use by 
commercial apps whereas Qt is GPL and closed source, so commercial developers 
need to license the SDK.



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Re: Buglabs

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 18 September 2007 16:30:01 hank williams wrote:
> modules. It sounds like hardware is frozen, or close to frozen. Moreover,
> If what they told me in person (and whats on their website) is true, they
> will be releasing four modules by the end of the year. But none of the
> modules they are publicly discussing is a cell module.

How big base and modules are we talking about here? (I admit I didn't read all 
the website ;)




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Re: AT&T is cruising for a bruising

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 10 September 2007 12:18:39 Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> > Iphone's international plan in 29 countries, mostly in Europe, costs
> > $24.99 for 20 megabytes.
>
> Which isn't even tha tbad considering my telco wants 5 CHF (roughly 4USD)
> per month.

I meant to say MB, obviously.


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Re: AT&T is cruising for a bruising

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 10 September 2007 12:03:05 Raphaël Jacquot wrote:

> Normally it does not cost US users for domestic data transfers, but the
> Iphone's international plan in 29 countries, mostly in Europe, costs
> $24.99 for 20 megabytes.

Which isn't even tha tbad considering my telco wants 5 CHF (roughly 4USD) per 
month.




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Re: OM Camera - a new angle

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 18 September 2007 03:27:24 Mikko Rauhala wrote:
> Now, for the relevant part. I want an open digital camera. So, hey,
> OpenMoko guys (or somebody else in the consumer device business and into
> openness), when you're well on your way to having revolutionized the
> mobile handset market, consider building one or twelve.

I agree. And please add WiFi to it. I've been looking at WiFi cams lately, but 
after the article about some horribly insecure ones on Slashdot, I figured I 
want one that runs on open source...

BTW, I wonder if you could have a really small camera module (basically a CCD 
chip+lens, i.e. your average webcam but saner form factor) that hooks up to 
GTA02 via USB and used both power and display from Neo?

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Re: ATI to provide specs (was: Re: SMedia 3362)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 10 September 2007 09:20:54 Harald Welte wrote:

> So what exactly is not enough?  You will get 100% free software drivers,
> down to the latest bit, no proprietary firmware whatsoever, plus
> hardware documentation that will be prepared by OpenMoko ?
>
> Which part exactly are you missing?  

Some people seem to bemoan the lack of h.264 decoding. Personally, I'm not 
very fussed about it (watching video on 2.8" isn't much fun in my view)... 
Personally I far prefer true open source drivers to binary only that will 
have one more feature but then stop working at will (which occurs rather 
frequently with the currently shipping ATI fglrx drivers, BTW).




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Re: stylus alternative

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 10 September 2007 07:28:52 Robin Paulson wrote:
> anyone else see my vision? or am i insane?

Yes, even thought you be able to cut your finger nails this way (now that IS 
insane). Those caps used to protect your fingers (aptly named "Fingerhut" i.e. 
finger hat in German) when sewing could easily be  turned into what you're 
thinking about, I guess.


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Re: Video decoding in GTA-02

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 08 September 2007 19:31:30 Ted Lemon wrote:
> > What about encoding features of the smedia chips ? The day there will
> > be a camera on the neo...
> Unless you're encoding a long run of video, I don't think this is a
> major issue.   If you are, yeah, hardware encoding for H.264 sounds
> like a great idea.

If you got a decent camera on it, you WILL be encoding long videos at times. 
Just look at the videos coming out of the Nokia N93 for an example of it done 
right...


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Re: Apple is going to beat all competitors

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 06 September 2007 18:52:35 David "Lefty" Schlesinger wrote:
> > Anyone saw new Apple announcement? Now iPhone is priced at $399..
>
> ...an act which has certainly pissed off all the folks who got suckered
> into standing in lines for days and paying through the nose to be the
> first kid on the block with one. 

>
I read somewhere that the early adopters will get 100$ credit from Apple?



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Re: Fwd: A guestion

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 06 September 2007 13:27:34 Andreas Utterberg wrote:
> Thanx for the fast replies!
>
> Does anybody have a good howto on how to setup a sandbox env on a Fedora to
> be able to write apps? I have also read that most applications is written i
> GTK+, can one program in any other languages for the moko? Such as
> python/perl?

In whatever language you can use to interface with GTK or even X itself, but 
it might not look the same or offer all the moko toolkit interfaces.

> I am really eager to buy a moko, but is it functional today, im living in
> sweden, is it stable to call from on GSM?

Not yet from what I read.



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Re: At the risk of being flamed : State of software

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 27 August 2007 19:23:26 Attila Csipa wrote:
> On Monday 27 August 2007 15:32, Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> > No it's more like MS telling Intel to port Windows to the new processor
> > for them. You want to sell something on a platform? Well if nobody wants
> > to port it there, you should do it yourself or don't do it, but then you
> > don't get to bug others how they should use it there.
>
> A slight logic error is that, to my knowledge, Trolltech never expressed
> that me, you, the OpenMoko team or anybody else MUST port Qtopia to the
> Neo1973 (TT must be chuckling quite a bit by now).

No they didn't. But TT employees keep pushing the idea at the very least. This 
is their good right, but I reserve mine to call them on it ;)

> The difference is, that 
> since there IS a GPL version of Qtopia (as opposed to a GPL version of
> Windows) anybody, me, you, Joe GNU Coder, anybody interested could
> potentially do it EVEN if there is no commercial interest for Trolltech to
> do so (which was the original claim - since TT developed Qtopia 'they'
> should port it to the Neo, 'we' should stick to GTK and the original
> framework).

That's true. But I actually think it could make sense for TT to do so (it's 
sort of why Sun always had a X86 port of Solaris laying around, partly so 
people could try it on hardware they already have and get familiar with it). 
I don't think the installed base of Greenphones is ever gonna be big, whereas 
GTA02 might get a few (tens of?) thousands devices shipped...


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Re: At the risk of being flamed : State of software

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 27 August 2007 14:56:14 Attila Csipa wrote:
> > How about Trolltech ports Qtopia GPL to the Neo *themselves*? That would
> > prove that it's easy enough (heck you could count the hours of work
> > included and write up some whitepaper touting how portable it is) and
>
> I don't really see the logic here. It's like Intel making a new processor
> and saying now Debian should make a port to their brand new processor so
> they would prove Debian is portable... 

No it's more like MS telling Intel to port Windows to the new processor for 
them. You want to sell something on a platform? Well if nobody wants to port 
it there, you should do it yourself or don't do it, but then you don't get to 
bug others how they should use it there.






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Re: At the risk of being flamed : State of software

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 26 August 2007 00:54:48 Lorn Potter wrote:

> OpenMoko Neo is a 'free' phone, why would you want to put commercial
> proprietary software on it? I thought the point of it was to get away from
> closed source/commercial/proprietary apps.  If I minded that, I would just
> use a Symbian or Windows Mobile phone as apps for those abound.

Largely because you don't get any useable open source licensed GPL maps. 
Furthermore, the whole point of being open means to have the freedom to run 
whatever you want... 

> > To get
> > phone functionality of Qtopia
>
> well, who knows.. if enough people email Trolltech... that could change.
>
> > OpenMoko company would have to pay for
> > commercial Qtopia Phone or wrote whole phone subsystem from scratch as
> > there is no phone functionality in Qtopia4/GPL.
>
> Better than writing the whole shebang from scratch. Why not start with
> something that is 95% finished, mature, stable and tested.
>

How about Trolltech ports Qtopia GPL to the Neo *themselves*? That would prove 
that it's easy enough (heck you could count the hours of work included and 
write up some whitepaper touting how portable it is) and people could chose 
themselves.  It would also mean that people get to try Qtopia on a reasonably 
priced phone!


Disclaimer: I use KDE everyday and I think it's by far the best desktop 
environment out there and a lot of that is closely related to Qt being a very 
good toolkit, so I'm not at all opposed to Qt, quite the opposite really and 
I also understand why Qt can't be LGPL.


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Re: Clarify openmoko != Neo1973

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 25 August 2007 00:52:48 Dylan McCall wrote:
> Openmoko.org's front page could show more than one smartphone running the
> system, or screenshots of it without any hardware visible. That may
> magically get the point across...

Then you will have people buying a Motorola A1200 only to come here and 
complain it doesn't run OpenMoko when they get it...



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Re: Fingerscroll, foofone and more from people.openmoko.org!

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 14 August 2007 15:52:04 Santiago Crespo wrote:
> There are some nice media from people.openmoko.org:
>
> Fingerscroll & foofone:
> http://people.openmoko.org/jserv/graphics/video/

Foofone is neat. But it doesn't seem very obvious to use the star to have it 
start calling?


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Re: An idea of sorts

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 28 July 2007 15:59:52 Giles Jones wrote:
> An easy way to install new software would be to be able to email it
> to your phone and use the phone's wifi to download the email. Of
> course security would have to be present to stop it installing
> anything received in an email.

I would much rather have a package manager (think apt) than something like 
that. And OpenEmbedded already provides that, from what I understand.


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Re: Product naming / wiki page naming / restructuring

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 27 July 2007 13:25:26 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> >>> OpenMoko-0.5 or whatever scheme is already in place.
> >>
> >> -2007 and -2008 so far.  We might have 200x.y at some point.
>
> Hm. I think using year-names is not a good choice for software
> versions (mainly talking about stable releases).
> It psychologically forces you to do one major release every year. But
> if you do it twice a year you run into troubles.

I don't think Ubuntu did very badly with (Y)Y.MM release naming. Except for 
the Dapper slippage maybe, but that was warranted by any means... Plus you 
can use future dates for unstable (right now the next Ubuntu  release is 7.10


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Re: Switch to newsgroup

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 26 July 2007 11:53:55 Eric van Horssen wrote:

> > http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.openmoko.community
>
> My provider doesn't have this group, allthough it does have some gmane.*
> groups
>
> Should al gmane lists be available everywhere?
Yes, at the very least using nntp://nntp.gmane.org




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Re: Hardware/Software UI Relationship

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 18 July 2007 09:50:36 Giles Jones wrote:
> > The matching object is shown on top and selectable. Size on those object
> > can depend on number of matches and can be compacted in intelligent ways
> > like: [contacts 3] [document 12] [apps 2]
> That sounds very similar to QuickSilver on the Mac, it works really well.
> You start typing and then it provides matching documents, webpages,
> applications etc.. it's very fast.

Katapult on KDE is kinda similar (I think it's actually intended to be a 
Quicksilver copy cat). It's included with Kubuntu, at least.


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Re: Not "the free phone"

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 17 July 2007 16:54:45 Ian Darwin wrote:
> > What about a nice industrial-style alphanumeric designation - like the
> > 'FIC A1'.  Or OM1.  Or FS1, whatever.
>
> Well, you know, we're pretty far off the topic I started here. The phone
> being sold now *is* called the FIC Neo1973, period.

IMHO it's a bad idea to call GTA02 Neo1973 as well. That's going to cause all 
sorts of confusion for sure.

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Re: Not "the free phone" (was: Re: Again: Advertising thoughts

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 16 July 2007 20:24:18 Shawn Rutledge wrote:
> How about simply the youPhone, or uPhone?
>
u is often short for the Greek letter \mu (in Latex notation) which in turn is 
used as a sign for micro in many places. That may confuse people as it might 
mean microphone then?


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Re: Not "the free phone"

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 16 July 2007 19:19:49 Mike wrote:
> Ian Darwin wrote:
> > Call it something else in the consumer market. The Flexible Phone. The
> > Does-what-you-want-not-what the big corporations want. I don't know.
>
> How about "The Freedom Phone".
>
How about centering around liberty instead of free (which has way too many 
connotations) and freedom (which is clearer, but I doubt it will work in 
Europe after the freedom fries stuff)?


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Re: Again: Advertising thoughts

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 16 July 2007 09:38:11 ramsesoriginal wrote:
> only one with " "The OpenMoko: now with builtin navigator" and so on.
> Don't even THINK of using "based on Linux Kernel 2.6.xx" or "With powerful
> ssh acess"

Not sure that's well spent money really: Linux using people generally read 
Linux related sites and all pretty much of them have covered Neo multiple 
times already and will very well do again if you only politely ask them. Or 
even send them a review unit with the clear message that this is not yet a 
mass market product. Essentially you can rely on word of mouth there, I 
believe. The vision behind the product is powerful enough so that people who 
understand and care about it will promote it anyhow.

As for the tech savvy ones: much the same applies, but you need to focus on 
different sites. Give a few units to respected tech sites and they will do 
the job much better than we can (heck, Ars will do so anyway as will do 
Slashdot). Once the more geek oriented sites have covered it, move onto the 
mass market sites a la cnet.

And most importantly get units out where people can play with them!

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Re: Again: Advertising thoughts

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 16 July 2007 02:39:56 Jae Stutzman wrote:
> demonstrated it. What is the point of all this anyways: promoting freedom.
> The consumer isn't an idiot, although MS would want us all to believe it.
> If you don't like Linux use "Powered by FOSS". But don't believe the FUD.

In my experience, many people actively get scared when you mention Linux (even 
though they may very well be using Firefox or even Thunderbird on their 
Windows boxes! Or Linux on their WRT54, for that matter ;-). In my view, you 
shouldn't advertise Linux, but make clear it's running on it when people 
actually *use* it. If they are scared about "the evil command line" they 
won't even dare trying it!


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Re: Again: Advertising thoughts

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 14 July 2007 13:54:30 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> What about ol' grandma, she doesn't want no phone with command line ;-)
> We need to care about low-feature users, too. Users that are


IMNSHO, low feature users neither want nor should pay 300-450$ for a phone. A 
<40$ Nokia 1110 much better suited for them (I can get those together with a 
prepay SIM card for like 20$ in Switzerland). 

Right now, the target demographics is more the people who might buy a Symbian 
S60 or a Windows Mobile phone, neither of which would qualify as low feature 
users, in general (unless they got sold totally overpowered phones in the 
store, which I wouldn't totally rule out).

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Re: [UK] Import Duty

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Friday 13 July 2007 17:30:36 Andy Loughran wrote:
> Does this mean that for a neo1973 Base ~184GBP on delivery I'll have to pay
> another 32.20GBP?

That's very much dependent on how the customs sees your Neo. Some categories 
of products seem to be exempt of VAT in many countries (engineering samples 
for one). In general I would expect that you will *have to pay VAT*.


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Re: Tutorials, HowTo's, etc

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 10 July 2007 09:20:39 ramsesoriginal wrote:
> Hi.
> I really love this project, but since (as most of us here, i imagine) i'm
> only a "simple" student, i can't afford to buy two Neos. So i will wait
> 'til october. But I would like to have some possibility to develope
> something in the meantime. Since this is all  open source, i imagined to
> find thousands of tutorials, howtos, step-by-step-descriptions, and so on.


Start here http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/MokoMakefile, you can test it in qemu 
after compiling it.


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Re: Hardware question

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 12 July 2007 16:38:37 Marc Verwerft wrote:
> - faster graphics (but since this is under NDA, it might take 6-9
> months or so before you can see the benefits of it)
> - more memory

Which means FLASH in this case (i.e. non volatile storage), I think RAM is 
128MB on both.


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Re: USB host question

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 08 July 2007 23:54:23 Don Park wrote:
> The netgear WGT634U access point ran linux and had USB host mode. This
> provided a gigantic amount of usability and expandability. Hard drives
> and wifi radios could hang off the access point. Has anyone tried
> hanging a USB wifi radio off of the neo1973? It would be bulky but it
> would give wifi access from the phone to those who are looking for it.

Neo doesn't provide power on the USB port. So unless you add some by means of 
power injector or powered hub it won't work. It's been discussed to death 
earlier this year ;9


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Re: Annoying but inevitable

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 08 July 2007 15:49:31 Attila Csipa wrote:
> What I find odd is that nobody considers that some users would WILLINGLY
> have/watch ads on their phone, depending on their plan, in exchange for
> better rates, rewards, whatever. You don't have to eliminate the ads, you
> can also eliminate the reasons to eliminate ads :)

Sure there might be some of those. Heck I might submit to that. But the 
problem is that you can't ensure that people actually watch the ads. They 
could even download them, then simply not display them with a small patch!


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Re: Quick Question about July 9th.

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 05 July 2007 21:00:19 Derick Jones wrote:
> Will the phones being sold on July 9th be available to anyone interested or
> only to developers? I am very interested in the phone and just confused as
> to who can order the phone on the 9th. I get mixed readings from various
> websites.

As far as I understand anyone who pays for it can get it, but don't expect it 
to be anywhere near complete or ready for daily use.


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Re: Custom case designs...

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:58:10 Tim Newsom wrote:
> Or how about this... Cases from recycled materials..
>
> Neo1973.. Free your phone, open your horizons, save the world...
> Good for you, great for the environment.


Swiss PET recycling organization currently has a campaign like that: "Don't 
throw your $devicePossiblyMadeFromPET out the window". There is one with MP3 
players and I think one with phones, even ;-)


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Re: Custom case designs...

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:03:47 adrian cockcroft wrote:
> I've been designing cases for the homebrew mobile club, posting the design
> files on the wiki and producing them on a 3D printer.
>
> http://www.hbmobile.org/wiki/index.php?title=Portrait_oriented_case
>
> I can get these individually made for $40 or so each at
> http://www.techshop.ws
> a custom case for the FIC 1973 hardware would be smaller and cost less (its
> $10/cubic inch).

I would most likely pay something on the order of 40$ for a rectangular, no 
holes, sturdy case. If the finish is done in a nice way. Ideally, it would be 
all black, slightly rubberish feeling plastic (some Nokia phones have this, 
not sure just how resilient it is though) and for the most important point: 
INCLUDE A PLACE TO STORE A SMALL STYLUS (the one on the P900 is about 1,5mm 
wide, that's plenty, it just needs to live in the phone)!

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Re: Why iPhone using AJAX was genius

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 03 July 2007 17:03:13 Attila Csipa wrote:
> Neo1973, like, without case/microSD/power adapter/battery/etc (possibly
> even without display), just the finished PCB with components ?


I think Sean is actively working towards that goal. At least he seemed to like 
that idea very much. Might even go as far as upgrade mainboards for 
GTA01-GTA02 if we're lucky.


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Re: New Oceans

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 02 July 2007 20:17:55 Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
> If FIC does manage to get Ingram Micro or some other large distributor
> to carry the Neo, I would expect to start to seeing a street price
> much closer $300.

And it would mean that you could suddenly buy Neo in online shops all over the 
place because most simply relay TechData and Ingram Micro stock lists and put 
some (usually not that high) markup on it... That would greatly increase 
exposure for sure. And FIC as an established OEM should be able to get the 
big whole salers to carry some more products...

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Re: GPS can work stand-alone (Re: Advertising/hype)

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 02 July 2007 12:31:00 Nick Johnson wrote:
> certainly what everything I've read has indicated. I thought it was
> also required to get a fix at all - that the AGPS chip offloads some
> of the harder work onto the network, as that's what a workmate told me
> - but if he's wrong, I'm glad. ;)
>
The GPS chip in Neo can work without any support from the network whatsoever, 
just takes him a bit longer to get precise position data.


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Re: Packet encryption possibilities?

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 02 July 2007 01:56:09 Patrick Madden wrote:
> One of my research interests is encryption, and cell phones clearly
> need some help.  Will hacking along these lines be possible in the
> upcoming release?   The chip sets used in the phone might not expose
> enough to do this, and if it's not possible, I'd like to know early!

It should be possible in GSM data mode (which gives you 9600bit/s), but it's 
gonna be expensive on most networks. I doubt ping times are good enough on 
GPRS for it to work.


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Re: [openmoko-announce] Re: New Oceans

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 01 July 2007 06:25:06 Justin Mazzi wrote:
> How much bandwidth is needed? Do you have a system in place for
> selling the phone online?

I think he refers to company bandwidth (i.e. resources to organize sales etc), 
not internet bandwidth


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Re: New Oceans

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Saturday 30 June 2007 18:39:27 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > +1 to this unbundled approach.  Also maybe add "replacement touchscreen"
> > as this is probably #1 part most likely to get busted?
>
> Another vote for the unbundled approach. A number of us hardware types are
> discussing various gadgets that would hack into the neo for CPU and
> connectivity. A pity to waste a whole phone (and the $$s) if the case and
> screen is not needed.

+1 for both. (I think I suggested that one months ago, already ;)


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Re: Clarification Rant

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Wednesday 06 June 2007 01:12:18 Ryan Prior wrote:
> I'm in the same situation. I need a phone, no question. The Neo 1973 is the
> phone I want, no question. The question is this: will the Neo1973 with WiFi
> be available by the time I cannot live without a phone for any longer? 

How about getting the cheapest phone you can find? Around here there are 15EUR 
phones without contract (but sim locked to one carrier)...


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Re: New wishlist item: Side-mounted touch strip sensor

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 19 June 2007 11:39:22 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> This is an idea which was floated on the SVHMPC list a few months ago.
> The only possible issue is those people who are left-handed. Perhaps a
> strip on each side would be the best way to go. :-)
>
I think the HTC S620 has something like this (their Blackberry looking device 
if I got the model number wrong) if anyone wants to see it in real life (I 
haven't).

Personally, I'd prefer a 5 way scroll wheel like on my SE P900,though.


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Re: Will Openmoko ever see the light of day? Was Re: Concern for usability and ergonomics

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 14 June 2007 23:45:29 Jonathon Suggs wrote:
> Well as far as we know (no *official* word) the models (GTA-01) that you
> have actually are vaporware as far as we are concerned since they are
> not going to be mass producing them in favor of rolling out the GTA-02's.

Which assuming GTA-02 doesn't take much longer, would be a bad thing why?


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Re: Will Openmoko ever see the light of day? Was Re: Concern for usability and ergonomics

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Thursday 14 June 2007 13:21:36 Jim Thompson wrote:
> parts on them... and the software is mostly done too!
>
> This is the only worrisome thing to me.  Nobody has seen the software.


Uhm the SVN is public and people actively run the software in qemu?


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Re: standard API for linux phones?

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 12 June 2007 08:19:34 Paul A. Lambert wrote:
> compatible this group is  at least in philosophy.  The
> participation is closed, the  forum allows patented code (as long as
> the license is non-discriminatory).  Even with these issues, I'd
> still be very interested in seeing what they are cooking up.


From what I understood looking at their documents, they are currently 
soliciting a reference implementation of a Linux phone (software and 
hardware, OpenMoko should work for software and Neo might fit hardware, 
albeit they have something about a serial port in their requirements and VGA 
display is not clearly allowed, either).


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Re: Concern for usability and ergonomics

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Monday 11 June 2007 19:00:42 Sean Moss-Pultz wrote:
> I totally agree with your points. Please keep in mind that this was
> our first design. And that we are using an ID design that simply
> wasn't made for what this project has become.  It was originally
> designed for a completely different usage scenario.


Will you be able to give basic information (like form factor) on those new 
devices at the time GTA-01 will ship? That would certainly be hopeful for 
many of us...



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Re: cellphone-sized X86 PC motherboard potential OpenMoko platform?

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Sunday 10 June 2007 23:28:03 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> set!) at a lower speed with much less transistors. Wikipedia tells
> that the original 8086 did have just 29.000 transistors and the 8087
> FPU did have 45.000. So, I would assume that the instruction set
> extensions since the 8086 area (i.e. 32 bit, etc.) does not make up
> more that 1 Mio transistors out of the 300 millons. 

IIRC, the 486 (being the second generation 32bit x86 chip) had about 
1.2million transistors, yes.


Besides, there are very small PowerPC chips just as well as there are monsters 
like Power6... And the big ones should be able to run just about any code 
that runs on the small ones.


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