That is basically what we would be doing. The problem is that a phone
shipping with Replicant right now wouldn't work terribly well. Even the G1
(the oldest model) does not have wireless (802.11G) or 3G support. You can
make calls and that is the extent of it.
The best thing you could probably do right now if you wanted to support that
effort is to make a direct financial contribution. As until we have something
else to offer that at least half works there isn't going to be much of a
product.
You have to remember that we have to support it, flash it, and so on. It
takes a considerable amount of time to flash these phones. It took maybe an
hour to flash one phone. It is possible that this could be reduced
significantly although there is still the issue of half the basic
functionality not working. If the 3G or 802.11 chip worked with Replicant it
would probably be "good enough". The actual phone seems to work OK and much
better than the freerunner did.
I think even the freerunner though had wireless and/or 3G a couple years
back. The thing was slow and unusable and had voice issues at the time. The
main issue with it though is the cost. If you could get the freerunner down
to $100-120 price per unit in quantity and then a consumer price of $200 USD
with a bit faster CPU, working code (browser, calendar, contacts, etc), and
no voice issues then it might be a workable solution. That isn't the case
today. The replacement board is several hundred dollars and that doesn't
include a case. By the time you had a final product you would probably find
it selling to consumers for around $1,000-1,200 USD.
