You might also want to look at the ZTE "Open". I wouldn't call it free
software friendly as it does depend on non-free firmware for the wifi
although I believe the replicant phones all do too and it also has non-free
maps. However the phone uses a 3d graphics chipset that has a reverse
engineered driver in the works for it and the wifi chipset is an Atheros
chipset (ath6k I think). Ultimately it might make a very good free software
phone if someone pursues Atheros to release the drivers for it. Plus it's got
a very low price point ($80 USD). The other thing in its favor is it's
running firefox OS. Which is suppose to be free software friendly. The
downside might be that it is more like software as a service model. The other
downside is nobody has yet (as far as I'm aware) managed to get the code to
compile on it. Another downside is that ZTE has no plans to release updates
for it so unless we get the firefox OS working it may be all downhill from
here out. And lastly ZTE has no plans on another production run of this phone
so if we did get Atheros to release the firmware for the wifi and everything
eventually worked it would not be much of a victory (short of maybe working
on a campaign to get funding for a whole production run? and ZTE agreeing to
it).
In any case here it is:
http://stores.ebay.com/ZTE-Mobile-US
Clearly I did only a tad bit of research on this with no results and no plans
at the moment to try to move anything forward. However I thought it might be
worthwhile to mention it all in the case somebody else was interested or had
an idea on how to maybe make something happen with it.
