Darwin's Theories - Telephony category

iPhone catching up to OpenMoko

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:21:00 GMT

People who know I'm involved with Openmoko ask me how the new iPhone will affect the Openmoko project. But as we've seen, the reverse is already happening. Openmoko pioneered having a completely-accessible GPS in the GTA01, and have maintained this in the GTA02 FreeRunner. Apple have seen the light and have included some kind of GPS in the iPhone 2 (I'm assuming, subject to counter-information, that when you you paying a ~~carrier tax~~ access fee for using it, as you do with most carrier-beholden smart phones such as the RIM Blackberry). But Openmoko remains a customer-beholden smart phone, one of the very few.

In fact, there really is little point in comparing the phones directly. The most obvious difference is price: the iPhone costs ($199 plus 24 months of contracted tenure at maybe $50), for a minimum TCO of about $1400, whereas the FreeRunner costs about $299 with no contract so you can use it on any of the very-economical pay-as-go plans that you have to look around for, say $10/month for a light user, for a total TCO of $540; so the TCO for this user would be about 3:1 in favor of Openmoko :-) (late note: my iPhone guesses are low; see this Yahoo Blog analysis for better figures). But that is not why people buy the iPhone or the Openmoko. People buy the iPhone for the glitz, for being cool, for being able to show off.

No, really. A week after the iPhone was released in the US and people were smuggling them into Canada, I was buying a coffee at a Starbucks in Toronto. Some dork dressed up as a Hollywood director left his shiny new iPhone right in the way where he knew anybody who wanted to get at the cream dispenser would either risk splattering on the iPhone, or have to move it. I very gently picked it up with the respect due such a device and moved it out of the way, whereupon he tried to launch into a tirade about how much he'd (over)paid for it. I wasn't in the mood to discuss it so I just said "if it's that valuable, keep it closer to you" and left (Seriously, I do have friends with iPhones, and they are reasonable people...).

Yes, really, the iPhone is sleek, and sexy. It is also almost completely a closed environment. People keep trying to open it up, because that's a challenge. People buy Openmoko not because it is sleek (the current hardware is, but the current software is not, yet; far from it) but because it is open. Open hardware. Open software. An open process company. The iPhone is a thing to give joy those who don't care how a thing works and have no care that they have paid $1400 to surrender control of "their" device to Apple and to the carrier. The Openmoko Freerunner is a thing to give joy to those who love to tinker, who want to be able to (even if they never get around to) write their own applications in any of half a dozen programming languages. To make it do whatever they want, without regard for what the hardware supplier or the carrier wants. Openmoko.com encourages you do go "higher up and further in". Apple tries to prevent you. And that, I think, makes all the difference.

iBrick

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:08:00 GMT

What can one add to this? I like a lot of Apple's technology, but their decision to make a customers' iPhone into an iBrick at the drop of a hat is leaving a lot of people puzzled. And it sends an ominous picture of the future of cell-phone tech; I'm glad there's OpenMoko and other open source phone projects.

Time for a really new cell phone

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:45:00 GMT

The OpenMoko website started selling the developer preview of the Neo1973 cell phone on July 9th, as promised. Linux-based and all open source (except for a tiny shim around the GSM module), this is the phone that most every open source developer should have. The current offering is a bit short on software, but the price reflects that. Why buy that closed-shop iPhone when you can have an open source Neo phone? And, check the site to find out why it's called Neo1973!

My talk at OnLinux (October 2007)

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:21:00 GMT

It's confirmed - I will be speaking on OpenMoko at OnLinux in Toronto in October, 2007. OnLinux promises to be a large gathering of local open-source talent as well as project leaders from around the world.

True Cybergeeks will route around the iPhone hype

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:21:00 GMT

Everybody's heard the hype about the closed-source vunderkind cell phone that is supposed to "revolutionize" the industry. And maybe it will do well in the mass "consumer" market. But there is an open-source phone that has many of the same features - including a full-sized touch screen - but also has a full open-source telephony stack, runs Linux, and is going on sale at about the same time. Not to mention: about half the price for an unlocked GSM worldphone - meaning you can use it anywhere, almost immediately. See the wiki site and check back at the buying site. Just bear in mind that a lot of the software here is unfinished - open source geeks love to finish stuff - whereas the iPhone software is at least ready for Apple to release to the iPublic.

After I wrote this, it appears that Globe & Mail Technology Writer Jack Kapica agrees with me.