Frequently Asked Questions... with answers included!
A: OpenMoko is a software platform and the world's first completely open mobile phone software stack. It is based on Linux and allows users and enthusiasts great freedom to customise their phone.
We would love to hear from you.
A: The OpenMoko Neo 1973 is now sold out (11 Feb 2008). You should get the better Neo FreeRunner instead!
A: Since 4. July 2008 July on openmoko.com. Watch the Community Portal and Community Updates for further updates! Or check the GTA02 FAQ
It retains many good features from the Neo1973 such as the very high resolution touch screen and integrated GPS unit.
It adds the following features
A: Neo1973 (Internal code name GTA01B_v04): $300 for Neo Base, $399 for Neo Advanced. Available now. See Neo1973 for what is included.
A: FreeRunner (Internal code name GTA02): $399 for FreeRunner, $99 for the debug board on www.openmoko.com.
In Europe €350 (incl. vat.) for the FreeRunner on Trisoft.de or €299 on Pulster.de.
A: For long answer see Developer preview
A: The Neo1973 is a Phase 1 phone and aimed at software developers only. It is not suitable for end users, it will have basic functionality as a touchscreen phone. Little else will work, software development will continue till mass market release. Here are one developer's thoughts about the possibilities [1]
Those interested should:
Ideally they also:
A: The Neo Freerunner is the first phase 2 (mass release) phone from the Openmoko project and is designed for everyday use by end users and continued software development and improvements by the Openmoko team and the Openmoko community.
A: The question is almost what can you NOT do with this phone - eventually there will be a huge range of free software applications allowing both end users and developers to get much more out of this phone than a standard "locked" mobile phone using features like the integrated GPS, bluetooth, wifi and accelerometers.
End users or power users should buy the "base" unit.
Software developers may wish to buy the "advanced" model.
With Neo 1973 Base or Neo Freerunner Base you can do:
With Neo 1973 Advanced or Neo Freerunner Advanced you can additionally do:
For Neo1973
For FreeRunner
A: In a conventional closed phone, the handset maker and the mobile network operator work together to provide a service to you that best suits their business model. The capabilities of a modern smartphone equipped with GPS, Wifi and bluetooth are amazing and the result is that many features are "locked down" because they do not suit the network operator. Up until now it has been difficult to buy a phone on which you have freedom to install sofware which is not controlled by the network operators - Openmoko changes that!
A: A list of examples of "closed" behaviour has been started here - Problems of typical "closed" phones
A: Reviews of the latest "bleeding edge" daily builds of the OpenMoko software stack can be seen here
A: At the moment, the answer to many other questions is "no". The phone is at the moment a small linux box with a touchscreen, a working dialer and some prototype apps. Most do not function in any way that would be suitable for end-users. If you want to add a feature or application request, then look over the existing Applications and either add one, or add a feature request to the applications page.
At the moment, almost no 'end-user' applications are present and working in a usable state. It is possible to make and receive calls in some software revisions, this frequently breaks though.
A: See OpenMoko and OpenMokoFramework
A: User space GPS/Gpsd will use a binary plugin for Hammerhead AGPS and GSM modem is separate subsystem connected to S3C2410 UART1.
There are legal reasons why it is not possible to provide Open Source software for GPS and GSM modules.
Otherwise it is completely free software. See MokoMakefile and Development resources.
A: ipkg: http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/Ipkg
A: See Toolchain.
For a lot of testing and development work, you don't actually need emulation as you can run OpenMoko on a normal PC too. The emulators also aren't 100% accurate. That being said, there are several emulation options as described in the following.
QEMU can now emulate the Neo1973 device. The MokoMakefile has support for automatically building, flashing, and running the Neo1973 emulator.
See Qemu for more advanced information on running OpenMoko in Qemu.
Another is Xoo. Koen says: "Xoo should be enough for most apps people will develop, since most don't need access to the gsm uart directly. If you're hardcore you could use qemu + xoo, but that still doesn't emulate all the hardware quirks (e.g. unaligned access)".
Update: Stefan Schmidt has resized the Neo1973 Mock-up and written a small description for xoo. In his words:
It's not really useable at all, as you need a really high screen resolution to fit the whole picture on your screen. And of course the dpi are wrong. Even no buttons because I can't remember where they are at the case.
http://www.datenfreihafen.org/~stefan/OpenMoko/neo1973-xoo-device.tar.bz2
Start with 'xoo --device /path/to/neo1973.xml'
Some more details here.
Or use Xephyr directly with locally compiled programs (e.g. matchbox svn + openmoko):
Xephyr -screen 480x640 -nolisten tcp -ac :1 & export DISPLAY=:1 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib matchbox-window-manager -display $DISPLAY -use_titlebar no \ -use_super_modal yes -use_lowlight yes -use_dialog_mode static \ -use_cursor yes & matchbox-panel --geometry=480x44 --end-applets=clock & openmoko-footer & openmoko-taskmanager &
A: This should get you started:
A: Making legacy apps written for the "Garnet" OS (née "Palm OS") run on Linux is decidedly non-trivial.
PalmOS apps are in general very hard to simply 'port'. Particularly well-designed programs may make it possible.
The ACCESS Linux Platform will include Garnet on Host (GHost), a PalmOS emulator that will support M6800 (68k) and ARM PalmOS applications. This part (GarnetVM and the .prc loader) will however be closed-source and likely under a restrictive license (fact confirmed by ACCESS Co. employees), making it rather unusable. In addition GarnetVM depends on Hiker and other packages.
It is possible that POSE, an emulator that simulates a Palm device on a Linux host could be used to allow 68k based applications to run. This emulator has been around a long time; one expects that it will also run on OpenMoko, but this has to be considered a short-term bandaid rather than a long-term solution.
The soon-to-be-released Palm Foleo, which runs a Linux port developed by Palm Inc. independently of ALP, contains a PalmOS compatibility environment that runs PalmOS apps, supposedly all of them and supposedly seamlessly. Little is known about how it works but if it's not too kludgy it should run unmodified on any ARM linux. It is not known what license it will be distributed under.
Hopefully emulation will be necessary only for M68000 code (pre-PalmOS 5) while native ARM programs can run natively under Linux, provided a proper set of PalmOS libraries and a .prc executable loader.
A: It will have eventually, if you help us to get it working. Some good places to keep track of would be projects.openmoko.org and PhoneME.
Project [Jalimo] is a project aiming to provide a Java stack on mobile devices. This project supports OpenMoko.
A: See xdpyinfo output.
You can run it on your PC. You may be able to run it on other mobile platforms
While I can't speak for the OpenMoko team, it's worth noting that maemo is fixed resolution only. That will, I've heard, change in the future, but it hasn't yet. Maemo's current layout is also optimized for wide screens, not tall narrow ones. Most third party maemo applications that are out there will need to be modified to work at different sizes. Finally, a number of the software components of the Nokia 770 and N800 are not open source. --gopi
To add up on that, according to Nokia, Maemo is designed to bring the "Desktop" experience to an Internet Tablet. A lot of Desktop paradigms just won't work on a phone. However, we really share a lot of the base-technology (gtk, dbus, eds, gconf, to name a few) with Maemo, so we are definitely not a reinvent-the-wheel team.
A: Answer for the Neo1973 - Perhaps. Hardware issues mean that it won't work well on the Neo1973. (the typical latency of GPRS is far too high). Also, Skype is a closed source application, which does not provide binaries that would be suitable to run on OpenMoko. Skype's vendor could of course choose to provide binaries for OpenMoko phones. However, many telephone providers' terms of service agreements preclude running VoIP over their baseline GSM service.
A: Answer for the Neo FreeRunner. Since it has WiFi the FreeRunner should be a good platform for VOIP use. Check for softphone apps ported to the OpenMoko distribution at the projects page.
A: Very probably. MSN is closed source and will only run where Microsoft wants you to run it. But there are many Open Source IM clients, many of which have a plugin architecture and so support the use of more than one IM protocol, even simultaneously. One example is Pidgin, formerly called GAIM. GPRS does induce a certain amount of latency but that should not be a problem for simple, text-oriented chat between parties. And the GTA02's WiFi will make it even better.
A: See page Neo1973_Hardware and category Neo1973 Hardware and Disassembling Neo1973
A: No, see Neo1973 for details on what it does include (and Wish List - Hardware for what some want in the future.) See also FAQ#USB.
A: The currently available Neo1973 does not have WiFi. There was no suitable Wifi device available when it was designed. The next version will have WiFi. See also FAQ#USB.
A: Yes! Bluetooth 2.0.
A: Yes, but there's no holder for it on the phone.
The power button is a small circular button, just next to the USB connector. The Auxiliary button is a rectangular button on the top left of the edge of the phone. (on black phones it looks just like an IRDA port).
A: Use provided keyboard app.
A: Use Bluetooth keyboard.
A: For more methods and ideas see Wishlist:Text_Input.
A: Yes, audio path from GSM to/from mic and speakers is completely controllable by user. For example recording calls (both sides) and implementing an Answering Machine is possible. Also using text->speech should be possible or modifying outgoing voice. Currently there is no software bundled in phone to do this. There are only 2 A/D inputs and three D/A outputs (one dedicated to the earpiece). This means that stereo audio playback cannot happen at the same time as the Answering Machine functionality, amongst other things. See the audio page. Neo1973 Audio Subsystem
A: There has been no word on this so far, but see these estimates for a rough idea. More information about the battery here.
A: Charge the phone, communicate with it over USB-serial, or USB-networking.
A: Plug external devices, such as wifi, cameras, or mass-storage devices in. The "Mass Market" version of the phone will have wifi integrated.
The only limitation on current hardware seems to be no usb 2.0 support, which means slower communication with 2.0 devices.
A: The processor has USB 1.1 built in. One with USB2 built in would have been more expensive.
A:
FIC product development is looking into providing something that conveniently solves this problem.
The USB port on the Neo is not a properly compliant USB host port, all USB host ports must provide 5V - though powered devices or hubs may not draw any current from this, they may refuse to work. (The Belkin Tetrahub is an example of a hub that will not work.)
One solution is a three headed cable.
One end plugs into the Neo. One end plugs into a device port of a powered hub, or the Neo charger. One end plugs into the host port of a hub.
The Charger/USB device plug only has +5V and 0V connected in the simple cable, which are connected to the other ends.
For a more complex cable, when the host socket is not plugged in, the cable acts as a simple USB cable.
A: The Neo1973 will have mini-USB-B, and will be able to function as either a host or a device. It will NOT be USB On-The-Go. OTG is a complex specification, and it comprises way more than just a AB socket, but also electrical and software components which cannot be provide by the S3C2410.
You will need a special Mini-B to regular-B cable (note that this won't actually comply with the USB standard: a compliant cable has to have an A or Mini-A plug on one end, and B or Mini-B on the other).
A: The Neo1973 P1/P2 will have no LEDs besides the screen backlight.
A: Included with purchase of The "Hacker's Lunchbox" (Advanced version).
There are exposed I2C, SPI and debug board connectors inside case in all versions and Debug Board v2 (JTAG and serial console) in Advanced version. Connecting Neo1973 with Debug Board v2 explains how to connect it to the phone.
A: Yes
A: A faster CPU, faster GSM (EDGE?) perhaps even powered USB port, USB2, wifi, and camera. No details have been released yet. More details of hardware upgrades should be available sometime in May. There will also be 5 more OpenMoko devices - some not phones in the traditional sense - announced by FIC in September.
[1] http://www.amazon.de/Secure-Digital-Card-microSDHC-8192MB/dp/B0019XICD4/ref=pd_sbs_pc_15
A: Tri-band GSM (commonly known as "European tri-band", 900/1800/1900 MHz), GPRS Class12/CS4 2.5G (Not EDGE), Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, USB in all versions. WiFi: Atheros AR6K in GTA02. (No 3G in year 2007 models)
A: Yes - see this howto for how to configure a linux computer to act as such a router and Bluetooth Support.
A: See Neo1973 compatible cellphone providers
A: There has been some discussion of this on the mailing list. There is motivation, and there are interested developers. Not being a Mac OS X user, I don't know enough to summarize the discussion to answer this question. Can someone please fill in?
A: For IP over USB cable connectivity, it is planned to improve/adapt the AJZaurusUSB driver, allowing ssh into the OpenMoko.
A: It is expected that (Bluetooth/UB) SyncML based interoperation for contacts and events can easily be achieved by a patch to the Apple iSync configuration tables.
A: There is an open source implementation of Cocoa (GNUstep) that aims to run MacOS X compatible applications (sort of PPC/x86/ARM universal binaries) on OpenMoko devices: mySTEP.
A: Please reply UNDER post.
A: By searching the mailing list archives. For example, using Google searches:
site:openmoko.org text
For example, to search for accelerometer:
site:openmoko.org accelerometer
If you only want to read the "official" mails from FIC people or from OpenMoko people:
site:openmoko.org text "at fic.com.tw" site:openmoko.org text "at openmoko.org"
For example to search for "release date" from FIC people:
site:openmoko.org "release date" "at fic.com.tw"
Alternatively you can use the custom OpenMoko search engine that is using Google Co-op.
A: the answer for the display used in GTA01 and GTA02 is '2'
The Neo1973 was last available in Febuary 2008. See [Ne
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