Cell Phone Blog

Golem.de reported:

The FIC the affiliated undertaking of OpenMoko will not evolve open-source smartphone Neo Free Runner any more. OpenMoko had to reduce the number of employees to be able to stay active in the market. The only rescue is to bring another device to the market but not a phone.

It wonders me not that the development of this project was stopped. The idea in itself, an open-source mobile phone is the right one, as it can be seen from the success of G1. The problem is that this device until the present time is not ripe. As far as I see, the OpenMoko developers wanted to work out the mobile phone with the help of user feedbacks. Unfortunately, it has failed, as the development of the device required too much time. The device is also still quite buggy. The design of OpenMoko is also a weak point of the device. Somehow, this situation reminds me on Linux problems. The operating system is great, but it is too difficult to operate it. I am a student of computer science and I find Linux really great. I use Linux as a server to host my web pages, but I will never install this OS as a home system. At least not until the design and usability will be reviewed for normal people. The Linux community has a lot of things to do. Maybe someday I will make my contribution, who knows. In our university there is an option – “man-machine communication,” where problems and solutions of usability of software products are the matters of studies. Unfortunately, I have not enough time in this semester to visit this decepline, but perhaps I will do it in the next one. There must be someone who after all solves the eternal Linux problems
That was obviously a joke, but the topic of design and usability is very burning question in the Linux community.

Few No mobile phone manufacturer was able to create so much excitement about their product. The iPhone is not a simple mobile phone, as some people think, but a powerful smartphone with a 400 MHz processor and more than 100 megabytes of RAM. The operating system is limited but very powerful version of MacOS. Apple initially does not planned, or not wanted to advertise, to open the system for third-party software programmers. After a while, it was possible, to hack the mobile phone by an error in the processing of images in Safari, and so to open the back door to install programs on iPhone. Apple had unsuccessfully tried to close all leaks. Each new firmware was cracked within hours or days.
Immediately formed a huge worldwide fan community, amateur programmers began to develop their own programs for iPhone and Ipod touch. Most of them are free, but there are also several commercial projects.
As an example of a successful commercial project I can call the game Labyrinth. This game imitates the toy, where you should guide the ball through a labyrinth, without falling into the intermediate holes. The game uses motion sensors of Iphone to find out what position the device is kept by the user.
Meanwhile, you can find SIP software for iPhone, with it you can make free or cheap calls through internet. Incidentally, Apple had announced the possibility for third-party programmers to develop software for Iphone. But if you want to develop software legally, you must buy a license. In addition, the programs will be distributed only via iTunes so Apple will have a good possibility „to make money from air“. At the moment I can see only one weakness, the operating system on Iphone, don’t support multitasking.