Show me the Open-Hardware

TrollTech announced an 'open' phone, called the Greenphone. It runs Linux (QTopia Phone Edition specifically)

QTopia GreenPhone thumbnailIt is a full-featured GPRS/GSM phone:

  • dual-core 312MHz XScale processor
  • 64MB Ram, and a mini-SD flash slot
  • 1.3 megapixel camera
  • Bluetooth
  • WiFi networking

Looking at the success Nokia has had with exposing various developer interfaces to their mobile phones and N770 tablet (Maemo), I think there is a huge market for an "openphone". When I first heard of the O'Reilly Telephony Conference, I pictured people sitting around with their antiquated telephones, talking about switchboards and the like. I guess it's a lot cooler scene than that.

Additionally, hopefully Open-hardware like mobile phones and tablets will kick the closed-minded carriers into realizing they're slowly strangling themselves by keeping everything closed and begin to work with the huge, untapped, hobbyist and developer community.

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About the Author

Andrew Turner is an advocate of open standards and open data. He is actively involved in many organizations developing and supporting open standards, including OpenStreetMap, Open Geospatial Consortium, Open Web Foundation, OSGeo, and the World Wide Web Consortium. He co-founded CrisisCommons, a community of volunteers that, in coordination with government agencies and disaster response groups, build technology tools to help people in need during and after a crisis such as an earthquake, tsunami, tornado, hurricane, flood, or wildfire.

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