View Single Post
dos1's Avatar
Posts: 257 | Thanked: 2,053 times | Joined on Sep 2010 @ Warsaw, Poland
#5
Hello, I'm Sebastian Krzyszkowiak (dos), member of Openmoko community and strong supporter of GTA04. And now also Neo900

First, a bit of back-story:
GTA04 was designed as a drop-in replacement for Neo1973/Neo Freerunner (from Openmoko project) motherboards. It comes from Open Phoenux initiative created by Golden Delicious, one of former Openmoko distributors. You know, apt-get upgrade for hardware It's as open and free as you can get - only 3D acceleration needs binary blob, but everything works great even without it; there's also non-free WiFi firmware. But other than that - it's 100% free, you can control everything that runs on main CPU, just like with previous Openmoko phones.

It already works, there are around ~100 GTA04's in Openmoko community. There are already few OSes available (QtMoko, SHR, Debian) and Replicant (Android) is in works.

But there are few problems with GTA04: there's no dedicated case for it. You have to use refurbished GTA01/02 ones, and they are rare (not in production anymore) and expensive. GTA04 itself is not cheapest too - that's due to low demand.

But... joerg_rw recently came up with amazing idea to modify GTA04 board, upgrade some components etc. and use N900 cases instead of Openmoko ones. Second source N900 housings are easily and cheaply available on eBay, and hw-keyboard form factor will surely appeal more people.

What's more - part of joerg_rw's idea is to port Fremantle. As it it now - providing full compatibility. That would make GTA04-N900 vel. Neo900 a drop-in replacement for current N900 users. The same software, the same repos, the same everything - just faster, better and supported!

(level of backwards compatibility is still to be discussed - maybe removing some proprietary Maemo cruft will do better for us? Or maybe providing full, 100% compatibility will allow us to get more customers? Discuss! )

I think this is what both of our communities (Maemo and Openmoko) were waiting for so long - a proper successor for our phones. I'm all hyped for it!

Of course this is early planning stage, lots of things will probably change, but please please please, if you're interested - show it! We need to know how many people will want to buy one when it comes out. Low production runs are already pretty expensive, but if there are more people interested, it can get much cheaper.

Golden Delicious already showed with GTA04 that if there's demand, they can design and produce working, nice hardware. This is no vaporware of any kind, this is real project in its first days.

If you have any questions about both GTA04 or Neo900, feel free to ask

BTW. This is about current GTA04 prices depending on demand, just to give you all some insight:
> 1 buyer: 3000 EUR
> 10 buyers: 1500 EUR
> 100 buyers: 590 EUR
> 1000 buyers: 490 EUR (here it would include a better CPU, e.g. OMAP4)
> 10k buyers: 390 EUR (here it would include a new plastic case)
> 100k buyers: 290 EUR
> 1 Mio buyers: 240 EUR
> 10 Mio buyers: 199 EUR
PS. Feel free to spread the word about Neo900!

Last edited by dos1; 2013-09-09 at 22:05.
 

The Following 103 Users Say Thank You to dos1 For This Useful Post:
ajack, Akkumaru, Amboss, andil, AndyNokia232, ArchiMark, Artyom, ballfresno, benny1967, bigears5000, bills2north, bingomion, borghal, bozoid, Breeze5, Bundyo, cheve, cipper, ck2nb, cproc, crenquis, Cyberik, DA5, Daneel, drax, endsormeans, enne30, Estel, ezameht, Fabian Schölzel, Fabry, Faz, foobar, freemangordon, gerdich, HtheB, Ilew, Iosian, iosu, Iryus, Jedibeeftrix, jellyroll, joerg_rw, Jordi, jurop88, juz, kain, Ken-Young, kinchan, kingoddball, klinglerware, koznj, malfunctioning, MartinK, max_power, meemorph, MetalGearSolid, mhzesent, minimos, MINKIN2, misiak, mrsellout, mr_jrt, nicolai, Nilli, nodevel, orion188, OVK, peterleinchen, phapsubongtoi, pkz, ranbaxy, Rauha, rcolistete, reinob, rfa, rotoflex, Russe89, santeira, saponga, shabr, sixwheeledbeast, skanky, Skaven2k2, smoothc, Straycat, szopin, tanago, tangent, The Wizard of Huz, Tiran, titilambert, tonyhuynh, viento23, viktor80, wicket, Wikiwide, Win7Mac, wnt, xprism, YuppieNalle, zod, [Knuckles]