Please keep in mind that we don't aim at selling thousands of devices, for now. No sense in going to start a mainstream advertising campaign. And the device is not considered ready for prime time for joe averageuser, heck not even N900 is, tbh. Particularly not since OVI store gone south. As a rule of thumb: when you couldn't sell a N900 to those prospects, you can't sell a Neo900 either to them.
Think however what we can do once we got FOSS-fremantle with basically all the closed system bits - like audio - REed. We can for example use improved and same time streamlined/simplified audio hw design. We can use a new SoC that's not completely compatible to OMAP3530. That's the main purpose of Neo900 for STEP2: make sure we got a truly open and working OS which we can adapt to a new hw platform. Then STEP2 can start to adress mainstream. Wouldn't want to base STEP2 on replicant and plain vanilla debian only.

That just made me think!
Modern x86 CPUs can do AES de/encryption in HW so encryption has no real impact on performance.
Would something like that be possible for the Neo900 too (e.g via some cheap and small chip)? Is it already planned and I missed it?

OMAP3 might or might not have some hw accel for crypt functions (probably related to HS devices which Neo900 is _not_ one of them). A separate chip is not feasible. I'm almost sure the CPU has enough power to encrypt/decrypt in realtime at maximum bandwidth of the storage interface.
/j

Quick reply...
About Step2: Curious what it will look like, so there are several form factors:
Banana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_8110
Swivel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N93i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N90
Double slider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N95
Simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Quark
Usual slider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeeksPhone_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Wizard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Photon_Q
Round-ish slider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Blue_Angel

What's the availability and usability of Nokia 808's famous camera?

Best wishes. Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

You forgot...

Clamshell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator

Wouldn't it be much better to start a thread for Step2 and keep this one for the first model ?

I can imagine newcomers coming to see what the Neo900 is about and seeing talks of Step2 while "Step1" is not even released.
That'd be as confusing as it gets.

HAhaha I still own the 9110 comunicator!!!!

Please stay tuned for rollout of our extremely convenient and informative updated Neo900 block diagram (interactive html version) later on today.
I'll update this post with URL as soon as it goes public.

cheers
A.Hitch... err jOERG

Here it is:
Neo900 Block Diagram latest (interactive)
and there's more: http://neo900.org/stuff/block-diagrams/

Many thanks to Werner for this awesome work!

Thanks for the update Joerg. I was never considering having NFC on any device I owned, but I trust this project will take the most precaution to protect my info or at the least give me the ability to really turn off chip/services.

So when I saw "NFC kill RF switch" in the diagram I thought freakin great ... but before I get all excited I want to ask you if there any thing more besides the title.

thanks

x

Well, it is supposed to do exactly what the name says: switch off the NFC antenna so there's no way whatsoever for the NFC chip to communicate via RF.
[edit] If we can get a chip that's capable of working from RF energy (like a smartcard), then the operation scheme will be:
(KillSwitch-)NFC-enable controlled by CPU as long as CPU/device powered up.
(KillSwitch-)NFC-enable shuts down NFC when CPU/device powered down and battery inserted.
(KillSwitch-)NFC-enable allows NFC-RF-powered operation when battery removed and backlid (with NFC antenna) closed, for supporting sort of "emergency operation" e.g. when your battery runs empty and you need access to the bus ticket on NFC
/j