joerg_rw | # 1 | 2013-08-25, 21:32 | Report

so it begun:

Introducing the Neo900 project - the first true successor for N900


we (the Neo900 team) are currently in the planning phase about a maemo5/fremantle-compatible successor of N900, with N900 look-alike (aka case) and a processor with more grunt and RAM.

This is already beyond the state of vaporware, see www.gta04.org which this will base on.

I.E. the GTA04 exists (350+ working units sold), what we're talking about are slight modification to GTA04 board to make it fit into a
Neo900, with housing, display, digitizer aka touchpanel, cameras etc sourced from the commercial N900 spare parts market. (though our primary target is to provide ready-to-run complete devices, we will also offer an option for you to buy the GTA04-NeoNinehundred board only, instead of the complete Neo900 device, to upgrade any N900 you already may have)
So it wll look like a N900, feel like a N900 and work like a N900, just way faster, thanks to the DM3730 CPU @1GHz and at least 512MB RAM (1GB depending on chip availability) plus maybe a few GB more of fast RAM-based "storage" as swap.
And - that's our plan - it will have all the functionality you're used to from N900 plus sturdy USB (that won't fall off the PCB) with full OTG support, all sorts of new nice sensors like gyro and altimeter and compass, and at your choice a GSM/UMTS (3.5G) or LTE (4G) modem that doesn't break (or when it ever would then you can fix it).
The AV/headset connector will offer new stereo line-in function on top of the usual mono mic and stereo-out and video.
We will add a general purpose expansion interface under that battery lid - funny enough it turns out it's a superset of what Jolla is using on their TOH interface.

Plus the whole device is 100% open, you get all the schematics and links to all the datasheets of the 'free' chips that are used. *), we don't work behind walls.

The project is about the hardware, we can't run a software development department to port maemo to the device. It's up to a community effort to establish this. Two volunteers already hollered: freemangordon whom you all know from CSSU, and FatPhil, an ex_Nokia kernel maintainer :-) Many thanks to both! And I mustn't miss to mention that a lot of other community members also offered to help wherever they can in our newly formed fremantle porting task force. Many thanks to all of you too.

Stay tuned for more to come :-) Please note Dos1's excellent post#5 below!


*)what we we possibly will hand out later on only are the Eagle project files to feed the fab with. We won't hand out the "shopping list" with all the commercial contacts. What's also not available are docs about the powervr graphics core, but device works without using that core. We don't have access to any modem firmware sourcecode or sources for other subsystem firmwares.

cheers
jOERG

PS: I added a public poll, to allow for evaluating if we might reach the minimum of 200 preorders with a target of 700EUR per complete device (just ballpark figures!)

Context Links:
http://www.mwkn.net/2013/36/front.html
https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=430
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91308
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments....3&cid=44840495

some timeline: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1374716
disclaimer: this project is not related to or driven by the maemo community council, nor does it get any support from council or HiFo

Update:
FUNDRAISER succeeded, development started - see http://neo900.org
FOR SHIPPING DESTINATIONS PLEASE NOTE http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1383775 and http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...99#post1407199

Update2[2014-06-17]:
Sorry for neglecting this post#1 for so long, we shouldn't have urged you into reading 1000s of posts in several threads to get latest status.
The project is now under responsibility of a company dedicated to Neo900 exclusively: the (surprising name ) Neo900 UG
We're still about to complete the process of transferring assets from GDC who originally held responsibility, to the new Neo900 UG - however that's basically irrelevant for our supporters since nothing really changes for you from this.
We started to accept donations again, after we had to suspend this for a while during the GDC->UG transfer, see http://neo900.org/#donate . This is still low profile since we need to sort out our "fineprint" to be in line with the way we promised to handle your donations, but we're about to improve this during the next few weeks.
On the technical side we are about to build our 3rd version of prototype boards with a lot of exciting stuff that's unique and new with Neo900, compared to both of its ancestors N900 and GTA04 (well, the latter obviously has more already of the sensors and stuff we plan to cram on protoV3) - we're just on hold until the majority of our donors transferred their donation from GDC to UG, so the UG can actually order the proto hardware to get built. So if you donated and haven't taken care to add an according note to your GDC order management page already, please do that now. Thanks for your support and patience to all our donors. The V3 will demonstrate working display, working modem incl the more relevant part of our security concept to monitor the modem, working charging and possibly battery hotswap incl improved charger detection independant of CPU support.
Finally I missed to officially introduce Werner Almesberger here. We're very glad to welcome him on board of the Neo900 core developer team.

Please stay tuned for us doing a major overhaul of our website http://neo900.org to represent more in realtime all the progress we made so far. We're going to get a microblog there really soon now, to keep you up to date with what's going on.

Update3[2014-06-23]
microblog added to website
donation now open again, even via PayPal. Stay tuned, bitcoins may be around the corner.
Hoping to continue with ProtoV2 (in some locations called V3 since it's 3rd PCB) next week.
Please all donors (those wo already donated) check your GDC order page if not done already. Aso see http://neo900.org/donate-gdc

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Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-06-22 at 22:43. Reason: update 3

peterleinchen | # 2 | 2013-08-25, 21:36 | Report

Wahoo!

Fremantle-compatible means?

joerg_rw | # 3 | 2013-08-25, 21:38 | Report

to be discussed. It means same apps, same user experience, same knowledge base.
My idea is to make it possible to run fremantle apps on the Neo900, dialer and all other stock apps as well as everything straight from maemo-extras repo. We'll see how that pans out. Worst case we need a custom built rootfs and dedicated Neo-repositories. We need developers who help to port fremantle kernel and core system to the new platform (which is also an OMAP3, so it should be feasible). Ideally the new platform will be so much identical to N900 that you simply can flash PR1.3 to it and it just works. There are a few minor obstacles that forbid this ideal: Nolo and modem. I think both is manageable.

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Last edited by joerg_rw; 2013-08-26 at 05:40.

n900hacker | # 4 | 2013-08-25, 21:45 | Report

Yeah! I fully support this idea!

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Last edited by n900hacker; 2013-08-25 at 21:48.

dos1 | # 5 | 2013-08-25, 21:54 | Report

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:
PS. Feel free to spread the word about Neo900!

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

MINKIN2 | # 6 | 2013-08-25, 21:57 | Report

Ummm, if they are making a chipset to fit a look-alike case... Could there be any chance of making the chipset fit an existing n900 shell?

Edit: Dumb post, my bad should have paid closer attention to first post.

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Last edited by MINKIN2; 2013-08-25 at 22:14.

dos1 | # 7 | 2013-08-25, 21:59 | Report

That's exactly the point of this project To adapt GTA04 to use N900 casing and screen instead of Openmoko ones.

MINKIN2 | # 8 | 2013-08-25, 22:03 | Report

Yup, just saw your post as I was refreshing my page. Sorry.

Really, If this takes off then the prices of those Broken USB n900s or are going to sky rocket! I have one waiting already for this project.

Estel | # 9 | 2013-08-25, 22:04 | Report

1st april was a while ago.

Seriously though, yes, I would buy one in a heartbeat, even before all software whistles would get finished. Probably would do so, instead of buying Jolla ("probably" is about instead, not about "may buy or may not")

Proposed price is quite rough (AIUI it is "only" a board, screen module, case, etc to be re-used), but I get that such niche (as compared to mass market) project can't get ready boards for cheap.
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Still, consider that expectations would be quite high, i.e no hardware feature missing (including peripherials like FM receiver/transmitter, IR transmitter, etc), and real hope for having CSSU'ish Hildon as UI.

As for "could we replace closed source components where possible", I think that doing so would even increase number of buyers. We don't need 100% fremantle copy - it have it own flaws. We need100% fremantle features, prefferably without those flaws, and with more room to expand. So, the more FOSS in it, the better.

/Estel

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Last edited by Estel; 2013-08-25 at 22:13.

dos1 | # 10 | 2013-08-25, 22:15 | Report

This is not a joke! I think it's the best way to combine potential of those two communities. Open Phoenux, coming from Openmoko, showed that it's possible to create and sell new, working device while staying true to FOSS spirit. Maemo community has great foundations for supporting software (Openmoko community rather failed in this regard - our OSes were amazing for hacking and playing, but not really for actual usage).

GTA04 works, Fremantle works. Both have rather poor demand at the moment, because both work separately - GTA04 without proper software and Fremantle without proper hardware. Let's combine it and do something that rocks!

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Last edited by dos1; 2013-08-25 at 22:17.