BTW the VHF/UHF and maybe lower band RX software defined radio is probably not a quick cut/paste option for the established GTA04 though it could be connected with only a few GPIOs later in a new phone/tablet case.
Just for info a software defined radio modulates the signal from a software controlled modulator so any radio modulation ie: AM/FM/SSB/FSK/CW modes are possible on any frequency the tuner can achieve.
Since we already have several microwave band black box radios in our phones already it would be possible with the correct protocol software stack to say emulate GSM, wifi, bluetooth, nfc, xbee, umts, etc; even some satellite up/downlink data protocols and HDTV from a software controlled radio, best part is the whole system would be fully open as the modulation would be accomplished with software written on OSS by our community.
Even if the UHF/VHF radio were not a SDR but only software tuning controlled and modulation fed from pulsaudio in FM mode it would/might allow it to RX/TX:
-FRS/PMR446/GMRS/MURS unlicensed/public walkie-talkie mode
-Marine VHF band
-Old VHF and UHF public safety band(for volunteer firefighters and police reserve)
-Air band(distorted, possibly shortened range)
-Amateur(ham) radio simplex, repeater, and satellite(with ext antenna) services
-APRS position and telemetry reporting over amateur and unlicensed bands between phones and APRS equipped radios
-UHF low bandwidth commercial satellite data communication modes
National regulation agencies might require the UHF/VHF chip to be disabled in software and a quiet unofficial community 'hack' to enable or hackable filters to initially restrict the radio to local unlicensed or amateur radio bands.
An additional AM shortwave-medium wave receiver again like the Earl Android tablet and external antenna(3.5mm audio jack?) would permit receiving shortwave signals worldwide including news, music, and some amateur radio transmissions, more options if the AM rx had a simple carrier wave injection to the mixer so power efficient amateur radio and pirate single-sideband signals can be decoded.
All of the above would be great once we move beyond the GTA04-Neo900 stage to a next gen phone and/or tablet.
Crossing fingers and toes it allll comes out good...Practically though I do hope it can pull off 1 gb of ram since as mentioned in other posts it would make it in the barest of terms current (considering dual...even quad core is the current standard...as well it would be viable for roughly a decade)...less would make me hesitate to purchase. If the boys can even pull off a better fremantle that is more open then I am content.
Actually it is very critical that once undertaken this succeeds...otherwise the potential that it may be a very long time before it is attempted again or never happens at all is high..."once burned" and all...and would not make maemo 6 development devices any quicker. I would love bells and whistles...but as long as it can go toe to toe with current and immediate future competition..even out perform in some areas...big hurrah...so air conditioning...reclining easy chair...and wide screen tv aside...simply increasing it's abilities and ramping up some 4x..making it more open..enabling more devel. as well...essentially increasing it's viable device and os lifespan and encouraging maemo 6 devel...I am more than happy...
price wise...I would buy two for sure one for me and the lady...right now
...I know it would be an even more unique and need-to-have-device than our n900's now and worth the money....but after $500-600 a pop I would be starting to say "ouch" as I reach for my wallet
We might try to find a PoP with RAM only that maybe allows 1GB (8Gb) then - at the expense of nuking NAND and moving the NAND partitions to eMMC or sth. We need to check that.
I'd also like to know what's the SoC in N9 (didn't dare to disassemble it yet)
Another idea I might investigate further is to add some RAM on eMMC bus as a fast volatile alternative to flash. For fast swap ;-)
cheers and thanks for your invaluable feedback
jOERG
It has been a few years but I think my neo1973 has a bunch of GPIOs available, dont know the badwidth or how many pins are required to access and use a ram chip but if the two are similar I think we had a MMC card wired direct into a zaurus 5500 board with just power and a repurposed in and out line that didnt have glue logic. No recollection on the bandwidth though.
It has been a few years but I think my neo1973 has a bunch of GPIOs available, dont know the badwidth or how many pins are required to access and use a ram chip but if the two are similar I think we had a MMC card wired direct into a zaurus 5500 board with just power and a repurposed in and out line that didnt have glue logic. No recollection on the bandwidth though.
Yes, that's basically the idea behind my note about adding RAM as fake volatile fast flash/eMMC storage. Though we need to use a decent interface to get some bandwidth that makes the whole thing worth it.
@all: what would you think about maybe 2GB of fast swap on top of 512MB RAM, instead of 1GB true RAM? Would that somewhat satisfy your requirements?
We might try to find a PoP with RAM only that maybe allows 1GB (8Gb) then - at the expense of nuking NAND and moving the NAND partitions to eMMC or sth. We need to check that.
Another idea I might investigate further is to add some RAM on eMMC bus as a fast volatile alternative to flash. For fast swap ;-)
cheers and thanks for your invaluable feedback
jOERG
hmmm..Ah..right...brilliant bit of juggling there if it can be done...though I have completely run out of body parts to cross while holding a horseshoe, my rabbit's foot and clover for good luck ...and am now contemplating praying to all the open-source gods I know for intervention in making the neo900 happen.
There are a bunch of us here on Van. Isle holding our breath waiting for the news.
Fortune favours the brave and daring.....and as far as I know... a smarter and crazier pack of determined bas***ds that could make this happen ....exists nowhere else but here.
I'm for 300EUR as unfortunately I don't have enough money to be able to spend more for a smartphone.. 300EUR + delivery costs means that it'll take away my money which I earn in 2-3 months (I'm just a young studend - so I don't even have proper work atm...).
I'm 99% sure that I'll not be able to buy it in the next few months..
And ofc.. I'll not buy it as well if it will not have enough good hardware to get me interested. Current N900 is so slow comparing to smartphones which are produced in theese years, anyway I do not expect NeoN900 to be smarphone which will beat all other smartphones put together.. I just expect to have CPU 1GHz+ (dual core will be great, but.. it's not cheap...), 1024M RAM - yes, that much because ofc I'd like to install Android next to Maemo just to mess with it sometimes. Ofc everything needs to be get to compatibility with N900 (I mean - Maemo, because Android is just optional for me).
I think that keyboard should be modified. It'd be great if it will have own case - not N900's one. It'd be great if there will be more buttons than on N900 (make it wider to have more space for hardware and add one line of keys to have alt and 2 additional modifier keys), It'd be great if in the front of the right side of the screen there will be few touch buttons (3?) just like in the most of stock-android devices. It'd be great if screen would get replaced with amoled.
P.S. I didn't read the whole topic (yet), 'coz I didn't have enough time to read it - so sorry if I'm saying something that has alredy been said and replied to.
I think that keyboard should be modified. It'd be great if it will have own case - not N900's one. It'd be great if there will be more buttons than on N900 (make it wider to have more space for hardware and add one line of keys to have alt and 2 additional modifier keys), It'd be great if in the front of the right side of the screen there will be few touch buttons (3?) just like in the most of stock-android devices. It'd be great if screen would get replaced with amoled.
Production of cases is damn expensive. It's completely not economically reasonable for such low amounts. That's why GTA04 still doesn't have its own case produced and just relies on used GTA01/02 ones. One of the reasons for Neo900 idea was limited amount of those cases - N900 ones are much cheaper, easier to get and there are lots of them on free market.
