I think sticking to N900 form factor is a way to go, and I'm talking this as someone sitting in deep s**t of producing custom N900 case.
As for 3D printing, it is good for prototyping/personal use, not for mass production - ATM, for the latter case, it is even more expensive. Also, and what is even more important, there are no 3D printers that doesn't require manual polish afterwards for project like that (just like there are no CNC machines, that could mill fine to touch CNC case, every single one need manual polish), so it's a no-go for Neo900, IMO.
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Now, again, as someone who build cutom bodies for N900, Pi, etc, I really, really hope for as much connectors and access to peripherials on the board as possible, even if basic N900 case doesn't make use of it. Even vanilla N900 have connectors for external antennas, to all radios, available on board (Hirose U.FL connectors) - for Neo900, as modders/geeks device, the more, the better.
I found the OpenMoko form factor as bad as I could imagine in a smart phone but just for an embedded gadget with GPS and a GSM modem. One thing to be said about the GTA01/02 cases though is they are about as tough as any phone I have ever owned. They are built to survive DOT automotive crash guidelines.
If money is the most important factor, well, this project might not be exactly, what you are looking for.
Don't get me wrong, this project is very attractive to me and money is not the most important factor for me. What I'm primarily looking for is a solid OS base, potentially in the form of Fremantle rebased over Debian. I would be very willing to help with that too (time permitting). Give me that as a first-class OS and I would pay more for the Neo900 than the Jolla device, even if it's only going to have 512MB RAM.
One of the reasons I'm keen on this is so that we can have an up to date, stable OS where we leave the maintenance of the core OS to the Debian community so the Neo900 communitity can then concentrate on hardware adaptation and Frematle specific stuff.
But you also state you would rather have an OSS-computer in your hands with phone capabilities than a pure phone, that is the N900 and, may be, if we are lucky, the Neo900 as well.
Exactly. That's why I'm so interested in this project.
My expectation regarding openness of Jolla is low. They were Nokia people and their track record to bring a true OSS-phone to the market is obvious in the struggle to update Maemo to more modern Debian versions.
Up until the announcement of the Neo900, Jolla seemed to be the best option for a new mobile FOSS device, however I am skeptical of Jolla too. Among other things, I'm not keen that they (the Mer project) prefer to use unmaintained GPLv2 versions of software in favour of Tivoisation. Let's hope the Neo900 can deliver where Jolla can't.
Don't get me wrong, this project is very attractive to me and money is not the most important factor for me. What I'm primarily looking for is a solid OS base, potentially in the form of Fremantle rebased over Debian. I would be very willing to help with that too (time permitting). Give me that as a first-class OS and I would pay more for the Neo900 than the Jolla device, even if it's only going to have 512MB RAM.
One of the reasons I'm keen on this is so that we can have an up to date, stable OS where we leave the maintenance of the core OS to the Debian community so the Neo900 communitity can then concentrate on hardware adaptation and Frematle specific stuff.
This is the main problem I believe, new HW is not going to bring newer libc/glibc/libglib... The most limiting factor of current N900. While a bit faster execution would be VERY welcome, we're still stuck in a few year old ecosystem (could we change the poll to allow modifying votes cast? My 750 vote is waay over reality after the initial YEEEAAAH! moment)
Have there been any attempts to run maemo on the GTA0x devices by the on community in the past? And if so, what big road blocks were found?
We know that there have been attempts to run maemo on other hardware before (even the identical Palm Pre) with little to no luck, so I do believe that the "Proof of concept" device for now should just be having Fremantle running on an existing GTA0x chipset. Once this can be proven it would help more people realise the dream and make a commitment?
As a big proponent of a future Neo900mkII having VHF/UHF rx/tx chip I forgt to mention that perhaps the biggest boon to folks of the RMS tinfoil hat mindset is it would be the first mobile phone I know of with the ability to receive old school one way beeper/pager signals, a simple app would import the phone number to the dialer when you felt like firing up the GSM. Low power monitoring and encoding and decoding was done with software and sound cards back in the days of DOS.
Pager signals, which are ultra small and only need between 1200 and 9600baud, are mass transmitted repeatedly by towers in the service area, it is not possible to track people(easy to track and log with mobile phones) as it is a one way communication. In the 90s I used to take calls and voicemails by numeric pager and decide whether to fire up my mobile phone, use a payphone, or wait until I got home.
If marketed as the first real freedom phone which returns some privacy I bet it would market virally bringing down unit cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pager
From my reading it might even be possible now with current hardware to do a proof of concept using the FM receiver chip possibly with the tx chip transmitting a canceling signal to receive and decode as per wikipedia:Pagers using the commercial FM band(aka 100mhz?) receive a subcarrier, called the Subsidiary Communications Authority, of a broadcast station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsid...ions_Authority
Would it be any cheaper if people sent their fully functioning n900 (especially those with mre than one) to be fitted with the new board or is the cost of building it from parts negligable compared to the price of the new board?
