Since I have two FreeRunners, I look forward to replacing one of those with the new innards while keeping the other one as a daily phone while kernel and modem drivers get ready with the new platform. With a newer platform with ARMv7 instruction set, there would be easily also other ”traditional” distributions choices besides Debian to choose from, like Ubuntu or MeeGo. Both have oFono (+ telepathy etc.) packaged up, while Ubuntu also has a lot of the FreeSmartphone.Org (FSO) stack that has come to Ubuntu from Debian's pkg-fso team that I'm part of. Both software stacks are capable of getting updated with new modem drivers, although I think currently FSO has more daily / only phone users than oFono at this point of time still (I haven't yet heard of many Nokia N900 users using only free software distribution while using the phone functionality of such a distro as the one to count on).
So, a quote from today's Openmoko Community Updates:
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GTA04
GTA04 is a project by the long time distributor and hw developer, German company Golden Delicious. The name is loaned from Openmoko project because of the spiritual continuation - GTA01 was the codename for Neo1973, GTA02 was the Neo FreeRunner, and GTA03 was the canceled successor product. Besides offering improved versions of Neo FreeRunner (better battery life, better audio output), they've a complete replacement board planned to fit an existing Neo FreeRunner case and use the existing display.
The key details of GTA04 include among else:
- OMAP3530 ARMv7 CPU
- UMTS/3G (HSPA)
- USB 2.0 OTG
- WLAN, BT, FM transceiver
- Barometric Altimeter, Accelerometer, Compass, Gyroscope
- Optionally camera
Find your GTA04 information at the following addresses:
- http://www.gta04.org/ - technical: u-boot, kernel, Debian...
- http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04 - shopping page
- http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04-Early-Adopter - the early adopter program, although already finished
Latest news:
- gta04-owner mailing list founded, although occasionally you will find news also from the openmoko-community list among else; browse the list archives at http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/
- First engineering sample (GTA04A2) is working in PDA mode (U-Boot in NAND Flash)
- GTA04A3 is getting final PCB layout fine tuning
- UMTS (3G) modules have arrived. And GTA04 likely to have 512 MB RAM, 512 MB NAND Flash and 1GHz DM3730 CPU. http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/2011-January/000025.html
Visit the FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium next weekend (5th/6th of February, 2011) to see GTA04 in action and discuss about it! See http://fosdem.org/2011/ , http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FOSDEM_2011 , http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2010-December/063899.html
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