For a long time I had the Nokia 1100 -- the "Made In India" phone! And I absolutely loved its usability.
One button to access them all,
One button to find them,
One button to do all the stuff,
And in usability bind them :)
But then I had to shift over to Reliance to get a RIM-to-RIM free pack, and it went downhill from there. Not even a single phone was good enough. I picked the least of all evils -- the Nokia 2112. But I still wonder why would Nokia, the only company that had got its phone UI right, go back and screw it all up! Who the fuck needs the "receive call" and "disconnect call" buttons -- you know the stupid red and green buttons on all phones. From 3 clicks to send an SMS in the 1100, I now need 7 clicks through a cluttered and complicated menu to be able to send a single message!
So, I've never cared much about phones, until today -- the FIC Neo1973 has me all worked up! No MotoRazrs, MotoPEBL, Nokia SOME_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE, Sony Ericsson's, and what have you have ever excited me as much as this phone does! An open Linux phone with GPRS. Apt-get style software updates. Open SDK. The power to tinker and write your own apps. The power to install hundreds of existing Linux apps. The power to change the UI if it sucks! Wow -- the possibilites are endless!
Can't wait to get my hands on one! Though I wonder how it would feel to dial a number using a touchscreen and not a keypad -- receiving/making calls while having food, washing hands, etc. is out of the window, I guess!
And I love the presentation that Sean Moss-Pultz (the creator of the phone) gave at the "Open Souce in Mobile" conference in Amsterdam. The power of simplicity!
That's what the phone looks like. A little on the unusal side, I must say -- but for all the phone narcissists out there -- it will make everyone take a second look at your latest "tool"!
The phone is called FIC Neo1973 but the software platform is called OpenMoko. The OpenMoko dialer.
The OpenMoko menu.
Like yourself i have fallen in love with the OpenMoKo phone. I have tried to contact people at FIC about the software development, trying to get access to at least some documentation, so i can start development on the phone as soon as possible. I got no reply thus far. Did you by any chance find something more then openmoko.com and openmoko.org?
ReplyDeleteFirst off, thanks for such incredible words of praise. (A friend told me I have to read your blog.) It's so cool to hear about people getting as exciting about this phone as we are. I'm totally swamped with all the feedback and questions. But I promise to reply. Give me another day, max.
ReplyDeleteSean Moss-Pultz
sean_mosko AT fic DOT com DOT tw