Hi Denver, > It would be great if I could find some existing hardware instead of building > my own. The Neo FreeRunner seems like a good candidate given what you said > later (more on that below). > [...] > I realize that building a phone is a substantial undertaking so I'd like to > avoid that if possible.
Yes, building your own phone hw of any kind is very very hard, not only in the actual manufacturing phase, but also in creating the design to be manufactured. The process can be somewhat simplified by skipping the design and making a 100% verbatim clone of a hw product that was made by someone else in the past - see below for my thoughts on doing just this with Openmoko's Neo. > I do have a Neo FreeRunner so perhaps that should be my first goal: to run > FC Magnetite and see how well it works for me. Our community contributor David Matthews can probably help you with Freerunner issues, including firmware flashing, but I can absolutely assure you that you WILL NOT be able to see any observable differences between Openmoko's official firmware and FreeCalypso Magnetite: if someone were to give you a used Freerunner without telling you what firmware version it runs, you won't be able to determine it behaviorally, only by looking at the ID strings returned by the modem. > > Our Magnetite firmware has not been fully deblobbed yet, but: > > > > * We have a clear roadmap toward a fully deblobbed version; > > Does it seem like a substantial amount of work? > Or is there not much left now? The latter - not much work left, but I need newly made FreeCalypso hardware with an active manufacturing and marketing company behind it in order to make the work meaningful. > Would it not still offer wifi support? If so, then it seems to be a good > candidate for my use case. If you understand WiFi and know how to use it, then yes, for your use case the Freerunner does offer a practical advantage over a dumbphone. My analysis of the FR having no advantage over a dumbphone is from the perspective of someone who has no use for WiFi on a phone. > And I would be unlikely to find a dumbphone that would do wifi anyway. Actually the Pirelli DP-L10 (which I currently use as my everyday personal phone with the WiFi disabled) does just this, but its WiFi VoIP hardware is completely undocumented, hence it's a no-go for FOSS. > Of course, as you said, the community is mostly gone at this point. Bringing > that back would be a challenge, but if I was able to work on the FreeRunner > software full-time for a while, perhaps I could make that happen. Yes, the effectively-dissolved status of the community is one of the two killer problems with the Freerunner. The other killer problem is the no-longer-made status of the hardware, reduced to an extremely scarce set of second-hand units. The two problems feed each other - I don't see how the community can be rebuilt without a new company that actively manufactures *and markets* new Freerunner units that are verbatim-identical to Openmoko-made ones, but it is a two-way street: anyone who steps up into the role of the new Freerunner manufacturer will need the help of an active software developer and user community in order to succeed. Now here is something I need to emphasize: restarting new production of GTA02 (Neo Freerunner) units verbatim-identical to Openmoko-made ones *is possible*, and if someone were to fund it, *I can do it*. The complete design files for the GTA02 are published, and all of the essential components that would be needed for a Freerunner clone including the original LCD+touchscreen module can still be obtained in volume. However, such a venture would involve a quite substantial cost: * If I were to do it, I would need about 10 kUSD upfront to start phase 1: to start acquiring all of the components needed for making a new GTA02 motherboard, and once all of these components have been acquired, produce the first experimental batch of these new GTA02 motherboards in exactly the same manner as what we are currently doing for the FCDEV3B. * The WiFi add-on, the Bluetooth add-on and the plastic case will be separate steps with separate unknown costs after we have recreated the base motherboard. * My guesstimate for the total cost when it's all said and done is somewhere between 50 and 100 kUSD. Now if anyone would like to actually pursue what I just outlined, let's wait another couple of weeks first to see how our FCDEV3B pans out. Everything we are doing on the FCDEV3B will also be required for a Freerunner clone or for a SIM900-like packaged modem module or for any other kind of end product we can come up with, and since the FCDEV3B is now only 2-3 weeks away from the moment of truth, I believe that we should prove it working first before we start thinking about what we should do next. To the funding people who are reading this list: once we get our current FCDEV3B built and working, we shall come to a crossroads, and we'll have a choice as to what kind of potential end product we should pursue next. I have at least 3 possible choices in mind already: Option 1: build a new GTA02 motherboard as outlined above. Option 2: build a packaged modem module that would compete with SIM900 etc, but with full recompilable source for the official shipping firmware, no restrictions against users loading their own fw, and published schematics for the guts of the module for transparency. This packaged modem module can then be used by other people seeking to build FOSS smartphones or any other applications. Option 3: build a Handset Motherboard Prototype (HSMBP), a board just like the motherboard of a dumbphone handset, but in a prototype form factor that allows everything to be fully exercised on a bare board without plastics. This HSMBP will primarily allow us to play with and polish TI's dumbphone UI for the 176x220 pixel color LCD configuration, and may later be turned into a complete FreeCalypso libre dumbphone product. Which of these choices will we end up pursuing after the FCDEV3B? Answer: it won't be up to me, but rather up to the funding people to decide. So if you are one of the latter, you may want to start thinking about which project direction you would like to fund going forward. Sincerely, Mychaela Falconia, The Mother of FreeCalypso _______________________________________________ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community