I do tech support for phones and I assure that there are many people who don't care about cameras. I knpw because they say exactly that "I don't need a camera". However, based on the number of mms messaging, and problems with this I see, they certainly are popular with a lot of people.
Lack of a camera will not doom a phone. Although it is now becoming hard to find one without camera, most have very pitiful camera that take lousy pictures. I have one that takes great pictures, but it's made to specially be a phone blended with camera (sony cybershot) and it works very as a camera and less well as a phone hehe. I can't say that Neo is for non techies. An open source linux based phone where you can compile your own kernel and can get a JTAG adapter for flashing ... for non techies? This is not for non techies. It could have been but then it would not even be released until the software was fully cooked and idiot proofed, and they probably wouldn't be talking about tons of new features. Also, knowing what I do about how phone providers work and how they deal with phone firmware, branding, security, authentication, etc ... You will not see a phone like this sold by a major provider. Not in a fully open source form. They will not allow that. There are many reasons for this which I will not mention, if you don't know them then you don't understand the phone industry. There are sales oriented reasons, security oriented reasons, and branding reasons. A fully open source phone is a provider's nightmare. That does not mean they won't sell to users, but it does mean that providers won't buy them to sell to you, not unless they can erase the flash image, provide their own, prevent the JTAG access, and many other things ... -- Doug _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community