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".
Wait until someone actually writes some good applications that use the camera as more than just a holiday-fun activity capture device. For example, I'd love to use the GTA03 as a mouse. This is entirely feasible if it has a camera onboard.
;) j.
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 the developer stage, obviously. There's no point for me to be spending so much effort being involved with the developer stage of this phone project, if there isn't at least some promise that on the horizon, OpenMoko will be available to consumers as a platform. I envision that all the effort I'm putting into writing apps for OpenMoko will prove worthwhile, once there are people who can buy OpenMoko-based phones freely on the open market, plug in my feed address, and subscribe to my applications. This would be an awesome relationship, in my opinion, between me (the developer) and (hopefully) thousands of users. If there isn't at least a promise of this on the horizon, there is no point hacking around with OpenMoko - I can get my Linux hacker fix on with plenty of other more viable platforms, in the meantime. Such as for example, the GP2X gaming platform, which shares a lot of similarities with the OpenMoko ethos, even though the users:developers ratio is a lot higher in that realm.
I would encourage anyone on this list right now to remember that this is supposed to be the developer-stage ramp-up towards a possible more consumer-oriented future. Please, OpenMoko people, plan to bring products to the market that are *not* so developer focused in the very near future.
I would love to have a few thousand normal users plugged into my application feeds, and not just for the fun of it.
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 ...
All of these tasks can quite easily be wrapped up in a consumer- friendly package, without intruding on any network-provider realities. The fact is that the OpenMoko-based phones are quite functional devices - once people see that there are applications beyond-the-box for the handy they are enslaved by, things will change. I can think of tons of applications for OpenMoko, also, that are not just limited to network-provider metrics; I, for one, would love to see these applications become more broadly acceptable, and thats not going to happen without a little developer investment and faith, no matter what the status quo currently provides, that there will be users one day able to buy hardware to run the cool pocket apps of the future. Such as we are seeing right now with the developer-stages of OpenMoko..
j. ; -- Jay Vaughan _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
