OpenMoko has taken the stance to sell cell phones to general consumers as announced at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Before we proceed any further, here’s a little bit of history on OpenMoko. This company is run by Openmoko Inc. of Taiwan, a subsidiary of First International Computer Inc. of Taiwan, and is proud to be a developer of cell phones which rely on open source hardware and software. To date, OpenMoko has developed OpenMoko Linux and Neo, whereby both of them are open-source software platform and hardware for cell phones. Currently, OpenMoko Linux utilizes Linux as its OS kernel and employs X11 and GTK as its window systems. company is now concentrating to make the necessary steps in order to start selling individual cell phones to consumers as yet another stream of revenue.

Neo, the hardware platform developed by OpenMoko comes with a 400MHz microprocessor and an ARM core, a 640 x 480 display with a touch panel display, GPS navigation and wireless LAN functionalities among others. The Neo also doubles up as a controller for USB, enabling one to hook it up to different peripheral devices. Currently, OpenMoko’s Neo 1973 cell phone that was specially developed to run OpenMoko is sold out after being made exclusively to developers, and they are currently working on a new and improved version known as the Neo Freerunner. The Freerunner won’t be that easy to use though, as you will still need to go through the trouble of reinstalling all your previous software. OpenMoko is ready to make the Freerunner a consumer product, but that will only come sometime in the next half dozen months.

Will you be rocking on with an open source phone in the future, or do you prefer to stick to the tried and tested handsets which hail from the headquarters of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Apple?

Source: Tech-On!