Scott’s Weblog

Sorry, iPhone…

January 30th, 2007

… but I’ve found someone else. It was a brief romance, based mainly on that special kind of geek lust. The promise of something totally revolutionary, a wake up call for the handset industry busy basking in it’s own mediocrity. And, it was shiny. But as the Reality Distortion Field wore off, and we came to find out more about you, things started to look grim. The killer was the closed ecosystem.

Enter OpenMoko. Yes, it’s “old news”, and mattb blogged about it a few days ago, but I only became aware of it today, and boy did it hit that last nail into iPhone’s coffin (well, for me at least).

The Neo1973 lacks some of the nicer features of the iPhone, such as WiFi and built-in storage. However, WiFi is being worked on for a future release, and given the micro-SD slot, storage shouldn’t be an issue (plus, it’s upgradeable). It lacks a camera, but to be honest, I don’t care. The Neo1973 also lacks decent mobile data support with GPRS. Then again, iPhone isn’t 3G either. Both phones are quad-band GSM.

But even with all these “lacking” features, the Neo1973 has some really nice things that iPhone doesn’t. GPS, for instance. It also sports a very nice sounding 2.8″ TFT screen at 640×480 pixels compared to iPhone’s bigger but lower resolution screen (3.5″ at 320×480). That’s a hell of a resolution for a 2.8″ screen. The Neo1973 will also be carrier neutral and be sold directly from the manufacturer from their website, with worldwide shipping.

And the kicker of course is that it runs Linux and the whole stack is open. I like the fact that developers (well, anyone really) will be able to buy one before public release, as this will ensure that there are some really good apps available when it does come out. I really really want one, but I’m not sure I want to buy a smartphone without WiFi. I think I’ll wait for version 2 (developer release in September ‘07 according to the current timeline) to see if it gets WiFi and better mobile data. If it does, I’ll be all over it. Until then, I’ll continue to live with my trusty three-year-old Nokia.

Entry Filed under: General