A first look at the OpenMoko Neo 1973

By Jake Edge
August 29, 2007

The hubbub over the iPhone is old news now, unlocking it from AT&T is the big story these days. Another phone – one which may actually deliver what many were hoping for with the iPhone – arrived in the LWN laboratories a few weeks ago: an OpenMoko Neo 1973. The phone, pictured at right (Apple's large handed model was not available), is compact and reasonably light; it looks very different from other cell phones. The hardware seems to be working fairly well at this point, but the software is lagging, which is likely to delay the consumer launch, currently slated for October.

This device is the first to run the OpenMoko software platform. Because it is the first, it is being called the "OpenMoko phone," but the company, OpenMoko, Inc., is clearly hoping to have other manufacturers use the software platform on their own hardware. Their business model is quite different from most in the consumer electronics world as they are very open about their hardware specs as well as their product roadmap. An unlocked phone running free software is obviously their goal; no doubt they would like theirs to be successful, but they are doing everything they can to see that the overall goal is reached.

The Neo hardware is fairly powerful, a 266MHz ARM processor with 128M of RAM and 64M of flash for running Linux and the applications. For additional storage, it has a Micro SD slot, tucked underneath the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) slot; both live underneath the standard Nokia battery. The back plate is rather easy to remove to get to the battery compartment, though it seems unlikely to pop open unexpectedly; the hardware design seems quite well thought out.

There are several connectivity options, starting with the quad-band GSM radio, which allows it to use cellular networks throughout most of the world. The radio also supports General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) for (slow) data connections, as long as the carrier and contract support it. Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 1.1 round out the communications choices. For the development hardware, there is no charger, USB from a host provides the battery recharging.

There is a GPS receiver in the phone, unfortunately one with a closed-source driver that is not distributed with the phone. There are efforts underway to reverse-engineer the binary driver and produce a free alternative. Once that is done, GPS applications can be written to take advantage of the device.

The touchscreen display is a sharp, 2.8-inch diagonal active matrix at 480x640 resolution which is reasonably easy to see in full sunlight (as long as you tilt it out of the glare). The Neo comes with a combination pen, mini-flashlight and laser pointer to be used as the stylus, which is a useful combination, though leaving ink behind on the screen seems a bit worrisome. There are only two buttons on the phone, one for power and one auxiliary (AUX), both flush with the case to prevent accidental button hits.

Software is going to make or break any phone project and OpenMoko seems a bit behind in that area. They just announced a complete overhaul of the user interface to be easier to use with fingers, rather than a stylus, and to incorporate what has been learned while using the real Neo hardware. Much of the software was written using emulators; what is easy on a monitor with a mouse is not necessarily so easy on a touchscreen using fingers, particularly when the screen is recessed, making the edges harder to use. The older startup screen is shown on the left, the newer to the right.

Some of the major applications (dialer, contacts, calendar, etc.) have been ported to the new interface (called 2007.2), but there is still a lot of work to do. Both old and new interfaces suffered from poor response and some application and UI crashes. The applications themselves are very rudimentary, probably too simple for what cell phone users expect, but they are a good start.

Actually connecting and registering with a cellular network was a manual process in the most recent build. Once some fiddling was out of the way, though, the phone could make and receive calls. Audio quality was mediocre and there seems to be some kind of echo cancellation problem for the audio at the other end. Those kinds of problems need to be high on the developers' priority list, without rock-solid basic phone functionality, consumers will be uninterested.

For a Linux user, it is unarguably cool to be able to ssh into your phone and poke around in the guts of the system. By using USB networking, a simple ifconfig on the host allows connections to the phone. Logging in as root puts you into a shell with BusyBox installed for many of the standard Linux utilities. By configuring the host as a gateway, the phone can access the internet (presumably via GPRS as well). This allows the use of Ipkg to update the phone software in the same way that apt-get and friends are used. There is also a terminal application, shown at right, which provides a root prompt on the screen, though making it bring up an on-screen keyboard was not obvious.

This phone clearly has a lot of potential, but it also has a long way to go to reach the polish that the iPhone is rumored to have. Its strongest feature, though, that it is not tied to any particular carrier, might be enough to carry it in the early going. In addition, carriers will not be able to lock out "foreign" ringtones or only allow their games and applications to be installed. OpenMoko, both the company and the software, are truly trying to live up to their Matrix-inspired slogan: "Free your phone".

Hopefully, the OpenMoko company has the resources to carry it through for a while, until the software catches up with the hardware. If not, though, the software is free, some other company could pick up where they left off. That would be unfortunate, as we look forward to following the development closely; we don't want to wait another year or more for a free (as in freedom) phone. We will keep you updated as things progress. 

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