LINux on MOBile - QtopiaLINMOB.net is a blog about LINux on MOBile devices. With the PinePhone (Pro) and Librem 5 shipping it is back to report on GNU+Linux on mobile devices.Zola2011-10-24T19:55:00+00:00https://linmob.net/tags/qtopia/feed.xmlQtMoko on the GTA042011-10-24T19:55:00+00:002011-10-24T19:55:00+00:00https://linmob.net/radek-polak-shot-a-nice-video-of-his-distribution/<p>Radek Polak shot a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgZzxmHzWtg">nice video of his distribution QtMoko</a>, which is essentially a Debian based distribution based on Qt Extended (Qtopia), originally developed for the Openmoko Freerunner, running on the <a href="http://www.gta04.org">GTA04</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2011-October/065580.html">Openmoko Community Mailing Lists</a></p>
First impressions of Openmoko Neo FreeRunner2009-02-17T00:38:00+00:002009-02-17T00:38:00+00:00https://linmob.net/first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/<p>Recently I bought a defected FreeRunner from eBay, the articles description just said, that it had stopped starting up some days ago. I wouldn't have bought it, if it wouldn't have been quite cheap: I won the auction and had to pay ~53 euros including shipping—I had seen another defected FreeRunner with a similar defect priced far higher after all.</p>
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<p>I was (of course) excited to get it. When it arrived one day after my G1, I had to take it out of its box immediately. Turned out that it really didn't start. So I connected it to the wall charger, in order to charge the battery. Didn't start, still. Finally, I wired one of my Motorola batteries to it, and guess what: I got a weird looking image on the screen. </p>
<p>So I thought: Maybe something happened while flashing the device and flashing failed. I asked for help at #openmoko on freenode, and i was told to try to enter the NOR boot loader. So I pressed and held the AUX button before the power button, but: From that what I saw on the screen, i had to consider, that even the NOR flash boot loader was broken and a debug board necessary.</p>
<p>The next morning I decided to open the upper part of the FreeRunner, just to have a look at the JTAG connector. And what did I see? The AUX button was broken. Well, actually it still is, as I don't have a soldering iron—but i will have one pretty soon. </p>
<p>Last night I've then been playing with my FreeRunner, had a look at an older version of Qtopia/Qt Extended (which was actually installed on flash), played with SHR unstable, FSO stable and Android (one build from panicking, and now the koolu beta3). </p>
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/1-openmoko-and-htc-dream.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/1-openmoko-and-htc-dream.c7240fdb09334c48.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/2-openmoko-defect.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/2-openmoko-defect.100ca0b3851b6a4a.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/3-openmoko-bootloader.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/3-openmoko-bootloader.2e87a26499776988.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/4-openmoko-bootloader-2.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/4-openmoko-bootloader-2.a51a6434b5d7cf98.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/5-openmoko-shr-illume-launcher.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/5-openmoko-shr-illume-launcher.a0e45c45d0c63600.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/6-openmoko-shr-midori.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/6-openmoko-shr-midori.ea4c77558d1986ce.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/7-openmoko-shr-power-manager.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/7-openmoko-shr-power-manager.4c2146f020016fa1.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/8-openmoko-android-lockscreen.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/8-openmoko-android-lockscreen.7bf34f6275fb5c3d.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2009-02-17-first-impressions-of-openmoko-neo-freerunner/9-openmoko-android-settings.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/9-openmoko-android-settings.f295e0a5f0b73b41.jpg" />
<p>I will write more about my experiences with these distributions soon—currently I don't have the time to do so. </p>
<p>(The real reason for this post is to show my happiness that I was able to find the (and maybe solve) problem.)</p>
Weekly linmob round up (1)2009-02-14T20:54:00+00:002009-02-14T20:54:00+00:00https://linmob.net/weekly-linmob-round-up-1/<p>As I decided to do weekly round ups with a focus on the mobile linux world recently, I will now try to give this idea a good start, even though i don't have much time right now.</p>
<p>Let's start with Android. Besides the 1.1 SDK was released, <a href="http://www.archos.com/corporate/press/press_releases/ARCHOS-TI_020909_Final.pdf">Archos announced</a> an internet and multimedia tablet device supposed to run Android and featuring phone functions, powered by chips from TI. It isn't too unlikely, that we will see some more Android running devices on next weeks MWC at Barcelone, Spain - but don't expect a flood, as Motorola and Samsung are unlikely to announce any Android devices there.
Besides this, there are some efforts to jailbreak the european T-Mobile G1 devices, as Linux kernel developer Pavel Machek <a href="http://pavelmachek.livejournal.com/72674.html">states on his blog</a>.</p>
<p>As Motorola will release there first Android smartphones in Q4 2009, they need something to fill the gap until then - considering they don't want to loose the rest of their highly decreased market share. <a href="http://www.unwiredview.com/2009/02/13/motorola-qa4-ve66lx-and-qa1-for-att-in-official-pics/">Unwired View</a> has pictures of some new Motorola phones: While the VE66LX is just a luxury edition of the already announced 5MP MotoMAGX slider VE66 and the QA4 seems to be pretty close to the CDMA Qualcomm BREW powered Krave ZN4, the somehow QA30 resembling GSM/3G (aimed at AT&T) QA1 seems to be the most interesting: What kind of OS it is running? Has Motorola tweaked good old p2k05 so far? Or has it finally tought MotoMAGX 3G (and probably touchscreen capability? Or is it BREW? Well, nobody seems to know yet (hopefully besides Motorola ;-) ) so we have to keep our eyes on this, as it would be a great finish for MotoMAGX.</p>
<p>From Motorola to OpenEZX - support is becoming better and better, and thanks to FSO OpenEZX efforts seem to be close to become really usable. There is a <a href="http://img264.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotphonetoolsphoqw0.png">flash tool with GUI</a> on the way.. So those who are not that skilled or just fear terminal emulations will be able to mess around with this, too.</p>
<p>One platform to run on top of OpenEZX is QT Extended, we shouldn't forget about that. If you are interested in programming for this platform, you might be interested in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ICSNetwork">ICSNetworks Youtube Videos</a>.</p>
<p>That's it for this week, see you again for the next little round up next saturday, hopefully with lots of MWC news!</p>
CES - A short roundup2009-01-15T08:06:00+00:002009-01-15T08:06:00+00:00https://linmob.net/ces-a-short-roundup/<p>Of course Consumer Electronics Shows are always pretty interesting, and so was the latest CES. A bunch of news, e.g. Microsoft demo'ed Windows 7 among with allowing the download of a the first official beta. But let's forget about Microsoft and have a look at the mobile stuff.</p>
<p>The most interesting device presented at this years CES is, if you ask me, the <a href="http://www.palm.com/us/">Palm</a> Pre and Palm's new WebOS. There were rumors that Palm would prepare a new OS for years (and these rumors were credible as the need for a Palm OS successor was huge). What they released (I'd recommend to watch the <a href="http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/palm-pre-ces.html">presentation of the device</a>, if you have time and bandwith) looks pretty promising, the Pre is a goodlooking device and a TI OMAP 3 SoC promises that it's a fast one, too. WebOS is, at least as it seems, a browser based OS: Creating Apps in HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript seems weird at first, but when you consider today's web services, it isn't the worst idea after all, as it is confirmed that this isn't the only way to create apps. And don't forget: There is a Linux kernel underneath.
But that's all I want to write about this device, if you want to know more, check out <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/13/palm-pre-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know/">Engadget</a>. </p>
<p>Regarding smartphones there wasn't much I fancy. There is a phone stated to be able to run Android, the “<a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/13/compulab-unveils-the-exeda-android-winmo-handheld/">exeda</a>” handheld, a huge device featuring the well known PXA270. Additional to that, Motorola unveiled the <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/06/motorolas-surf-a3100-headlines-three-pack-of-new-phones/">MOTOSURF A3100</a>, a phone that has been seen on spy shots a long time ago, running Windows Mobile 6.1 which makes it kind of, well, let's say “not that interesting” for us. </p>
<p>Furthermore there were some new mini notebooks presented at the CES, some featuring the new 64bit enabled VIA Nano CPU (e.g. the <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/14/samsung-publishes-nc20-user-manual-new-images-surface/">Samsung NC20</a>), some featuring the various Atom combinations people interested in “mini notebooks” should already know. Sounding the most interesting to me are the Nano powered and FreeScale i.MX 51 powered ones, especially the <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/09/pegatron-and-freescale-team-for-low-power-ultra-cheap-netbooks/">FreeScale solution</a>, as it means that these mini notebooks or let's call them mobile companions will run Windows CE in worst case and more likely Linux. This could be (as long as they are delivered with “good”, device and user experienced optimized linux distributions) another step to more people using switching to Linux on their desktops, and it could lead to better driver support by hardware manufacturers (thinking of USB TV sticks and such peripherals).</p>
<p>If you want to know even more about this CES, I'd advice you to go over to <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/12/ces-2009-all-the-stuff-and-more/">engadget once more</a>.</p>
<p>I expect that the Mobile World Congress in about one month will be much more interesting for those mainly interested in handsets and I think that I (equiped with a real digital camera (crazy, huh) will visit this years <a href="http://www.cebit.com">CeBIT</a> at Hannover, so that I can do a little coverage with having seen the stuff myself. </p>
<p>One last thing, not really CES related: <a href="http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4480114925.html?kc=rss">Nokia/Qt Software adds a LGPL license option to Qt 4.5, a decision which might be of importance for the whole GUI market.</a></p>
GUIs on phones and PCs ... next step?2008-05-30T16:23:00+00:002008-05-30T16:23:00+00:00https://linmob.net/guis-on-phones-and-pcs-next-step/<p>As some of my regular readers might have already realized, I want to use a mobile phone like a PC, I want to have it as a smaller PC to have a PC everywhere—that's why I am quite happy with my HTC Universal, thanks to its keyboard (though the next device does not have to have a keyboard, if it is able to use a bluetooth keyboard, but that's another cup of tea) it is quite like a PC.</p>
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<p>So if you ask me for that what I like on a mobile phone (or internet-tablet, because devices have to have some size if you want to use them for web-browsing, document-editing and stuff), I will answer: Give me that what I have on my PC—but do I really like that, what I run there?</p>
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<p>To be honest: No, but ATM it is ok. I used Gnome, which I used since 1.4.x—I always liked it's look and feel. Now I started to use XFCE, which I like a lot and which I made to look almost like my previous Gnome Desktop. The reason for switching is: Thunar. I discovered that I prefered it over nautilus, when I had to do something as a root I used it quite often—now I am only using it.
And I am still happy with it.
But if I'd work out an interface I would really like, it would have more drag and drop capabilities—I guess it would be something like <a href="http://gnustep.org/">GNUstep</a> or <a href="http://etoileos.com/">étoilé</a> (I'm sad that there are no etoile packages in Ubuntu, and it is hard to get GNUstep working).</p>
<p>To understand that, you have to know that I was raised as a Mac-guy, the first computer I used was a Apple Macintosh Performa 600, featuring a Motorola 68030 CPU running at 32MHz, 4MB of Ram and a 80MB hard drive—running Mac OS 7.</p>
<p>It had no games on it, so I was forced to explore the system (without damaging something, because it was my parents computer). I am still able to use Symantec Great Works 2.0 (that's the Office-Suite that my parents used on this system), as it is the office software I am most familiar with. Great old times.
Seven years after that my parents bought a Windows-Box, and they still aren't able to use it as well as their Macintosh, my mother is still somehow unable to use right-click and shortcuts like Ctrl+C. And you can't blame her on that—she is just used to have windows with little borders and to do drag and drop.</p>
<p>I am able to use MS products, I even do it while I am writing this (university…), I know how to get a dead windows system running again. I can tell you how to install a driver that isn't easy to install in Windows (9x,2k,XP) without having a system next to me, just by remembering what the dialogs look like.
But I don't like them. All these windows popping up and filling at least half of the desktop, making Drag'n'drop difficult and…. and…</p>
<p>Another thing I believe in is that a graphical user environment should be FAST. It's better to have a fast UI, than a good-looking polished and shiny UI—that doesn't mean I don't like shiny software, but it should be FAST as well. That's why I'll leave Gnome when I set my PC up the next time. There were huge improvements on speed in Gnome, but some days ago I was using WindowMaker (without a GNUstep environment, because it wasn't installed back then, and it was so much faster that I was asking myself whether I was dreaming, even big fat Firefox (which has become smaller and faster (especially if you have to use bloated JS/AJAX websites) in version 3, it's usable again on old machines (600MHz PIII e.g.) felt a lot faster. If you have a look at mobile phone / mobile device GUIs, you have to say that Qtopia is quite fast—at least without X11.</p>
<p>A graphical user interface should be SIMPLE. If 6 icons are enough, don't use 15 smaller ones, because the user will become slower by that, more options to choose lead to a longer choosing process. SIMPLICITY. It's really important, if you ask me. Those old programs on that slow old Mac, which wasn't slow, even after it was upgraded to 7.6.x (ok, it got 12MB of ram ;) ) where simple and fast and I ask myself: Why shouldn't programs be like that today?
Ok, some more features, if they are easy to use, why not. As system have became so much faster since then, it should be absolutely no problem to keep the speed, to keep it fast—it's much harder to keep it simple.</p>
<p>Keeping it simple is important for “architecture” as well. Don't use to many libraries, and if you have good libraries, you shouldn't need to do that. To keep things simple and usable.
Recently I compiled Abiword with embedded UI on my Universal (I was to lazy to set up a cross compiling toolchain (I know I'll have to do that soon), and I removed the printing part and Gnome bindings. While starting it up as it is packaged in Debian, this abiword-embedded 2.6.3 is really fast compared to the experience before. You're able to use it without waiting eons (OK, that is exaggerated).</p>
<p>Let's focus on mobile systems. As you might know, I like OpenMoko's “old” GTK attempt (I believe that it is a good decision to be toolkit-agnostic, though using too many toolkits at the same time won't make things faster, but it might attract more developers and might lead to more and better applications (and I appreciate the decision not to use matchbox which didn't make me happy on my HTC Universal)), as it is delivering a free phone. But concerning the software—I don't use it. Why?</p>
<p>First of all, it is rather slow, it is shiny, but slow—it's heavy graphics make it slow, and the extensive use of libraries. There are people saying that this is due to GTK—i am no expert, but I don't think it is due to GTK, it is due to all that stuff which is included next to GTK (Gnome, pixbuf… ). It eats your ram and requires your CPU to work harder—things become slower.
But that is not the only point I dislike regarding OpenMoko GTK. The UI itself... it reminds me of Windows Mobile in a way. The really bad thing about WM is that it isn't that simple it appears to be on the first look at it and this makes it somehow annoying. If you click a symbol, which means “close” on your PC, the application is gone, but it's still running. Openmoko doesn't even have a symbol that looks like close—you have to get back to the main screen, enter the task manager and quit the tasks. That is very … bad—I think it should be easy to start a application, and it should be easy to quit again. There may be some reasons for that behaviour of OpenMoko and WM, faster application startup times, saving data, but I doubt it's really faster. After some time your system will become horribly slow, because you run out of ram—at least on the HTC Universal which has only 64MB Ram—which is not enough, but could be. And why don't I create applications which have the features the user needs, but are slim enough to start fast? I know that developing applications is not easy. But I believe that it should be possible somehow, as it was possible to run good, usable and feature-rich applications on hardware, which is much slower than todays mobile devices hardware.</p>
<p>If you want to talk about the future of how mobile GUIs should look like, you should first define how to use this devices by thinking of what their hardware will look like (will they have a touchscreen (i guess they will) or won't they, will you use a stylus or something like that or not (it's nice to have the option to do so, because it makes using desktop-apps easier) will they have other controls (why not, people are used to “hardware buttons”)).
And you have to have a look at the existing solutions.</p>
<p>First of all, the GUIs we'll look at have different origins, I will focus on the solutions that run on Linux first:</p>
<p>GPE and OPIE (I) are GUIs that were developed for PDA-Devices, which featured a touchscreen used with a stylus. They were build like Palm OS and Windows CE/Windows Mobile, like “smaller desktops”.
QTopia PE is, as it's name (phone edition) says, developed for mobile phones—and somehow limited in it's usage due to this fact, and if you don't use with X11, you will be forced to use QTopia/Qt apps only.
OpenMoko (GTK), which is something like a smartphone aimed GUI—little less limited than QTopia PE, but there are still limitations, as it's finger-touchscreen optimizations eat up much screenspace.
GPE PE is much like that…
Hildon—The GUI of Nokias internet tablets, should be usable without a stylus
<a href="http://www.quantum-step.com/">QuantumSTEP</a>—a project that attempts to build a linux-based environment for mobile devices, which is aimed at Mac Users (development needs a Mac according to tutorials) and based on GNUstep, optimized for stylus usage</p>
<p>Now what's my idea? I like some aspects about each of these GUIs.. but to be honest: There are things that I dislike as well.
QTopia PE e.g. is really nice as a phone GUI, but when I think of my HTC Universal, which isn't a small device, I don't like the fact that there aren't much QTopia-applications and that if I use it without X11 I can't use any application which uses another toolkit.</p>
<p>As I have this big device with its keyboard and its flip-screen, I would like to have some GUI, which is “dual mode”—one easy touchscreen mode for phone and organizer functions, and another mode for document editing and stuff like that. which has much “screenspace” for the document—and it would be really nice, if it could be still usable without a stylus, but it would be ok to use one.</p>
<p>As I said before, I would like to be able to quit applications easily, and I would like to have drag and drop as far it is possible on a little screen.</p>
<center>
<img style="margin: 10px;" src="dock.png" alt="Mock up of my User Interface" />
</center>
<p>I did a little mock up, I am not really confident with it, but I think it is close to something I could very well live with, though it might look slightly old fashioned.</p>
<p>The image doesn't show how “application windows” would look like on this system: I imagine a single application handler, usually showing the application logo, which contains a menu regulating the windows size on double tap (to be able to show two (or more) applications at once)—next to this object we would have some space for menus.</p>
<p>If you want to close that application, just drag its handler into lower right corner. (I am sorry for not knowing the correct vocabulary concerning this, excuse me, please)</p>
<p>Some other features would be smart scrolling for “everything”, including the space on the right of the app handler, to make advanced applications possible.</p>
<p>And to make that plan totally unrealistic: </p>
<p><em>It should be toolkit-agnostic.</em></p>
Universal disappointments2008-03-25T18:28:00+00:002008-03-25T18:28:00+00:00https://linmob.net/universal-disappointments/<p>First of all, I want to thank the guys on #htc-linux for their hard work and help.</p>
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<p>But all in all I am a bit disappointed—I am unable to start one of goboxlives GPE or OpenMoko images on my Universal (MDA Pro), as I was told this is due to a “watchdog”, which kills the haret/Linux starting process after some time. On WM5 it was possible to kill that watchdog, but on WM6 it isn't.</p>
<p>Nevertheless QTopia starts and works fine (it does not become killed, WHY?), but there is only a rather unintuitive way to get QTopia running landscape mode (which would be attractive because of Universals nice keyboard), and I was told it doesn't run weird in that mode. OK, you think, well, then don't care and use QTopia. You're right, I could do that, QTopia is a nice phone software. But I want to use Universal as a kind of micro notebook, as my 15” HP one is to big and to heavy for having it always with me. Universals size is just right for that kind of usage, using it as a little text-machine and mobile internet device is fun—but QTopia hasn't any interesting applications for that (no office tool, no browser) and I'm not that crazy to use that brick for phone calls and short messages only, just because I can use free software to do so.</p>
<p>I was told that GPE is rather slow. Well, it might be, but as fast as QTopia is, a little bit less speed is absolutely OK for me. Really, no problem with that… and maybe it is possible to use QVGA, to make it faster? Would be no problem for me. Really—I just want to use it for a little bit surfing and writing some stuff with <a href="http://abiword.org">Abiword</a>.</p>
<p>As QTopia is not killed I believe that there must be a way to run some GPE version—problem is: I have got no experience in creating images, and ATM I have got no time to learn it. I would pay money for a working GPE image, really…</p>
<p>But on the other hand: I was able to discover that Windows Mobile (6) isn't too bad. At least there is plenty of software out there, including some free software.</p>
Happy Easter!2008-03-23T11:52:00+00:002008-03-23T11:52:00+00:00https://linmob.net/happy-easter/<p>Well, this is really happy Easter. Yesterday I received my MDA Pro (HTC Universal) and I finally received some read out firmware of A910i. <em>Merci beaucoup, gama!</em></p>
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<p>OK, there are (as always) some bad points. I tried to run <a href="http://linuxtogo.org/%7Ehtcpxa/htcuniversal/index.html">Linux/QTopia</a> on my (still T-Mobile branded, but unlocked) MDA Pro, and I always get some “Kernel panic”message, what makes me kinda sad, as Windows Mobile isn't that good, Internet Explorer for example is just a horrible browser. But the device is a nice one, it is huge and heavy, but the keyboard is just wonderful.
I think I'll flash it to some English “Crossbow”, and maybe I'll be able to run some Linux on it successfully (though the error might be due to my 4GB SD (not SDHC) card… but I don't know. BTW: does HTC-Linux support SDHC?</p>
<p>The bad thing about A910i firmware, is that I don't have much spare time ATM to really work on a FW… I might have time for trying to flash my A910 with parts of that A910i FW, but that's it, due to lots of University work.</p>
<p>I wish you all a happy Easter!</p>
<p>Boot messages of my Universal before Kernel panic:</p>
<pre><code>Mounting SD card
Mounting root fs via loopback
Switching to new root
switch_root: bad init &#8216;/sbin/init'
[3.100000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
</code></pre>
<p>And (repeated installation on “Crossbow”): While creating the partition, I get a warning: “Invalid tar magic”.</p>
2008. An attempted mobile market summary2008-02-05T07:49:00+00:002008-02-05T07:49:00+00:00https://linmob.net/2008-an-attempted-mobile-market-summary/<p>After my angry post about the Software of existing Linux phones, I want to write down my expectations for 2008.</p>
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<p>It's been really interesting to watch the stream of announcements during the last months, just to give you a few keywords: OpenMoko, Qtopia becomes OpenSource, Android, Azingo…, Nokia buying Trolltech…</p>
<p>Quite a lot going on, and we can expect, that there is a new kind of jungle growing like the jungle of Linux distributions on the Desktop—but as cellphone/smartphone market differs a lot from PC market, it will be really interesting who will be really successful as there are many factors:
Hardware producers, Operators, the OpenSource community… and, last but not least: consumers.</p>
<p>Why do I put consumers at the back? Well, they are very important for success, as they are “creating” the demand for phones, but: I don't know many people that really use their phone for more then some calls and SMS, listening to music and playing some funny Java games.</p>
<p>Do you need a Linux based phone for that? Sad to tell, but if you aren't a kind of geek, you don't—and I think that is the reason why the two manufacturers I was angry at created there phone stacks as they did: Let's have Linux as a cheap platform that decreases RnD expenses and looks just like other phone interfaces do, is quite adjustable for us, has a nice JavaVM for additional “software”.</p>
<p>Somehow in 2007 the market changed a bit in this point, I really think that the iPhone showed people (consumers and developers) that you can do more with a phone than that I described a few lines above (not because the iPhone is that great—I don't want to talk about it—but maybe because of Apples' great marketing). Operators like(d) that, I think, because Mobile Internet is a thing they've tried to push for a long time, but besides of businessmen and geeks nobody really used these services.</p>
<p>Let's go back to the beginning of 2007: OpenMoko was already announced, Apple announced the iPhone (and you could hear a “big bang”, long flamewars in forums about mobile phones).</p>
<p>Then, in autumn, Motorola announced MotomagX (with a linux SDK(!)), GPhoneAndroid was announced.. and in 2008 this happened: Nokia bought Trolltech (and Motorola announced to switch over to GTK, which is also preferred by LiMo-Foundation, OpenMoko and others (GTK and WebKit appear to be the big players…)) and there are several announcements of new platforms or phones based on Linux every week, we can be absolutely sure that there will be a bunch of Linux phones in late 2008.</p>
<p>But who will win? Well, it depends on marketing, operators and consumers, and I really think that Android will be quite a success (what doesn't mean that I like it) as there are many powerful companies behind it. Motorola… well, we can't even be sure whether they will continue to build mobile phones (I can't imagine a cellphone market without them, BTW) and they've got a multiplatform strategy: Linux (Android (maybe on announced new Qualcomm powered phonesm as QC is an OpenHandset member) and LiMo), Symbian UIQ, Windows Mobile and a little bit of there own old proprietary os, some other cheap solutions, exspecially aimed to bring 3G technology to the poorer parts of the world... OpenMoko, I hope they'll be able to gain some market shares big enough to survive, as I really like there open philosophy and as they're completely right, that phones will be pocket computers (in a better way than “PocketPCs”).</p>
<p>There will be much innovation in the market, I can imagine an x86-powered Smartphone in 2009, and lots of <del>phones</del> ultra ultra mobile computers with fast data services and big bright screens, which will hopefully have good enough power management to be useful as a mobile device.</p>