Starting with OpenMoko.

[email protected] published on 21 July 2007 I've already ordered my OpenMoko-based phone already and anxiously await its arrival to the U.S. from FIC. The first order of business will of course to see if I can use it as a real phone, which I'm not holding out for since it's very obviously both beta hardware and software. More importantly however, I'm very excited at the idea of getting Mono running on the mobile, Linux/arm-based device.

In the meantime, I've been playing around with the OpenMoko platform inside of the QEMU-arm emulator. Enjoy :)

Meet OpenMoko

Booting Linux

The OpenMoko Interface

Running a Terminal

OpenMoko Mail

Ordering Take-out

All in all the interface definitely needs some work, but as my iPhone toting coworker David Young said "how cute!"

The platform in general has a lot of potential in my opinion, it's still up for grabs whether FIC will completely miscarry on producing decent hardware to run the phone, but you never know. The biggest key will be whether open source developers, notable for producing some of the most horrid user-interfaces since Windows 95, can cope with the new design paradigm that a smaller touch screen interface creates. I'm going to be doing my part, and for that much I'm very excited.

Is that a penguin in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?