Wired's Open Phone Round-Up Tells the Bleak Truth

Rob Beschizza, lead blogger at Wired's Gadgetlab, has a popular article up glancing at the world of open source and unlocked phones like the Neo1973 from OpenMoko and Nokia's N series tablets. It does feel good to read about the theoretical of openness of these phones, some available now but not that open, some coming soon. But the truth seems to be that none of these are as polished as Apple's (even the Moto and Nokia examples here). And even for Apple's, the programs came quite quickly from those already familiar with writing for OS X. The energy in a device's dev community, recognized or not, is not to be underestimated in the success of it. That's more important than any official thumbs up by the manufacturers. Openness in a phone counts for nothing if no one gives a shit about it. [Wired]

OpenMoko Developer Preview Kit Unboxing: Wow, That's a Lot of Stuff

Someone got their OpenMoko Neo Advanced developer preview phone kit in the mail, so naturally the first thing they did was throw the Christmas-in-August pictures up on the net. That "Hi, I might contain a portable nuke" case is indeed packed to the gills. But for $450, it should be. [digg] More »