Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I think the pool results can be quite misleading - much depends on final specs of device in question.

For example, I could pay even 800EUR+ for a device with 1GB of RAM, and exactly 0 (aka not interested) for 512 RAM one. As I mentioned earlier, hardware compatibility with some of unusual habits we have with N900 (like, FMTX or IR TX) are crucial, too.

Now, *this* question, that had to happen at some point:
Is there a realistic chance for miniHDMI or any other computer-monitor compliant video out? That would make device much more worthwile, even to the point of 1000+ EUR (if former hardware requiments are meet).

Don't get me wrong - I'm fan of the idea, even outside tight hardware specs. But if I'm going to consider spending sum close to 1k EUR on single device, expectations are high, rightly so. Such sum is just too big, to spend it "for the love of idea", only.

Also, I think that developer of Neo900 really like honest answers more, than initial "take my money" and low amount of orders later, so don't crucify me (yet) for being "moderately optimistic", at best.

/Estel

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Anyone could do that in this long time and this didn't happen. Porting complete OS with some black boxes inside into different hardware with some black boxes inside is definitely much harder than porting OS with some black boxes into device to which you have full control.

Sooner or later you'll encounter some problems which you can't overcome with access to closed bits of original Droid OS. Heck, even porting alternate OSes to N900 turned out to not be as easy as you could imagine due to "exotic" ISI modem. We know now how to handle ISI and we can trick closed parts of Maemo to use some FSO<->ISI interface instead. With anything else, it would be work from scratch.

And you won't ensure full compatibility anyway. You can't take Droid boards and modify them to your needs. You won't add missing sensors, cameras. In Neo900, we can.

(anyway... doesn't Droid have pretty much locked bootloader? That alone renders it useless for us.)

Anyway. It's a phone created by community. For us by us. And it already exists (GTA04), so those are not just a words. Can you name any similar project? :)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I suggest that the Maemo community board and Openmoko leadership together write a nice press release.
This will allow us to approach places like Slashdot, BoingBoing, even geek comics like XKCD with a unified believable message to get some popular buying pressure behind this.
If we can get enough horned-rimmed-glasses(no prescription) fixed-gear-cyclist hipster geek-wannabes to choose the ultimate alternative grass roots bespoke hardware/OS phone because of our 1337 street cred, then it will really bring the hardware price down for all of us.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Please throttle just a tiny bit on all that :-)
We're in the absolute initial phase of the hole thing, like "hum, nice idea, we should evaluate it". This week Nikolaus and me will study the schematics and write a list of issues that need further investigation. E.G. I honestly completely forgot about the camera in N900 when I came up with this idea. Sure, GTA04 supports *some* camera, but we need to check what can be done and make up our minds what should be done regarding the 5MP Nokia vs 1.?MP on GTA04.
So maybe it's just a tad too early for a press release, just let us do our job and come up with some hard facts.

Thanks for your patience and your support
jOERG

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Maybe evaluate the RPi camera?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/camera

EDIT: crap, fixed focus...

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

The foundation of this idea is very promising and has the potential of making it far in the current maker and indie culture.

There are a few points to make which I think are critical for a wider adoption to be attained (wider than openmoko has had until now).

The device has to actually be usable. Nowadays that means at least 1GB of RAM. I would like to echo Estel:

700€+ is a lot of money for something that's a hobby thing and not usable for day-to-day use like the N900 still kind-of is. For me the price I'm willing to pay for something like this would jump from 0 to "as much as it takes" the minute it's actually usable and is relatively future proof. Which leads me to my next point.

If something like this is done, it should be done right. Openness is important, but what biketool is saying about including a UHF/VHF transmitter struck a cord. Especially in todays context of cellular networks being co-opted by governments or just for more robust communication a fall-back alternative for creating ad-hoc networks would be great.

Finally I'd like to summarize that for this to be worthwhile it has to do more than just equal the N900. I can still buy an N900. It might not have great support, but it's "cheap" compared to what a "Neo900" would cost. So if this is done, it has to be done right. Which means day-to-day usable in terms of hardware and future proof in general.

If those conditions were fulfilled I would be amongst those who were willing to pay an arm and a leg for this, not to mention contributing to community support where possible.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Heard the BeagleBone Black first from you, and checked it up, this looks brilliant and its pretty handy.
Generally the idea is great and am in, I voted 500 cos am not even sure what will happen to my n900. How else can I use my n900's motherboard etc. Also, is it possible to change the camera to a bigger one like lets say 12MP like on n950? I hope this goes through, this means I won't have to shop for a nokia phablet...:(

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

the n900 has 256mb RAM and is still useable for day to day use, I think 1gb minimum would be needed for booting Nitdroid (or Neodroid :p)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

How much faster is it compared to N900?

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I just meant half of the HW you need is in them, buy at 50$ refurb and you have cpu/gpu/ram, they have sensors, not sure if compatible/open though. Unless printing the board is the costliest, most of the things we need are in cheap second hands

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

several times I expressed the idea here that we need to free maemo. I mean fremantle. to rewrite/replace non-free parts of it thus make it live without being dependent on the old body.
n900 case is cool for me. but it's a body which will die one day. software is like soul, it can use different bodies. so may be someone gets a strong brand new body like nexus, and he'd like to use good old maemo on it? we need to get a free maemo first. the body is not that important as the free soul. let's get free maemo running on n900 and/or gta04 and/or n9(50) and/or google nexus.

Running on one type of board is like having one hardware adaptation. Let's have many hardware adaptations. Why one?

Yes, free hardware is better. But some may prefer just to use free software on non-free hardware. It's anyway better.

Though we don't have free maemo now. At least free maemo is an improvement.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=83442
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=89416

And check 'closed components replacement with open ones' thread in CSSU.

This will be a closed blob bob

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Yeah, Free Maemo is something we would like to see someday. Personally, I think Neo900 can boost development of free replacements. When we'll port Fremantle to Neo900, we'll see exactly what closed parts are there. Some of them will probably have to be replaced (pulseaudio?), some of them will need some adapting interfaces. That may serve as a ground work for proper replacements later.

At least that's how I see it. It'd be pity to be stuck with closed blobs on such nice free device forever ;)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

95 votes in 24h, with 10 of them >=700EUR. Not bad at all. I know this won't sustain, but I may dream, no? In 20 days we have our 200 preorders :-D

(even 37 >= 500EUR. I don't see this happen yet, but things may change)
/j

PS: Hurry! I'm pondering to get a one-way ticket to Mars. ;-)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

n900 case is perfect.

I don't know if someone here knows hp old calcs:

a 30 year old case -> hp41 with an old pcb and 2 years ago a new pcb was created just to fit in the old body.

look:

http://systemyde.com/hp41/index.html

pictures:

http://math.pc.vh.free.fr/divers/hp/perspectives.htm

Neo900 :rolleyes:

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I honestly hope they kept the *unique* key click tactile characteristics. I never before and never after pressed a key like on HP41 or HP25. If HP had spend only 50k$ on development of those, I'd say "well done! worth a lot more". Mere ???-pr0n

lame substitute: http://maemo.org/packages/view/free42/

/me sobs a bit about the HP-41CV which incinerated some 7 years ago, in a burning flat

Estel, did you finish the prototype of that aluminium body of yours? If you did, great, we COULD incorporate it. If you haven't, well, you could work with these guys? :)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

may be, think about 'spam'-mailing all registered maemo.org members to get the casual user aware of the chance to start research on the subject.:confused:

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Thanks.
Although this sounds like a neat idea in theory, in practice I think its not that good (from what I know so far).

The reason being is that the software isn't completed yet, and there's bound to be annoying bugs... this takes dedicated developers working fulltime like in larger firms.

The next thing, is that this board is pretty big.
For a device like N900 its suitable, but it doesn't offer us a physical form factor like those slim Motorola Droid's.

And lastly, its very expensive.
While a short-production run is excusable... having a look at the prices listed for batches of 10k and 100k its still very expensive. It will drive the cost of the device easily into a thousand.

To illustrate my point, an order of ~40,000 units would bring the cost down of each unit to roughly ~$470 each.

Canonical wanted an order of ~40,000 pre-orders for the Edge phone. That device was not only offering the software to be done, within its total price of $700 it wasn't just giving the board but the body, screen and gismos (and some of the highest quality).

I mean if that project failed, only making $12 - $13M... I doubt this one would take off.

No offence, its just the reality of the situation.
Linux on mobile is pretty much dead. The only glimmers of hope I can see rests on:
- Vivaldi Tablet (Plasma Active on Craplet)
- Jolla phone
- GNexus/Nexus 4/Nexus 7/New Nexus 7/Nexus 10/Chromebook etc etc with a port of Ubuntu, Mer, PlasmActive, openSUSE ARM

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Didn't quite catch the point in this message. You did realize people here are not talking about commercial product per say, but about super miniscule, small circles "fanboy" phone? We are talking about patch of a few hundreds, definetly not thousands, produced phones at best.

Bringing up comparisons about Ubuntu Edge (and others U mention) scale of production doesn't really hit the point from what I have understood.

Also, ability to cut cost comes exactly from using existing and compliant HW/SW "base" of N900, so again bringing up point about software/high-end CPU/case-form factor/Physical form factor doesn't again hit to the point on my opinion here. Soooo, did U read the thread carefully, is it me here who is totally lost on the main idea here. Or what are we talking about here? :D

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

OK. Now this may sound crazy but how about starting a crowd funding like Ubuntu did on Indiegogo. This may be insane at first but with this we could gain more attention from people about this project.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Firstly we need a functional device. After that, KickStarter/IndieGoGo campaign is good idea. It could be usefull to kick price down.
(See post #5)

Now, lets start #hashtagstorm about #neo900 on Twitter, G+ and FB. The progress now is, that joerg_rw and guy(s) from openmoko community, are working on working example of this device :)

Let them some time :)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

i like the idea, i'm just not sure it's enough at the moment.

I understand keeping OMAP3 will help make porting easier. I just think if I was gonna be shelling out over €700 I would expect better specs and a more future ready device. i understand number of units dictate price, but on a lower income it's not something i can commit to in its current state.

I would like to think of this as a starting point, to work out what needs rewriting, to work on hw abstraction. should this be possible, porting to a newer platform would be easier. this is then the point i would be willing to commit that sort of cash.

If you were taking a Jolla like approach using libhybris to port to something like and S4 google play edition to churn out a current high spec device i could live with that price knowing if the project failed there was a fully working os i could flash to it.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

port maemo to other devices man.
512 ram, old resistive touch ain't gonna work and it wont be able to fight other high end devices.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Now that's what I want as a new phone!

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

The n900 is by far the best smart phone.
With the neo900 it has again a future.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

The neo900 is not the phone for folk wanting high-end. It's for those who want Maemo Fre(e)mantle.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Give somebody an inch and he'll take a mile ;) I think this project's goal is not to provide a high-end device, nor complete with current high-end devices. And for sure not using some keyboardless crap as a device to run Maemo on. Neither some closed architecture (libhybris, deformated Android kernel, etc.), I want my device to be open enough for me to be able to have a look on its insides and know that it does only what it says it does (:wink wink: I don't trust Android, if you know what I mean).

As far as I'm concerned, Fremantle is far better than Harmattan, so using it as a software base is great. Also the N900's form factor is much better than N9's or slim keyless android phones. I see your project as a chance to make our devices live a few years longer. I find these specs sufficient enough for me for the next few years. I don't need quad-core beast only to overload it with dalvik vm crap. I will be unspeakably happy to be able to buy the device which idea you sketched in the first post. In other words, count me in ;) If it will be stable, relativelyopen and durable enough to serve me for a few years, I am willing to pay a good price for it, better than for any other phone on the market. Even if it won't be high end.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

hybris ain't non-free https://github.com/libhybris/libhybris

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I know, and praise its creator for doing such useful piece of software, but as far as my personal preferences for a mobile device are concerned, I think of it as a cancer which popularizes incorporating closed Android blobs into Linux ecosystem which might fool unaware observer into thinking he's running real full Linux. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from RMS approach, but if we're talking about upgrading a Linux device, let's make it a Linux device (with Linux kernel, libraries, etc., only some drivers closed, but pure Linux drivers), not closed Android base with some Linux userland. It's like compiling Debian for Android kernel on aPad WM8650 and saying it's still Debian (it's not, it's Android with some Debian software on top of its stack). These are my personal oppinions, and I still want to emphasize my respect for autor of libhybris, as in many cases it may be useful and for many people it may be sufficient ;)

Edit: and libhybris was just given as an example in my previous post, as an element of the whole stuck of software which can be used to run Linux environment on Android kernel, nothing personal agains that project ;)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Guys. We understand that 512MB RAM might be a bit low for todays standards. I'd LOVE to see 1GB in Neo900, it just might be not possible.

Still, 512MB is two times amount of RAM in N900. It should provide major performance boosts itself.

See, when it comes to mobile, there's no easy distinction between CPU and RAM like you have with desktops or laptops. You can only buy complete packages with CPU, RAM and maybe some GPU included.

Finding and buying such package can be major obstacle due to our low quantities. You can't just go to shop and say "I'd like to have 200 SoCs". Distributors work with thousands, even millions. Setting everything up just for three-digit amount is unprofitable for them.

You might get lucky and hear "oh, Apple is using those in new run next month, there probably will be some leftovers". You might find some 3rd party stocks. But you cannot take it for granted.

We'll use the best we can find and what can be used without major board redesigning. Option with 512MB seems to be pretty safe, that's why we're mentioning it now, but it might change later.

Or not.

I still think it's better to say "hey guys, look, we were able to upgrade specs and it's now with 1GB RAM!" than "uhm, sorry, we weren't able to get 1GB, so it'll have only 512MB" :P

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

count me in, but I didn't answer poll because it depends on too many things:
-If it's possible to copy images btw n900 and neo900 via backupmenu (or something equivalently easy) then I'd pay significantly more. Because I want to always have a backup device, so if I can't use n900 as one then I'd need TWO devices. Realistically I'd pay up to 400€ for one or 600€ for two.
-I'd pay more for certain bonus features, if there are any. Top of my list, full size USB port on device would def be worth 100€ extra to me. External ant connectors for wifi/gsm would be worth something extra too, as would more onboard storage and/or a second micro sd slot. (or better yet full size SD slot)

Great idea and super thumbs up for this

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I didn't know a default unmodified N900's case has a place for these ;) This is a project for upgrading the hardware core, which accidentally needs also motherboard replacement. The things you said are rather peripherals. About storage flash - GTA04 has only 1GB of storage (afaik)... but again, N900 has only 256MB of rootfs, so this would be a stunning 4x upgrade! But the eMMC is included as a separate chip (meaning we have like... two memory cards inside allready, but one is unremovable). By the way, would GTA04 be capable of supporting that kind of config (eMMC + external memory card slot anyway)? Well, screw that anyway, I guess it's far to early to ask that kind of questions, just wanted to bring attention to this point ;)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Should be. We would like to reach feature parity with N900, just a bit upgraded and maybe with some small extras added.

Maybe we won't be able to reach some specific features - we'll see, as you said, it's a bit too early to conclude that. But if something like that happens, then for sure it will be written here ;)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

As far as I can see, there is no internal 32GB EMMC available, so flashing a vanilla N900 image on Neo900 may not be possible.

And this is another question: did you have any plans on this topic? Maybe an internal microsd card, so it could even be changed in the future?

Sorry to be so skeptic, my intention is to be constructive. The impression I got as of now is "let's reshape the board and add what's missing", when IMO it should be the other way around, specially if you want to keep it 100% compatible: having the basic shape in mind, try to add the missing stuff (camera and internal storage, for example) to see, among other things, if it is even possible, and then reshape the schematics to fit on the N900 with all board "peripherals" in the right place.

Again, please take it as constructive criticism!

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

see Dos1's http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=115
We will not build a device that's for example missing the eMMC. It might become a second uSD slot, a 16GB eMMC or a 128GB eMMC, or some magic chip with 32GB flash and 16GB RAM, everything is on the table except one thing: leaving out key features of N900 on Neo900.
FYI: Nikolaus already came back from holiday and had a first analysis of features in N900 vs features in GTA04, we got a long list of items to work on (like eMMC) but we think it *might* be possible to actually create a N900-compatible new PCB.
[edit] insider info: one issue is that GTA04 has WLAN connected via a completely different interface than N900, and that has impact on other peripherals since on SoC each single pin has at least two, often 3 or 4, alternative functions.

stay tuned
/j

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

does the board allow the TV-out composite cable to work or is it possible to upgrade to miniHDMI cable like Estel mentioned? or is it too early to know right now?

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

standard AV-out works on GTA04 already afaik. We might not have the automatic detection and replace that by a requester in userland, to select what type of cable you attached resp which function you want to use (headset or AV-out) - after all that detection never was really great on N900 either. MiniHDMI is a completely different topic which starts with "where's the apperture for that in N900 case?"

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I just love to read all this.
If I won't have the money for this device, heck, I'll sell my camera! :)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Thanks for your answer! This is actually quite reassuring, and what I needed to hear to wish I had the option to increase the amount I voted for ;)