Openmoko Community Update

[Posted February 1, 2011 by jake]

The Openmoko Community Update for February 1 has been released with news of new Openmoko hardware. "GTA04 is a project by the long time distributor and hw developer, German company Golden Delicious. The name is loaned from Openmoko project because of the spiritual continuation - GTA01 was the codename for Neo1973, GTA02 was the Neo FreeRunner, and GTA03 was the canceled successor product. Besides offering improved versions of Neo FreeRunner (better battery life, better audio output), they've a complete replacement board planned to fit an existing Neo FreeRunner case and use the existing display." The new board has an OMAP3530 ARMv7 CPU, UMTS/3G (HSPA), USB 2.0 OTG, WLAN, BT, and FM transceiver, Barometric Altimeter, Accelerometer, Compass, Gyroscope, and optionally a camera. The update also includes information on various distribution releases for Openmoko devices. (Thanks to Sam Tygier.)

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Gta02-core also dead

Posted Feb 1, 2011 20:28 UTC (Tue) by alvieboy (guest, #51617) [Link]

Unfortunately, our own gta02-core project (a full open-source design based on GTA02) is also a bit dead lately. GTA04 is also facing a fierce competition on mobile devices, one that makes it ultimately difficult to live to tell your story.

I don't know the device, but I suspect again it won't be fully open-source (as gta02-core aimed to). Can anyone confirm ?

Alvaro

Gta02-core also dead

Posted Feb 1, 2011 21:31 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

I *think* the only closed bit is the OpenVR 3D video which needs a closed module for X (I *think* the kernel side is open).

And of course the firmware inside the GSM/3G device etc are closed.

But everything else seems to be open.

Gta02-core also dead

Posted Feb 1, 2011 21:47 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Might there be a free GSM stack for it when Harald Welte's project is ready?

http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2010/08/14/
http://lists.osmocom.org/pipermail/baseband-devel/2010-Au...

Gta02-core also dead

Posted Feb 1, 2011 23:15 UTC (Tue) by dcbw (guest, #50562) [Link]

The baseband is apparently an Option-rebranded Qualcomm Gobi device. Which sucks, since Qualcomm is about the most unfriendly when it comes to open-source, especially in the baseband division.

While I'm not sure what changes Option has been allowed to make to the Gobi firmware (an Option engineer told me they can't make many) the Gobi devices expose only one AT port, a GPS port (that can't be used for AT commands), a DIAG port, and a QMI port.

The DIAG and QMI protocols are proprietary and only partially reverse-engineered. QMI requires a proprietary, closed userspace helper library for things as simple as SMS and getting the current access technology (ie GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA, etc).

So going with a Gobi (even if it's coming from Option) is a strange choice for a project that built it's reputation on openness. Especially if the modules don't support a full suite of AT commands on multiple ports, which the Gobi parts don't with normal Qualcomm firmware.

Openmoko Community Update

Posted Feb 2, 2011 14:16 UTC (Wed) by ssam (guest, #46587) [Link]

there is a draft reference manual attached to
http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/2011-Jan...
if you want more hardware details.