Qtopia Greenphone

Qtopia Greenphone from Trolltech

I just read this article in Linux Journal about Trolltech's new Greenphone and the Qtopia SDK it comes with. It looks like yet another Linux based cell phone is coming on-line. This can only be good for the Linux community trying to have cell phone options and compete in a cell phone world of corporate control and commodity hardware. linux.com also has an article about the phone.

It looks like Trolltech is only targeting developers for the time being since you can only buy the phone with the SDK. You may choose from the Professional, Light, or Community (GPL) versions. With prices ranging from $695 and up.

The specs include a Marvell PXA270 312MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, 128MB Flash, 320x240 QVGA touch color screen, Mini-SD card slot, Tri-band GSM, Bluetooth, and a 1.3 mega-pixel camera, with Qtopia running on Linux kernel 2.4.19.

Even though the Greenphone looks pretty sexy, it's pricy for what you get. Plus after reading some of the reviews it seems to have some hardware issues. I think I'll stick with my plans to get an OpenMoko device for now.

Agent Gates: I hate this place. This GNU. This open source. This license, whatever you want to call it. I can't stand it any longer. It's the free software, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your GPL. And every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.

– fishbonez