Re:Crowdfunding the Ubuntu Edge will fail
by rogerbinns on Wednesday July 31, 2013 @07:18AM
(#6132914)
> What I'd like to see is a very basic cheap open mobile device
Raspberry Pi and a battery?
> It might even have to shun making calls because of the proprietary hardware/software stack.
The cellular side can be on a separate baseband processor that talks to the outside world using good old fashioned AT commands[1] pretending to be a serial device. At that point you don't care how proprietary it is since any kernel and userspace can work with it. The current proprietary problem area is graphics (binary blobs abound) and often some other pieces (eg bluetooth, system initialization and bootloaders)
OpenMoko[2] did do open phones, although IIRC there was one proprietary piece.
Raspberry Pi and a battery?
> It might even have to shun making calls because of the proprietary hardware/software stack.
The cellular side can be on a separate baseband processor that talks to the outside world using good old fashioned AT commands[1] pretending to be a serial device. At that point you don't care how proprietary it is since any kernel and userspace can work with it. The current proprietary problem area is graphics (binary blobs abound) and often some other pieces (eg bluetooth, system initialization and bootloaders)
OpenMoko[2] did do open phones, although IIRC there was one proprietary piece.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko