We are moving towards an era where the line demarcating a computer and the rest of the electronic devices is at best getting hazy. Take the mobile phones for instance... Now a days, the sheer power and the number of features available in some models of mobile phones rivals those found in a low end PC. Electronic devices are fast morphing into gadgets which are many things for different people.
Trolltech, the creators of the Qt library which is used to develop KDE has released a Linux mobile development device - the rest of us can call it a mobile phone. What is unique about this phone is that it is powered by Linux and more importantly, it is aimed at the developers who are interested in creating applications using the Greenphone SDK and the phone allows the developers to test their applications on it. The current model of greenphone was developed with close cooperation with a Chinese device manufacturer called Yuhua Teltech. Offered as a part of the Greenphone SDK, Trolltech claims that this powerful GSM/GPRS device provides the perfect platform for creation, testing and demonstration of new mobile technology services.
Fig: Trolltech's greenphone powered by Linux.Nathan Willis who spent a couple of weeks with a review unit reveals his thoughts about this unique product from Trolltech. And even though he finds a couple of faults with the design of the phone, he concludes that nevertheless, it is a small step in the right direction. He has also made available a slide show of the pictures of the phone here.
Specifications of the Qtopia Greenphone
The software that powers this phone consists of Qtopia Phone Edition 4.1.4 and Linux kernel 2.4.19
The hardware consists of the following:
- Touch-screen and keypad UI
- QVGA® LCD color screen
- Marvell® PXA270 312 MHz application processor
- 64MB RAM & 128MB Flash
- Mini-SD card slot
- Broadcom® BCM2121 GSM/GPRS baseband processor
- Bluetooth® equipped
- Mini-USB port
Minimum system requirements for the development environment are as follows:
- 512 MB RAM
- 2.2 GB HDD space and
- 1 GHz processor
It may be worth noting that there are a number of embedded devices which are powered by Linux, Nokia's internet tablet being a prominent one. But what makes Trolltech's greenphone unique is the open developement environment provided with a capability to reflash application memory thus making it truly Open Source.
