...stuff I do and things I like...

I just found this editorial titled The Chaos of Incompatibility in Mobile Linux on OS News. The guy really got it right! The mobile phone manufacturers really screwed up their Linux phones.

I really want a Linux-based mobile/smart phone but I haven't found a decent one yet. As the author, I don't care about Java/J2ME. It is slow, incompatible and just sucks. These companies just don't get it, just Linux doesn't do it. They need to publish native SDKs to allow 3rd party applications. Otherwise these Linux phones are not better then any other closed phone platform.

I personally put my hope on the h63xx and BlueAngel Linux ports.

As I reported before the actual phone of the h63xx works now (for 3 month as I was told by the guys who got it working). The actual cool part is that there is a complete ready to go filesystem and boot loader (pre configured) for developers and skilled testers available since a couple of days if I remember right. I just untared all the files to my development SD card and booted, it worked right away and I was able to initiate and receive phone calls using gomunicator. I'm really happy that the project went so far.

The complete tar archive and instructions are available here: Mika's website

I think I have to get involved again with h63xx Linux port project, yea!

Every once in a while I check the iPAQ h63xx Linux port page at handhelds.org and today I discovered that the guys got the phone part running on March 23rd. This is really good news! Also other essential stuff is still missing.

I really wished I had more time so I could also work on this project.

during my morning news fix I came across Matthew Mastracci's blog where he reports that he got Linux (the Kernel) to boot on his PalmOne Treo650 (a mobile phone). This is very cool again (not that I own one), so we have another Linux mobile phone project. Also he all ready got a handhelds.org page for the Treo650 Linux port.

Now we have four Linux cellphone projects (not counting commercial ones) the h63xx, the HTC BlueAngel, the Motorola A780 and E680 and now the Treo650. Also Panasonic reportedly to only build Linux based UMTS mobilephones in the future.

Maybe also Nokia will ship a Linux based mobile phone after the success of their 770.

I can't wait to have my first truly hack able Linux phone!

the h63xx Linux port is making progress. Today I got a SMS (short message) from Mika which he apparently send from his h6315 using gomunicator. This is awesome!

Also right now I'm busy with other stuff (Nokia770) so I don't really have time to work on it myself. Also now we need to get audio working with ALSA which is a big project I defently don't have time for :-(

just was reading Harald's weblog where he writes that there was so much feedback on his A780 hacking and that people are all over it. Some how people seem to want to be able to have a fully controllable mobile phone running software they can change them self. I myself wanted to have this forever so I started working on the Linux port for the HP iPAQ h63xx which by the way makes some progress. The phone is still not usable (which is more of an audio driver issue then a GSM issue) but this should be fixed soon. Also there are other projects (like the HTC BlueAngel Linux port) which all ready support making phone calls. They even have a nice looking phone GUI!

Anyway I think phones running Linux will be one big thing in the future (or at least in the future of hardware hacking, like the Linksys WRT).

Also I started putting to gether a OpenPhone website some weeks ago... but this is work in progress!

is a serial multiplexer for wavecom modems

from the readme:

wavecom modes have a multiplexing mode to send two streams over one serial line, one stream for commands (AT) and one for data (GPRS) the multiplexer will spawn two sockets one for each stream, the data socket will be dead until a GPRS connection is initiated

command socket is: /var/run/wavecom_mplex_cmd

data socket is: /var/run/wavecom_mplex_data

this is part of the h63xx port Linux port!

download: mplexd-0.1.tar.gz

see MINICOM for howto use minicom with mplexd, GPRS has not been tested sofar (lame, I know)

for more infos see: www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/HpIpaqH6315