More Choice In Linux Based Pdas And Smartphones

[handheld-linux]

Dear all,

we are a small online reseller in Europe focussing on improving the World by selling Handheld Linux devices - currently all available Sharp Zaurus models.

Every now and then, we come across announcements of new Linux based PDAs and Smartphones. Most of them are vapourware or design studies that never see a shop - remember the Royal LineaLX?.

But sometimes, we find something that is more real. This time it comes from a company in Asia and they have shown it last and again this year on CeBIT. Unfortunately, they don't have a brand themselves and they don't sell single unit quantities. So you and we can't simply order like with the Sharp Zaurus.

So, my approach is that if there shows up enough interest (meaning approx. 1000 devices per year) amongst you and your contacts, and we can raise some pre-investment money, we would approach them to make e.g. a ZUG branded device.

Attached are pictures of a PDA (the screen shows WinCE but they have Qtopia) and a Smartphone (more or less prototypes/platforms) and some spec:

PDA (seems to be similar to a Zaurus A300):
* 3''5 QVGA (320x240) touchscreen, no keypad
* Freescale ARM 200MHz
* 64 MB RAM, 64 MB Flash
* Speaker, Headphone, Microphone
* SD slot (no CF)
* IrDA, USB
* Linux 2.4 kernel, Qtopia
* Options: Bluetooth, WLAN, Camera, USB Host, FM Radio

Smartphone:
* 3'' QVGA (320x240) touchscreen, pull-out QWERTY keypad
* Freescale i.MX21 350MHz
* 64 MB RAM, 64 MB Flash
* Triband, GPRS Class 10
* WLAN integrated
* Speaker, stereo Headphone, Microphone
* SD slot (no CF)
* 1'3 Mpix CMOS camera
* IrDA, USB
* Linux 2.4 kernel, Qtopia

As I haven't seen the smartphone in operation, I can't tell anything more. Generally, specs seem to have some flexibility, as they make customized devices.

I have no idea on the price because that is part of negotiations - so, if you are interested, please tell how much you would value such a device (compared to the price of a Zaurus).

Nikolaus
http://www.handheld-linux.com

[BarryW]

I would like to see something about the size of my newton.  Doesn't have to be as thick but the screen size really helps in writeing on the screen.  Unfortunetly I'm waay too far in live with 640X480 screen res on handhelds.  320X240 just looks crappy to me now.

[darkloran]

i'm really happy with my zaurus SL-C3000 !  
well i'd like a bigger hard drive [10GB would make it] a faster processor [1GhZ would be great] and a bigger RAM [192MB] and an open "environment" to be able to install a Fedora for example, but really the sl-c3000 is the pda i've been waiting for since i bought my first visor in 2000. Currently i am satisfied with my Z and won't change it except if it was broken...

loran

[tg]

We need a high end device like Zaurus c1000 with the following added:

1. either another cf slot or built in wifi/gprs
2. faster processor
3. double memory
4. screen from z6000
5. better battery life if possible

I'd easily pay $1000 for that (probably even more).

[amrein]

Everyone ask for more memory of more powerful processor. For me, wifi + bluetooth + localised keyboard are the most important hardware feature to add to the SL-C3000 (and GSM/GPRS/UMTS + camera if I wanted a smartphone).

But the Qtopia linux desktop fiasco and the fact that there is no real KDE/Gnome like active open source community prevent me at present to think about buying a device like this. It would smell like open source but will be just as closed source as any other PocketPC/PalmOS device. Even more true if it is a smartphone.

The Zaurus community: a lot of geeks, a few real developpers, a lot of strategy to slow down or kill not controled open source initiative. My SL-C760 + pdaXrom rc9.1 is enough to fit my current need (even if I really don't like ipkg, matchbox desktop and the "no developper community needed" feeling).

[nequiem]

I don't think there are enough people here to justify a ZUG branded version of anything and expect to sell 1000 units per year. Most are happy with their imported Zaurii and, unless you offer something substantially better, it will be a tough sell. It would be an astounding feat to offer something both cheaper and better than the current Zaurus line of PDA's and hope to show a profit.

The one product that is missing in Sharp's offerings are smartphones. I find it puzzling that they dropped the prototype they were working on because that's where the industry and money is going.  

The specs of those devices mentioned won't appeal to many here. A smartphone comparable to the specs of a low end Z with Windows Mobile as an option is probably the best solution. The Windoze market has very few smartphones with an integrated keyboard, so offering a dual OS option would increase exposure and sales. ZUG people are in love with the 4" VGA screen, but my guess is it's pretty expensive to integrate.

What's wrong with using Qtopia as the default? Uber-geeks are going to flash to new ROMs anyway as they become available and Qtopia phone edition is simple enough to get the Joe Sixpack's and suits of the world on board. There are a lot more Joe's in the world than uber-geeks.  Who do you think the lion's share of Zaurii are being sold to in Japan? Joe + sales = future toys.

An ideal smart phone (to me) must have:

PXA255/PXA270
128MB of RAM, 64MB of flash ROM
At least a QVGA screen.
Qtopia phone edition
IR
docking station or cable synching method
OK / Cancel / Navigational buttons

Should have:
Integrated WLAN
SDIO slot
non-membrane keyboard that can be localized (swappable).

Nice to have:
a dedicated on/off button
mini USB host
Bluetooth
jog dial
Screen protection

A high-end model might have:
built-in HDD or large flash
built-in camera

Supposing the money pops up and 1000 people agree to buy. Who is going to do support and repair? You have a very nice selection of products on your site, by the way, Nikolaus.

[ev1l]

If that's the specs a Linux smartphone are going to sport, just give me a good GPRS card with an OSS application layer on top.

What's wrong with using Qtopia as the default?

There's nothing wrong with it per se, it's just that Sharp's idea of it left a bitter taste in many people's mouth.

[adf]

of course, sharp's idea of linux is pretty strange, too.
 As for this proposed device.
Why kernel 2.4?
why qvga? I hate websurfing in qvga. vga is small enough... a qvga can't really evn pretend to replace a laptop for even the simple task of web browsing IMHO.

is the entire thing OPEN SOURCE?  no proprietary drivers?  

why qtopia?  why not gtk x and blackbox.  with the right key setup blackbox can rock on a handheld-- maybe xfce for the aesthetes---

This is a silly design--it is pretty much a zaurus  all over again, warts and all 3 years later....even maybe named after the ZAURUS User Group.

The idea of a low cost open pda is great. but maybe the mistakes made on the zaurus shouldn't be repeated.

still, put on 2.6, open source everything, publish ALL the specs and sell it for $us 175, or thereabouts and it could get interesting.

Here is a better solution.  put debian arm (sarge) on it, native, not chrooted or any other workaround. allow it to boot from and run its os on expansion cards.  make it vga.  sell it for $us 350.  make afaster bigger, more expandable version in 18 months... sell it for $us 600.  put the debian logo on it, or a penguin, or something.

good luck with it though... you are almost on the right track.

[JohnKiniston]

My $0.02

Make the camera a option if its going to have one, Either CF or USB or some other kind of removable interface.

Not everyone works where cameras are allowed and phones that only come with a camera are not a option for those people.

Having the Camera, Bluetooth and WIFI be options via CF or USB would help keep the costs down on entry level devices as well.

[B_Lizzard]

The way I see it, the Zaurus has already covered the Handheld Linux Area (Ok, this and Handhelds.org devices).The only thing that would sell is probably a nice little little smartphone.But, in order to be succsefull, it should be a "clean" product, not a rushed one.Here's what I reccomend:

In terms of form factor, the Smartphone in question should at least have the minimum assortement of buttons (Yes-No buttons,small Joystick-like thingie) if not a full number pad.Recomended:

A nice phone, if not a bit fat

The Sony Ericsson P910

Another "Good Looking" phone, with a nice form factor

Second of all, Qtopia for Smartphone should be used to maximise compatabillity between the Zaurus and the Smartphone in question.

In terms of specs, I guess this is enough:

Either a ARM9 or a Intel pxa 270 could do the job, with clock frequency at about 300 mhz.Thats enough for most of the apps around.
64 MB of RAM and somewhere between 64-1024    MB for ROM is enough.
A SD card slot with IO would be nice (SDIO).IR is also good.USB (Either 1.1 or 2.0 is ok, altough 2.0 would speed things up.WIFI and Bluetooth would be nice, but expensive.Bluetooth does the job.Triband GSM.
The screen should be somewhere between 2.5 inches up to 3.7 inches   .

Thats all I can think of.Anyways, If the product is good enough people might buy it.But, the way I see it, people don't need more power.They use their Zaurii as their PDAs and their normal phones as....phones.They don't go buy two products, if one does the same thing better.Get it?

[lpotter]

There's very good reason for the way Sharp did it. One of them being that it's easy to reset the device to a known state.
Kernel 2.4 works fine, it's stable and tested and it works. Nothing wrong with it.

Why Qtopia? Because it is ready now, works and looks pretty. Plus you have a company to fall back on when you want support, unless you choose the GPL version, but that will leave you out of Qtopia Phone. Have you tried gtk, bb and x at 176x220? It's far from being ready for production. For hackers that like to mess around with their devices it might be ok.

I hate to inform you of this, but there isn't a phone manufacturer or operator on the planet that is going to let you have easy access to the system. Some phones don't even let you install 3rd party applications. Why? Security and legality reasons. Phones are highly regulated devices, not like PDA's.

Putting Debian on a handheld is overkill, and is just silly. Which is why there aren't any handhelds shipping with debian.

[B_Lizzard]

lpotter,I already know this, the phone security thing (For those who don't go HERE) but how come, even if phone companies don't let you hack the phone's software, and even laws are made about that, tell me, how come there are GSM cards out there that can, with the help of simple software, make any device with a CF or PC card slot a fully funcional phone? Are there no security risks there? With that simple software, a Windows Laptop could become a phone, the Zaurus with PdaXrom could be a phone, the Zaurus with OpenZaurus could be a phone, a Pocket PC could be a phone...and all without security risks, wilst the other way around would be law breaking?

Please, elaborate on this, cause we need to clear this up.

[adf]

lpotter. assuming that a 2-300mhz arm w/ a qvga or less screen is what defines a handheld is the silly position.
We see improvements in screens, processing power, memory and storage almost continuously.
Given that your assumptions fly in the face of reality (that qtopia support is meaningful to the end user and that your hardware assumtions are valid today, never mind next year) The silly position is yours.  Pdaxrom works very nicely on now obsolete boxes. Quite a few of the z6000 users are in fact using debian via xqt and a chroot now (and taking a performance hit to do it through all that overhead), and pdaXrom users also chroot to debain, though most of 'em seem to use ice windows or xfce (both heavier than bb).  Are you contending that these are are either stupid or non-existant? Or that they are just being mindlessy geeky rather than that they are looking for a more complete system? The fact is handhelds are getting more powerful, and more people want to really make use of them as tiny computers rather than expensive notepads.If it were 100 years ago would you be yelling "get a horse? "  
And, should I mention that if I want a qtopia that is newer than 3 years old to run on my z, I absolutely have to abandon support of any kind? (what kind of direct support from trolltech am I entitled to now, btw?--besides having you on the forums?) There is much more of an open source community built around standard, open stuff like X and gtk... hence a source of community support. extremely limited support that sticks me with a 3 year old system doesn't really excite me, or, I suspect, anyone else.  I'm not saying the QT library stuff is worthless--I like KDE on my sid box.but... isn't there a lot of X going on under kde?  If Trolltech wanted to make an open handheld interface using X and qt--a kind of light kde (with the ability to run gtk apps) I'd be fascinated.

On the phone issue I agree. A tiny very light device w/ a small screen and a few pretty buttons to work the pim suite is just the thing demanded by the market, and Qtopia can serve that market very well.  The idea of a pocket computer is rather a different thing, though, and if it is to be a linux pocket computer, then it should be opensource and work on standard community based toolkits.
Maybe you are contending that a linux pocket computer shouldn't exist? or that there is no market for such a thing?  ZUG would be a strange place to do so...

as to some of your other ideas...  a brick is easy to reset to a known state too... and so is any computer whose storage can be imaged. Qtopis and/or sharp really don't have a corner on imaging.

and the comfort of "corporate support" angle is Microsoft's pitch, If I recall correctly.  It is a big reason why so many buisnesses use ms products (not that it is necessarily the best choice, just the comforting one)

sorry to be so wordy,
adf

[nequiem]

adf. lpotter didn't write anything about QVGA and 200-300mhz defining a handheld and neither did anyone else. For a regular PDA, VGA is great. Heck, go crazy and make it SVGA if you want to go cross-eyed trying to read stuff. But that doesn't apply to a smartphone, which is what I was referring to.

A smartphone with 4" VGA screen and the dimensions of a brick isn't going to fly for average Joe.  Joe wants something he can fit in his pocket that "just works". He wants a toaster with PIM, games, & email.  He doesn't care about all the marvelous benefits to be had by running Gentoo on his phone. That said, i don't think it's "silly" and "overkill" to want to be able to do that if you have the technical proficiency and the spare time. If someone wants to run X, Debian & Firefox on their wristwatch, more power to them.

As far as support goes, Joe isn't going to want to go to a forum to get support and be told "RTFM". He needs a number to call, so he can have his hand held. What I'm getting at here is you need Qtopia or MontaVista over Linux to make Joe happy and an SDK would be nice to make uber-geek happy. Expect to get either indifference or resistance to anything else from hardware makers.

In regards to a "Linux pocket computer", I think more OQO like devices will be made and in smaller sizes, so there is a market for that and it might even get corporate support. You are not going to get enough customers for an "all geek" PDA to make it profitable.

Thanks for clearing up the smartphone legality issue, lpotter. That reveals why Linux smartphones are so few in number despite the free OS and why Sharp dropped their phone.  

PDA's are evolving into convergence devices and with that comes lockdown due to DRM and communications legalities. People brought this on themselves by stealing IP. Linux will have to comply with DRM or be left out. It sucks, but that's the future.

[LadyBug]

Give me a well integrated Linux smartphone in Nokia 9300 form factor and I'll buy it ASAP. I don't need a camera etc, but I want the keyboard in a format that I can actually hold in my hand while talking. The prototypes in the first post are sadly lacking in the usability front.