The device has got a name: Letux 380Dear all,
now it looks achievable that we can really get this nice device as a "Letux 380" for everyone!
First of all it is a real device and I have made some more experiments over the weekend like shooting photos and doing phone calls. The device comes from China and I am in contact with the manufacturer. Fortunately, they are willing to give a little technical support and they want to have a sales partner who can do end-user support for 3rd party software. Because they did not have such a partner yet, they hesitated to open the software, although they have designed the device specifically to be an open PDA/Smartphone, i.e. to allow 3rd party software.
Fortunately, I can now tell a little more about the specs:
- QVGA touchscreen display (2.4 inch)
- Quadband GPRS Class 10
- TI OMAP730
- 1.3 Mpix camera (can record MPEG4)
- 90g incl. battery
- talk time up to 240 min
- standby up to 200 h
- 1020 mAh battery
- 64MB ROM (internal flash) - I don't know if we can install a different kernel or rootfs
- ca. 46 MB "internal storage" and 12 MB "mobile storage" as one vfat and one ext3 partition (e.g. for settings, music, videos, etc.)
- 64MB RAM
- T-flash slot, 1GB T-flash memory card
- Bluetooth
- Handsfree
- USB
- Qtopia installed, with Dialer, Contacts, Calendar, Opera, MP3, MPEG4, Java, ... - works out of the box
- based on Linux 2.4.20 (plus patches) - this is mostly binary compatible to the Zaurus!
- universal charger (100-240V, 50-60Hz)
What we have tested is:
- there is FTP access built in
- it is possible to install/start telnetd and OpenSSH (binary taken from the Zaurus version) to get a remote shell
- more complex binaries and libraries work (main issue is that /bin and /usr are readonly so we have to mangle $PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH)
- busybox is a little spartanic
Now come the issues: We need to purchase a production lot of at least 1000 units from the manufacturer. This also means that 1000 units have to be sold within approx. 6 months.
The production lead time is approx. 45 days, so the devices will be
available by end of May 2008 if we order soon. The price will be in the range of
249 - 299 EUR (incl. 19% German VAT and 2 years warranty) or
300 - 350 US$ (if we ship to outside Europe with only 90 days warranty) - depending on the currency exchange rates when we order.
We will also install a
Wiki and a mailing list specific for this device so that we can share ideas, tricks, tips, i.e. how to install additional software and build a community around it.
But for doing that through my company (
http://www.handheld-linux.com), we
need a partner (preferrably with a rich uncle and within the European Trade Community) to prefinance the stock and help with manging the project. So, if you are interested yourself or know someone who is, please contact me through a private message.
So, what do you think - should we continue? Do you think it is possible to distribute 1000 units at the given specs? Are you interested yourself in hacking this device and adding 3rd party software? Or do you know projects that need such a small and nice Quadband PDA platform?
-- hns