OpenMoko to support Android on its open-source phones

by Hamish Robertson on October 30, 2008 8:55 am

The clever chaps over at OpenMoko are hard at work on an Android port to their existing Freerunner and Neo1973 phones. Although OpenMoko hasn’t set an official timeline for the port, Canadian company Koolu is already pledging to offer Freerunners (rebranded as WE Phones) running a beta of Android around November. We’ll believe it when we see it as according to this developer’s blog it’s quite a difficult task due to Android being developed on a slightly different CPU than what is used in the OpenMoko devices.

OpenMoko is famous for developing completely open smartphones. The phones have been recieved to mixed criticism due to software glitches and changes of direction in their Linux-based software platform. Android could really help OpenMoko by providing access to the much larger pool of Android developers and apps as well as unifying their software platform. Android also fits perfectly into OpenMoko’s staunchly open-source philosophy. Everybody wins.

[via AndroidGuys]

Hamish Robertson

hammerv2

Hamish Robertson

hammerv2

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Comments

http://www.koolu.com Brian Code

Hi,

There are a couple of factual errors in this post that I would like to correct.

Firstly, Koolu is a Canadian based company located near Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Also Openmoko, in order to maintain their openness, is focusing on their own software for the phone. They support the hardware and kernel which in turn allows the greater community to run whatever operating system on the phone that they choose (Qtopia Extended provided by Trolltech, Debian, Android, and others).

Koolu continues to work with the Android source tree as well as with members of the larger community and has chosen to focus on Android as the operating system for the phone, but we have also supported the Debian port to the phone (http://lwn.net/Articles/294469/).

Regards,
Brian Code
http://www.androidauthority.com/ Stefan Frank

Thanks for the correction.
http://www.openmoko.com Steven Mosher

Let me second what Brian has said. The Openmoko hardware and kernel is a foundation that other developers can build on. We build our own software on top of that foundation and other individuals and companies, as Brian noted, can also build on our foundation, as in the case of Debian and Android. Developers can also choose to modify the OM distribution, as is the case with FDOM, to cite a popular example.

Steve Mosher, VP marketing Openmoko.
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