I suppose I'm gonna have to comment on the upcoming Nokia N900 internet tablet slash phone. The N900 is a GNU/Linux based smartphone, but despite some
hype,
apparently not a very free one.
Some components whose drivers have been proprietary in Nokia's previous tablets (such as wlan) do seem to be more open this time around, however, this does not by any means apply to all of it, and reportedly even the userspace phone stack is proprietary at least for the time being.
A special mention should be reserved for the PowerVR graphics processor in the device; it provides 3D acceleration, but with a quite proprietary driver. This is a more general problem though, since in the embedded GPU space there pretty much aren't any open alternatives. See also my
more elaborate comment on the above-mentioned hype article (which I, as well as many others, have heavily commented on otherwise as well).
Fact remains, that using the opening words of the article itself, this is not a historic event for free software lovers. This is merely business as usual; a company making a largely proprietary Linux-using phone.
The actual historic turning point of mobile computing for freedom-lovers was the launch of the OpenMoko project; even if its success has been ... limited and the road rocky. Though the company seems to be quite on the rough, at least it's a honest effort at a free phone, and it did manage to spur some community development around the subject.
The Neo Freerunner is still sold, even if it has its issues especially on the power saving front (in practice you'll want to charge it daily, though you can somewhat improve it with a hardware fix, which as hardware fixes go is relatively simple but nevertheless requires physical tinkering). There is also decently working phone software for it — and free software, at that. There is even a
community project to refine and slightly update the Freerunner hardware design.
This is what the true revolution in mobile computing is about, even if its profile is still low and reach limited. We'll see how things go from here.
