[ubuntu-uk] Linux mobile phones in the UK

[Matthew Macdonald-Wallace]

Quoting Tony Arnold <tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk>:

> Albert,
>
>
>
> Albert Vilella wrote:
>
>> Does anybody know if there are any Linux mobile phones available by the
>> main carriers in the UK?
>> I guess one can always buy the phone from abroad and put a UK sim card
>> here but, I am
>> interested to know if any Linux mobile phone can be bought directly here
>> as well.
>
> I've never bought one but the OpenMoko WEB site (www.openmoko.com)
> points to www.truebox.co.uk as a supplier of the OpenMoko based Neo phone.

@ £227 ex VAT per unit, I think I'll stick with my freebie that came  
with my contract for now.

IMHO, there is no incentive for carriers in the UK to support F/LOSS  
handsets as the fact that they are open removes the abilty to lock the  
handset into a given network or restrict certain features.

There was an excellent quote a few series back on LUGRadio (May it  
rest in peace) where someone (Jono??) said to someone else (probably  
Aq!) "The only reason that you want an open-source phone is so you can  
play "Hunt the Wumpus" and run bash on a phone"... I think that these  
are both excellent reasons, but I'm going to have to wait until the  
price comes down first.

If you can get your hands on an old WindowsMobile-based phone  
(XDA/SPV500 etc), you can flash it with Linux and run it fairly  
sucessfully (the only bit of my phone that doesn't work is the making  
calls and send messages bit, so I've got a glorified PDA with  
bluetooth support instead at the moment!), I can't recall the URL, but  
try handhelds.org or similar.

Cheers,

M.

-- 
Matthew Macdonald-Wallace
matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk
http://www.truthisfreedom.org.uk/