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I think it may be a bit premature. Just look at what people are doing with RPis and various radio boards. There was one such project posted on HN recently tha

I think it may be a bit premature. Just look at what people are doing with RPis and various radio boards. There was one such project posted on HN recently that had a RPi Zero W hooked up to a touch screen and a mobile radio. All battery powered. In a sense the Openmoko was too early and too bespoke. Thus driving the cost of entry for would be tinkerers through the roof.

potatolicious 9y ago
I think it goes to the other poster's point: "You won't get users until you have something that /does something/" The RPi was ready to roll out of the gate - they had a working Linux distro from the get-go that actually worked. They also provided really simple instructions on how to get said Linux distro onto a SD card. You can boot the RPi and have it be useful within a matter of minutes. Openmoko simply never got near enough to working where the community felt like picking it up and running with it. I don't think Openmoko was premature - it was incomplete. You're not going to get much participation from the community if doing anything useful on your platform first involves fixing/finishing the platform.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  You're right. The rpi is feature complete for me. Everything works as expected. I don't have to change any of the platform or OS code. I can simply build on top. But I guess shipping a feature complete smartphone is much harder.
petecox 9y ago
The Pi zero phone is a cool hack but I doubt many would opt to use it as a 'daily driver'. Broadcom, according to the wikipedia page for VideoCore, did however make a couple of Cortex-A9/A7 SoCs that made their way into low end 2012-3 era Android phones. Perhaps a startup might recycle old Broadcom-based HTC and Samsung models in collaboration with the RPi team.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Perhaps. Thing is though that by bring a generic stack of boards, it does not live or die by that one project. A RPiZ with a mobile data connection but no screen is still a potential IoT platform etc. Openmoko with its bespoke board lived or died by how well it performed as a phone.

potatolicious 9y ago

I think it goes to the other poster's point: "You won't get users until you have something that /does something/" The RPi was ready to roll out of the gate - they had a working Linux distro from the get-go that actually worked. They also provided really simple instructions on how to get said Linux distro onto a SD card. You can boot the RPi and have it be useful within a matter of minutes. Openmoko simply never got near enough to working where the community felt like picking it up and running with it. I don't think Openmoko was premature - it was incomplete. You're not going to get much participation from the community if doing anything useful on your platform first involves fixing/finishing the platform.

dingo_bat 9y ago
You're right. The rpi is feature complete for me. Everything works as expected. I don't have to change any of the platform or OS code. I can simply build on top. But I guess shipping a feature complete smartphone is much harder.

petecox 9y ago

The Pi zero phone is a cool hack but I doubt many would opt to use it as a 'daily driver'. Broadcom, according to the wikipedia page for VideoCore, did however make a couple of Cortex-A9/A7 SoCs that made their way into low end 2012-3 era Android phones. Perhaps a startup might recycle old Broadcom-based HTC and Samsung models in collaboration with the RPi team.

digi_owl 9y ago
Perhaps. Thing is though that by bring a generic stack of boards, it does not live or die by that one project. A RPiZ with a mobile data connection but no screen is still a potential IoT platform etc. Openmoko with its bespoke board lived or died by how well it performed as a phone.