Linux-Based Phone, Snatched From Inferno

elemur writes: "For your linux loving friends with everything, why not get a TuxScreen? This phone is based on the Compaq Linux distribution, normally used on the iPaq. When is the last time you needed to upgrade the packages or distribution on your phone?" A phone with a 640x480 touchscreen and a lot more smarts than "redial" would be an upgrade to most people anyhow -- being able to play games even more.

Linux on Fridge

Come on...
This is a dumb marketing ploy. Attempt to get the linux community to buy our phones!
I don't need the stability of linux on my phone. I have yet to have my phone blue-screen or crash. Its the age old "I got linux on my fridge" cliche...

snatched from inferno?

could someone explain? do you mean 'inferno' as the plan9-based OS from bell-labs?

Just another net appliance...

And those have sold so well.

No remote control so I can dial from my couch? Where's the advantage?

No camera?!

Wait a minute . . . it's a phone with a color screen, but no camera for "videophone" capability? Is this a joke?

• It's a PDA that's, uh, not portable
• It's a phone that costs way too much
• It's a complete overuse of technology

Gimme a freakin' break, and some freakin' technology that's useful!

Linux and Telephony

Although some may snicker at the kicthen aspect of the phone, this really does provide a nice platform for Linux telephony.

Strides are being made in the telephony arena using linux. Bayonne is making great progress:

http://www.gnu.org/software/bayonne/news.html

One of the interesting things that people forget is that while VOIP is cool, you can't forget about the phone/automated system interaction for transacation based systems. Lots of market there.

Re:Linux and Telephony

this really does provide a nice platform for Linux telephony

"Linux telephony"? Am I in a Dilbert cartoon about buzzword hell or what? It's a network appliance with a voice modem and a telephone handset. Big friggin' deal. I can just envision conversations like the one below:


Son: Hi Mom. I'm calling you on a Linux-based telephone.

Mom: A what?

Son: A Linux-based telephone. It's a phone with Linux in it. I just started penguin-dial, clicked on your name, and it dialed the phone for me.

Mom: Oh, like my speed dial buttons...

Son: No, this has your name on the screen.

Mom: But I write the names on the labels next to the speed dial buttons.

Son: This is different. It's like a laptop computer and it was only $99.

Mom: But we bought you a laptop computer before you went to college. What happened to that? If a $99 one was all you needed, why did your father and I spend $1500?

Son: I still have the laptop. This one is really slow and has a small screen. Plus, it does not run on batteries so you have to keep it plugged in. So this can't replace the laptop.

Mom: So if you already have a better computer and your phone worked fine, why did you need that new $100 thing you are using?

Son: Because it runs Linux.

Mom: You keep saying that. What's Linux?

Son: It's like Windows only way better. It's free.

Mom: So you spent $100 for a computer phone to run a free computer program that gives you speed dial?

Son: You don't understand. It does much more than that.

Mom: Like what?

Son: It has a web browser and word processor and calculator and all kinds of other stuff.

Mom: But that laptop has all of that, doesn't it.

Son: Yeah, but it uses Windows and Windows sucks.

Mom: Then why did you have us get you a computer with Windows?

Son: Because all of the programs that I need to run for school are on Windows. But it sucks. It's not stable and crashes a lot.

Mom: So this new "thing" doesn't crash?

Son: It does, but that's because it has a beta version of Linux on it. Once I have a non-beta version of Linux, it should be more stable than my laptop.

Mom: So now you will use this new thing and the laptop we spent all of that money on will gather dust?

Son: No Mom. You just don't understand. Anyway, that's not what I called about. Could you and Dad send me another $100? I need it for books and clothes and stuff.

Hackable?

The ONLY use I could see for such a device is if you can add a network card and make a nice little X term. Otherwise it only scores point in the "oooohhh" category. Sure, it's fun to have a touch screen phone but unless it can play MP3s and DivX ;-) movies what's the point? And as someone else pointed out, there's no camera, so video conferencing is out of the question.

Fun hack?

I work for a company doing a lot of wireless VoIP stuff, and can imagine all sorts of cool stuff you could do with this. Just load up OpenH323 [openh323.org] and you have a functioning VoIP phone for anywhere. A guy who works with me has written an open source H323 app [kiryanov.com] for WinCE on the iPAQ, and I bet it would be simple to port to a device like this!

Nokia 7100

is the phone I considered buying a few months ago. It cost here R$ 799,00 (aprox. US$ 300). I had the money to buy it without caring for the money, but after a second tough I gave up and kept my old 5120, you know why ???

I have a palm IIIC with a modem that allows me to connect to internet and read mail, I have a desktop at home and at the office for more sofisticated use of the Net, so would I buy a phone with crapy 9.2kbps, black and white small screen when most of the time I'm on the big blue room I DON'T need to be connected ?

7100 is big end clumsy for a cell phone, is not a decent PDA, and almost worthless as a web browser. I rather have an excelent PDA, with a reasably good web connection and an awesome desktop.

all-in-one devices usually doesn't perform any of it's individual tasks as good as a dedicated device and in some cases they cost more than buying 3 or 4 separate pieces of hardware, so give me a break.

hello anyone there?

hello!!! there are 2 usb ports on the thing.. so what is the problem with adding a usb supported device... come on guys be creative.. I think it is a nice prospect

The US ... mobile backwater...

Go to Japan, come to Europe. This really isn't news. The nokia communicator http://www.nokia.com/phones/9210/index.html or for you guys next year http://www.nokia.com/phones/9290/index.html does all of that, runs on the rock solid EPOC operating system and is very nice as it runs full Java and a proper rather than cWAP browser (although it does that as well).

Java's CLDC and CDC profiles address these sort of issues in a device independent mechanism which is critical given the differences in OSes, memory configurations and facilities.

Software for phones

If phones had decent and available SDKs, as Palms do, we would have some useful user-written software for them, as we do for Palms. Alas, cell phone designs change much faster (or it seems so). Also, producers use same hardware for several models, enabling and disabling features in software. So, having an SDK or just decent specs may lead to conversion of cheap model to its more expensive and able brother just by upgrading software. (Remember the USR Sportster to Courier thing?)

Let's hope that using embedded java will lead us to some standard for phone software. Anyway, by the time when all phones will have java onboard, most of them will be PDAs anyway.

I have an idea!

How about a simpple device, handheld, controlled with an easy to use numeric keypad, used only for voice communication? Has anyone else ever thought of this?

Doesn't even work yet!

From the article "We hope to get Linux running on the devices soon". Its nothing more than a design concept for now. I'll stick with my $10 wal mart phone for now.

Cool toy, but needs to be re-directed.

microwindows is cool, I use it in embedded places.
but this phone screams for PicoGUI instead. It's much smaller, and is better suited for a multi-display device instead of a mini-X windows. I tried both in a home automation project, and picogui won because of size and speed and the lack of ability to have overlapping windows.

I for one am getting 3 of these phones just for the hardware hacking potential.

explanation

Since a lot of posts here seem to show a misunderstanding about what this phone is all about, let me explain:
This is actually a phone that was developed and produced about three years ago. It was really ahead of its time when it was made, but never reached the market before the project was cut.
Tim got his hands on a big pile of them, and is reselling these dirt-cheap as Linux developer boxes because they've got a 206MHz StrongARM, 640x480 color LCD screen, have 2 PCMCIA slots, are expandable up to 72MB (come with 16MB), have telephony circuitry (caller ID, etc), so they make a great development box. They come with an
IR keyboard too. (I saw some comments about having to use the keypad to play games which
isn't true)
You can find out some more details about them by going here [eclipse.net].

X10 Interface? X-10 Confusion?

does this device have an X10 interface? according to the hardware [tuxscreen.net] doesnt say specifically, but when you look at the logo [tuxscreen.net] on their index.html has a little subscript '10' next to the "X" in Tu X

Anyone care to comment? Still a very interesting little device...

What it really is...

is a computer with a Lucent DSP chip to provide telophony support.

I bought 2 of these units and think they are pretty damn great. Right now, they can boot linux and run xwindows + pcmcia support. Unfortunately, the dsp chip itself needs a driver to really use this device as it could be used.. glorified call management device that could forward 'voicemails' as e-mails or posted to a website (which could also be run from said device). I can't wait to get it to the point where I enter my kitchen, click on an icon to review calls,v-mails, etc. Then use 'normally' as a linux computer and run kmail or konqueror to quickly check e-mail or look something up.

Think of the possibilities...

With a DSL connection (and some software), you could basically answer your phone from any computer connected to the internet.

Dissapointment!

I can't describe how dissapointed I was when I saw the picture of the phone. When I read the posting I thougt it was a cell-phone, that would have been much cooler!
Anyway.. who uses ordinary phones these days?

You folks seem to not get it

This is a product that was dumped by Philips. They made the phones, spent a ton of money, and eventually decided to not even sell them. They dumped them, and Tim Riker managed to pick them up for a fraction of their value. The touchscreen on these things alone is worth $150 and yet Tim is selling these things for just $99.

The other thing people seem to not understand is the we (the people currently hacking on the tuxscreen) already have Linux running on them, thanks to Russ Dill's work on the kernel, and Tim's work on the blob bootloader. I bought 2 of them and I'm having a lot of fun hacking on them. I plan to use it as an email terminal (using a pcmcia network card) and for VOIP as well. You really can't go wrong here. Tim could turn around and sell the lot of them to an electronics salvage house with about 15 minutes of effort, but instead he want to make them available for people like me to hack on. These phone are very cool.

inferno to linux is a downgrade :)

kinda
'cept for app support
the usual annoying problem
if you kept it inferno no doubt you can keep all the telephony gubbins going and add more apps that you need.

Inferno'll do tk & limbo out of the box
If you need to customize it use the tools that fit, not batter it with the linux hammer.

Still, nice cheap boxes.

M

Thank you Slashdotters

Thought I'd post here briefly to clear up some of the comments.

As andersen mentioned these are a discontinued product which I got a hold of for below the manufacturing cost.

They are a true hackers appliance. Probably don't serve any useful purpose yet. Once we have VoIP and a digital answering machine working then I'll call them useful.

At any rate the components should run you around $300 (usd) so if you want a project to hack on, this has been a fun one for those involved.

There is no x-10 interface. As the paragraph quoted below mentions this could be connected to the existing serial port if you like.

Linux will run on the device. Inferno is on them now. Play with both. Subscribe to Inferno source for $500 and hack on it if you like.

It looks like MicroWindows and perhaps others as well running on uClibc will fit in the 4M of onboard flash and get about the same functionality that the existing Inferno offers. I prefer a complete open source solution, but will not force those views on others.

Thanx for the interest! Still around 1000 units left at the time of this writing (for the may that keep asking).

Re:Definity G3

It might me a bit off-topic, but it is Telephony. Maybe you can upgrade to OpenUNIX 8? Then you can run almost all the Linux binaries you want via the LKP. They will run even faster than on the 'real' Linux kernel too.

Re:Definity G3

first off, the current version of the definity software runs on Unixware 2, not Unixware 1. it's a minor improvement, i ran it while it was towards the end of beta. the developer types were looking towards UW 7 already, but who knows what's up with that with the current state of Lucent and here derivatives.
also, i've run both UW1 and UW2 based Audix systems, and neither one relied on a windows program. i didn't even know such a thing existed. i did all my administration via xterms or on console, using the pre-bundled tool set. nothing special going on.
and that kinda makes me very uninterested in your Linux work. i mean, if all i'm using now is xterm, why would i want any special program, regardless of platform?

Re:Definity G3

Talk to your Avaya SE, he may have a nice NDA for you to sign, but you may like what you'll hear...