3. Working With The Neo1973

The out-the-box experience is challenging, as the hardware ships without an installed file system. You’ll need to download both kernel and FS images from the OpenMoko community Website. Several are available - we chose to use the August snapshot of the 2007.2 system tree. The original 2007.1 platform was designed to work with the phone’s stylus. 2007.2 redesigned the UI so it would also work with finger touches.

Flashing a Neo 1973 is best done from a Linux PC. We initially attempted to use Ubuntu running in VMware Workstation 6 on a Santa Rosa laptop with VT enabled, and while we could get a kernel on board, the FS install timed out. Once we moved away from virtualization, things worked a lot better. The hardware uses the uboot micro-kernel as a boot-loader, so you can use standard Linux tools to transfer images. You’ll find complete instructions on the OpenMoko wiki - along with details of tested images. To start the phone in the boot-loader, hold down the select button while you press the power button.

Once you’ve installed a kernel and a file system, you can start to add application packages. It’s best to use an Ethernet-over-USB connection to a host PC for this, working with a remote console. The OpenMoko Linux uses close relatives of familiar commands to download and install applications and components - and to keep existing tools updated. While the phone supports USB connections, you’re likely to need to spend some time getting a host PC to share its IP connection with the phone - as it requires some reconfiguration of any firewall you’ve got installed, as well as working to configure the Linux IP stack. Once your connection is working you can use an SSH connection to the phone to use the ipkg command to download any updated packages and components. OpenMoko runs its own ipkg repository, and applications can also be downloaded from several volunteer repositories that are the hosts for alternate distributions of the OpenMoko Linux platform.

As OpenEmbedded has been around for some time (it began life as the OpenZaurus tools for Sharp’s early Linux-based PDA), there are a large number of applications that can be recompiled for the OpenMoko platform. The software may not match that which ships on a commercial phone, but it’s developing quickly, and the community-driven development model is making considerable progress. You can also write your own applications using your choice of IDE and the OpenEmbedded cross-compilation toolkit.

Choosing packages is easy enough, and as the Neo is a Linux device, all you need are a stylus and a terminal window to tweak the phone as much as you want. The on-screen keyboard may be small, but it’s easy enough to use, and the phone’s terminal program lets you get into the heart of things - from querying the various configuration files, to using the built-in text editor to make the changes you want. A command line on a phone turns out to be just what the doctor ordered - a powerful way into the parts of a phone normally hidden behind the gloss of a graphical UI.

You’re not limited to OpenMoko’s own stack. The popularity and the relatively low cost of the OpenMoko hardware has led to Trolltech porting its Qtopia platform to the Neo 1973, so you can use one device to create applications for both platforms.