Tuesday, August 14, 2007 Limpag: Again, the L world By Max Limpag Celltalk
LINUX ON PHONES. Infoworld has an interesting story on the direction of Motorola. The website said the manufacturer “is betting big” on using the open source operating system on its phones.
Motorola, according to Infoworld, is planning to install Linux on 60 percent of its phones within two years. In last week’s LinuxWorld in San Francisco, the company showed developers its latest version of the mobile Linux system, Motomagx.
According to Infoworld “Motomagx offers a new development option, called WebUI, to help bring Web 2.0 applications to phones. It lets developers who use tools such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) present their applications on a mobile phone through the WebKit open source browser engine.”
DEVELOPMENT. The development is an open source techie’s dream. AJAX gave a new face to the web and browser-based interaction. Suddenly you no longer have to repeatedly load or reload pages, data is refreshed by bits and pieces. Using AJAX will certainly improve the mobile Internet experience.
AJAX interfaces, done well, helps the user navigate information more easily.
COMMUNITY. Currently, cell phones use systems developed internally or licensed from a proprietary developer. By developing on top of Linux, Motorola takes advantage of the advances in the operating system introduced by a huge community of users and developers. Parallel to Motorola’s move is a community-driven project to develop an open source operating system for cell phones, OpenMoko. It would have been great if Motorola had chosen to support OpenMoko.
RAZOR-THIN RAZR. The Infoworld story identified the Razr2 V8 (see photo), “the long-awaited follow-up to its sleek Razr phone for GSM networks,” as being based on Linux. The phone is so sleek it makes you say that if this is the face of Linux, we would all be open source converts in no time. The clamshell phone comes with a stainless steel frame and metal and glass housing. It comes with a 2.0 megapixel camera with 8x zoom that allows video capture. Its external display contains touch-sensitive music controls. The phone can be fitted with a stereo micro-USB headset for music listening. Users can, however, choose Bluetooth headsets to listen to music.
The phone comes with a full HTML browser. It also comes with MotoSync, a program that allows over-the-air synchronization of email, phonebook and calendar. This means you don’t need to attach the phone to your PC via a data cable to synchronize email and other data.
