Nokia responds to iPhone by Promoting 'Open'

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 06:33:32PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-10-07 at 10:41 +0100, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 10:18:35PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > > Well, the Neo has proprietary software "on it" if you count the internal
> > > modem. I'm not sure how interesting a list that would be, particularly
> > > if you count firmware - the number of devices would basically be zero.
> > > 
> > > There is always some aspect of a device which is proprietary.
> > 
> > As far as I could understand from the Neo's information, it's all Free
> > Software except some components put in ROM (well, maybe it's a REPROM)
> > like the GSM and GPS components, allowing the system to operate without
> > BLOBs.
> 
> Not quite, as I understand it. The GPS is a somewhat separate story,
> since it's not clear what chipset they're going forward with - the
> current one is proprietary, but I doubt that users of the GTA02 Neo will
> suffer that - even the current proprietary one has had some decent
> reverse engineering done it.
> 
> The GSM thing isn't in ROM; it's a GSM modem that's connected to an
> internal serial port. It's just like plugging in an external modem in
> the old days - it's effectively a separate piece of hardware, and you
> just send it AT commands.

I don't know if they could even sell a phone if the GSM and GPS parts aren't
the official closed ones, so here's to hoping to one of two things:
	1) GPS can be free'd
	2) they can attach it externally and just read/write commands
	   as in the GSM modem

Still, a hell of a lot better than any other options at the moment! :)

Rui

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