14 DAY TRIAL // The Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) will make its first specifications release in order to provide well-defined guidelines for helping mobile communications evolve. This action comes after a series of others which have proved Linux applications to be highly preferred in the case of cellulars.
The specifications made by the Linux Phone Standards Forum include a reference model, address book, voice call enabler, text input method APIs and user interface services, such as widget sets. All these are meant to provide the maximum amount of resources in order to make mobile phone experiences highly comfortable for all mobile phone users.
LiPS Forum is currently making efforts to develop applications best adapted for running on any Linux-based mobile phones. "The reality of the market is it's coincidental that different phones run Linux because an application developer wouldn't be in the position to write something, to work on all of them", said Bill Weinberg, general manager for business development at the LiPS Forum. Moreover, he observed the fact that this is exactly what LiPS Forum is working on, as to find solutions for these problems.
Among the featured functions, the LiPS forum also took into consideration those which differentiate Linux-based mobile phones from others. The users and operators have the possibility of customizing the interface and several other features. "These are all things for which there are existing processes but there are too many different ways to do it, so having a set of specifications is important", Bill Weinberg further observed.
LiPS Forum was created in 2005 as a result of the converged efforts of several companies in order to establish more efficient standards for using Linux on mobile phones. At this time, China and Japan are the world's biggest users of Linux-based handsets.