14 DAY TRIAL // Qtopia Phone Edition has been ported to the Neo1973 mobile phone from FIC and open-source software provider OpenMoko and it's under the GPL license, as Trolltech announced. In addition to Qtopia GreenphoneT, the developers will have one more additional reference platform and form factor for the production and testing of new mobile Qtopia software. The 4.3 version of Qtopia is anticipated by Trolltech in late October.
Trolltech will continue to support Greenphone as a reference platform for mobile development within the company and through its partners. The full GPL version of Qtopia Phone Edition will be configured to run on the Greenphone, on which a person can install new and different applications.
The Neo1973 mobile phone has a lot of support and interest in the open source world, and the creation of Qtopia-based apps that can function on open reference platforms like Greenphone will open up new possibilities to the developers.
The fully GPL'ed version of Qtopia Phone Edition will run on regular phones and in addition to that, on phones with touch-screen. Also, the Qtopia for the Neo1973 mobile phone has some new tweaks that improve the interaction on the touch-screen based version of the phone.
The Greenphone has besides the Qtopia Phone Edition 4.1.7 (released in December 2006) the Linux kernel 2.4.19, and on the hardware side it is equipped with:
- QVGA LCD color screen - Marvell PXA270 312 MHz application processor - 64MB RAM and 128MB Flash - Mini-SD card slot - Broadcom BCM2121 GSM/GPRS baseband processor - Tri-band (GSM 900/1800/1900) support - Bluetooth equipped - Mini-USB port - 1.3 megapixel camera
There are still some problems, noticed by the users of the Neo1973, like the sending of MMSs only via HTTP, or the OpenMoko which isn't complete yet, but there will be a lot of improvements soon.