Group: Hardware/TODO/TO SORT/Smartphones

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Revision as of 10:37, 2 June 2011 by GNUtoo2 (talk | contribs) (Hardware and software capabilities)
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Introduction

First let's define a smartphone,

A smartphone[1] is a phone with at least 2 processors:

  • one where runs the operating system(like Android,GNU/Linux etc...), it is usually called the Application processor
  • another that interface with the GSM network(for instance it reads the sim card,interface with the GSM tower etc...). It is usually called the baseband.

Historically both processors talked to each other trough a serial port, with AT commands(also known as Hayes command set ).

While freedom is possible on the GSM processor too,we will focus on freedom on the Application processor(because it's illegal to run modified GSM processors on carrier networks and also very dangerous)

Possible Free SmartPhones target comparison

Hardware freedom

Openmoko Freerunner Nokia N900 HTC Dream Nexus one Palm pre(normal,plus or version 2)
Non free firmwares No Yes:
  • Wifi(wl1251_spi)
  • Bluetooth(broadcom)
  • camera(many components)
  • DSP(note that the CPU and mplayer do a better job than the DSP but consume more battery)
Yes:
  • Wifi(wl1251_sdio)
  • bluetooth(broadcom)
Yes:
  • Microphone
  • Sound card
  • WIFI(bcm4329)
  • Maybe others?
Yes:
  • Wifi(libertas_sdio)
  • Maybe others?
Modem can be flashed Yes Yes[2] Yes Yes
Modem can be unpowered Yes Yes ? ?
Audio path under modem's control? No No Yes Yes
GPS under modem's control No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Free Bootloader Yes No ? ? Some work has been done(must check status,not usable yet,abandoned?)
Modem can access the main CPU memory chips No No Yes Yes No

Hardware Features

Openmoko Freerunner Nokia N900 HTC Dream Nexus one Palm pre(normal,plus or version 2)
USB host Yes (not strictly needed since no firmwares are needed),limited to ? mA Yes(with 2.6.28 power kernel), limited to ? mA ? possible, untested, unpowered ?

Hardware and software capabilities

Openmoko Freerunner(FSO+SHR) Nokia N900(FSO+SHR) HTC Dream(Replicant) HTC Dream(FSO+SHR) Nexus one(Replicant) Palm pre(normal,plus or version 2) (FSO+SHR)
Capable of viewing a video from Very difficult to impossible yes(with mplayer in command line) yes(example Youtube using rstp:// ) Difficult(need to be rotated before etc...) yes ?
Capable of playing music On speakers only

( sound quality is very bad on headphones because of a capacitor which value is too low )

yes yes(without issues) yes(prevent phone ringing) yes ?
Web browsing
  • Very slow with the default browser(eve)
  • uses 100% CPU while loading pages
yes yes yes(with midori, the default browser(eve) is too slow) yes ?
mail client usage
IRC painful with the software keyboard (bluetooth keyboard is better but require a non-free firmware, and a table)

Operating System/distribution support

FSO+Debian FSO+SHR Meego Replicant
Hardware supported
  • Openmoko Freerunner
  • other?
  • Openmoko Neo 1973 : badly supported[3]
  • Openmoko freerunner: very good
  • htc dream: partial
  • palm pre(nomal,plus,2) : work in progress
  • nokia n900 : work in progress

Details available here

  • Nokia N900
  • HTC Dream
  • Nexus one
  • Other phones : work in progress
Depend on non-free drivers No Yes 3D driver is required, and no decent free one exist for phones. No
Non-free firmwares Policy ? Not shipped(not redistributable) but promoted,not needed in case of the openmoko freerunner,linux-libre not used Non free firmwares Shipped linux-libre not used,a page details which are needed for what but doesn't tell how to install them(altough it's obvious for the experienced user)
Checked for freedom ??? No but some of its developpers are against proprietary software inclusion[4] contains non-free software No:The main low-level developer supposed that the sources he forked were free(he asked on IRC on the original project channel),

he replaced non-free not-included parts and looks for help on verifying freedom. As he has no experience in replacing firmwares,he's unsure what to do about them.

References

  1. See http://laforge.gnumonks.org/papers/gsm_phone-anatomy-latest.pdf for a more correct definition
  2. Nokia Updates are capable of flashing the modem firmware, in fact unpacking the PR 1.3(The version of the nokia Update)update with 0xFFFF shows that the modem firmware was flashed,also some modem properties changed between PR 1.2(The version of the nokia Update) and PR 1.3(The version of the nokia Update)
  3. From #openmoko-cdevel on Freenode on IRC: Jan 17 14:17:15 <JaMa|Wrk> with state of gta01 support in SHR we can just drop it from supported list :/
  4. From #openmoko-cdevel on Freenode on IRC:
    Jan 14 20:58:10 <mrmoku> GNUtoo|laptop: btw. what about xrandr and rotation on n900?
    Jan 14 20:58:28 <GNUtoo|laptop> do we really need that?
    Jan 14 20:58:44 <GNUtoo|laptop> I mean we would have to modify xf86-video-omapfb
    Jan 14 20:58:49 <GNUtoo|laptop> and write the code ourselves
    Jan 14 20:59:07 <GNUtoo|laptop> the rotation driver of nokia depends on non-free 3d
    Jan 14 20:59:13 <mrmoku> grr