Greenphone

Last updated
Greenphone
Greenphone cropped.jpg
Manufacturer Yuhua Teltech for Trolltech
First releasedSeptember 2006;13 years ago (2006-09)
DiscontinuedOctober 2007 (2007-10)
Type Smartphone
Dimensions106.5 × 49.0 × 15.6 (mm)
Operating system Qtopia Phone Edition (Linux-based)
CPU Intel XScale @ 312 MHz
Memory64 MB SDRAM
128 MB NAND Flash
Removable storage miniSD
Battery Battery
Data inputs Touchscreen, buttons
Display240×320 QVGA TFT
Connectivity GSM
Bluetooth
GPRS
USB 1.1
2.5-mm audio jack

The Greenphone was a smartphone developed by Trolltech with Qtopia Phone Edition, a GUI and application platform embedded in Linux using mostly free and open source software.

Smartphone Multi-purpose mobile device

Smartphones are a class of mobile phones and of multi-purpose mobile computing devices. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which facilitate wider software, internet, and multimedia functionality, alongside core phone functions such as voice calls and text messaging. Smartphones typically include various sensors that can be leveraged by their software, such as a magnetometer, proximity sensors, barometer, gyroscope and accelerometer, and support wireless communications protocols such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and satellite navigation.

Free software software licensed to preserve user freedoms

Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price: users—individually or in cooperation with computer programmers—are free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed free if they give users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

Contents

The proprietary software on the phone includes the communications stack and the package manager. [1] However, Trolltech put these components under GPL in version 4.3 of Qtopia, making it possible to run the Greenphone with no proprietary components by updating its software to Qtopia 4.3.

Proprietary software, also known as closed-source software, is a non-free computer software for which the software's publisher or another person retains intellectual property rights—usually copyright of the source code, but sometimes patent rights.

On October 22, 2007, Trolltech announced that it had sold all inventory of Greenphones and would no longer continue production, having achieved its goal of promoting the Qtopia platform and gaining interest from developers. Focus was shifted to developing the Neo FreeRunner phone. Trolltech intends to continue supporting the Qtopia Greenphone community, [2] and alternative hardware, such as the Neo 1973.

The Greenphone was named after Robert Green, an employee of Trolltech at the time, who jokingly suggested it when the company was having trouble agreeing on a name for the phone.

See also

Android (operating system) Free and open-source operating system for mobile devices, developed by Google

Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, with the main contributor and commercial marketer being Google.

Openmoko Linux distribution

Openmoko was a project to create a family of open source mobile phones, including the hardware specification, the operating system, and actual smartphone development implementation like the Neo 1973 and Neo FreeRunner. The whole project was sponsored by Openmoko Inc.

Related Research Articles

Linux distribution Operating system based on the Linux kernel

A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection, which is based upon the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to powerful supercomputers.

Qt (software) Object-oriented framework for GUI creation

Qt is a free and open-source widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed. Qt is currently being developed by The Qt Company, a publicly listed company, and the Qt Project under open-source governance, involving individual developers and organizations working to advance Qt. Qt is available under both commercial licenses and open source GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, and LGPL 3.0 licenses.

The Qt Company company

The Qt Company is a software company based in Espoo, Finland. It oversees the development of its Qt application framework within the Qt Project. It was formed following the acquisition of Qt by Digia, but was later spun off into a separate, publicly traded company.

Qt Extended is an application platform for embedded Linux-based mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants, video projectors and mobile phones. It was developed by Qt Software, a subsidiary of Nokia, and when they cancelled the Qt Extended project, as it was free software, the community created a fork of it, the Qt Extended Improved project, and continued building. The QtMoko Debian-based distribution is the natural successor to these projects as continued by the efforts of the Openmoko community.

The Motorola A760 is a Linux-based camera equipped mobile telephone developed at Motorola's laboratory in China and released in the Chinese market on February 16, 2003. The particular Linux distribution used was MontaVista Linux. It is the first phone to use Linux.

Operating systems based on the Linux kernel are used in embedded systems such as consumer electronics.

Linux-powered device

Linux-based devices or Linux devices are computer appliances that are powered by the Linux kernel and possibly parts of the GNU operating system. Device manufacturers' reasons to use Linux may be various: low cost, security, stability, scalability or customizability. Many original equipment manufacturers use free and open source software to brand their products. Community maintained Linux devices are also available.

Lazarus (IDE) Free cross-platform IDE for Free Pascal

Lazarus is a free cross-platform visual integrated development environment (IDE) for rapid application development (RAD) using the Free Pascal compiler.

OpenEmbedded is a build automation framework and cross-compile environment used to create Linux distributions for embedded devices. The OpenEmbedded framework is developed by the OpenEmbedded community, which was formally established in 2003. OpenEmbedded is the recommended build system of the Yocto Project, which is a Linux Foundation workgroup that assists commercial companies in the development of Linux-based systems for embedded products.

Free and open-source graphics device driver

A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware.

Maemo mobile operating system

Maemo was a software platform developed by Nokia for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK.

Linux Family of free and open-source software operating systems based on the Linux kernel

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution.

Openmoko Linux mobile operating system developed by the Openmoko project

Openmoko Linux is an operating system for smartphones developed by the Openmoko project. It is based on the Ångström distribution, comprising various pieces of free software.

SHR (operating system) Linux distribution

SHR is a community-driven Linux distribution for smartphones which is based on OpenEmbedded and the FSO framework. Several different graphical toolkits are made available, such as GTK+ and Qt.

An app store is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called Applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the computer itself. Complex software designed for use on a personal computer, for example, may have a related app designed for use on a mobile device. Today apps are normally designed to run on a specific operating system—such as the contemporary iOS, macOS, Windows or Android—but in the past mobile carriers had their own portals for apps and related media content.

Replicant (operating system) free software version of Android

Replicant is a free operating system (OS) based on the Android mobile platform that aims to replace all proprietary Android components with free-software counterparts. It is available for several smartphones and tablet computers. It is written in the same programming languages as Android, /c/while the modifications are mostly in the C language, as the changes are mostly to the lower-level parts of the OS, such as the Linux kernel and drivers that use it.

Werner Almesberger is an Austrian free software computer programmer and an open-source hardware designer/maker. He is mainly known as a hacker of the Linux kernel.

References

  1. "Linux Devices article on the Greenphone". Archived from the original on 2012-07-10. Yrvin noted that Greenphone does contain some proprietary components, including its secure execution environment (SXE) package manager and its communications stack.
  2. "Trolltech Press Release on the end of Greenphone productions". Archived from the original on 2007-10-24.