[LAU] OT: linux phone?

[kloni wotski]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Ken Restivo <ken at restivo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 01, 2008 at 11:18:41PM +0100, kloni wotski wrote:
>> Titchy Mobile on the HTC Universal. (Yep! Debian on a phone!)

> Where does one buy an HTC Universal, and how much do they cost?

They're not in production now, so basically your options are dictated
by the second-hand market: ebay, etc. or you're local second hand phone
dealers...

> I Googled around and it seems that they come "locked" from various people, and some kind of hack is required in order to unlock them.

Yep, though it you can get them under the O2 xda exec branding, they're supplied
unlocked.

I've run a titchy install on mine without needing any hacks (it just boots from
a windows program called haret.exe and uses a partition on the SD card as
the root filesystem.

> If it's easy and cheap to install Debian on an existing proprietary phone-- and
> I could actually make calls on it--, I'd be up for buying one and trying it. If not,
> I'll wait for an OpenMoko hardware phone.

Making calls works (at least it did for me on T-Mobile (UK) network.)

They were quite pricy new, but cheaper second hand - try looking at ebay for
the pricing; there's usually one or two on there.

Another limitation, as far as running X apps - the RAM is only 64M. I've
seen advice to set up a swap partition on your SD card - not sure how
viable that is long term!

Have fun.