Suvarna Garge (Editor)

Neo 1973

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Manufacturer
  
FIC

Media
  
microSD, SDHC capable

Type
  
smartphone

Neo 1973

Release date
  
July 9, 2007 (2007-07-09)

Operating system
  
Openmoko Linux, Qtopia (both Linux-based)

CPU
  
Samsung s3c2410 SoC @ 266 MHz

The Neo 1973 (development code name GTA01) is an open source software and open source hardware smartphone developed by the Openmoko project to run the Openmoko Linux software platform, released 2007. The CAD files have been released in 2008 under a ShareAlike Creative Commons license, and the schematics are available for download from OpenMoko and Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

Contents

Development

The Neo 1973 was designed as open source hardware and it is mostly using hardware components with open source drivers,

The device is named after the first year of mobile telephone communication: the inventor of the mobile phone, Martin Cooper, made the first call in 1973. The phone released was inconsistently-named Neo 1973 or Neo1973.

The Neo 1973 was sold from July 9, 2007 to February 2008. It was priced at US$300 for the basic model, or US$450 for a kit including more tools for hardware work.

The initial releases of the Neo 1973 were hampered by supplier shortages, which forced the shipping date to slip, and hardware development difficulties exacerbated by the small size of the core team.

Furthermore, other platforms have been ported to the Neo 1973, including Qt Extended, Debian and Android.

Release under Creative Commons license

Shortly before the shipping of the successor, the Neo Freerunner, the OpenMoko project released the CAD files, the schematics and other development resources of the Neo 1973 and Freerunner under a Creative Commons license, the CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Neo FreeRunner started shipping on June 24, 2008.

References

Neo 1973 Wikipedia