I’ve did something I surely will (financially) regret, next year, and designated the Neo900 to be the successor to my PocketPC, due to the latter having only 64 MiB RAM and Geocaching applications being quite hungry. It’s got a lovely hardware keyboard, a “pen” display like the PocketPC (as opposed to the “wishy-washy” displays that Android and iPhone have), not only GPS but also GLONASS, fully free software with mostly free firmware (I’m okay with that, mostly), a Ctrl key (useful in ssh and locally and my text editor; ^I is Tab, so it’s useful in shell, too), WLAN, UMTS (I don’t think I need LTE and would rather it have the more RAM), USB host (OTG), and lots of other nice features.

In short, it’s a tinkerable device: one I can not only hack at, but also hack on.

Since I use a “dumbphone” for mobile phone anyway (pro: separate battery from the “toy” PocketPC/Smartphone — we’re talking two+ weeks of battery time when using it here, and easier use and less bugs, and a reliable fallback when I tinker “too much”), this is perfect for me.

I’m reposting this in the wlog mostly because it’s an interesting technical and OSS project, and because if 1000 people want one it will get less expensive for all of us (while here… shameless plug… any sponsors willing to contribute some EUR so I don’t ruin myself with this, in exchange for services of some kind?). I’ll probably run Debian on it (unless it goes systemd), maybe in a chroot — if the native OS has functionality needed that I can’t simply put into packages; they say Maemo has much better power management, but considering most use will have GPS, GLONASS and backlight on, battery isn’t going to last long anyway… — or maybe even native… I’ve been wanting to know what this “freesmartphone” stuff my m68k (Atari VM) buildd has been happily compiling, anyway… and some sort of Geocaching application (ideally a cross between something online, CacheWolf and an offline OSM (with most of Europe, but uninteresting tags stripped) and possibly access to the GS Live API but nevertheless supporting TC, NC, OC, gpsgames too), and my usual mksh(1), GNU screen, jupp(1), lynx(1), ssh(1) toolchain.)

Delivery is expected for mid to end of 2014, but once it’s there I’ll keep you informed ☺

On that matter… I’ve got my PocketPC (currently in production use) and another WinCE device and wonder about tinkering with them, too. It appears to be a rather open platform (compared to Android, anyway) but most official documentation is tied to Windows® host systems, and most utilities have been taken offline after the abomination called Windows Phone has taken over. Hm I’ve got PocketPython and some sort of cross GCC but nothing to tinker with the core OS / ROM image…