Openmoko Neo1973

Openmoko® is a project founded by First International Computer (FIC) to create the world’s first open source integrated mobile communications platform. The project encompasses both hardware and software with the Neo1973 as the first in a line of devices designed and built by FIC specifically to run the Openmoko software platform.

Such an ambitious project is a challenge even for an organisation that could boast the experience of the Openmoko team and the resources of FIC. Openmoko chose OpenedHand to help them develop the Openmoko software platform because of their years of experience with the entire Linux and GNOME Mobile stack, and in designing user interfaces for consumer devices.

When creating a new conceptual user interface (UI) from scratch, the first design tends to be inspirational but lacking in refinement to provide a clear, responsive UI and a simple and familiar toolkit for developers. OpenedHand took the spirit of the original Openmoko UI concepts and transformed them with a user-centred design, taking into account the strengths of the hardware.

“OpenedHand is, IMHO, the most talented open source company in the world.” — Sean Moss-Pultz, President for Openmoko

The new UI framework was designed for the high resolution screen of the Neo1973, and leveraged GTK+ to implement the UI without the need for custom widgets. This improves performance and reduces the amount of maintenance and bugs in the framework. This also creates a simple conversion path for “desktop to phone” experience, and makes it easy for anyone with GTK+ development experience to start creating applications that will look and feel like they belong on an Openmoko device. OpenedHand created a set of UI guidelines explaining how developers should design and layout their applications to provide a consistent user experience across the platform.

OpenedHand ported the Contacts, Tasks, and Calendar applications from their Pimlico suite and reworked the core Dialer and Today applications according to the new design, splitting each application into “pages” which represent a single interaction point such as browsing a list of contacts or dialing a number. While the original design forced users to interact with the device using a stylus, the new design made applications accessible with either a finger or stylus input method.

OpenedHand continues to work with Openmoko on refining the UI framework and several other areas of the Openmoko software platform such as the GSM and SMS libraries, a kernel driver for the WiFi chipset, and GPS software, all of which are fully open source.

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