OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner to Launch July 4

By Geoff Duncan Published July 3, 2008

Taiwan’s OpenMoko has announced that its Neo FreeRunner LInux-based mobile phone will go on sale July 4, 2008, with shipments to customers starting on July 7, and will also be available through several distributors in India and Europe. The Neo FreeRunner is OpenMoko’s latest open-source handset, following up on the Neo1973 launched last year. Unlike the Neo1973, the Neo FreeRunner is actually inteded as a consumer phone rather than a development platform. Although the FreeRunner’s software is still in flux, OpenMoko is promising incremental updates to improve functionality and add applications and features to make it more appealing to everyday phone users.

The FreeRunner will be available in both 850MHz and 900MHz tri-band GMS versions to work in different countries. The device features a full VGA (640 by 480-pixel) 2.8-inch LCD display, integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, GPRS 2.5G, Bluetooth 2.0, two three-axis accelerometers/motion sensors, 128 of RAM and 256 MB of flash storage. The FreeRunner runs on a 400 MHz ARM9 processor; about the only thing missing is 3G networking support, which may be a show-stopper for some mobile application developers.

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The Neo FreeRunner will carry a suggested retail price of $399, and will be available directly from OpenMoko as well as distributors.

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