The latest device in the OpenPhoenux open hardware familiy is the Neo900, the first true successor to the Nokia N900. The Neo900 is a joint project of the Openmoko veteran Jörg Reisenweber and the creators of the GTA04/Letux2804 open hardware smartphone at Golden Delicious Computers. Furthermore, it is supported by the N900 Maemo5/Fremantle community, the Openmoko community and the OpenPhoenux community, who are working together to get closer to their common goal of providing an open hardware smartphone, which is able to run 100% free and open source software, while being independent of any big hardware manufacturer.



With the big ecosystem of free and open Maemo5/Fermantle applications, the hacker friendly N900, which provides an excelent hardware keyboard, the variety of free operating systems of the Openmoko community (SHR, QtMoko, Replicant, …) and the experience in designing and producing open hardware devices of the OpenPhoenux community (e.g. GTA04), they want to bring the best of all worlds together in one single device, the Neo900.

The Neo900 is meant to be an upgraded N900, with a newly designed and more powerfull motherboard, which is based upon the existing and tested OpenPhoenux GTA04 design. Together with the nice housing of the N900 (e.g. slider, hardware keyboard, big screen, …), this is trying to get “the hackers most beloved device”. In the same spirit of the OpenPhoenux community, which created unique cases for their GTA04 devices out of aluminium, wood or 3D printing, there is also an effort to build an aluminium housing for the N900, which might lead to personalized and self-produced cases for the Neo900 in the future and thus the independence of spare parts of N900 smartphones.

Due to the fact that the Neo900’s new motherboard is very similar to the GTA04, it is possible to reuse most of the low level software stack like development tools, the Bootloader and the Linux Kernel from the GTA04 project, with just minor modifications applied. This will speed up the software development process of this new open hardware platform a lot!

To fund the development and prototyping of this new open hardware device, which is made in Germany, a crowdfunding campain has been started a few days ago, in order to collect 25.000€ (which is by now already halfway reached!). Depending on the outcome of this fundraising the project might be able to provide better hardware specs than the following minimum keyfeature set:

TI DM3730 CPU (OMAP3 ARM Cortex A8) with 1+ GHz

1GB RAM, 512MB NAND flash, 32+ GB eMMC, Micro-SD-Reader

3.75G module for UMTS/CDMA; 4G (LTE) optional

USB 2.0 OTG High Speed

GPS+GLONASS, WLAN, Bluetooth

Accelerometer, barometric Altimeter, Magnetometer, Gyroscope

VGA (front) + 5MP (rear) camera

If you want to see the N900 to live on, help the independet open hardware community to succeed, or are looking for a new, hacker friendly smartphone, you should consider to support the fundraising with a donation. If you donate 100€ or more, your donation will also serve as a rebate for a finished device, once they are ready.

[Update 2013-11-04] The goal of 25.000€ is now reached, less than a week after the fundraiser started! Thanks to everybody who donated and spread the word and thus helped to make that happen. If you want to qualify for the rebate on the finished device, it is still possible to donate.

Let the OpenPhoenux fly on!