Que seráCrafts, Open Source, & General Geekery

The touch screen, the keyboard, the hotness, the open source. My long wait for a hot phone may be nearly over. CrunchGear is reporting that the video below of the alleged HTC Dream running Android may be the actual phone after all. So much for the haters.

Wired is reporting that according to an unofficial T-Mobile blog:

“…the first version of the multimedia Google Phone will be released by HTC starting on September 17 for one week, for T-Mobile customers only. This offer will be immediately followed by a general release a week later. It will be called, ostensibly, the G1.”

T-Mobile offering a special early release to their current customers, with or without discount, would play perfectly into their customer base who tend to be faithful and loyal to the cellular provider.

While some may be wary of being an early adopter for a brand new mobile interface, I for one look at the potential of being able to work with something that isn’t locked down and closed source as the iPhone is. At least I won’t have to modify firmware to make it work.

Regardless as how it plays out, I am saving my lunch money in anticipation for the Android phone. Now I can stop scouring the market for an old beat up, overpriced iPhone to jailbreak & unlock while I wait for T-Mobile to release something better than their current Sidekick 2008 dud.

From LinuxDevices.com on my two favorite topics of the moment (Linux and Google):

Google’s first mobile phone will run a Linux operating system on a Texas Instruments “Edge” chipset, and will likely ship to T-Mobile and Orange customers in the Spring of 2008, according to unconfirmed reports. “GPhone” call minutes and text messages reportedly will be funded by mobile advertising.

News of the so-called “GPhone” or “G-Phone” broke quietly about two weeks ago in the island nation of Singapore, where Jennifer Tan of Reuters subsidiary Anian Research filed a report on July 12.

Tan cited “industry sources,” “U.S. sources,” and “manufacturing and component supply chain sources” in backing her assertion that after year-long delays finding a manufacturer, Google contracted Taiwan-based smartphone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) to design its phone hardware. HTC is best-known for its Windows Mobile smartphones, however, and Tan offered no conjecture about who might supply the phone’s Linux-based operating system. 

Read the rest of the details at LinuxDevices.com