You very well may not have heard about it yet, but the OpenMoko Neo1973 is better than an iPhone. Yes, this is a point of opinion, but I've been watching the development of this phone since before the iPhone was more than a whisper in the back rooms of Apple. I've been more excited about the Neo1973 than I have been about the iPhone pretty much all along. It brings more actual change with it than the iPhone. It just doesn't have the Apple marketing team behind it. I'd like to tell you why this device is what I think the iPhone should be so please read on…

An Open Phone

The exciting thing about this phone is that it is open. It's open in the sense of freedom and liberty. So you might want to know why I would care about philosophical terms like freedom and liberty in a cell phone. First, if you have read my iPhone comments, you might have caught that I think philosophy is actively being discussed through technology, more specifically software. I also happen to think that philosophy is being discussed heavily in music. We really need to become participants in those discussions, but that's another blog entry entirely.

The open source movement in the software world is built on a philosophy that software is information and that information should be free, both in acquisition and in use. Allow me to explain better what that means.

An Open Book

Let's step out of the software world for a minute and look at this from a different perspective. Let's consider the Bible. What do you really pay for when you walk into the store and purchase a copy of The Holy Bible? You're paying for a packaging of the words. You can get those words freely from lots of other sources. The information in the book is free, monetarily. So you are paying for the pretty gold-leaf pages, the double-column formatting, the leather cover, but the words are free. I could and do get the same words from BibleGateway.com any time I want without paying a dime. So could you.

We also have the liberty to use these words as we wish. Sadly, there are those who have twisted the words of the Bible for their own gain, but they usually get away with it. These words are not copyrighted (many translations are under copyright, but for the sake of this argument lets put that issue aside). You can use the words in any way you wish. You can publish whole sections of these words in new books with new types of pages and bindings.

The Phone is like a Book

So the Neo1973 is kind of like the pages that The Holy Bible is printed on. You buy the pages, binding and so forth and it comes with words, or in this case software, written on it. The really neat thing is that you can re-write the neo1973 book to say whatever you want. Don't try this with the Bible now, but pretend you were traveling with Paul as he was writing all those great epistles to the churches. If you had a Neo1973, you could keep adding each letter to your Neo and build up your library.

What this looks like in practice is a phone that you can change to meet your needs. With you current phone you can install software on it. You probably have to pay AT&T or Verizon for that privilege each time you do it and then you can only get certain things. If you change phones, the programs that were available on say your Nokia phone probably don't work on your Motorola phone. If you have one of those phones that can play music, you probably have to pay Verizon for each song, even if you already have the CD. If you want more ring tones, you have to pay AT&T for those.

You Are Now Free to Move About

With the OpenMoko, you have complete control over your phone. If you want to, you can leave it just the way it came and enjoy the good phone that it is. If you switch from AT&T to T-Mobile you can keep the phone. Just use the SIM card T-Mobile gave you. You don't have to go to the Internet to find some cryptic unlocking codes that only give you 1/2 of the features you want.

Or, if you want to totally wipe out all the software on your phone and go with a new interface that you like written by a kid in South Africa who also happens to be a Philly's fan and pretty handy at coding you can. I don't know why you'd want to, but you could!

More practically, anyone with an interest in these phones can write a program for the phone and give them to you freely. If you don't like the GPS program that comes with it, all you'd have to do is download another version off the Internet and install it. You can also do this for your ringtones, maps, music or whatever. You don't have to pay Verizon or AT&T for the ringtone or the GPS or the maps or the music you play. This device can flex to your needs. You don't have to pay extra for that!

Almost There

This device isn't to the point where I'd say just anyone should pick it up and use it. It has just today been openly released so that anyone can buy it so not many people have used it yet. In fact, probably less than 100 people have had their hands on them. It's also a rather expensive device now at $300, but still only 1/2 the price of an iPhone and you don't have to sign a contract. As these things get more entrenched into the community of developers who adopt this open philosophy, they'll start writing programs to meet their needs, and your along with them. Imagine, the development of programs for this phone will be driven by the needs of the users, not the best way for a company to make money. That's cool!

Imagine, you have a pile of clothes at the Sudsy dry cleaners. You forgot about them after adding a reminder to you calendar, but your Neo1973 didn't forget. It knows that you can pick them up any time after 3pm today and that as you're driving home from a visit with a client you are within a mile of the dry cleaners so it sends you a note.

You're a mile from Sudsy's, would you like directions so you can pickup your dry cleaning?

Then you think, "Maybe technology is finally getting to the point of simplifying my life instead of complicating it!" Of course, that's a bit of a day dream, but it is nice to have this hunk of phone working for you for a change.