The truly open smartphone
that cares about your privacy.
The truly open smartphone
that cares about your privacy.
Jun 01, 2015, Werner Almesberger
It has been a while since the latest newsletter. We would like to update you on the current project status, and announce the opening of our shop.
If you have made a loan / donation in the past, you should already have received a mail with this information and another mail with your voucher code in the last few weeks.
If you have no such mails you may want to check your spam folder or contact us at contact@neo900.org. In order to help us find your payment record, please provide us with as much information as you can, such as:
We have completed most of the design of the subsystems of Neo900, and we have tested some critical components. For details, please follow the links on resources page. Some of the highlights:
Assorted R&D and sourcing examples:
As a result, we now know which major components we will want to use and we are about to begin purchasing parts for production - especially those that have long lead times or that are difficult to find.
In order to make these purchases and also in order to know how many parts we need to source, and in cases where there are multiple choices, which variant, we now ask prospective Neo900 owners to place a pre-order and make a down payment.
Pre-orders can be made in our online shop: https://my.neo900.org/
We have prepared a walk-through that explains the various steps of placing a pre-order.
The amount of the down payment depends on whether you choose a NeoN board, for upgrading your existing N900, or a fully assembled Neo900. Please note that the down payment is only a partial payment. We will ask for the final payment before production starts, which we estimate to be towards the end of this year.
We also have updated our cost estimate, taking into account the details the R&D work provided. Unfortunately, the total cost of the NeoN board has increased from the original estimate in 2013, to a large part due to the weak Euro. This is our latest cost estimate: http://neo900.org/estimate
We analyze the effect of the Euro to US dollar exchange rate here: http://neo900.org/exchange
The above cost estimate is for the NeoN board. The fully assembled Neo900 will cost approximately EUR 130 more, also plus any applicable taxes.
Our shop has already been open for a few weeks for supporters who have already made a donation / loan, and we now invite everyone who is interested in obtaining a NeoN or Neo900 to make their pre-order.
Please try to place your pre-order before the end of June (2015), so that we can purchase materials in a timely manner, and especially while some older parts (N900) we need for compatibility are still available.
If you have questions or experience difficulties with the shop, please don't hesitate to contact us at contact@neo900.org or post in the shop questions thread on talk.maemo.org
Thank you, and happy pre-ordering!
- The Neo900 team
Neo900 on Chaos Communication Camp 2015 »
The Neo900 project aims to provide a successor of N900 Nokia Internet Tablet™ device, with faster CPU, more RAM and LTE modem, basing efforts on an already existing, mature and stable free platform - the OpenPhoenux GTA04, following the spirit of freedom known from Openmoko devices.