FLOW - a homebrew Android gumstix phone (finally)

See more here.

A few years ago the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club (SVHMPC) formed out of frustration with the closed market for phones, and set out to build something we could program in our pocket. We made some progress but the prototype Gumstix Goliath board never made it into production, and along came the iPhone, which gave some of us the application platform we were looking for to customize. The OpenMoko project is also limping along, and Google Android is finally out there in volume. The FLOW project is open hardware running Android with a Gumstix CPU module. Nice combination for making custom devices.

Gumstix Goliath - myPhone system board

The Gumstix Goliath open phone hardware is now available for order. There are versions with and without the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) support.

Features:	GSM/GPRS/EDGE, GPS, analog audio in/out, LCD, touchscreen controller, USB host port, 3D-accelerometer, NiMH battery charger (batteries not included) Provides full- speed USB access to the Siemens MC75 GPRS/EDGE module, the u-blox NEO-4S GPS module and one external USB device.
Connection:	60-pin Hirose connector to verdex motherboard only
Dimensions:	105.5mm x 67.3mm

I've placed my order (I already have a Gumstix Verdex CPU board), and I'm still working on myPhone case design for this board and its 4.3" touchscreen LCD. Unlike the iPhone, the hardware and software is completely open, you can do anything you like with it, and thats also the problem, the software is extremely basic at the moment. However, its about the journey, not the destination, I'm going to have a lot of fun as we build this device.

Must. Buy. iPhone. Must. Buy. iPhone....

OK, I give in. Its Apple at their best, insanely great, detailed craftsmanship and "it just works" usability. However I didn't want to get in line at a store, so I logged in to the Apple online store and made sure my one-click ordering was setup right and enabled, and at 6pm when the store re-opened I got my order in as fast as the site would refresh. It was a little slow, but as far as I could tell, the store was up and running and handled the peak load, so some extra congratulations to the team that runs the store. Delivery was stated to be 2-4 weeks, I should be near the front of the queue, so we will see what happens.

What about the open phones? Well, OpenMoko is running late, but is just about to ship developer phones for real, however the version that will have WiFi is their second revision that is months away, and their software is still being developed. However Gumstix are also very close to getting their new "Goliath" phone kit out, and that is a much more flexible design, where I can add WiFi etc. without replacing anything else, and I can wrap my own case design around the 4.3" LCD. The software is rudimentary, but we intend to port the OpenMoko packages to the Gumstix based "myPhone", and tinker with it to do whatever we want. In the meantime, I will soon have a phone that "just works" better than anything else....