Right at the end of the ETel conference, I caught up with Sean Moss-Pulz, a product manager for OpenMoko to show me the FIC Neo1973 GPS/GSM/Bluetooth mobile phone. The phone is expected to ship next month for 350 US dollars. The prototype still lacks power management and is not yet optimised (it took awhile to boot up). It uses both a touch screen and a stylus. According to Sean, consumers around the world will be able to buy it directly from FIC's web site. Cingular/AT&T subscribers might encounter some problems though because the operator might "white-list" the phone and prevent its users to getting on its network. T-Mobile apparently doesn't white-list phones, probably because they have a lot of EU customers connecting to their US network.

We're about opening up your cell phone to create new applications, new usages. Why can't you use it to tune your guitar. It has a great microphone and speakers! This phone is like God in your pocket, it follows you everywhere. But today you can't do anything with it because it's so locked by the carriers

Obviously, OpenMoko is not the first Linux phone, but,

No one has ever said "look, let's make the whole thing open". For Motorola, Linux is just a way to save on royalties, licensing cost. But you don't get any of the benefit of the open system, of Linux' strength, like the ability to rewrite your own rules to combine things in new ways