Trolltech today announced that it has sold its entire inventory of Qtopia Greenphones, the world’s first open phone built by the company to drive developer and operator interest. Trolltech, having accomplished its mission and committed to its roots as a software company, will not order additional units and will work closely with developers to migrate them to new, compatible reference platforms that have since been introduced to the market. As an open, Linux-based mobile phone, Qtopia Greenphone was a project initiated by Trolltech to stimulate open development of mobile phones and to serve as an industry catalyst for the open phone movement. The pioneering initiative resulted in the creation of the first platform for open phones and, in turn, provided the developer community and mobile phone operators a platform on which to test and advance the creation and demonstration of new mobile technology services to foster mobile phone innovation. “At Vodafone Betavine we launched a web portal to interact with the developer community, said Stephen Wolak, on the Vodafone Betavine Team. “Greenphone was an innovative programme that responded well to open source developers, and mobile application experimentation. At Vodafone Betavine we believe there is a growing community and developer interest in open platform devices, Greenphone has certainly helped in the visibility of this growing trend. “Going forward, Vodafone Betavine hopes to be stimulating the development and growing awareness of the Open Source community by housing their innovative work, and offering open API’s on the portal.” Trolltech will continue to work with a number of device manufacturers to make Qtopia Phone Edition, the popular application platform for Linux-based mobile phones, available to further leverage the innovative work the community has already done on the Greenphone.Since the introduction of Greenphone, Trolltech has given open source developers and commercial organizations the tools to create innovative, inspiring applications and services. “The success of Greenphone is due in large part to the void it filled in the market by providing an open phone platform that could be used for experimentation and to build innovate applications,” said Benoit Schillings, Trolltech CTO. “While we have sold out our inventory of Greenphones, we continue to work with other hardware manufacturers which have open devices on the market. Our community now has a choice of phone platforms to work with and we aim to support additional platforms in the future.”Trolltech will continue to support the Qtopia Greenphone community with new software releases in the coming months. In addition, community developers and organizations looking for phone hardware on which to develop Qtopia applications, Trolltech recommends the Neo1973 from FIC and OpenMoko. Trolltech is also currently working on support for additional devices and hopes to announce support for these devices in the coming weeks.
Bored? Never again Nokia N81 8GB now shipping
Finland – Mobile entertainment just got more fun with the Nokia N81 and Nokia N81 8GB multimedia computers now available globally. Designed for the best in music and gaming, these devices come with dedicated music and game keys and are loaded with memory so you can store more and play more.The 3D Multimedia Menu introduced in these devices is the first step to bringing a new user interface to the Nokia Nseries range. The new menu makes it easy to discover and enjoy your digital content and the Internet, and share your experiences with others.
“Accessing your portable music and games collection is not enough anymore,” said Jonas Geust, vice president, Multimedia, Nokia. “Today people want to be more in control of how and where they consume their digital entertainment. They want to discover new favorites and share them without being confined to one location – and it’s devices like the Nokia N81 that facilitate this.”
The Nokia N81 and Nokia N81 8GB also offer the discovery of millions of tracks through the Nokia Music Store*. And, with their integrated Nokia Music Players, creating playlists and managing music collections on the move is a breeze. For enhanced sound quality, compatible high-quality headphones or speakers can be used with the standard 3.5mm headphone connector.
A preview of the N-Gage games service is also available in the devices, including playable demos of EA SPORTS(TM) FIFA 07, Asphalt 3: Street Rules and Space Impact Light. After the launch of N-Gage later this year, the full N-Gage application will be available for download. Players can then try all N-Gage games for free and buy only the ones they want.
The estimated retail price of the Nokia N81 is 360 EUR before subsidies or taxes. The Nokia N81 8GB is expected to retail for 430 EUR before subsidies or taxes.