Linux Mobiles

Linux Royality-Free Phone Spec

Posted by samc on June 11th, 2007

The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum released its first mobile phone specifications on Monday, in hopes of encouraging more applications for Linux phones, reports Linux Devices and PC World.

The specifications, will include a reference model, address book, voice call enabler, text input method application programming interfaces (APIs) and user interface services such as widget sets.

The forum, launched in late 2005, is working to standardize a layer of software in Linux phones that will make it easier for developers to create a mobile applications that can operate across many phones.

The LiPS Forum based the user interface on Gnome’s GTK toolkit, dealing a blow to Trolltech which also offers an application platform and user interface for Linux mobile phones.

Bill Weinberg, general manager for business development at the LiPS Forum, said more companies are using Gnome. “Trolltech has done well in the mobile space but we’re seeing a trend toward Gnome,” he said. GNOME technologies are used in numerous products, including the One Laptop Per Child and Nokia’s web tablets.

The forum defined APIs on top of Gnome’s GTK, optimizing it for the mobile usage model, he said.

The next set of specifications for the forum will deal with functions like instant messaging and allowing users or operators the ability to change the phone’s user interface. The third wave of specifications, expected to come out next year, will have more to do with how applications use different phone resources, he said.

The U.S. lags behind other regions of the globe in adoption of mobile Linux. China and Japan are the biggest users of Linux phones while the U.S. has a reputation for being “cautious,” in part due to the tight control the U.S. operators like to keep on the market, Weinberg said.

source : dailywireless.org