The Neo 1973 is a smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

 developed by the Openmoko

Openmoko

Openmoko is a project to create a family of open source mobile phones, including the hardware specification and the operating system. The project was sponsored by Openmoko Inc....

 project to run the Openmoko Linux

Openmoko Linux

Openmoko Linux is an operating system for smartphones developed by the Openmoko project. It is based on the Ångström distribution, comprising various pieces of free software.The main targets of Openmoko Linux were the Openmoko Neo 1973 and the Neo FreeRunner...

 software platform. Furthermore other platforms have been ported to the Neo 1973, including Qt Extended, Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

 and Android.

The Neo 1973 was designed as open source hardware

Open source hardware

Open source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered in the same manner as free and open source software . Open source hardware is part of the open source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. The term usually means that...

. It is mostly using hardware components with open source drivers, the CAD files have been released under a ShareAlike Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

 license, and the schematics are available for download from OpenMoko and Wikimedia Commons
under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

The device is named after the first year of mobile telephone

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

 communication: the inventor of the mobile phone, Martin Cooper, made the first call in 1973. The phone released was inconsistently-named Neo 1973 or Neo1973.

The Neo 1973 was sold from July 9, 2007 to February 2008. It was priced at US$300 for the basic model, or US$450 for a kit including more tools for hardware work.

The initial releases of the Neo 1973 were hampered by supplier shortages, which forced the shipping date to slip, and hardware development difficulties exacerbated by the small size of the core team.

The next version of the phone, Neo FreeRunner

Neo FreeRunner

The Neo FreeRunner is an open source smartphone that is developed by the Openmoko project and manufactured by FIC...

, started shipping on June 24th, 2008.

External links

• Neo 1973 article on the OpenMoko wiki