From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Motorola A780 is mobile phone and PDA running the Linux operating system sold in Europe and Asia. Some models dubbed A780+ include GPS and navigation software.
[edit] Design
The Motorola A780 is a Linux-based flip phone. When the lid is closed, the phone appears like a traditional phone, with a keypad matrix and small display, actually a window to the larger display below the lid. When the lid is flipped open, a quarter VGA touch screen is revealed that can be used with fingers or a supplied stylus.
A780 with closed flip
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A780 with flip open
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Side view
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[edit] Features
The phone is supplied with a a number of applications including a POP and IMAP email client, Opera web browser, calendar and a viewer for pdf and Microsoft Office files. Calendar and address book can be synchronised with a Microsoft Exchange or SyncML server. The phone has a 1.3 Megapixel camera recording still and video images. RealPlayer is included to play sound audio files and streamed audio and video. The phone has 48MBytes of internal flash memory for storing user data and a slot for a microSD card. Both Bluetooth and USB are provided for communication with another computer. Character entry is via an on-screen QWERT keyboard and hand writing recognition. Models including a GPS receiver are supplied with ALK Technologies' CoPilot Live navigation software with street level maps of Europe. Features available on some smart phones but not present on the A780 include a physical Qwerty keyboard, IEEE 802.11 wireless ethernet and the capability to use a stereo bluetooth headset.
[edit] Technical details
[edit] Linux enthusiasts
The phone is popular with enthusiasts for Linux. By installing additional free software it is able to establish an ethernet connection between the phone and another computer over USB or Bluetooth. One can then telnet to the phone and be presented with a bash prompt. From the prompt one can for example mount NFS drives on the phone. As the operating system, Motorola EZX Linux, is open source. With the source code hosted on sourceforge, it is possible to recompile and replace the kernel of the operating system. However Motorola do not publish a software development kit for native applications, instead expecting third party programs to be written in the Java-based J2ME. The OpenEZX website is dedicated to providing free opensource software for this phone and other using the same OS.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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