Operating-System Importance

Mac OS X will become more important, as iPhone sales continue. Estimates suggest Apple will ship 3 million iPhones this year, and the company stands to make a lot more money from its phones than its competitors. Beyond the software and media content that Apple will sell to iPhone users through iTunes, the company is likely to see significant revenue from carrier partners like AT&T. For example, O2, a subsidiary of Spain's Telefonica, is reportedly paying Apple as much as 40% of the telecom fees paid by iPhone customers.

As a matter of comparison, consider Windows Mobile. "The Windows Mobile guys have thus far failed to scale," said Jackson, noting that Microsoft expects to ship about 20 million Windows Mobile devices this year.

Apple is aiming to have shipped half that many iPhones with Mac OS X on board by the end of 2008.

Apple's relevance to this discussion isn't just a matter of the iPhone's booming popularity or its apparent profitability; it's also about the company's leverage with media companies. Apple, thanks to its ties with Disney and its near-monopoly on digital downloads with iTunes, can put content on its phones that won't be easy for Linux players to match.

But Apple's appeal to content owners may be diminishing as more and more companies, at least in the music industry, experiment with abandoning digital copy protection schemes, or digital rights management. Resentment of Apple is coming to rival fear of unauthorized copying among some of Apple's former iTunes partners. That resentment may translate into greater acceptance of, or at least resignation toward, Linux-based mobile devices, particularly if Google can extend some degree of copy protection to content on the gPhone.

Hardware Perfection: OpenMoko

Until Google tips its hand and reveals the gPhone, the OpenMoko Neo 1973 is a suitable proxy for hardware perfection, or at least a starting point.

"The perfect mobile phone, I would argue, is something that becomes more than a phone," said Sean Moss-Pultz, president of OpenMoko, in an e-mail. "Not simply an appendage to carrier. Not merely a pod powering the matrix, but rather a new thing, a neologism; Neo for short. Eclipsing the phone means more than adding 'me, too' features or the bling of the moment; it means morphing the whole mobile market. It means moving the phone into productivity niches and creative niches that it hasn't served. This Neo will connect all forms of content anywhere, anytime. This Neo frees its owner to create content. It knows its owner's location, loves, and life. The Freed Phone weaves itself into its user's life and disappears, becoming as natural and invisible as the air we breathe.

"We don't know exactly how to get there. Only how it will begin. We need an army of Davids, a collective effort. And we need an open platform, based on Mobile FOSS [Free Open-Source Software], that changes and evolves as its owners' needs change. It becomes what it needs to be."

The OpenMoko Neo 1973 is built using a Samsung S3C2410AL-26 CPU, capable of running at up to 266 MHz, 64MB Samsung NAND flash, 128MB SDRAM, Texas Instruments' Calypso-based GSM modem, an AGPS module from Global Locate, GPRS analog baseband and RF transceiver chips, an 8GB Samsung microSD card, a TPO mobile LCD display and a Touch Screen controller, an audio subsystem, a vibration module, support for analog and Bluetooth headsets, a Phillips power management chip, and a Nokia BL5C battery, not to mention a stylus.

Being idealistic about this, though, we want a multi-touch screen (making the stylus optional), a more powerful processor (Via's Mobile-ITX board, perhaps), WiMax support (not to mention UMTS and HSDPA support), Unlicensed Mobile Access (currently being offered in the United States by T-Mobile), an 8 megapixel camera that can take video and transmit it in a live stream, optional programmable buttons, an accelerometer (like the iPhone), ambient noise sensors, a digital compass, a fingerprint sensor, an LED flashlight and laser pointer, FM receiver and transmitter, RFID read/write capability, an inductive charger, a solar recharging panel, and multiple SIM slots.

Platform For Programmers

Really, though, the hardware's not all that significant. What matters to developers is that they can write programs that interact with the hardware, without serious limitations. What matters to users is that the phone works, has enough internal storage, and can be outfitted with hardware modules that deliver the services they want. That, and it has to be fast. No AT&T EDGE network compromises. We're talking speedy 3G, as in, hopefully, next year's iPhone, or better.