Hi!

The rumours have already spread, as several bloggers have already
reported: Yesterday [subject to time zone], Monday the 5th of March
2007, OpenMoko was finally able to start the Phase 0 of the OpenMoko
Neo1973 developer programme:

The Neo1973 Phase 0 phones have been shipped!

This means that by the end of this week, there will be 36 Free Software
developers around the world with a Neo1973 in their hands :)
(Why not 50? Go on reading)

After having releaed the current source code, and development resources
such as wiki, bugzilla and mailinglists almost four weeks ago, this
Phase 0 shipment now marks the next logical step: Hardware availability.

Unfortunately the current hardware revision GTA01Bv3 still has some
issues that are fixable in post-production rework, most notably too high
standby power consumption. Due to those issues, the remaining 14
developers have chosen to rather wait until the next hardware revision.

The brave first 36 will obviously get a free fully working Neo1973 as
soon as they become available - which brings us to the second news item:

We have finalized the next revision called GTA01Bv4, which we expect to
be available in sample quantities roughly at the end of the month.
Let's hope this time we got everything right and can immediately proceed
to producing larger quantities.

In order to enable the Phase 0 developers to even literally "Open their
phone" (before freeing it by free software), we actually packaged all
the tools required for opening and disassembling it: Torx screwdriver
and guitar plectrum :)

The OpenMoko core team is sending a warm welcome to this first group of
36 developers. We're looking forward to your feedback and help!

Once again our sincere apologies for delays and further delays. We
werer striving to be above industry average - but have you ever seen
any reasonably complex hard/software project finish on time? Murphys
law applies to all of us...

Happy hacking,

Harald (for the OpenMoko Core Team)