Greenphone: dial your own components

How many times have you heard this one? “I wish I could truly customize my phone.”

Well, a company out of Norway has heard the cries and then actually done something about it. Trolltech, which makes Linux software for mobile phones, says it has designed a fully reprogrammable mobile handset. That’s good news for phone designers, many of whom are desperate for the kind of flexibility that their PC counterparts enjoy.

Trolltech will offer a mobile camera phone called Greenphone, which will run on the GSM/GPRS standard. It’s rather high-priced at US$690, but it comes with all software and source code a developer needs to customize it, while still sporting a working phone, address book, and camera. A company could, for example, have a fleet of phones built that come with company address books and software packages pre-installed.

Greenphone will be available next month.