As I’m finally getting down to reviewing the Google’s mobile Android SDK, I’m wondering if this is the nail in the coffin for OpenMoko (it isn’t a very big coffin and would only need 1 nail).

My thinking is this: I’ve been working on a appropriative /pervasive game toolkit, and have been holding off on moving into the dev stage until I had a chance to get my hands on the consumer version of the Neo1973 to what I could really do with it. The fact that the device has been continuously delayed has not helped OpenMoko in this case.

You might ask why would I even bother with OpenMoko in the first place. Well the pervasive game toolkit requires a fairly high level of API access to a device’s hardware functionality. While I realized that any OpenMoko version of the toolkit would only be demoware, I was prepared to use it until the mobile community came to their senses.

Now it appears that Google may have lead them there. I’m putting a lot of stock into the optional low-level hardware APIs that have yet to be released but based on what I am reading now, it looks Android will allow me to have my demoware and deploy it too.

…I still might get a Neo1973 when it is finally available, but I certainly won’t be developing for it.

Did Android cause anyone else to close the book on OpenMoko or am I the only one who ever bothered to open the book?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 4:14 pm and is filed under android, openmoko, homebrew, pervasive games, ubiquitous games, appropriative games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.