Linux hacked onto HTC's Windows Mobile phones

The linked progress report is fascinating reading. Thanks, Luke.

This work comes very, very close to making me wish I actually had some plausible use for a PDA/phone. That's an accomplishment considering I detest cell phones and find PDAs mostly annoying.

thanks ncm. i really _did_ fry my brain 18 months ago, and not from making too many GSM phone calls: it simply wasn't possible at the time :)

some more progress since the article: i managed to make and receive a phone call on the himalaya. i could hear things - but not reply :) the reason is because the audio driver lacks i2c initialisation, and the only way at present to get it going is to be playing a sound in wince as you run haret.exe (directly equivalent to loadlin.exe for win32).

also i am struggling with opie-image but it's getting there.

... but to tempt you: think about it - why are you trusting MS, trusting symbian, trusting your phone company, with your conversations and your business?

as geeks, this is _very_ empowering stuff: changing your ring-tone depending on the caller-id because _you_ want to (not because some other wince thing wrote it).

downloading your contacts via LDAP because YOU want to instead of in some stupid proprietary xxxxing format that you (personally) are never going to use.

backing up your phone and your data in ways that YOU are used to instead of ways that suit the microsoft monopoly.

this is a lifestyle thing: it's not about PDAs - to me, the only useful things are being able to access the SIM card, being able to write notes on the touchscreen, the bluetooth headset and ... what else... oh yes - making phone calls. oh - and checking email. _maybe_ web browsing.

the rest? calendar? task list? games? *spit*.

... _but_ butbutbut: got a linux phone?

GREAT! instantly, i'd write a program to back up my contacts - as a text file.

i'd put ssh on it.

i'd consider putting in VPN tunnelling or ssh forwarding over GPRS.

iii'd... consider writing a "compressed/cacheing" version of squid, or looking to see if there was one.

i'd consider putting squid _on_ the phone and upping the TTL!!!

i'd look into compression/cacheing of IMAP.

all things to save money over GPRS because it's _expensive_ - £1.00 per megabyte - that's a _lot_.

right now: these things are... possible-ish, but i don't _want_ to use wince development tools (oh - yes haret.exe has been ported to the gnu tools :)

... you mean, once in a while i don't write complete pointless gibberish???