Press shots of a new Motorola phone based on a Linux build just leaked today and it’s…not all that exciting. Dubbed the Motorola ZN300, the phone will have a slide-out standard keypad, QVGA display and a 3 megapixel camera.
It doesn’t look anything special although I guess that should be expected from the upcoming batch of Linux handsets that’s going to make their way to market during the year. From what we’ve heard, after all, the Linux takeover is going to climb up the cell phone ladder starting from the bottom rung.
The LiMo foundation, in fact, announced last week that they’re devoting resources to developing a Linux platform specifically for lower end phones. Instead of hoisting themselves up in contention with Android or Apple (or Pre, as the situation looks to be), they’re hoping to take over the spot of smaller mobile operating systems. While the move won’t be as high-profile as trying to break into the high-end smartphone pool, the market is undoubtedly still a lucrative one.
Chief among the attractive features of a Linux phone will be the stable and flexible platform it can provide to handset manufacturers. Instead of a complete OS that manufacturers can bundle and ship out, LiMo will contain basic building blocks like resource management, multimedia support and security functions. Handset makers, on the other hand, can deploy home-brewed features on top of a common platform that offers plenty of room to get creative.
Based on the LiMo Foundation’s presentation at WMC this past week, though, I’m not sure if the ZN300 is running off of the latest LiMo build or on Motorola’s own version of the open-source OS. The group expects to see handsets using their LiMo Platform R2 starting third quarter of the year.
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