Neo900

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You are here: Home > Neo900

Neo900 Motherboard - www.neo900.org

Note: this is a product under development. Therefore you can help to get the development cost covered by making donations. Any small donation is welcome! With higher donations you are entitled for a rebate for the series production product (if it finally goes to production), or even one of the early prototypes. Please note that hardware development of this complexity means paying people, machine operation and for components, and includes the risk that there is no finally useful result. Therefore these donations are not refundable. The project was initiated jointly by Jörg Reisenweber (Openmoko Veteran) and Nikolaus Schaller (OpenPhoenux / GTA04).

Donate

Neo900 Development Donation

Donations currently not possible. Please wait some days.

Helps us to start the project; not refundable; select multiples of 10 EUR to donate higher amounts.

Donations of 100 EUR or more entitle to a rebate for a single series production device (price of motherboard w/o case expected to be in the 500-700 EUR range, depending mainly on number of orders). Please keep the order reference of the donation to claim your rebate.
Donations of 1500 EUR or more entitle you to get one of the prototypes (in addition to one rebated device from final series production).
The rebate amount will raise by 2% for each month between donation and start of shipment. E.g. 200 EUR entitle for 204 EUR rebate after 1 full month. This is a bonus for supporting the project upfront.
Initially we have to include German VAT because we do not export anything, but as soon as you order the final devices, VAT free delivery rules can apply.

Please read carefully the special conditions below.

Note: if your country is not in the list of the Destinations, we really appreciate that you intend to support the project! But we regret that accepting correctly and finally handling shipment may need us to learn new export rules. We plan to have some distributor network when Neo900 goes into production.

Watch a video demonstrating the idea:

Reusable components:

First sketches of a new Motherboard:

What it is

The Neo900 project will provide a motherboard replacement for the Nokia N900 to modernize its logic and make it more open for free and open software development.

New key features are planned:

faster TI OMAP3 CPU (DM3730-1GHz) and more RAM
open WWAN modem (UMTS 3.75G, CDMA, LTE or similar - antenna is not optimized for everything)
USB OTG 2.0 High Speed
fits into existing N900 case (or gives easy instructions how to modify the case)
reuses existing components like speakers, headset jack, antennas, display, keyboard, ...
complete schematics and manual (see the GTA04 manual how it could look like)

In the long run we plan to offer different product options:

motherboard for DIY upgrades. Note: this will not be a complete phone. You need to get a new or used N900, open it and replace the motherboard.
preinstalled in a refurbished N900 case.

But as of today we are still at the beginning of this venture and therefore ask the community for funding. If you want to stay infomed, please subscribe to http://www.neo900.org.

For project News please look here: http://neo900.org/#news

Special Conditions for Donations and Refunds

Development of such a complex device has some risk (see Neo900 Feasibility Study)and costs money before devices can be produced and evaluated by a bigger group of people. With this fundraising we kindly ask for donations to cover this early development cost. Therefore the following conditions apply in addition to the general Conditions / AGB:

Payments are treated as (non-tax deducible, non-refundable) donations to the Development Funds.
What we want to do with these funds
1. if we reach 5000 EUR (total) we expect that we can do the schematics, identify components and initial mechanical PCB design.
2. if we reach 15000 EUR (total) we expect that we can build ~5 almost working prototypes (i.e. CPU, Display, Keyboard, UMTS working).
3. if we reach 25000 EUR (total) we expect that we can build another 10 prototypes to fix and test bugs detected in the 5 prototypes and make the design production ready. We also want to hand out / lend those prototypes to the Fremantle Porting Task Force developers for testing.
4. if we get more budget, we discuss with the community to build more prototypes or add features etc. or use it to make series production cheaper.
There is no time limit or minimum funds goal like e.g. Kickstarter, so you can help us anytime to reach the next step.
Donations of 100 EUR or more entitle to a rebate for a single series production device (price of motherboard w/o case expected to be in the 500-700 EUR range, depending mainly on number of orders). Please keep the order reference of the donation to claim your rebate.
Donations of 1500 EUR or more entitle you to get one of the prototypes (in addition to one rebated device from final series production).
The rebate amount will raise by 2% for each month between donation and start of shipment, so that e.g. 200 EUR entitle for 204 EUR rebate after 1 month. This is a bonus for supporting the project upfront.
The level of funding will be reported regularly on www.neo900.org (and/or here).
There is no warranty that we finally can produce such a motherboard before we actually do it, but we do everything (including very open communication) to reach the goal.
If the project can't continue for whatever reasons, remaining funds are paid back fairly and equally.

Minimum Key Features (planned, subject to improvements according to feasibility)

Motherboard (PCB) upgrade that fits into N900 case (and reuses the existing Display, Battery, Antennas and some other components)
Texas Instruments DM3730 CPU (OMAP3 ARM Cortex A8) with 1+ GHz
512+ MB RAM, 1+ GB NAND flash, 32+ GB eMMC, Micro-SD-Reader
3.75G module for UMTS/CDMA; 4G (LTE) optional
USB 2.0 OTG High Speed
GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth
Accelerometer, barometric Altimeter, Magnetometer, Gyroscope
support of N900 camera module
will likely ship with some Debian/X11 preinstalled (e.g. for system tests), maybe Replicant