Taiwanese phone manufacturer FIC, recently announced the timeline for the release of the FIC Neo1973 smart phone. It’s shaping up to be a very cool device. The phone is nice to look at, has a completely open software stack via the OpenMoko project and at US$350 it’s actually relatively cheap!

Feature wise the Neo1973 is relatively similar to the iPhone, right down to using a touchscreen for the user interface. It will be interesting to see how many of the people who have been complaining about the restrictive and walled-garden iPhone model migrate over to the OpenMoko platform. The Neo1973 will work with any GSM cellular network in the world (as opposed to only Cingular in the states, and other apple partners elsewhere) and will allow you to run essentially any application that you want on the phone itself. The contrast in approach between Apple and FIC is stark, and I hope that FIC wins out in the end, although it will no doubt be an uphill battle for them to get anywhere near the mindshare that Apple receives.

The one feature that really drew my eye to the Neo1973 is the built-in GPS chipset. For a while now I’ve been looking for a device that would allow me to reveal my current location (possibly obfuscated to a certain radius) to selected family and friends. Once the source code is released in a week or two I imagine that it won’t be long before someone (maybe me…) whips up an application to make this possible.

Here’s hoping that the phone lives up to the expectations set for it and that I can come up with a suitable excuse to purchase one when they become available in early March!

Update: Found a linuxdevices.com post with some good technical detail on the hardware