Developer edition of open source phone Necuno for sale for 1199 euros
Finnish Necuno has started selling its first open source phone, in the form of a community edition. The Necuno NC_1 is intended for developers, can run five open source systems, has no modem or SIM slot and costs 1199 euros.
The Necunos NC_1 can run the Plasma Mobile interface on Debian or postmarketOS. In addition, users can install Maemo Leste, Nemo Mobile or LuneOS. It is striking that Necuno speaks of six operating systems in its announcement, but that there are only five on the store page. There is also the option to have the device delivered with the display disconnected, so that the interior can be tinkered quickly and easily.
The first batch of NC_1’s is 500 units, which will be delivered from March, in the order in which they are ordered. The price includes worldwide shipping costs. A portion of the proceeds will go to the organizations behind the chosen ox, or one of the other ox makers, if the buyer so requests.
The Enterprise variant of Necuno will follow later. The software of this variant is designed with security as the first priority. “Secluded chips, e2e encryption and wiretapping proofing” should ensure that the intended audiences can count on privacy. These groups are for example companies, governments and journalists.
Necuno is not releasing any further technical details about the device at this time, although it had already done so in November. Assuming those specs haven’t changed, the NC_1 has a 5.5″ display, but with an as-yet-unknown resolution. The phone features an NXP i.MX6, a quad-core processor with four Cortex A9 processor cores running at 1.2GHz. and a Vivante GPU, which isn’t the most powerful processor, but NXP makes the entire source code of its processor publicly available, so Necuno thinks this is the right choice.
It was also announced at the time that the device has a micro-USB port and a 3.5mm jack. It features a button that users can program themselves, in addition to the usual buttons for volume and power on or off the phone.