Time For a Hobbyist Smartphone? 207
theodp writes "Over at Scripting News, Dave Winer has a hobbyist phone on his wish list. Innovative phone manufacturers, Winer suggests, should 'make a smart phone with a really great scripting language, with all kinds of scriptable tools on board. Instead of disallowing scripting, disallow apps that can't be scripted. Make a great simple programming environment that runs on desktops or laptops that plugs right in, but it should also be easy to write scripts on the phone itself. Dave concludes, 'We've already seen the Jobs phone. Now it's time for Woz's.' Having ditched App Inventor, it would appear that Google isn't interested. Microsoft Research has the idea, if not the right implementation, with TouchDevelop (video). Any other existing or in-the-works projects that might fit the bill?"
Android + QPython3 (Score:5, Informative)
I recently defected from iOS and I'm having great fun with an android app called QPython.
Docs are still a bit spotty, but with a few lines of Python I can do all sorts of things with the Android API.
What an amazing idea!! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, wouldn't it be great if someone made a completely developer-friendly, unlocked phone with good specs at a decent price?
Yeah, no fucking shit it would. The carriers would NEVER allow it on their networks. We won't see a phone like that until we have a worldwide standard for cell networks, so that somebody could make that phone and actually sell it in the US.
Already done, people didn't want it. (Score:4, Informative)
There was already a phone proposed that could have done this with no problem. There wasn't enough interest on it to make it a reality.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge [indiegogo.com]
And before you go complaining about the cost, please have a look at flagship Android phones and how much they cost *off contract*. The Edge was a pretty good value.
Kivy (Score:4, Informative)
You should check out Kivy- it will let you create a native app in Python for iOS or Android. http://kivy.org/ [kivy.org]
Neo900 (Score:2, Informative)
Too bad Nokia quit making fun phones. The last was the N900. I'd love to have a new phone similar to that with modern specs.
It seems that you haven't heard of the Neo900 project [neo900.org] which aims to deliver just that.
Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like the literally DOZENS if not hundreds of flowchart programming languages that have tried it before and failed outright because it simply isn't an easy format for us to follow the logic from when designing complex logic?