Red Bend Software will demonstrate a concept phone supporting partial, differential firmware updates over-the-air. Based on Trolltech's open Linux-based Greenphone, together with Red Bend's vRapid Mobile FOTA (firmware over-the-air) stack, the “Mast” phone will be shown at the Mobile World Congress… 2008, February 11-14, in Barcelona.

In the demo, the Mast (short for “master key”) phone will be stocked with software from Trolltech, as well software from Greensuite members Digital Airways, Opera, Synchronica, and Zi. The demo promises to show the Greenphone's software being “fully customized” over the air, as follows:

• Synchronica Device Management Server — showing how Synchronica provides the device management server connection to securely provision Greensuite software using the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Device Management protocol
• Opera — updating Opera's mobile browser without updating entire firmware image
• Digital Airways's Kaleido — deploying a customized, operator-branded Kaleido user interface, based on SIM updates
• Zi eZiText — updating Zi Software's EziText predictive typing software with new languages and enabling dual-language messaging

The demo will show software updates using vRapid Mobile, Red Bend's new and enhanced superset of the company's widely use VCurrent Mobile FOTA software. Whereas VCurrent is designed to update an entire firmware stack at once, says Red Bend, VRapid is more flexible. It supports intermittent, selective updates of higher level software components, enabling customers to add, update, or remove selected components.

VRapid Mobile architecture
(Click to enlarge)

The Mast concept phone is based on Trolltech's recently discontinued Greenphone. The Greenphone had been billed as the first Linux-based mobile phone with user-modifiable firmware, and was sold as a development platform for phone software vendors such as Red Bend. The announcement comes a week after Red Bend announced that vRapid Mobile would be incorporated in Trolltech's Qtopia Phone Edition (QPE), and made available through Trolltech's “Greensuite” third-party ecosystem.

>Availability

Red Bend will demonstrate Mast at Mobile World Congress 2008, February 11-14 in Barcelona. More information may be found here.

 
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