Most people who are into hacking things are at least listening to the chatter about hacking iphones if they aren’t hacking them. Meanwhile, an open source totally hackable phone, openmoko, has surfaced and it’s not nearly as interesting. Why? Because it’s more fun to hack something that shouldn’t be hacked!

Openmoko runs on linux, has all the software and hardware bits out in the open for folks to check out and mod, but um, it costs $300 and they really want developers for it. This makes sense really. If you’re going to open up your box, you want folks to play with it, create apps, and build functionality. It’s really a phone for developers rather than hackers.

Back in the 90’s you could hook up a phone to your computer over serial and basically control the phone from your computer. You could listen to peoples conversations, make calls from your computer and stuff like that. Nowadays, you’re phone hacking options are limited to hacking the security of the cell company’s voice and data networks, unlocking your phone, and getting your phone to act more like a computer by adding functionality and connectivity… and the way it looks! If I’m missing something, drop a note in the comments.

By making something hackable, it turns hackers away. Chumby came out last year and despite getting a lot of press at the time as being a hackable product, nothing has really happened with it.

It seems to me that if you want a hacking community to abuse and mod your product, the public face of your company shouldn’t actively encourage it.

A successful hackable product is the roomba which is a vacuum cleaner. People saw it’s potential as a robot platform and went for it. Recently the folks who put it together released a roboticist version without the vacuum bits for people to use and it appears to be successful.

So what would you want to make your phone do? What functionality do you want to add?