A week or so ago I blogged about the future domination of Linux in the smartphone market. I mentioned that Palm spun off it's OS division into a company called Palmsource which was bought and renamed Access. Access then started working on a Linux replacement for the PalmOS to be used in Palm hardware devices. They took so long that Palm (the hardware company) created their own Linux based OS called WebOS which you can try out in the Palm Pre and Palm Pixie. Thought to be dead in the water without a hardware vendor Access just resurfaced on the First Else from Else Mobile. The interface is very interesting and new, a word that doesn't get used often in the smartphone industry these days. It seems since the iphone changed everything and became a sales hit everyone wants to mimic the iphone. Makes sense from a commercial standpoint but at some point you might want to be called "better than an iphone" instead of "as good as an iphone". Else is risking a bit but I welcome the diversity nonetheless.  I don't just blog about smartphones for the heck of it considering I don't even own one! I'm blogging about the Else because it's based on Linux. If this thing takes off we will have 4 major Linux platforms in the smart phone market - Android, Maemo, WebOS and Access Linux. This doesn't count the LiMo phones which never seem to materialize. I belive Access Linux is LiMo compatible though since they're a member.

The First Else has roughly the same hardware as an iphone/n900/Palm Pre/Droid which puts it on par with the best. The interface is really where it's at.  There's a video interview of Else Mobile's CEO at  TelecomTV.