STMicroelectronics has announced that its LIS302DL 3-axis accelerometer is being used by Openmoko, Inc to provide motion-sensing functions in Openmoko’s Neo Freerunner LINUX-based mobile open platform.

Openmoko is a project dedicated to delivering mobile phones with an open source software stack. The company is currently selling the Neo FreeRunner phone to advanced users and application developers.

“ST’s accelerometers, such as the LIS302DL, and gyroscopes, such as the LY530AL, are widely used to enable advanced motion-sensing functions, such as portrait/ landscape rotation, pedometer, and menu browsing and now the Open Source community will be able to create even more new applications that exploit our motion-sensing technology,” said Benedetto Vigna, general manager of ST’s MEMS and Sensors, Transceivers and Healthcare division. “This confirms our leadership in this exciting field and will further strengthen our position in handsets and mobile applications.”

The Neo Freerunner is a GSM tri-band mobile phone with a VGA touch screen, 2D/3D graphics acceleration, 256 Mbytes of NAND Flash memory, Wi-Fi, AGPS, and Bluetooth 2.0, as well as 3-axis motion sensing. The Openmoko GNU/Linux-based software stack is 100% FOSS (Free Open Source Software), supported by GNU/Linux development tools.

“We chose the LIS302DL because we wanted to include reliable and accurate motion sensing in the Neo Freerunner,” said Steve Mosher, vice president of marketing, Openmoko. “In addition to its role as a mobile phone, developers are embracing the open hardware, open software and open CAD of the Openmoko platform to create a wide range of new products in applications such as healthcare, industrial, tourism, communications, entertainment and scientific visualization and motion-sensing will play a key role in many of them.”