Photos: Linux Greenphone unveiled

Despite being created purely for developers, the Greenphone is a more attractive device than one might imagine. "We wanted developers to use it as their everyday phone," explained Nord.

"It's kind of mind-boggling for developers," he added. "Everybody usually wants to protect the software in their phone, but we want to let the developers experiment and innovate."

Manufactured by Yuhua Teltech in Shanghai, the Greenphone runs on a 312MHz Intel XScale processor, has a mini-USB port and a 1.3megapixel camera and takes standard mini-SD cards. It has a touchscreen and stylus, which Nord says will help developers create paint applications.

It also has session initiation protocol (SIP) stack capabilities, which Nord said made it "easy" to produce VoIP capabilities and add multimedia functionality. "We'll see tons of applications but I'm also interested in seeing new ways that people can interact with their phones," he told ZDNet UK.

Future iterations of the device are likely to include built-in Wi-Fi capabilities, but there are no plans at present to include GPS.