Comparing the Freedoms Offered By Maemo and Android 244
An anonymous reader writes "Maemo 5 and Android have received a lot of publicity lately, despite the former not even shipping yet. Both have become famous partly for using the Linux kernel, but now that we have a choice, how do we pick one? Is the issue as mundane as choosing your favorite desktop distribution, or is there a more significant difference? This article compares the two from an end user and developer perspective, emphasizing root access and ease of sharing code."
Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend (Score:2, Insightful)
Maemo 5 and Android have received a lot of publicity lately, despite the former not even shipping yet. Both have become famous partly for using the Linux kernel, but now that we have a choice, how do we pick one?
I assume that you'd probably pick the one that you can actually buy. Or you could opt to buy nothing, but that's not really picking one.
"We" don't really have a choice, do we?
How do I choose? (Score:5, Insightful)
I choose the one that will install on the hardware I own. or the one that has the most pro user functions and anti carrier functions...
I.E. mp3 ringtones that are not locked out.
Backgrounds can be any file I choose to upload to it, same as themes. Give me a way to design and upload a look change without makign the carrier rich.
All features enabled and systems in place that keep the carrier from disabling features in the phone or forcing an update to my phone that is crippled.
Allows me to use a voip client at a wifi hotspot to circumvent airtime charges.
there are features on my S60 phone that I dont see anywhere else. If I press end on a ringing call it will SMS that person with a "I'm really busy right now, I'll call you back as soon as I can" That is a ROCKING feature that I dont see on any of these phones.
Finally scripting. I want scripting on my phone. a sequence to happen when number xx-xxx-xxxx calls me.
So I choose whatever empowers me and works on my hardware.
Re:How do I choose? (Score:5, Insightful)
That auto-SMS idea is amazing, and one of the reasons why even as an iPhone developer I'm annoyed at Apple for locking us out of making apps to fill in that kind of functionality. I respect that they need to make sure the phone doesn't blow up whatever network it happens to be running on or ring up a $500 bill for the user, but you would think that something that cool would be really trivial to write now that everything else is in place.
Another idea: why not have the phone give you a couple of options on the auto-SMS that you can write yourself, i.e. "in a meeting right now," "at the theater," "soldering my fingers to the windowsill," or vary the auto-SMS depending on the caller? I don't know if you can roll this kind of functionality yourself on Android, but if you can Apple is going to be sweating bullets in a year or so.
Not really an article (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a blog by someone unknown that is also very light on facts.
He seems of the opinion the Maemo owners will be better treated if the root their hardware because Nokia make it slightly easier to do. The problem is that we do not yet know what Nokia will make you agree to in order to install the gain root privileges application. In my opinion they will make you agree to voiding your warranty anyway so that will put you in the same boat as most android owners.
Even if Nokia do not then most carriers will, and the vast majority of phones are purchased through a carriers discount so the user does not end up paying full price for the handset.
Re:The writer is clueless about end users (Score:5, Insightful)
There must be a nontrivial market consisting of people like me who don't care about support as much as they care about functionality.
The Maemo looks good. It's the first smartphone that I'm actually excited about!
Re:How do I choose? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, sure, it's great that the phone's OS allows that kind of open development and all, but
Re:The writer is clueless about end users (Score:5, Insightful)
I second this.
Most users don't need root, nor have any need for source code access. Most users have access to support from the manufacturer, and are fine with that.
Judging from this guy's questions, he already had a conclusion, and started asking questions to justify his points of view. The article is flamebait beginning to end. Some notes:
The N900 will (hopefully) be a great phone, no need to go on bashing the competition in order to promote it.
Re:The writer is clueless about end users (Score:4, Insightful)
The Maemo looks good. It's the first smartphone that I'm actually excited about!
That's because it's the first "phone" that's actually a real computer, not a locked down piece of plastic.
I just got an N810, and I'm loving it. As a double-plus, you can actually get a used one cheap now that everybody is buying an N900.
Maemo wins hands down (Score:5, Insightful)
From my personal opinion Android simply doesn't stand a chance. While Android does run Linux kernel it doesn't have X Window etc. It's glorified java platform that doesn't even support full java spec. You can do anything with it, but things will take a lot of work.
Maemo on the other hand is what I see as a 'real' Linux platform running software stack which makes it pretty trivial to port existing apps to it.
Stuff I currently run on my N810:
-Real browser looking firefox with flash support
-MPlayer for playing nearly any format I can throw at it...
-Gnumeric for spreadsheets
-Battle for Wesnoth, Beneath the steel sky, Duke Nukem 3D when I feel like playing something
-Vnc server & client
-Gjiten for translating stuff to Japanese. Japanese symbols display nicely etc.
Only thing I'm really missing is the phone functionality. Even if the only improvement to N900 would be adding that, I would be happy. Adding processing power etc. makes it a must buy for me.
Win Mobile features (Score:5, Insightful)
all the features you mentioned are available with windows mobile.
Additionally, you get a lot of nice extra features, like random restarts, battery monitor that always reports full battery, battery that lasts 1 full day when you're lucky, touchscreen that sometimes responds to your touch (sometimes even to do what you want it to do!), apps that cost much more than I am willing to pay and don't do what I need, plus a generally clunky and inconsistent UI.
I have a windows mobile phone and I will NEVER make that mistake again.
And before I get flamed: I know, many of the problems I have are specific to the device, not to windows mobile, so I have also blacklisted LG for my next purchase. Still, the OS makes you feel like it's windows 98 all over *shiver*.
Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend (Score:5, Insightful)
Javascript as a mobile device's ABI? (Score:2, Insightful)
And the apps are all text (javascript to be precise).
That is actually the #1 reason I won't buy a Pre. I think it's a horrible design decision. The device has limited processing power, storage, and battery. I don't want it to waste time or power translating Javascript code.
Kind of an interesting metric. (Score:5, Insightful)
None of the metrics really have anything to do with the average user.
1. Freedom from crashes. random, and forced resets.
2. Freedom to find the applications that I want to run without having to write them myself.
3. Freedom from having to learn a complex and inconsistent UI.
Most smart phone users really want and need a good smart phone first. Most users will never want to root the phone. How free and open a consumer software system is of little concern if it is not functional. I would love to see Android and Maemo put in the hands of a new smart phone users that doesn't know FOSS or the GPL from a hole in the ground just to see how functional they are. I would also like to see a comparison of the SDKs from a programmers point of view. Finally we can talk about how "free" they are. All of that is important but usability really is very important and it wasn't talked about in this story at all.
I have yet to play with Maemo but my next phone will probably be an Android device. I don't want to be on the AT&T network so the iPhone is out. WinMo doesn't really thrill me, and the PalmOS still lacks voice dialing and video recording. My wife loves her PalmPre but I am disappointed with the SDK and the fact that it still lacks video recording and voice dialing! MY STINKING SANYO FEATURE PHONE CAN SHOOT VIDEO AND DO VOICE DIALING.
Right now I am torn between the Samsung Moment and the HTC Hero I just hope that we see them get 1.6 and 2.0 updates very soon.
Re:Javascript is the universal scripting language (Score:3, Insightful)
Built in on Windows, MacOS.
Built in on every web browser.
Built in on virtually all smartphones.
Available as Spidermonkey on Unix systems.
It's pretty much everywhere already. It'll replace most of the others; perl, python, ruby as the libraries and VMs available for it improve.
That's a lovely poem. Really. The Vogons would absolutely hate it.
Being a good scripting language is all well and good. That doesn't make said scripting language a good choice for an embedded platform.
Re:How do I choose? (Score:3, Insightful)