Nokia Trades Symbian For MeeGo In N-Series Smartphones 184
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia announced that moving forward, MeeGo would be the default operating system in the N series of smartphones (original Reuters report). Symbian will still be used in low-end devices from Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. The move to MeeGo is a demonstration of support for the open source mobile OS, but considering the handset user experience hasn't been rolled out and likely won't be rolled out in time for its vague June deadline outlined at MeeGo.com, could the decision be premature?"
Re:As an N900 user... (Score:5, Informative)
The late June release that is expected will have an "open" and "closed" release. The "open" image will run on the N900 but omit some firmware and OpenGL/BME drivers. The closed image will include those, and will require a valid IMEI for the N900, and should provide 100% hardware functionality.
With luck the BME will be replaced, since it just controls a chip with plenty of publicly available documentation. OpenGL, well... until Imagination stops acting like Nvidia we're SOL.
Some points (Score:2, Informative)
It is more like Nokia Linux (Score:5, Informative)
This is not someone's pet project, it is Nokia and its flagship multimedia phone platform (E(nterprise) series stays on Symbian).
I am sure they will put stability and power usage to first place. After all, this is the company who takes huge beating because they insisted and still insist on "code with discipline" on mobile platform. Most of the parts of Symbian which developers hate is actually a specific way to code for mobile platform to use less power and stay stable. They expect(ed) some company who manages to do "talk" and "smart" on single CPU without problems to let them code like they code for desktop. It doesn't happen of course.
N series on the other hand, is flexible and they can say "lets put 2 CPUs", "lets put 512MB RAM" as they are multimedia/high end phones with high price flexibility. I guess that and massive multimedia support already existing on Linux along with developers is the major reason for this decision.
Don't let their liberal "no app store" fool you. If your app doesn't act fine on Symbian, it is gone. It won't slow down or anything. Flooding memory? "Memory full, please close some applications" and guess what? It closes it before it alerts. I am sure they won't let things like that happen on Linux too.
So, it is not something like desktop linux fitting on phone. Just like iOS isn't some NeXT/BSD compiled for ARM either.
Re:It is more like Nokia Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Except that there -will- be, like there is for Maemo, a community repository where less stable software can be made available.
Sure you won't get into the Ovi store or whatnot, but you will be able to make your software available without having to pass strict checklists if you really, really want to put it out there. Assuming your carrier or non-Nokia handset vendor isn't being an ass.
Re:So, by next year.... (Score:3, Informative)
You are thinking 2010, the year when N900 blew everything else out of the water. A (very incomplete) list of software that it runs already includes busybox, bash, GNU utils, apt-get, emacs, vim, texlive, python, gnuplot, ssh -X, mplayer (!), fennec (firefox with full plugin support), midori, lynx, pidgin, conky... Its main limitation is, hands down, the amount of RAM, and even here, with its puny 128M, it performs very similarly to somewhat cleaner and faster Android. It is a fair tradeoff, Android being a toy OS compared to Maemo.
Re:N800 Symbian?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Open source is the key? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't be too surprised by Symbian breaking this year the "100 million devices sold annually" barrier, and generally maintaining quite well its half of smartphone market. Nokia finally really started pushing it in the mainstream class.
So called "junk" also enables this, allowing very modestly priced devices with greast power management. And Symbian^4 has Qt as its main API.
You might call it apocalypse of the undead if you really wish to, but I would be suprised if Symbian won't remain a major player for a very long time. Plus zombies are cool.
Re:So, by next year.... (Score:3, Informative)
it wasn't usable for the 95% of the population
It is painfully clear that you never used one or know anything about it. It is dead easy to use, with or without unlocking. Installing texlive is not easy. Making phone calls, using SMS, email, chat, web browser, media player, transferring files, using GUI config -- dead simple and very much idiot-proof. It's not FSF we are talking here, it's Nokia.
Re:As an N900 user... (Score:5, Informative)
It seems that a volunteer company (some "Nokia" if you've ever heard of them) has already done that [maemo.org] (5th post down). No real need to do it again..
I'm hoping that they keep the open nature of Maemo/Meego on these new phones. The N900 is the first phone I've had in ages which doesn't crash all the time. Not as slick as an iphone yet, but definitely much more flexible. Nothing quite as fun as controlling your phone from it's web server via WiFi...
Re:Very pleased (Score:3, Informative)
What are you blabbing about? The thing has the whole set of Linux apps avaliable for it. And since when does “flagship device” equal “second-class device”?
Also the Ovi Store is just a dummy. It’s there to be able to say they have an “app store” to the Appletards*. But there never was a point to an “app store” on full operating systems. Just as there is no point to an app store for your Linux or Windows desktop. And just as there was nobody who felt a need for a app store back in and before 2004, when the first Symbian smart phones came to the market.
You just went to Google and typed “Symbian $myAppKeywords”. Up came and come countless sites listing tons of Symbian apps, allowing download and linking to the manufacturer’s site.
And then you can also just search for MIDP (Java) software. Which again lists you lots of sites with lots of apps.
* It’s really just Applethink in an Apple world, where there is a point to a single app store.
Re:So, by next year.... (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of people in the media seem to want Nokia to fail, but the N900 is in fact highly successful in its market segment. When it was launched, Nokia said Maemo wasn't ready for mass consumption yet, and now say that it is exceeding sales expectations. According to Engadget, it sold 100 000 in the first five weeks, not months.
What Nokia also said is that the next product *will* be ready for mass consumption, so we can safely expect significantly stronger sales based on their surprisingly honest statements about the N900. It does have a real chance of changing the world for GNU/Linux (as opposed to Android/Linux).
And why wasn't the N900 ready for mass consumption? They haven't yet ported 100% of their features from Symbian, and most of the default applications are stuck in landscape mode due to their heritage. Don't trust the mainstream press on this. Despite reporters' bad conclusions about the cause, the UI in general is extremely well designed, and counting the number of apps in the Ovi repository is ridiculous given that the Maemo repository is full of apps.
Re:Android (Score:3, Informative)
Nokia knows exactly what they're going to do with Maemo/MeeGo. They're going to make as much community-driven software stack as possible, this will drive down development costs for non-core applications. Meanwhile, they will, for example, roll out Ovi-services on top of that to bring in extra cash. Kind of what Apple is doing with their iTunes and AppStore and other content selling services. And don't think only music, videos or e-prints, it will be much more than that.
It's really a beautiful win-win situation. Nokia delivers a hackable, good product to the hands of millions of nerds and hundreds of millions of other people. They are quite free to do, pardon my French, more or less whatever the fuck they want. Meanwhile Nokia gets all kinds of business benefits.
And anyway, I'm not sure what exactly is your beef with Maemo. Maemo/MeeGo stack is currently emerging tech that's about to break to the market big time. It's not setup.exe-productized for mom and pop developers, yet. What did you expect at the moment? Use the emulator in the absence of hardware, and be sure to contact European side of Nokia for specific support questions to get something done. This might help you.
That's my take. Maybe you agree or maybe not, but consider it food for thought anyway.
Re:Android (Score:3, Informative)
That's about equivalent to saying Redhat should dump their distribution and try to sell Android instead.
Android may have a place on the Meego/Maemo platforms, but that would be as a port of the vm so it can run Android apps as well as, and alongside, everything else.
And Infra Red. And Replaceable battery. And... (Score:1, Informative)
And Infra Red. And Replaceable battery. And WiFi bridge. And Tethering. And do you want any more?
Plus, the N900 is not the top of the line. The N900, like the N770,800 and 810 are proof-of-concept toys, where their openness allows Nokia to see where users take the platform, rather than hire a marketing company to BS them Where They Want To Go Today.
Re:Hardly premature. (Score:3, Informative)
That it has an unresponsive touch screen? that it had to include a stylus?
Nonsense - you don't have to use a stylus. But I prefer the option of using one.
The N900 (and 5800, N97) have resistive touchscreens. Downsides are you have to apply a tiny amount of pressure (I'm sure most people can manage) and it lacks multitouch (I don't miss it though - "one mouse button is simpler", remember?) Advantages are you can use a stylus, or indeed anything you like, for extra precision, and also to avoid smearing dirty fingers over your screen. And things like gloves present no problems.
I don't think either one is better; they both each have their advantages. But if you want capacitive, Nokia have options for that too (e.g., the X6). That's the good thing about having a choice of phones in their range, rather than one-size-(doesn't)-fit-all.
Re:Hardly premature. (Score:3, Informative)
And if you mean it had a touchscreen, sure - so there's at least one thing that Apple did before Nokia.
It is not even the case. [wikipedia.org]