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So the issue is how to get out of the current muddle and to cut ties with these carriers. Of course, we can use Skype or various IM and video conferencing tools to talk to people without making a traditional landline or mobile call. The coming deployment of WiMAX networks will increase our ability to use IP-based devices for calling.

The forthcoming FCC auction of the 700MHz spectrum, now scheduled for January, will introduce more openness into the bidding process, and should enable a company such as Google to develop a competing service. Assuming that happens, there will be an alternative our dependence on the incumbent carriers, which will have its ups (price, flexibility) and possible downs (advertising, privacy concerns).

There are also numerous efforts underway to create devices based on open source software. The Nokia N800/N810 http://www.nseries.com/ is a Linux-based device with a useful developer site http://www.maemo.org/. The OpenMoko project http://www.openmoko.org/ is aimed at developing an open source phone. These devices are, of course, unlocked. When OpenMoko has advanced a little further, you should be able to take anyone's SIM chip, put it in your OpenMoko phone, and make a call. For now, though, the best you can do is to have an unlocked phone. (I have about 8 SIM chips from different countries, and switch them when I travel, thereby avoiding the extortionate international roaming charges of the mobile carriers. You can easily buy "pay-as-you-go" service almost everywhere, including in the US.)

So we can already take various steps to loosen our ties to the cellphone carriers. With some luck, many of us will be able to extricate ourselves completely. It's only then that the cellphone carriers will feel the need to improve their products and services to attract and retain customers.

I'll second that motion, and up the ante . . . download the Maemo SDK VMWare image, and have a whack at developing applications for the device yourselves, without actually buying the thing:

http://maemovmware.garage.maemo.org/

  . . . and maybe even read the tutorial . . .

http://maemo.org/development/documentation/tutorials/Maemo_tutorial_bora.html

          Your N8xx has the bestest, coolest applications ever, because YOU wrote them, and YOU think they are.

          Oh, and my N800 was worth the 400 price, just for the s00per sekrit extra application installation back door that prompts: "Which pill? Red Pill? Blue Pill?" You gotta luv a product that allows some geek humor to slip through.

I'll second that motion, and up the ante . . . download the Maemo SDK VMWare image, and have a whack at developing applications for the device yourselves, without actually buying the thing:

http://maemovmware.garage.maemo.org/

  . . . and maybe even read the tutorial . . .

http://maemo.org/development/documentation/tutorials/Maemo_tutorial_bora.html

          Your N8xx has the bestest, coolest applications ever, because YOU wrote them, and YOU think they are.

          Oh, and my N800 was worth the 400 price, just for the s00per sekrit extra application installation back door that prompts: "Which pill? Red Pill? Blue Pill?" You gotta luv a product that allows some geek humor to slip through.

Check out MicroB, a mozilla-based browser for the Maemo platform on the N800. I prefer it to the default Opera-based browser that the N800 ships with. It's based on Gecko 1.9.

You're ability to follow a conversation is 'special'. The submitter implied that Nokia adopted openness only because of Apple and this was the discussion point the parent replied to.

As the parent points out, Nokia has been open for years. Not many other companies using open source will providecash donations to major players as Nokia did with the GNOME foundation and their work on the Maemo platform (Nokia 770 and Nokia N800) has been extremely community centric. Sure, we bitch all the time on the mailing lists that it's not open enough, but every time we do they make it more open to meet our demands.

Or course, none of this really has to do with the advertising campaign at hand. When Nokia says 'Open' in the ads, they are referring to products that are carrier unlocked and run an 'Open Platform,' which may be closed source but is still open for 3rd party developers in the same way Windows is an 'Open Platform'. This has been Nokia's strategy for many, many years and has absolutely nothing to do with the iPhone's success. The only thing that's changed is Nokia's marketing strategy.

You can't buy an iPhone and use it with another company, even if you buy it direct from Apple and offer to pay more (like you can with Nokia or others), nor can you write your own software and run it on an iPhone without Apple's permission. This is the point of the campaign.

I bought a Nokia N770 Internet Tablet because it was a nifty little "open" Linux machine. It couldn't do much, but it was open, so the promise of an amazing device was there. Unfortunately, it was abandoned by Nokia as soon as the N800 came out, even though the devices are similar. No more OS updates, application development has largely dried up, and the developer community has moved on.

Os 2007 hacker edition is available for download. Just for your Nokia 770 (notice lack of "N"). So quit whining and go download it now :) http://maemo.org/news/announcements/view/1189171468.html

Erminig will sync GPE calendar with Google.

I believe that the n800 would do strongly in your rubric (applications, dev environment, syncing, interface and phone - voip). I believe that it can even do exchange (at least the 770 did through third-party software). As far as the dev environment, applications, etc check this out. It's not a phone, but it does do VOIP, as well as hundreds of other useful (and not so useful) things.

They're [Nokia] going to get their clocks cleaned.

I think they have different target audiences. There are pros and cons for each device. I personally would rather have a device that is not locked-in to using iTunes, and restricted to iTunes-friendly-only formatted audio. The Nokia does Skype, Flash 9 (iPod = no flash), has mplayer for playing any type of video (don't just read the Nokia specs, there are many Linux apps ported for it to playback ogg and other stuff), and also the fact that you can compile apps on it, or just install .debs is all very cool. To me.

Their 770 and N800 tablets have touch screens, run Debian Linux and have WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. They don't have a phone module but I suspect that's for the want of Linux drivers. They're a bit big to be a phone but a bit of development could produce a truly open competitor.

I am very interested in OpenMoko and the Nokia Maemo Garage. Both the Nokia Internet Tablet and the OpenMoko are Arm based and perhaps the leap from one to the other would not be so great.

If the openmoko could run the apps that have been ported to Maemo it would be awesome.

I use my 770 for GPS primarily, but it is a pretty decent gizmo for quite a few different apps.

http://browser.garage.maemo.org/

From the site:
"The Mozilla based browser for maemo is under development and is provided here for maemo developers. It provides support for the latest web standards and is flexible and extensible, and is based on mozilla.org's current Gecko layout engine which will be version 1.9 when it is released with Firefox 3.0."

With Nokia already backing Maemo based on GTK, and Trolltech's Qtopia based on Qt, what perceived need did Intel have for starting a new project to develop a mobile UI rather than joining an existing effort? Vendor specific fragmentation is just going to result in duplicated effort.

I'm writing this on an N800 and - whilst not as easy to use as a laptop - It's much more convenient. Not sure about remote admin but you can hack it to add an ssh server and there's also a VNC server which I've not tried.

http://maemo.org/ is the best resource I've foud so far.

The Nokia N800 is a pretty nifty device, a WLAN-enabled "Internet tablet" with a nice high resolution screen, running the open source Maemo platform based on the Linux kernel. Maemo has a very healthy open source developer community, and tons of the best applications have been ported to it. What is missing, however, is a GSM chipset, or indeed any non-WLAN networking capability. Nokia apparently does not want its "Internet tablets" to compete with its smartphones. I am waiting, then, for an "N1000" that combines these capabilities. Perhaps OpenMoko will be successful, but it doesn't have the WLAN chipset.

Any device that combines these three factors - open source and full hackability, phone, and regular networking - will be a killer app. Hackability does not mean that it has to be difficult to use: with a Debian-like system for software management, users can experiment with new apps easily. Of course, many of the current economic models around cell phones (ring tone downloads, background images, specialized content portals) are not really sustainable, and so the market may be biased against that innovation. But a smart company will recognize that by maintaining strategic leadership within an open source ecosystem, they will create many more business opportunities for themselves than in a proprietary, locked down market. It's too bad that Apple doesn't appear to be that smart company. I hope that Nokia is.

I gotta chime in here... I also purchased an N800 and am overall very satisfied with it. The thing is amazingly capable, especially when paired with a bluetooth keyboard. I use the Think Outside XTBTUE keyboard. The keyboard folds up to a size not much larger than the N800. I can walk around with an 802.11b/g capable, fully functional Debian based machine in my pocket, with ssh, vnc, and a keyboard that I can type on at full speed.

To be honest though, I think what really was the catalyst for my purchase was the desire to show my support for companies willing to empower and work with the opensource community, rather than against it (which is also why I purchased a SqueezeBox, another company willing to work with their opensource customers.) Check out maemo.org for a glimpse of the N800 development community.

Nokia even had a program where they allowed 500 active opensource contributors to purchase an N800 for only $99.

PS. Hear that companies? I vote with my wallet and will gladly give my money to companies that embrace opensource software.

It's also using the Hildon GTK+-based libraries for a user interface which form the most user-visible part of Maemo - the Linux base which Nokia is using in their 770 and N800 Internet Tablets. Those have the advantage of using ARM processors, rather than chunky x86 ones meaning standby/resume is not something you need as the power consumption is that much lower. Interesting times.

According to Nokia's website http://www.nokiausa.com/N800/1,9008,feat:1,00.html , it runs Internet Tablet OS 2007 edition, a modified version of Debian/GNU Linux. From http://www.starryhope.com/tech/apple/2007/10-ways- the-nokia-n800-is-better-than-apples-iphone/ "Nokia created the open source Maemo development platform for the 770 and N800. They've worked hard to encourage developers to port applications to this platform. You can find more info at http://maemo.org/."

The N800 internet tablet you are talking about has a TI OMAP 2420 chip according to the Maemo FAQ. Wikipedia OMAP page reveals that the OMAP2 architecture already has a PowerVR 2D/3D graphics accelerator and an IVA video accelerator besides that 330 MHz ARM11. If Nokia is actually going to make another N-gage, I bet it will be based on the same chip.

...and he sure as hell has spent more time thinking about this than I have. And yet, I still think this is very much the wrong move. Look at the success Nokia is having with the 770 and soon the 800. I will go so far as to say the only reason that device is successful is they were smart enough to build it on Linux (Debian), release an API (for the bits they even needed to do the API for -- e.g., their customised window manager), and foster a development community. That was just effing smart. Instead of the device having very limited functionality, it has -- with very little effort -- a rich set of open source software available for it. Sure, some of that's going to crash it, but there are clear distinctions between Nokia-tested and certified software and the things you download from Joe Blogg's website, and You Are Warned every time you install something. I just wish they'd put a phone module in it, but it can bluetooth to my phone, so...

As for the bit about Cingular's network going down: Bullshit. (Pardon my English.) Do an API to the phone functionality it provides, test that, and that's an end to it. If the network's that delicate, that's a useful thing to know and fix, because sure as heck someone will take advantage of it (using something other than an iPhone) otherwise.

This has the feel of something being forced by the phone companies, even if Apple is historically fairly closed (OS/X being the big -- and welcome -- exception). And yet, frankly, this is going to be the Must Have Item for a large number of high-quality customers (Christmas 2007, start saving now kids), what network can afford not to support it?

These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them.

...can't...think...too...many...jokes...

You might also want to check the new version of the application catalog: http://test.maemo.org/applications/.

I have a 770. First off, it's brilliant device, I love it. Definitely using it on my next long-haul flight rather than the built-in video players on airplanes. (I wouldn't use the built in video player, but mplayer has been ported to it and plays 400x240 movies full screen [hardware pixel doubling to fill the 800x480 display] at full fps, 128k audio, and about 500k video. Very watchable, and a full-length movie fits on a 1GB MMC with plenty of room left over for a couple of TV shows.) And of course there are various PIM style apps available for it over at maemo.org, not to mention VNC, xterm, ssh, ...

From what information we currently have (including the pics and video referenced above), I have to say I think they've addressed several of the biggest issues with the unit, specifically:

• Moved the ports to the side - on the 770, they're on the bottom, which is a problem if (say) you're plugging the 770 into an external amplifier to play some tunes, and want to put it on its stand so you can see what's playing. You have to put it up right at the edge of a book or something so the audio (and, frequently, power) connections coming out the bottom have room to protrude. Dumb. And fixed with the 800.
• Faster processor. Yum. The 770 definitely has speed issues depending on what you ask it to do.
• More built-in flash RAM -- excellent.
• Built-in stand. Very good idea. The little stand that comes with the 770 is fine, but not convenient to use. Looks like the built-in stand has at least two different tilts, as well, which is good.
• Stereo speakers built in. Very nice, the poor little one in the 770 does surprisingly well, so I'm guessing the 800 sounds pretty good (for what it is).
• Built in webcam. Excellent. Now it's a videophone!

From the good close look we get at the connectors in the video nursegirl linked to, the USB connector is still unpowered. Frankly, I'm not sure how big an issue this really is. Yes, it means you can't use your existing USB keys with it even if you had an adapter cable, which -- true -- is less than ideal. In terms of other devices, you wouldn't want to power an external keyboard of the poor little 770's battery -- you're better off getting a little portable Bluetooth keyboard. I haven't felt the lack of the power on the USB port yet.

Looks like a great upgrade, good to see Nokia thought it was worth pursuing the product line... I hope the next focus is on software -- improving the handwriting recognition, doing some Nokia-tested and certified PIM apps (calendar, etc.), improving the little desktop area, etc. Doing this device with Linux, documenting the API, and fostering a development community were all masterstrokes, but you can't leave everything to the community, too many users won't be able to handle the complexity (not to mention that, er, some ports are done better than others...).

try the mplayer port (with basic gui)
http://mplayer.garage.maemo.org/

it is said that it runs 25/30fps when running optimized movies..
(there is a conversion script out there too..)

It all comes down to the developer community.

I was in the same boat as you, just wanting too much out of a mobile phone. I just picked up the Nokia 770 and it does just about everything you mentioned in your dream device - except that it can't make phone calls. The idea is that you tether a small cheap mobile phone to it via bluetooth and connect to the net that way (or wifi). It runs Debian, and X, with maemo as the UI.

I'm more than pleased with this thing so far, and when I get my next phone in a month, the only thing that it needs to do is have a decent data connection with bluetooth DUN. I think that the really nice thing about this is that it detaches your data needs from your cell needs. Smartphones are nice in that they are a nice all-in-one device, except that the small ones have tiny screens that are useless for images/web, and the big ones you have to lug around a big, bulky phone with you everywhere. With a separate device, you can have a small phone, that does that job really well, and a separate web-browsing device, with a nice big screen, that you can leave at home when you don't need it.

Geez, I hate to sound like an advertisement for this device, but it's pretty sweet. (I have no affiliation with Nokia or maemo.org.)

There are many gui frontends for nethack, I especially like this one for my Nokia 770 :-)

This reminds me of Maemo Mapper for the Nokia 770.

http://www.maemo.org/platform/docs/tutorials/Maemo _tutorial.html#overview

The 770 is a stunning Linux device, hell i'm using it to compose this response. Add in the recent release 2 of the internet tablet OS (available now from http://maemo.org/) and it is very hard to justify the 'Nokia doesn't do Linux' statement. This software release even does VOIP with google talk.

Yes, Nokia does Linux and is a hell of a lot more open with the platform in comparison to its competitors.

As I read this /. issue on my Nokia 770 running Linux I tend to disagree on some points made in this news item.
Yes the Nokia 770 is not a GSM phone but It's a device capable of running many applications (like http://www.gizmoproject.com/ and http://www.google.com/talk/ ). The software is based on debian and the http://maemo.org/ platform.

Haven't all these manufacturers heard of GPE, Opie, or even Maemo? Those ought to be easily adapted to run on phones instead of just PDAs.

I think the real reason they're all going proprietary (and not providing SDKs) is because the service providers don't want there to be an easy way for anybody but them to make applications for the phones.

"Such commitment on open source-development could be seen as a good step, and may show the way to other companies."

Me thinks they are trying to keep up, or compete, with Nokia's 770 Web Tablet. Next OS version (Q2 2006 release) will include VoIP capabilities. And Nokia has already setup a development community here: http://www.maemo.org/

Chop

1. Recent firmware mainly fixed bugs, I didn't really care what was in it
2. Wireless works great with WPA over here, full support out of the box, unlike most PC linux distros. I don't know what problems you are having.
3. Wireless remains connected until one either shuts it off or closes the cover, unless you have a usage timeout set.

My main objections would be:

1. Though it is very power efficient when running (6 hours with just the screen on, 6 hours with just wifi or 4 hours with both), standby consumption is so great that it needs to be charged every three days even if used only sporatically, the device shuts down completely if left in standby for a week. My Nokia 1110 can do triple that.
2. Although both the onscreen keyboard and the handwriting recognition is done well, neither of them are anything compared to a good keyboard, but the 770 cannot have a keyboard that isn't bluetooth (expensive).
3. I think the file manager needs a little bit of work, it tends to become just a tad unstable and/or unresponsive when browsing files, especially over bluetooth.
4. The bus between the CPU and the screen is awefully slow, it kinda makes it sucky for being the "multimedia device" it is advertised as. Videos need highspeed fullscreen transfers, that's all there is to it.
5. The zippy DSP is no substitute for a big fat main core, the DSP is especially useless for an open souce targeted system since the SDK for said chip is expensive. If this is such a multimedia capable device, give us a nice fast ARM core like a recent Intel XScale (maybe Monahans), or maybe even an ARM with an FPU (yes, they exist) so we can get some performance with flash.
6. RS-MMC, WTF? I have only ever seen one of these elusive creatures and that is the tiny one that shipped with the 770 itself. I desperately want a GiB of extera flash, but I can't find it anywhere in Sydney, it totally sucks. If only they had allowed it to be a milimeter fatter in breadth they could have stuck a full size SD card reader in it or left it the same size and supported MicroSD or hell, even left it the same socket but allowed it to read with its door open so it could support a real sized MMC hanging out the back of it.
7. The GTK fork they use is a little infuriating, mainly it is exactly the same as its full size cousin, but sometimes there is something they just changed a little and it will piss you off for days before you find out what it is, like how they butchered trees or their abominable new widgets that have no signals that can be attached, WTF? That's plain AWEFUL!
8. They use GStreamer, awesome, that means it will support all of the extensive array of codecs GStreamer does right? Well no actually, it doesn't support OGG in its core media subsystem for one. Apparently Nokia didn't trust the legalities of OGG, but if that is the case, they should make it easy to install a plugin yourself, they don't. All GStreamer plugins should be able to be installed whether Nokia likes them or not, if you don't want to be associated with something, that is fine, but don't stop me from installing it.
9. The user base is very small, so if you write something cool, hoping people will use it, that is not as likely as you might think. I spent days writing a game specifically for it but it was very hard to get anyone interested in testing it. That kind of made me depressed to think that possibly the total amount of time people will spend playing it is less than the time it took to write. I'm not sure how much more development work will happen with it.

But all in all, despite some of these weaknesses, it's a great little gadget, it is fun and actually verges on the almost useful in rare occasions. If you want something that lets you have the web, email and some multimedia in your pocket along with some games and the l

** happy dance **

wait wait wait... europe.nokia.com? why do they get all the good stuff? am i "allowed" to have one of these in the US? (If not i guess I could move)

Yeah, that's very nearly it. I may settle for this despite the propietary os. 3 hours isn't quite enough battery life, but yeah, the Nokia 770 looks like it would do "enough" to get me by... thanks for the tip.

Nokia has apparently created and (for the moment) supports maemo.org, a developer site for the developer's kit that ONLY supports at this time, this single device.. it'd suck to be orphaned at some future date. The developer's program is "closed" but the code and stuff are still there, and the updates. I'm confused.

And the 2006 OS update is going to cost money. that sucks.

In the long run, e-Ink displays are essential... miniscule power consumption, negligible weight, excellent contrast... what's not to like?

I'm inferring that the e-ink "paper" must still be pretty expensive given the price points of all the announced reader products, not counting the Hanlin I originally mentioned (not shipping yet so all bets are off 'til it's in a box and available for purchase).

So how is this any better than the Nokia 770?

I mean the 770 already has an active community behind it and an open development environment that you can dig right into.

Yes, the 770 is a bit underpowered but the form factor looks MUCH better than the Pepper Pad. Plus I can go to the store and get one NOW.

So how is this any better than the Nokia 770?

I mean the 770 already has an active community behind it and an open development environment that you can dig right into.

Yes, the 770 is a bit underpowered but the form factor looks MUCH better than the Pepper Pad. Plus I can go to the store and get one NOW.

This Pepper pad looks nice, just like a bigger version of the Nokia 770, which runs Linux as well. Having an open plattform is a nice way to attract developers and establish a nice collection of applications. I hope we see more of those linux gadgets in the future.

I agree TFA was at best a troll. He could have summed it up in a few lines, "I like WindowsCE because on my summer vacation...."

Maemo http://www.maemo.org/is an open source project/distro. A very active one.

Go to the Maemo developer's Wiki, application wish list, and post your request. Assuming, of course, that it's not already done and somewhere else on the Wiki.

I admit that I have no idea what citrix is and no inclination to look it up, however, if it's not an application, there are other places in the Wiki where libraries and such are discussed.

Good luck getting OO.o to run on a device that has 64MB or RAM and no swap...

AbiWord and GNUmeric are both available for download, although the port of AbiWord doesn't read word documents. Installing apps from the web is trivial; click to download, say open, and then click yes a couple of times.

Of course, the correct solution would be to save the document as a PDF and read that on the device...

http://maemo.org/

His complaints about battery life, screen size and wierd wireless behavior are pretty spot on. Unless you want to buy a little tiny computerlet to hack Linux (which is why I bought it), it's a pretty lame little device.

I doubt there are enough Linux geeks with good eyesight and a couple of hundred dollars in disposable cash to make the 770 a commercial success.

If this photo is correct (looks a little bit strange), the device runs GPE, a pretty nice handheld interface used by several linux handheld derivates and based on GTK+. Since GPE uses a real XServer, porting applications is quite easy (you can even run them remote), as opposed to OPIE, which uses the framebuffer directly. Nokia's maemo platform has many similarities to GPE, I hope that both projects profit from each other.

Some of it can be found in the Maemo application catalog.

If you check out the Maemo software for the Nokia 770, they have Calendar software, todo, etc. It's the open source way to allow the user to decide what they want to install.

Mostly quick trips (under two minutes) to news sites et al during the day, check the morning weather, streaming music (and soon video) from my desktop, RDPing into offsite XP/2k boxes and ebooks (right now Crome Yellow by Huxley from Gutenberg). I've heard it's really good for wardriving. The RSS reader gets a lot of use too. I also added an 1G RS-MMC card for music, videos and such.

... here were a couple of things that I really want a tablet computer for -- an animation app, a calendar app, and a chinese character learning app.

Animation app: One thing the 770 isn't is a speed demon (250Mhz TI/ARM CPU) and I think most any app would choke. Sorry.
calendar app: Better news here, while there isn't one already onboard (go figure) GPE-Calendar is being ported. I suspect something will come along in the next six months.
Chinese character learning app: Nothing.

As you can guess it's still bleeding edge. Apps are coming, here's the list: http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog .

I'd say 3 hours is about what I'd expect with WiFi on, and maybe playing music. For reading an ebook or browsing off-line, I get a lot more.

There are lots of third-party apps available (cf http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog). However, it's a bit weak on standard PIM stuff like addressbooks and calendars. The choice I know about is , whose PIM apps have been ported to the N770. To my mind, it is a bit odd that Nokia shipped the thing without a full-featured addressbook and calendar pre-installed; they seem to really want to distinguish this product from traditional PDAs. (To my mind, the gorgeous if small 800x480 landscape-orientation screen does that quite well enough. :-)

your to retarted two link or prevue

http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog

duh