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iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen. The reason why people treat Apples screen as it would be high resolution screen has more to do with their software and design decisions they have made on displaying their user interface and web content. In here Nokia and others are behind, they usually have crammed too much to screen making it confusing.

However.. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have better hardware and lately Nokia has made an tremendous effort on software front. If I could choose any phone today, I would choose S60 based phone, probably Nokia N82 or . The reason is that Nokia has both improved S60 a lot, a N95 with new firmware just works, and they have an incredible selection of software from themselves and from lots of third party providers. For myself Maps, LifeBlog, Share Online and PC Suite are software that I want and need. It should also be noted I really appreciate having a large collection of third party software available, both S60 specific and J2ME software.

PS. If you appreciate big high resolution screen, why not get E90?

iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen. The reason why people treat Apples screen as it would be high resolution screen has more to do with their software and design decisions they have made on displaying their user interface and web content. In here Nokia and others are behind, they usually have crammed too much to screen making it confusing.

However.. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have better hardware and lately Nokia has made an tremendous effort on software front. If I could choose any phone today, I would choose S60 based phone, probably Nokia N82 or . The reason is that Nokia has both improved S60 a lot, a N95 with new firmware just works, and they have an incredible selection of software from themselves and from lots of third party providers. For myself Maps, LifeBlog, Share Online and PC Suite are software that I want and need. It should also be noted I really appreciate having a large collection of third party software available, both S60 specific and J2ME software.

PS. If you appreciate big high resolution screen, why not get E90?

iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen. The reason why people treat Apples screen as it would be high resolution screen has more to do with their software and design decisions they have made on displaying their user interface and web content. In here Nokia and others are behind, they usually have crammed too much to screen making it confusing.

However.. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have better hardware and lately Nokia has made an tremendous effort on software front. If I could choose any phone today, I would choose S60 based phone, probably Nokia N82 or . The reason is that Nokia has both improved S60 a lot, a N95 with new firmware just works, and they have an incredible selection of software from themselves and from lots of third party providers. For myself Maps, LifeBlog, Share Online and PC Suite are software that I want and need. It should also be noted I really appreciate having a large collection of third party software available, both S60 specific and J2ME software.

PS. If you appreciate big high resolution screen, why not get E90?

iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen. The reason why people treat Apples screen as it would be high resolution screen has more to do with their software and design decisions they have made on displaying their user interface and web content. In here Nokia and others are behind, they usually have crammed too much to screen making it confusing.

However.. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have better hardware and lately Nokia has made an tremendous effort on software front. If I could choose any phone today, I would choose S60 based phone, probably Nokia N82 or . The reason is that Nokia has both improved S60 a lot, a N95 with new firmware just works, and they have an incredible selection of software from themselves and from lots of third party providers. For myself Maps, LifeBlog, Share Online and PC Suite are software that I want and need. It should also be noted I really appreciate having a large collection of third party software available, both S60 specific and J2ME software.

PS. If you appreciate big high resolution screen, why not get E90?

I've used Nokias for the last 5 years, so I can tell you a bit.
The E-series are great business phones-the E61 offers wifi, qwerty and full blackberry like email support. Nokia doesn't yet support threaded SMS natively, but they've launched a free beta app that does the same (Nokia Conversation) and it works well for me. The N-series are more oriented towards multimedia, gaming and photography- I've used the N73 and currently own the N82 (wifi, GPS, 5mp camera with flash and lightmeter,3G, uPnP support, stereo speakers-you name it!) If Linux floats your boat- Motorola has a few nice Linux based smartphones, but I'm unaware of the details.

• Mobipocket reader
• The built in music player (paused)
• The built in web browser, open on Gmail.
• Nokia Maps, a GPS based map software.

No kidding! Some others that aren't hard to find...

http://developer.motorola.com/
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/developers/
http://www.nokia.com/A4126236

Thank heaven that Apple paved the way, it's amazing these other companies in the mobile market were able to adapt so quickly...

(All links are for developers, I didn't check but I think all have SDKs available.)

You must have a strange definition of "computer phone" if the N95 doesn't qualify. Nokia doesn't even sell it as a "phone" they call it a multimedia computer. It costs about twice what the iPhone does, and has sold about twice as many units. As of the beginning of last month, 7 million N95s vs. the iPhone's 4 million. The N95 did beat the iPhone to market by about two months (Another feather in Nokia's cap), but it's selling faster and generating more revenue than the iPhone, no matter how you look at it.... So.. wow... I guess you ought to consider actually looking up the numbers next time before telling someone else they don't do much reading.

It appears to me that they are trying to make the experience so miserable themselves that nobody WANTS to buy the device.

I'm not the one who bought a defective phone with no battery door. Besides, I've read much more realistic iPhone disaster scenarios in the news that I don't read. You see, what happened is some background task kept running and drained its owner's bank account of $4800. That wouldn't have happened if the iPhone wasn't locked to the American AT&T network. The owner could have just popped in a new SIM card for that locale and everything would have been peachy. But hey, it just one of many fine experiences brought to you under Apple's control. Others include, Look! I shattered my iPhone, Damn it! Why won't my headphones work? and everyone's favorite, I've been visited by the brick fairy!

Enjoy your app-less iPhone though. I'm sure you'll be kickin' it with that drug database in no time.

Uh..that's because battery technology hasn't kept up. Higher CPU speed and higher display require more battery power to keep running. I have a N82, with a dual core ARM 333 MHz CPU and dedicated OpenGL graphics, Wifi, 5 mp camera with flash, and assisted GPS, running on a 1050 mAh Li-Ion battery that lasts for about 2 days of heavy use before requiring a recharge.

You forgot to mention a few: Eclipse and all its subprojects
Linux kernel
MinGW
Octave
Scilab
R
Blender
povray
Ogre 3D
ogg vorbis + tools
Sun's Java compiler and libraries
Mono (C#)
Wine
X Windows
mplayer (linux)
KDE
GNOME
Slashcode
virtualbox
bochs
Nokia opensource projects

It's a little amusing that you throw out "wasting time on MMS" when I would view MMS as one of the least important apps on my N95 (and yes, I've used an iPhone, too). If you've not seen the latest version of Nokia Maps on an N95, you would be impressed. I agree with your assertion that XMPP is on the "must have" list of a fraction of a percent of users. But to suggest that there's something "irrational" about not being all gooey inside about the iPhone when my phone is smaller, is 3.5G, has a 5MP camera, has 8GB of internal storage, Bluetooth 2, Exchange Push email, GPS, etc. But I'll stop there, lest I be branded as an irrational Apple hater.

It's a little amusing that you throw out "wasting time on MMS" when I would view MMS as one of the least important apps on my N95 (and yes, I've used an iPhone, too). If you've not seen the latest version of Nokia Maps on an N95, you would be impressed. I agree with your assertion that XMPP is on the "must have" list of a fraction of a percent of users. But to suggest that there's something "irrational" about not being all gooey inside about the iPhone when my phone is smaller, is 3.5G, has a 5MP camera, has 8GB of internal storage, Bluetooth 2, Exchange Push email, GPS, etc. But I'll stop there, lest I be branded as an irrational Apple hater.

people will be swayed by Apple's marketing if Nokia doesn't do something

This is all about convergence, not so much the marketing efforts. The iPod is doomed and so is the non-MP3 playing cellphone. Sure, Apple has a strong brand with consumers, and especially so in the US. The iPod without wifi and cellphone tech would have been a dead end in a few years time.

I remember so well the quote from one leading figure at Sun that said: "I refuse to buy an iPod because the music should not be on my device but on the network". We're not there yet, but we're moving in that direction.

In other words the phone/personal entertainment device as we know it will change a lot in the coming years. And the services will be the real issue. iTunes as a streaming service probably. Apple is desperate to survive in the future and Nokia needs to move soon. Apple is squeezing everything they can out of their iPod now because soon it'll be as dead as the non-networked PDA.

And a user interface that a monkey can mash successfully.

This is where they will win or loose the war. Like most people here I love gadgets, and complex interfaces does not scare me. I however have the social skills needed to recognize that not everyone is me and need simpler and better solutions. Designing good user interfaces is what Apple is all about, that's certainly one of the keys to their success with the iPhone.

I'm making applications right now for the iPhone because I know my boss and clients have it, and love it, even here in Norway where the iPhone is not sold by any licensed partner. The very fact that I know my users will actually know, understand and use my applications is my inspiration to create applications for it. That can't be said for any other cellphone maker out there.

This isn't going to happen by relying on platform specific programs by Apple and Microsoft or third party web sites.

I don't know if you're referring to my 3rd party website or not. But take zyb.com. It uses open standards implemented by both SonyEricsson and Nokia (amongst others) that allows your phone to sync with any provider you choose. The standards are all that's needed for the service providers to get in on the game. Google will probably offer it once they discover it. Or here's hoping!

Configuring the sync is incredibly easy, so easy that ordinary consumers can get into it. The provider just sends an [specially formatted] SMS with the config settings right into your phone. You just have to accept it [and any local security prompt]. Voilá! Third parties can do a lot for a product's success, but you have to enable them and create the features.

Next, I would like to point out Nokia's very promising media portal called Ovi. Here's a good example of Nokia understanding the future needs of it's products - and more importantly it's customers ;)

First, Qt4 is written in C++ (in fact, C++ with some non-standard features).

Second, if you ever want to use Qt for non-free software, there is a large up-front cost.

Not to mention Carbide the IDE for their fancy OS thingie:

http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/tools_and_sdks/carbide/index.html

And don't forget about their Eclipse-based Carbide IDE.

Nokia does not make OS'es or IDE's.

Actually, they do. And, it's Eclipse and CDT based, so I would say that anyone that claims Nokia is not a friend of open source is mistaken. I am a committer on CDT, and I can vouch for the fact that the Nokia folks that work on Carbide have been making some significant contributions to CDT... enough that they have a committer on the project as well.

And let's not forget that they own a controlling interest in Symbian, who does make OSes.

According to this page, http://www.opensource.nokia.com/contributions.html, Nokia is already fairly involved in OSS, more so than I would have guessed. If they do smart things, I have no problem patronizing their product lines more.

This year, but before the iPhone came out. Nokia have provided updates, some with new features, for a large range of their handsets for a while, at least in Europe. This on a phone that cost less and has a proper 3G radio interface in it at that...

iPhone having a touch screen GUI isn't a valid reason for it not having J2ME support. Just in example look at some other phones that don't have the normal form factor that traditional phones and that have support for J2ME.

• Nokia E90 Communicator

• Nokia E61i

• Sony-Ericsson P1i

• LG KU990

• HTC Touch

As you can see all those phones support J2ME. The real reason why iPhone doesn't have J2ME support is the same reason why it didn't have MMS support: Apple just couldn't deliver.

I also don't think that there is any reason to change from J2ME to any other framework ff you can do the application in J2ME. If you can't do the application in J2ME, the next choice is S60. J2ME support is built in virtually every phone meaning and S60 is also very popular. Why limit yourself to a device and framework that has only a million users when you can go to tens and hundreds of millions of users?

iPhone having a touch screen GUI isn't a valid reason for it not having J2ME support. Just in example look at some other phones that don't have the normal form factor that traditional phones and that have support for J2ME.

• Nokia E90 Communicator

• Nokia E61i

• Sony-Ericsson P1i

• LG KU990

• HTC Touch

As you can see all those phones support J2ME. The real reason why iPhone doesn't have J2ME support is the same reason why it didn't have MMS support: Apple just couldn't deliver.

I also don't think that there is any reason to change from J2ME to any other framework ff you can do the application in J2ME. If you can't do the application in J2ME, the next choice is S60. J2ME support is built in virtually every phone meaning and S60 is also very popular. Why limit yourself to a device and framework that has only a million users when you can go to tens and hundreds of millions of users?

I wonder what this will mean for S60 based Nokia phones? The inbuilt browser is Netscape based.

Nokia recently signed on with MS for its proprietary codecs and is shoehorning WMP/WMA codecs into many (all?) of its products. Biting into Ogg and other open formats is probably part of the deal, or perhaps the MS boosters working from inside Nokia now feel secure enough to upset the apple cart.

It could also be backlash from MSFTers (both inside Nokia and outside) from Jorma Ollila's public support of open standards.

Or it could just be the water

Well, mostly; and, yes, I'm a bit of a whiner, and, I'm told, a douchbag too (whatever one of those is), but I think I'm right on this one!

The reason I hate pdf is that some companies tend to use it instead of plain html. Nokia, for example, use it on their Forum Nokia web site for pretty much everything, when plain html (plus a bit of css, perhaps) would do just fine. Perhaps they could supply the pdf as well for people who want to collect out-of-date copies (or want to view them offline or print them).

http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm

"Point and shoot your camera phone at a mobile code to connect directly to a website, view a message or get a phone number ready for dialing." --from the site.

> There are very few cellphones that have GPS satellite antennas,

Nokia have quite a few available. I tried to use the 'search by feature' facility on this site to figure out how many, but I just don't believe the results. I know there are at least 'several' though.

Some of them also have an assisted gps feature which seems to work similarly to this new google feature, though I don't think it works at all if the phone doesn't have gps. I read somewhere that Nokia intend to implement it on all their GPS phones via firmware upgrades.

I've also seen some phones running 'MS Windows something' with GPS too (which worked much better than the N95 I had at the time).

Of course, that's still 'very few' in the whole 'phone' market, but it's a fast growing segment of the smartphone market.

It's handy if you just want to make some simple forms and display simple data, but for real application development I find it insufficient.

• Wireless Messaging API 2.0 (JSR-205)
• Mobile Media API 1.1 (JSR-135)
• AMMS API (JSR-234)
• Bluetooth API (JSR-82)
• Personal Information Management (PIM) API 1.1 (JSR-75)
• FileConnection (FC) API 1.1 (JSR-75)
• Mobile 3D Graphics API 1.1 (JSR-184)
• Location API (JSR-179)
• Web Services (JSR-172)
• Security and Trust Services API (JSR-177)
• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) API (JSR180)
• Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API (JSR-226)
• Nokia UI API

Sure, this sort of beats the write-once-run-anywhere mantra (not to mention that Series 60 phones are fairly high end) but when you target a specific family of devices the options are no longer so limited.

RT
--
Your Bookmarks. Anywhere. Anytime.

There's a reason Java ME has gone nowhere

What about this list of Networks Operatos and Carriers

Or the Java ME Device Table?

Or, for that matter, what about these phones from Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericcson just to name a few?

Google is trying to succeed where Java has failed

RT
--
Your Bookmarks. Anywhere. Anytime.

Well, there is the N95 8GB

No mobile browser I know of has Flash.

Wireless synchronization is a hype feature, not a real feature. It would be useful if it were automatic, but that would require having bluetooth on all the time, which (for battery life reasons) isn't practicable.

The UI is how you use something, and if it's bad, it becomes less usable.

but because it costs a fortune to get development licenses with the software vendors

That's a totally false statement regarding symbian. I downloaded their sdk yesterday from Nokia's site. Free as in beer, but it's easy to get. There are quite a few apps for symbian already and the sdk looks pretty well documented. I think there's an OPL runtime for symbian too.

and distribution licenses with the carriers.
In symbian's case, you don't need to go to the carrier. It's possible to imagine the carriers aren't very thrilled with this feature.

If there was a truly open phone, with an SDK that allowed full network and display access, and users could install and run these apps without a carrier distribution aggrements,

What are you waiting for? Right here: http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/05c63dfd-d6e9-4c0e-b185-d365e7001aeb/S60-SDK-0548-3.0-f.3.215f.zip.html

Symbian's OS is arguably the best in the field, so I can understand why this guy is pissed. Maybe his business plan has other problems, but you are all missing out on a great phone OS that you CAN ACTUALLY WRITE NEW APPS WITHOUT THE CARRIERS INTERFERING.
--

Huh? I've been using free (as in beer and sometimes as in speech) languages and libraries for Nokia's S60 platform (built on Symbian) for a while now:

http://www.forum.nokia.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S60_platform

-Chris

but because it costs a fortune to get development licenses with the software vendors

That's a totally false statement regarding symbian. I downloaded their sdk yesterday from Nokia's site. Free as in beer, but it's easy to get. There are quite a few apps for symbian already and the sdk looks pretty well documented. I think there's an OPL runtime for symbian too.

and distribution licenses with the carriers.
In symbian's case, you don't need to go to the carrier. It's another reason why their OS is years ahead of the game.

If there was a truly open phone, with an SDK that allowed full network and display access, and users could install and run these apps without a carrier distribution aggrements,

What are you waiting for? Right here: http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/05c63dfd-d6e9-4c0e-b185-d365e7001aeb/S60-SDK-0548-3.0-f.3.215f.zip.html

Symbian is in a sh!t storm right now. Microsoft is using their usual tricks resources to screw the better OS out of the market. Apple's out-shouting symbian with their platform. Nokia has all kinds of Linux initiatives going on but two products actually using it, and BREW definitely is not a "compile once run everywhere" solution.

Symbian's OS is arguably the best in the field, so I can understand why this guy is pissed. Maybe his business plan has other problems, but you are all missing out on a great phone OS that you CAN ACTUALLY WRITE NEW APPS WITHOUT THE CARRIERS BOTHERING YOU if you don't have one.

Nokia has contributed to the Linux operating system kernel enhancements related to general OMAP support, OMAP/DSP gateway, Bluetooth, journaling flash file systems, power management, 2D graphics support of fbdev-subsystem on OMAP (omapfb), and USB (Universal Serial Bus).

Affix - A Bluetooth Protocol Stack for Linux developed by Nokia Research Center in Helsinki and released under GPL.

Mobile Tools for the Java(TM) Platform (MTJ) - MTJ is an open source project in the eclipse foundation. The purpose is to enhance the eclipse platform with mobile specific features.

S60WebKit - S60WebKit is the engine behind the Nokia Web Browser. I'm not sure what browser Google is planning to use, but a webkit-based one would have a number of advantages, including greater compatibility with iPhone applets.

Just to check: do you have the latest firmware installed on it? The Nokia N770 support page lists "Improved quality of WLAN connections" as the change made in the latest version...

LOL! As a programmer this was the first Snake on a Phone I thought of when reading the title of your URL: http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/pythonfors60/

I'd like to see something similar to the Symbian Signed design, but with one critical change: a free cert should be available that would allow you to sign binaries on your individual phone with no restrictions on what the binary can do
afaict devcerts are free, it's not "no restrictions" but it is a lot less restrictricted than what you can do with a self signed cert. Of course you can only use apps signed that way on phones included in your devcert request (they ask for IMEI numbers) and you get a warning on installation but for what you want it sounds fine.

With SS, AFAIK, self-signed binaries can't use the network, etc.
accrding to the forum nokia wiki ( http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/NetworkServices )you should be able to use the networkservices capability with a self signed cert, remember you have to explicitly set what capabilities you want for your application (in carbide.vs it is a menu item not sure about other environments).

True for Safari proper, but don't forget that Webkit has been ported to Symbian

I must say I haven't had problems with this, despite darkening the doors of countless hotels in dozens of countries every year. On long trips I travel with my trusty Sipura SPA-1001, on shorter ones I just use Eyebeam on the MacBook. Both approaches pretty much always work. I'm about to pick up a Nokia E-Series with SIP support, I understand that may be a bit trickier. But it doesn't support Skype in any case, so I'll be stuck with whatever stunning (harr harr) connectivity I can get from it.

Nokia Maps. Free but the routing and guiding functions have a subscription fee. Still, it can be a pretty good deal if you only need the routing stuff every once in a while. Maps are free and can be either downloaded beforehand or streamed to the phone while on the road.

• Treo 650 (Palm OS apps)
• Treo 700W (WindowsMobile ... or whatever it's called this week)
• All the Symbian stuff
• Linux phone I'm pretty sure you'll be able to customize the firmware without the FCC showing up

Here's the official press release. There's additional articles on Bloomberg and TradingMarkets.

This news was predicted after TomTom bought Tele Atlas last July, NAVTEQ's main competitor.

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.

After some of these iPhone articles, Apple misinformation is at some all-time high here at slashdot. There's lots of valid complaints to be had about the company - let's not muck that up with retarded ones, okay?

For those intrigued by the ads, here is where to get started for Nokia development. It is important to note that all applications must be signed (expounded on here), with the option (but not requirement) of doing things through a Symbian Signed certificate.

It should also be noted that Nokia's openness to development in comparison to the iPhone has been suitably documented previously.