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It's running Symbian so yes, you can write apps for it (c++:ish, That is to say, C++ with some special quirks).
Symbian has existed since 1998 and is probably the most used operating system in smart phones.
Then there is the open source Python interpreter by Nokia that is getting on quite nicely. Not native apps of course, but much more to my liking than Java. http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/pythonfors60/ There is still some subsystem support and standard libraries missing, but it is already useable. And running the Raccoon (Apache port for Symbian) with mod_python in that thing is really an eye-opener. http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/mobile -web-server/

It's running Symbian so yes, you can write apps for it (c++:ish, That is to say, C++ with some special quirks).
Symbian has existed since 1998 and is probably the most used operating system in smart phones.
Then there is the open source Python interpreter by Nokia that is getting on quite nicely. Not native apps of course, but much more to my liking than Java. http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/pythonfors60/ There is still some subsystem support and standard libraries missing, but it is already useable. And running the Raccoon (Apache port for Symbian) with mod_python in that thing is really an eye-opener. http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/mobile -web-server/

Just to add a thumbs up regarding Wi-Fi in the e-series (I have an e70), though I don't do VOIP; I prefer text:

the Apple WebKit based web browser is pretty neat, supporting JavaScript and CSS. It's not as fluid as the iPhone demos, of course, but then again it is on sale ;) . Also, always on IM (MSN/AIM/Yahoo/ICQ) is well covered by Agile Messenger.

For text based stuff I find the e70 display (352x416) nicer than the e60 (320x240, but larger).

Overall it's a great little phone and I don't have to keep track of which handset I need to be using. Now if only I could get my company to adopt asterisk and wireless...

Now the problem is that these people aren't asking if they can have a phone without a camera. And they know it. They want a phone that has WiFi, stereo bluetooth, a big high quality color screen, 3G, can play back every media file under the sun and better yet they can put custom software on and isn't locked to any provider... but not a camera. And that is where you do end up getting into "good luck, mate" territory.

So they're not just asking for a phone, they're asking for a good phone. Bastards. Should be hanged.

Fortunately, there is at least one such device. http://www.nokia.com/A4145124

And the implementation of a real web browser

> 2) why am I carrying a phone, MP3 player, camera, etc, at the same time?

Because a phone must be small, if I go to a Bar or a Party, I want a small phone that fits into my little jean's pocket. So, a small phone is not going to have a big screen, forget big space to store mp3 or a great camera.
I usually use my Nokia 8801 with my Nokia 770 (or check the new Nokia 880 with webcam). When I go out to a party for example, i leave my 770 in my house and just use my little 8801.

> 2) why am I carrying a phone, MP3 player, camera, etc, at the same time?

Because a phone must be small, if I go to a Bar or a Party, I want a small phone that fits into my little jean's pocket. So, a small phone is not going to have a big screen, forget big space to store mp3 or a great camera.
I usually use my Nokia 8801 with my Nokia 770 (or check the new Nokia 880 with webcam). When I go out to a party for example, i leave my 770 in my house and just use my little 8801.

"Gee this iPhone is a phone like no other, blah blah blah.."

"Internet, Music blah blah ..."

Huh ?? For fully featured phone see http://forum.nokia.com/devices/N95

"Touchpad.. blah blah"

Yes, it totally sucks !!! Imagine sending a SMS in -5C temperature (and windy)
without any real feedback on your fingertips..

If you google him, you will find that Edwin Suominen is a patent agent who studied RF at university and assigned some patents there. Despite his name (Suominen), he doesn't seem to have any Finnish connection (Suomi, is the Finnish name for themselves). I had wondered at first whether he had any connection to another well known Finnish company which was heavily involved in the original research. What is unusual is that he seems to have acquired a number of patents (about 4) whilst studying as an undergraduate at University.

The thing is that the original BT work done in Finland/Sweden (mostly the latter) was done some time ago. It has taken a very long time to catch on in the US but started appearing in the mid nineties. Simple implementations appeared a little later and it may be interesting to look at the history of this patent against when the first single chip implmentation appeared (about 98). It could well be that some existing technology leaked.

Yes, Konqueror, or better "KHTML" or WebKit http://webkit.org/ . Is being chosen by lots of companies as their web browser base, it is not tied in to anything (Apple removed the QT dependency) and is very efficient memorywise.

Nokia uses it in all it's S60 series and provides full source code: http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/S60browser/

It is the basis of Safari too and gives away its work on it now.

This is free (as in speech), cross-platform, light... what else do they need for the OLPC? I really do not see why they insist on using Gecko even with XULRunner, it will never be light enough.

Opera may be good, but Webkit passes ACID2 too and is free.

Also of note is the Nokia 770. Uses flash memory instead of onboard HD, but has a huge screen, real wifi, Opera, and a large collection of third-party apps.

And YouTube already has a mobile uploading system. Go to http://www.youtube.com/mobile to sign up.

You mean like this ? Why not just go out and buy one ?

That feature doesn't work so well with the E61, hopefully Apple will improve.

N80 built-in browser is most definitely not Opera Mobile. It's the new Safari-related S60 browser which uses lots of open source technology:

S60 browser

However, I don't like this new S60 Browser at all. The idea of scrolling around a web page which has been rendered exactly as it would appear on a big display is simply horrible from a usability viewpoint. It's surely a nice gimmick to show off to people, but actual surfing with it is pretty much impossible.

Until the Linux phone we all dream about arrives.

S60 has

http://forum.nokia.com/python

Of course not. The Nokia Communicators are the best phone/pda combo's, hands down. Treo's are outdated. You can't put one loose in your pocket for fear of scratching the screen. The keyboards suck. When the battery runs flat you lose your data.

A Communicator is a phone when closed and a pda when open and the memory is permanent.

http://nokia.com/phones/9300i

X.

Just curious - are these interface problems something that enterprising Python hackers might be able to fix by writing their own?

And webkit is open source (www.webkit.org), and derived from khtml from the kde project (www.kde.org).

btw: where can I download that webkit browser for my S60 v2 nokia 6600. It was promised by nokia a couple of months ago, but it looks like they want you yo buy a new phone first (but I kinda like the 6600). I searched, but only found press release-type stuff, and now I just find 'opendarwin shutting down' stuff... Just sdk stuff, and links to other places, circular references, like this http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/S60browser/in dex.html but nowhere a package that builds to a binary, nor a binary. this place only lists a few phones, and my s60 is not in the list http://www.s60.com/business/productinfo/applicatio nsandtechnologies/webrowser/

Does webkit do anything, or is it just a bunch of websites linking to press releases?

Works great on my unlocked Nokia E61. Great screen, qwerty keyboard, decent joystick, quad-band GSM, EDGE, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth. Normal (non-WAP) browsing is quite usable too. More 3G coverage would be nice though.

Yes!

Sip plays merry hell with firewalls. Don't even think about it unless you've got a VPN back to your sip server! If you have then it works great. The new Nokia E70 phone connects to our office Asterisk server via SIP and works very well ( http://europe.nokia.com/phones/e70 ).

IAX2 goes through NATed firewalled links just fine. It is much easier to configure if you are on the move (or your users are).

I wouldn't touch Skype with the proverbial barge pole given its closed nature.

Try one of these. They've got all your happy PDA functionality, fold out QWERTY keyboard, will sync up with your mac laptop with bluetooth and also happen to be a cell phone. With a GPRS data service you can also connect your mac laptop to the Internet with it when you're out and about and away from your favorite wirless hotspots. With its SIP capabilities, you can connect it to a local Asterisk server when you're in range of your wireless hotspot. It's the ultimate road warrior phone. Sure it's pricey and you'll have to dig around a bit to find one in the USA, but it's in the same ballpark as the other pocket PCs I've looked at and it's much more functional than anything else I've run across.

Or, for a clamshell PDA/phone with full Qwerty keyboard... 640x200(?) resolution, Wifi and such, the older Nokia 9500.

The Nokia 770 looks really, really promising. It runs Linux and has a pretty active developer community.

If or when it starts supporting Japanese input I'm getting one myself.

The Symbian OS is primarly for smartphones, and unfortunately they usually make for lousy PDAs. But if you're still interested check out the Nokia E61 or Sony Ericsson M600i. Same could be said about RIM's Blackberry OS.

There's also an plethora of quirky, mostly-discontinued embedded linux PDAs, including the geek-famous Zaurus.

If you thought having only two major players for PDA OS's was unfortunate, Palm has started replacing the Palm OS with Windows Mobile on some of their own hardware.

Personally, my vote for worst designed button scheme is the Nokia 3650. Arranged in a counter-clockwise circle. Now how is that intuitive?

Here's a few:

Nokia 9500
Nokia 9300
Nokia 9300i

The E-Series might have something like that coming up, too.

I believe that installation is one of Linux's biggest stumbling blocks to larger adaoption. I spend most of my Linux time running Live CDs where there is no OS installation at all (I love you Ubuntu). The issue for many home users is software installation. While there have been significant inroads made in this area over that past few years, it has generally not yet reached Windows' "double click the .exe to run" simplicity. Linux has a huge following among the geeks, nerds, and geeky nerds. It is also growing into mobile devices where people will have no idea they are running Linux and schools on the desktop. The biggest market that needs to be tapped is the "average" computer user at home. People need to feel that Linux is user friendly and can easily do everything that they want to do. Firefox and OoO (both of which I run on my WinXP laptop) have brought it that much closer to the goal. Now easier software installation is the next step.

Ummm, not adding features or fixing bugs?! Have you been living under a rock? The Maemo project is extremely active. The new Internet Tablet 2006 OS release for 770 has quite a lot of new things - GTalk among other things. Also Gizmo Project has also released their client to the new OS release.

http://europe.nokia.com/770

When I'm at home, the phone registers as an extension on my Asterisk server with its sip software. When someone calls me, the asterisk server rings the phone plugged into my computer and the Nokia simultaneously. If I don't pick up after a few rings, it initates a cellular call and tries to patch the call through to my cell number. Finally it drops into voice mail (I Had T-Mobile turn my voicemail box off so asterisk could handle the voice mail.)

The phone does have a couple of quirks. It seems that I have to turn it off and back on when I get home for it to register on my wifi network correctly. I also have to toggle it to make an internet call -- it doesn't seem to have an option to default to Internet calls and only use the cell network if sip software isn't connected. Those are just software problems which Nokia will hopefully overcome.

So if you want a smartphone that's actually smart and you want it now, you might want to start checking out the European market. They're way ahead of what we have here in the USA and the phone seems to work quite happily on the US network. I just slapped my SIM card in and was ready to go.

It is definitely fake since the Nokia 6230i is a Series 40 platform 2nd edition device. However, image capture using the Java MMAPI is only supported on some Series 40 3rd edition devices and not one 2nd edition handset. More information in this thread: http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/archive/in dex.php/t-75277.html/

I'm looking to buy one of these, and I guarantee you that several of my female co-workers will consider it to be as cool as I do. I'm pretty sure I can get both the guys and gals in marketing and sales drooling over it as well.

http://www.nokia.com/pcsuite

It's a software that lets you do things to your mobile phone. By not providing it or equivalent for linux (or any other platform than windows) or at least the neccessery information to access your data in your phone, Nokia stupidly gives the finger to it's paying customers.

"However with Nokia refusing to adopt Linux..."

?? I smell FUD. They may not have gotten around to using Linux in their cell phones (yet), but as a company Nokia has definitely adopted and supports Linux.

The Nokia E61 has a nicer operating system than the Q, Blackberry, or Treo, it's small, mature, and high quality. (Despite the European web site, you can order it in the US from on-line dealers.)

... at the E61 or the E70 while you are browsing the Nokia site I think they have a newer Symbian version than the one you linked to. Design wise I especially like the E70. It folds open into a QWERTY keyboard and has a 352 x 416 pixels display which is better than my old iPaq had but it's quite small for the kind of features it offers. Personally I like Ericsson and Nokia phones better than the Windows Mobile powered ones like the Xda Atom Exec. Windows mobile phones are nice and well integrated but only if you are runnig Microsoft products wall-to-wall. If you want to connect to non Microsoft solutions, unless the phone manufacturer bundles solutions for things like Cisco VPN, Lotus Notes and Blackberry connectivity, you usually end up paying a tidy sum to acquire these capabilities.

... at the E61 or the E70 while you are browsing the Nokia site I think they have a newer Symbian version than the one you linked to. Design wise I especially like the E70. It folds open into a QWERTY keyboard and has a 352 x 416 pixels display which is better than my old iPaq had but it's quite small for the kind of features it offers. Personally I like Ericsson and Nokia phones better than the Windows Mobile powered ones like the Xda Atom Exec. Windows mobile phones are nice and well integrated but only if you are runnig Microsoft products wall-to-wall. If you want to connect to non Microsoft solutions, unless the phone manufacturer bundles solutions for things like Cisco VPN, Lotus Notes and Blackberry connectivity, you usually end up paying a tidy sum to acquire these capabilities.

Useless!

I'll have one of these instead.
http://europe.nokia.com/A4142030

if Pocket Internet Explorer on a PDA was anything more than a toy, I wouldn't need it at all

I fear that if I start watching commercials thinking I like it...

> handhelds required for TALKING ON THE FREAKING PHONE

Guess what, the phones already do that and have done for ages. It Just Works(tm) pretty much all over the world, except in the US. Go shout at the your braindead network operators and let the rest of us, with more-or-less 100% cell coverage and functional roaming, enjoy the advanced phones.

BTW, I live in Norway. There are 4.6 million people living here, about 1 million of them around Oslo and the rest pretty thinly spread out. Go look at a map of Norway and you'll appreciate the difficulty and cost of providing cell phone coverage in the 90s percentile here.

Now go tear your cell network operator a new one.

PS. My cell phone is a Nokia E61. Yes, it's got WLAN. And a QWERTY keyboard. An advanced email client. A proper web browser with a pointer cursor. An ssh client. A built-in SIP client for VoIP. 3G. And yes, it just works everywhere I go. DS.

I can cite two examples of a "network effect," where FOSS has improved commercial products. One example involves Apple.

1. Embedded Linux has a huge growth rate in mobile handsets and other embedded applications, most of which are big commercial product development projects. These projects benefit from widely available experience with Linux kernel building. Anyone with a spare old PC and the time to read an O'Reilly book (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/belinuxsys/)can get into configuring and building embedded Linux kernels and persuse and modify source code as much as they like. Contrast this with what it would take for you to get into porting Symbian, or even VxWorks.

2. The Web browser in the Nokia E61 (and probably many upcoming Nokia handsets) is based on WebKit: http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/S60browser/ This means Nokia customers will benefit from having the same HTML engine and Javascript engine as in Konquerer and Safari.

So Linux users may or may not "care" about FOSS, but the elements of the value chain bringing Linux-based and other products that include FOSS certainly do care, and so should Apple. In fact I think the customers will begin to care quite a bit.

If Apple doesn't do all they can to cultivate a FOSS community around MacOS, they are missing a trick. Even if they triple their market share based on iPod users switching, that's still an 8:1 ratio (or worse) of Windows to MacOS in market share. Apple can't afford to stumble the way Sun did in their relations to the FOSS community.

This or even thison one of the following phones can do that kind of thing. SSH over EDGE, GPRS, or 802.11(9300i/9500) - even with the cameraless models. Full keyboard on those three and not terribly large, and looks like an older phone when folded. If you can live with the camera, go with the 9500 and a large media card, otherwise the 9300i is the best bet.

The only real thing missing from these is the SIP client that Nokia has in testing for these phones that they cant seem to release. After that, you can have all the calls you want without a conventional endpoint as well as a remote client. Other than that they might not want the Series 80 to compete with the E series, there really doesnt seem to be much of a reason to hold it back. Even then, that reason doesnt hold terribly well.

This or even thison one of the following phones can do that kind of thing. SSH over EDGE, GPRS, or 802.11(9300i/9500) - even with the cameraless models. Full keyboard on those three and not terribly large, and looks like an older phone when folded. If you can live with the camera, go with the 9500 and a large media card, otherwise the 9300i is the best bet.

The only real thing missing from these is the SIP client that Nokia has in testing for these phones that they cant seem to release. After that, you can have all the calls you want without a conventional endpoint as well as a remote client. Other than that they might not want the Series 80 to compete with the E series, there really doesnt seem to be much of a reason to hold it back. Even then, that reason doesnt hold terribly well.

This or even thison one of the following phones can do that kind of thing. SSH over EDGE, GPRS, or 802.11(9300i/9500) - even with the cameraless models. Full keyboard on those three and not terribly large, and looks like an older phone when folded. If you can live with the camera, go with the 9500 and a large media card, otherwise the 9300i is the best bet.

The only real thing missing from these is the SIP client that Nokia has in testing for these phones that they cant seem to release. After that, you can have all the calls you want without a conventional endpoint as well as a remote client. Other than that they might not want the Series 80 to compete with the E series, there really doesnt seem to be much of a reason to hold it back. Even then, that reason doesnt hold terribly well.

Nokia actually have a product that's intended to do pretty much what you suggest, called Sensor. However, it's nokia-specific and as far as I know the protocol's proprietary, and it's supported on a fairly small set of devices. There's also been a recent port of Apache to the Nokia Series 60 devices, which would potentially allow something similar to be DIY'd up nicely.

Nokia actually have a product that's intended to do pretty much what you suggest, called Sensor. However, it's nokia-specific and as far as I know the protocol's proprietary, and it's supported on a fairly small set of devices. There's also been a recent port of Apache to the Nokia Series 60 devices, which would potentially allow something similar to be DIY'd up nicely.

The Nokia 6600 has had the capability to run a web server for years.

Internet Connection + Programable OS = Potential for Web Server

It won't be long before we see watches and refridgerators with web servers, too.