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Nokia has released quite a few open source projects. See http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/

Probably all working for the Chinese

Alcatel: The parent company is based out of France, with close ties to the government. Probably pro-open source.

Ericsson: Sony owns them. This won't last. Sure, they've got a good track record, but...

Motorola: they're in it to make money, acquiring open source companies and selling linux-based phones.

NEC: They jumped on Itanium for their cluster platform, so they joined OSDL two years ago, probably to make sure their investment paid off.

Siemens: Just barely joined the OSDL. Siemens Communications is primarily a hardware company; from my POV they're just trying to push their profit margin.

Nokia: they seem pretty secure as a cell phone company; I think they're into OSS genuinely to benefit the community. Take a look at what they're Open Sourcing.

Their contributions to open source notwithstanding, it looks like they want to:

1. Form alliance, apply magic words "Open Source"
2. Post article on slashdot, improve public image
3. Wait for OSS community to write their software
4. Sell COTS hardware to upgrade cell networks
5. Profit!

Of course, maybe they're working on Carrier Grade Linux just so they don't have to buy Micro$oft products any more.

I think that Near Field Communication (NFC) would be a more secure way of implementing a similar system, and there are phones that can use NFC already. Each NFC tag has a unique ID, which (as far as i'm aware) cannot be changed, so unless someone steals the phone they can't use the ticket.

The tech industry in america is floundering. Oh sure there are some success stories just check Apple, an all american product. Wich state is China in anyway?

It grew 16% last year. Instead, let's talk about Microsoft and Google. Those two companies compare favorably to most Europeon nations, on their own. But let's not silly facts get in the way of your ramblings.

2. I rather they spend it on this then on a war.

Awesome. Here's a bit of logic for you. "This is a good idea because I don't like America and they spend money on a war. This costs money, therefore it is good." That's grade A bullshit.

3. Perhaps a search engine that does not bow to the Chinese goverment in the name of the almighty dollar?

Do we really need to talk about the bullshit the French government does for it's almighty Franc? How about Nazi references? Be honest, wouldn't you be bitching just as much if google -hadn't- respected the wishes of China, and then you could say "Imperiliast America and google imposiing it's will on other nations for the almighty dollar". This is your best steaming pile, yet.

4. Yeah, because the top cellphone company is european and all your pc's are made in the US. No I rather we keep our model. So do the majority of EU voters. EU socialist, US capatalist. Move to location of your choice.

This is the best one yet. Clearly you refer to Nokia. A company that is #1 because it competes in the free market with no government benefits at all. And this is your evidence supporting "socialism". Isn't that... ironic? Err no, wait... It's just plain wrong.

You can buy one directly from Nokia in Germany from this link. The price is 349 euro. Don't let the availability red warning scare you off, the 770 should be shipping in high volume by now in Europe.

It'll freeze up every time I go to the control panel to check the memory and it will not reset holding the button down.

This specific problem was confirmed to be fixed in a firmware update some time ago, so head to http://www.nokia.com/support/770 and grab the latest software update.

If you want Wi-fi and a high resolution screen then I highly recommend the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.

It is brand new and has wi-fi, bluetooth, an 800 x 480 screen and runs linux. The Opera web browser seems to run a lot better on this platform than on other handhelds or mobile phones and hasn't choked yet on any web pages that I have looked at. I should also point out that it is not a phone.

The only drawback is the two week waiting list at the moment, but what do I care - I already have mine. :-)

Oh well, maybe soon they'll be selling HTML-capable phones that are small enough for my pocket and I'll upgrade...

Not small enough? Some earlier models have been around for years.

(Sorry for being a Nokia fanboy. I'm sure other phone manufacturers have small models with XHTML browsers as well.)

Oh well, maybe soon they'll be selling HTML-capable phones that are small enough for my pocket and I'll upgrade...

Not small enough? Some earlier models have been around for years.

(Sorry for being a Nokia fanboy. I'm sure other phone manufacturers have small models with XHTML browsers as well.)

Oh well, maybe soon they'll be selling HTML-capable phones that are small enough for my pocket and I'll upgrade...

Not small enough? Some earlier models have been around for years.

(Sorry for being a Nokia fanboy. I'm sure other phone manufacturers have small models with XHTML browsers as well.)

Maybe the nokia 770 from http://nokia.com/770 be good for you, huge screen (800x480), wifi etc. No phone features but you can use VoIP for that.

Maybe it might be better to wait for the next generation as Intel are about to release a new version of their XScale clocked at 1Ghz that still only uses less than 1 walt. With that type of power you could do almost anything. I wonder if they will use them to make some type of wireless mesh network...

Why not get a Nokia 7710 then?

It may well be that the transition is worth doing in the long run, but simply spending money for no reason isn't a net plus.

Of course they have to look at the long run, they can not exactly wait for it to happen so they only need to look at the short term, since then they'll need to both rush a transition (and you do not want to rush a nation-wide infrastructure transition) and even risk losing connectivity with parts of the world before they're done. That wouldn't be such a big deal if there was no profits to make from global Internet connectivity, but there are obvious reasons this is very useful, even essential to many companies' survivability today. I have to wonder what's Google's stance about this for example, as they've worked mostly internationally from the start, especially with their business model of AdWords.

So by doing this, there's a cost, sure, but is not doing it even an option? Sometimes necessary progress cost money.

Not that you're saying so, speaking in general I think it's pretty naïve to believe the Internet population isn't steadily increasing, especially in the fields of ad hoc networking and mobility, where you often want direct IP address connectivities for p2p networking. One can read a surprisingly technical press release from Nokia about this and the IPv4 growing pains here, so there are clearly markets that would thrive under IPv6 that they can't easily do today, which should say "profit!" to any analyst of the growing mobile market.

You mean something like these?

hmm, wonder if their new 770 linux based tablet will suffer the same fate?
It was finally released in europe & US last week and there has been a rush. New stock due in next week

Nokia has a fairly substantial development community Trouble is...end users don't have exposure to it. It is mainly targeted at carriers who want to sell the apps. without much enduser input

Is a charging cradle different from a travel charger? Here is a link to the online Nokia shop. It says that a travel charger is supplied.

That sentence is silly. Nokia already has N91 with 4GB of internal memory (yes it can play music). I recall that also Samsung has a phone with microdrive.

Have you seen how atrociously bad Motorola phones are? The interfaces are useless. The "sabotage" (or mistake, depending on your PoV) was in doing a deal with Motorola in the first place. I mean, sure, they have a cool-looking phone, but compared to real phones, they are so painful to use.

Obviously, the ROKR loses in direct comparison with the Nokia N91 and Sony-Ericsson Walkman but at least their product is real and on the shelves...

In the meantime, while people are either enjoying the real phones or waiting for the next big thing, Motorola improves on both designs and announces the SLVR L7...

although I don't have the sales figures for companies like apple, nokia, motorola, SE, samsung and their respective mobile phone divisions, I'd venture saying that Apple can hardly have the leverage to damage the plans of mobile phone manufacturers. I bet Apple will still be in the front line of the high end audio gadget arena with the iPod and whatever they can make of it in the future, but there is much more room for growth in the multi-use-mobile-phone-gadget market.

Bazorg!

His reporti is about completely different site,
http://opensourceenergy.org/ != http://opensource.nokia.com/

Maybe it's just that I can't read legalese.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but you can download the Nokia PC suite program and get yourself a blutooth dongle. I had serious problems with my Nokia until I got those two, now I can surf on GPRS from the laptop, access all facilities, install programs, whatever I like. Make sure you get the updated version though.

Nokia IPSO is an appliance-optimized, security-hardened, clusterable OS capable of supporting a wide range of Nokia and partner security applications.

More info here.

Believe it or not, if you click on the OSS browser announcement, there's a page telling you all about it. Whatever will they think of next?

(And here's the link)

Can't someone make a decent camera-phone with mp3 functionality and 4GB of memory built in, and put it in a reasonable-sized package? Where's the culprit in preventing this? Bad engineering? Cell-phone carriers? Sony not wanting to damage their digital camera business?

I've been looking into the same area recently, and you haven't got long to wait (except if you're in North America);

Samsung SGH-I300 announced over 6 months ago, with a 3 GB hard drive.
Nokia N91 available very soon, with 4 GB storage.
SonyEricsson W900i with up to 2 GB, and designed to be a 'walkman'.
SonyEricsson P990i with a Memroy Stick Duo slot, again expandable to 2 GB. This is probably my next phone, it has the 3G video calling I want to play with, the full Symbian-based PDA functions, and enough storage to take a load a music. It also has wifi, VPN software and Blackberry functionality. This means it replaces my current phone, PDA, Blackberry, camera and MP3 player, in one unit. One charger to take way from home, one headset when I'm driving.... lovely.

But my last couple of phones have had a Memory Stick slot and an MMC slot, as well as having decent cameras. They've even been great as phones...

Focused on voice calls & SMS, it still supports WAP, albeit in limited format. It supports Bluetooth and GPRS for a connection to laptop too.

The one puzzling thing about it is the internal 0.5MP camera. With handsets including cams of 1.5MP and higher these days, it seems very much an afterthought and something included just because.

That aside, IMO it is a beautiful phone - small, lightweight, and without feature bloat.

Now, this is what i'd call superhandphone. Finally with something real for networking, 4Gb hdd, 10+ hrs of music, with equalizer(!!!), 3.5mm jack for headphone, and radio. Lot of euphoria news for this one as well, but keep the dreams up guys!

Now, this is what i'd call superhandphone. Finally with something real for networking, 4Gb hdd, 10+ hrs of music, with equalizer(!!!), 3.5mm jack for headphone, and radio. Lot of euphoria news for this one as well, but keep the dreams up guys!

And this answers the parent's question how exactly?

Seems pretty obvious to me. At the end of the post he asked:

On a side note, are there any phones / pdas that have a Python sdk available?

And I then told himabout Python support for two important PDA and Phone OSes, Palm and CE. Incidentally, there's also a Python SDK for Series 60 Nokia phones. So make that 3 important PDA/Phone OSes.

i think that almost anywhere in europe you still can get a new phone which isnt overbloated.

the nokia 1100 and 1101 are excellent examples. you can make calls with them. you can send sms-s with them and you can use them as an alarm clock if needed. afaik 1100 had a flashlight too incase you happen to wander in the dark :p. but thats it. no java apps. no mp3 players inside. no cameras. no crap. just the phone.

http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,76209,00. html

over here they cost around 60 Euros / 70-80 USD, which is also a lot cheaper than the regular overbloated phone.

ps. unlike pretty many ppl here, i like multi featured items. for example when i'm on the travel in a train or a bus or a plane, i can read the slashdot news on my phone, i can read my local countries news on the phone. and actually ... i hardly ever use my phone for calling someone ... i get a lot of calls thou, comes with the job :s.

anyway, what i would like to see would be a pda with huge flash-rom-like storage (i hdd-s noisy, slow, electricity consuming) like 40gb (so i could fit my movies or mp3-s in there for transportation), a simple browser support with wifi&bluetooth (crippled mozilla would be just fine), a human way to read my mail, receive/make calls, send/receive sms-s, an ssh client incase i have to access my servers from just about anywhere. and ofcourse it should be stable (unlike these pocket wind blowers)

Try Nokia--they have "just a" phones.

Is it possible to run J2ME games in a PC using free software, proprietary software available at no charge, or proprietary software available for less than 100 USD for one seat?

Yes, just google for J2ME emulators, I think Sun even has one included when you download the J2ME development kit. I know for sure Sony Ericsson/Nokia/Motorola et al have emulators. You might have to register at their developer sites first, but it should be free if you are a student or doing non-commercial development. After all, they want developers to make software that works as good as possible for their own devices.

Mobile developer sites:
Sony Ericsson
Nokia
Samsung
Motorola

Some good intro sites:
J2ME Gamer
Midlet.org

Does this Bluetooth thing work even with phones sold by prepaid service providers? Or does, for instance, Virgin lock its phones so that I can't just buy a Virgin phone and a Bluetooth adapter for my PC and transfer games that way?

I don't know how things work in the US, but I haven't heard of anyone locking Bluetooth file transfers on the phone, it would defeat the whole purpose of having Bluetooth. So you should be able to buy a simple Bluetooth USB dongle for your PC ($20) and then use a OBEX push program to transfer the game. The phone senses what the file is (game, image, mp3...) and where to put it, and will ask you if you want to accept it.

Over the air transmission though (OTA) is often locked to the service provider you got the SIM from.

I used Mandrake 10.1 when I was playing around and all drivers and programs were available as official packages on the CDs. No compiling or configuring needed after install to get Bluetooth working, everything worked like a charm.

They don't call it PDA, but it looks like it: http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,74866,00.html

mp3 phone: http://www.nokia.com/nseries/index.html?loc=inside ,main_n91

They don't call it PDA, but it looks like it: http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,74866,00.html

mp3 phone: http://www.nokia.com/nseries/index.html?loc=inside ,main_n91

Why does this question always come up? All manufacturers have plenty of low-end phones that are cheap, reliable and contains no bells and whistles, just go to http://www.sonyericsson.com/ or http://www.nokia.com/ or whatever your preferred brand is. Just because they don't make headlines on the slashdot front-page doesn't mean they don't exist...

I am not behind the times, it is you who doesn't bother to read the context of the discussion: the parent poster was wondering about phones without cameras, which the 9300 is, and the 9500 isn't.

And the 9500 has been out for more than a year and a half, not 6 months. clicky
Definitely, you are the one behind the times, and you even proved it yourself.

I think the 9500 is excellent. Still the best phone-kind-of-thing on the market, and quite classy, too (only beaten by the Nokia 8800).

How about a Nokia 6100? You can get them fairly cheaply these days. They are really small but the screen is quite big. Battery lasts for ages. You might be able to overlook the java given all the other benefits.

How about a Nokia 1100?

It does have one extra feature, a flashlight, but I'm sure you can put tape over it and pretend it's not there.
It also isn't really, really small, because like most phones it has buttons, a screen and a microphone + speaker combination.
It isn't made of liquid metal, but seems to have non-slippery sides.

I second that. I have a 7600 with the buttons down the sides in two rows, and I have to say that after a few days of "wtf?" it has become far faster and easier to use for applications than a traditional keypad. Two thumbs, one either side, and no obstruction of the screen.

Nice karma whoring, BTW.

Whoa, 3 hours of browsing time? :-/

http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,75023,00.html

I mean, Thats pretty lame compared to a Treo or something. Portability means alot less when you still need to be within walking distance of a power socket all day to use the damn thing.

I know that several people are asking for Linux support, and I echo that. But, I'd like to go further and ask about the possibility of specific Linux support, namely Maemo support.

Maemo is the version of Linux that is going to run in the upcomming Nokia 770 which will be a cool little tablet. I think it would be absolutely steallar to be able to play Civilization on this device, all over my house, while watching TV, etc.

So, is it possible that there will be Linux support in Civ IV? Maemo support? If not, why not? Support costs? Development costs? Both?

I'm personally waiting for Nokia N91 to arrive instead of buying the Nano. 6Gb of space, discoverable as USB storage (so it should work on Linux), and I already carry my phone everywhere anyways... A little bigger than Nano, but...

A casual user might not notice that since Opera branding is not visible. Even the user agent is

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Series80/2.0 Nokia9300/05.22 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

A casual user might not notice that since Opera branding is not visible. Even the user agent is

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Series80/2.0 Nokia9300/05.22 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

You might want to check out the Nokia 770 which has a 800x480 res at approximately the same size.
Disclaimer: I am associated with its development

I have to agree with you when you ask what the big deal is about this phone (marketing most likely).

My Nokia 6230 is a more user-friendly device than the ROKR I looked at last night. Heck, I can even listen to FM radio on my nokia and carry many more than 100 songs. The bluetooth is slow, but I can easily pop out the memory card and quickly transfer the files with my card reader. The battery life and display are outstanding and my phone was much cheaper than the current pricing on the ROKR.

Can you say Nokia 7280?

The only special thing about the "ROKR" is that it plays iTunes. The phone is uninspiring in looks, software and specifications.