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New Linux-based PDA due September
Bill Kendrick writes "LinuxDevices.com has a preview of a new Linux-based PDA due out next month. Some of you might recognize the form-factor; it's from Softfield, the folks who ended up with the rights to the first commercial Linux-based PDA, the black-and-white, MIPs-based Agenda VR3. Softfield's new model, the MX-7, sports a 200MHz CPU, full-color 240x320 display, 32MB Flash and 64MB RAM, an SD card slot, and Trolltech's Qtopia environment. All for $299 USD."
Okay, partial foot in mouth...
It seems it has a 140-pin expansion slot for other peripherals, like a CF adaptor, etc. Sounds like the "jacket" option of some iPaq models.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Some of the problems include badly thought out user interaction, wasteful use of the limited screen real estate (probably a result of being based on an adaptation of a desktop toolkit), and pretty excessive resource consumption by Qt/Embedded.
Indeed. This is true from both the user perspective as well as the developers- Qt/Embedded wasn't designed for use on PDAs, and it shows. I am talking about the API, not the way things look and feel, although that is certainly an issue as well. Qt/E was designed for a system with a mouse like its desktop counterpart, rather than for a stylus based system. This wouldn't be a big deal if TrollTech made the neccesary adaptations and changes to make for a system that worked well on both kinds of systems (there are Qt/E systems with mice and not touchscreens).
For instance, Qtopia has a simple character recognition system in which you write in a little box, ala Graffiti 1 or the Character/Block Recognizer in PocketPC. Developers have wanted to create a new input method that allows one to write letters anywhere on the screen, perhaps using the same engine, but not making you write in a little box. But nope, it appears to be next to impossible within the confines of Qtopia and Qt/Embedded due to the way the event loop works. This is just one example, but these things add up, painting a picture of an embedded GUI toolkit that really doesn't make much sense on a PDA.
And Qtopia/Linux does use an excessive amount of resources. For one, it's quite slow.
I have a Zaurus SL-C760. I just did some timing tests for launching applications, here are my numbers:
Calendar: 6 sec
Opera 6: 6 sec
Netfront 3: 4 sec
Hancom Word: 3 sec
Simple Calculator: 3 sec
And for comparison, I launched analogous apps on an iPAQ 3650. Mind you, the iPAQ has half of the RAM and about half of the CPU power as the C760.
Calendar, Word, PocketIE, Clock, Calculator: all > 1 sec
One way to get around the slowness of app launching on the Zaurus is a feature called "fast load." Basically, the system loads the application into memory and keeps it resident, even when you quit it. When you tap the app it appears to open, and the icon shows up in the taskbar. If an app has "fast loading" turned on, launching time is pretty similar to the PocketPC. Of course, for each app you have "fast loading" turned on, it uses up a MB or more, depending on the app. Turning on fast loading for Calendar uses 1.2 MB of RAM.
As far as memory requirements, the Linux+Qtopia combo uses up a pretty fair amount. On a fresh boot of my C760, with no applications in "Fast load" mode, 16 MB of RAM is used up. No application loaded. On a fresh boot on the iPAQ, WinCE is using up 3 MB.
As far as vertical apps, you may not be able to run GTK+ or Tk apps within the world of Qtopia, you can run X11 and these apps if you want. It negates any advantage percieved for Qtopia, but it's still an option. Then again, you can also run Tcl/Tk, Perl/Tk, X11 and other apps on WinCE without having to go outside the WinCE environment, so it depends on what your needs are.
The "Familiar" Linux distro and the Yopy PDA both use X11 and are thusly not limited to only one GUI toolkit. I myself would rather have one main GUI toolkit, but having options is always good. For me, consistency is more important, but even on WinCE/PocketPC- which is seen as a single toolkit environment can be host to other toolkits as long as someone does the port.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad