Slashdot Mirror
Linux Gets Mobile (phone)
arclightfire writes "The Register are reporting that Motorola, one of major mobile phone manufacturers in the world, has decided that the future's bright, the future's penguin! The reasoning cited is the belief that China holds the key to the mobile phone market of tomorrow, therefore this future needs to be Linux; 'Not only is China potentially the world's largest mobile phone market, but it's also where most phones are built. Even more significantly, it's where the next generation of all mobile devices will be based, thinks Motorola.' Pax Linux?"
and the geekdom was at peace for years after finally all microprocessors were switched to linux
And they laughed at me when I kept hold of my motorolla brick. Methinx I'll be getting hold of one of these Linux based phones when I can...be a good excuse to replace this bloody old one.
Do they run Linux?
Seriously most the people there earn about $50 a month. How can enough people afford a mobile?
The calls would have to be much cheaper. The handset shouldn't be a problem but you can buy a P4 system in China for about $300 but most people still can't afford that.
Has anyone tested a Motorola Linux phone? Can I download my own C apps to it? Do I get root access? Can I mess with the readio protocols and steal the ID number from another phone? Do I get source? Can I recompile the phone OS and reinstall it?
)9TSS
I Can't wait for phones to go open source. Just think about it. The more phones go open source the more cool things we will be able to do to them. Right now Phones are so propiatary If your provider does not provide stuff like games/ ringtones... and so on you just can't get them. But if they were open source. Think of the posiblitlys. ahhh to dream of a day when all is free to tweak :)
I wonder what this has to do with it all? If linux is the platform, what is M$'s stake?
I am really happy that Motorola will continue support of Java. That would be my main want from a cell phone.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Motorola is sticking to the one universal platform - Java - which runs on all existing phones and PDAs, whatever OS - and that's the angle the corporate publicity spin suggests. It's true: in February, Motorola announced its first Linux-powered handset, which uses Java technology.
I remember when people thought mobile phones would contain CPUs that run bytecode directly on the hardware.
Now it's "we have this platform independent technology that we use to run this other platform independent technology." Up next: java implementation of the linux kernel that runs on a java processor - so that we can use java-on-linux-on-java.
You can attach boosters to anything. It just costs more. -
Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07, @12:26PM
Plus, my old boss once told me that Motorola's sole purpose in life is to make crappy phones at a great loss. Anyone who has ever had the mis-fortune of using one of them will know that in order to beat the Nokia's of this world, they need to fire their entire UI team and replace it with people who actually know what they are doing.
Sure, it runs Linux and it's got that geeky appeal. But don't get carried away, it's still the same experience that all Motorola phones have.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
OK, so world domination is now within reach, but think of the consequences.
I think a biggish fork (or probably forks) cannot be far away as Linux transitions from the current server/plaything position to the OS of choice.
Why should 1/4 of the population of the world have their software controlled, however benignly, by some hacker bloke in the US?
Of course, this might not be a bad thing: lots more resources will flow in, but it might be just too difficult to expect the current system where there is one central repository and everything else is a patch off that, to continue.
To an extent all of this is prefigured in today's world, but just as with the Unix wars of the 1980s, the future will probably see lots of people talking about "Linux" when their systems are incompatible at a fundamental level.
But that is the price we will have to pay to play in the majors.
more importantly can you make a Beowolf cluster of them :-)
Now they should just port the UI and other frameworks from Symbian. Having a (C++) source code compatibility w/ Symbian OS would be a boon.
It will be interesting to see how Nokia and others react. The interesting thing isn't that it is based on Linux, but rather the fact that it's using Java extensively. Will also the lower level stuff be done in Java? In Symbian circles most of the "serious" stuff is done in C++ (ish), but we'll see whether the sledge will turn at some point. Phones are (still) very memory-cramped environments, and require design decisions that differ from normal Linux application design.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Are we expected a Linux world domination isn't it ?
It happens baby, it hapens.
Meawhile, M$ stock 49$ Bn cash in a bank, but this is a different story...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Damn Motorola and their kiss of mediocre products ... :D
You're looking for this site.
at least you could mention other reason for linux ..Mot believes in J2mE as the app api for all mobiles!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I know it's a big market opening up, but I have a hard time understanding why companies are going so far, as to focus all their efforts into making products that will work for China... Sure, there's lots of people, but a great many of them are poor, and couldn't care less if Cisco is making a router that deals better with the climate in China.
I think China has become an almost fictional ideal now. RIAA/MPAA have "piracy", and the electronics sector has "China". It's just become that thing that companies tell the investors is key, and if they can take care of it, money will fall from heaven...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I mean, I accept that I have to take one or two times out of the week to patch my one Windows box, but if I had to do the same with my mobile on the same frequency??? And probably need Winblows desktop to run the program that upgrades the firmware of my phone??? God I can see it now... "Today an unprecedented weakness in Microsoft's Windows CE allowed attackers from all over the world to gain access to an unknown number of cell phone users personal contact information. Microsoft says it is looking into the matter and does not have a patch available, or a means for getting the patch onto the phone. In other news....."
How about no Windows viruses for just one friggin week?
Look at this mobile from Motorola with GSM/GPRS, GPS and Linux. It also includes PDA functionalities and has the size of a credit card.
;-)
The only weak point may be the way you enter characters: with a jog-dial.
The future looks promising to me
Naive? Yeah... but one gotta stay positive :-)
Mobile phones are indeed a nice thing to have, BUT... has anyone, be they manufacturer, reseller, or even end user, given any thought whatsoever to the issue of disposal and recycling of outdated or "obsolete" (I loathe that word) phones?
"Planned obsolescence" may be considered a Good Thing for helping to keep phone manufacturers in business, but what I'd like to know is how recyclable older phones are. What are manufacturers doing to recycle the materials in older units into newer ones, thus helping to keep toxic electronics residue out of the landfills?
Is anyone in any position of authority asking (and getting good answers) to this question? Or are we all going to find ourselves, eventually, living in condos built out of retired computer and mobile phone parts?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Sure, you may be wondering how most people manage to possibly even get by on a $50 paycheck a month, but realize that that is the national average, where all sorts of people are factored in. In a land of such contrast, there are still tons of terribly rich people, and those who earn upwards of $1200(USD) a month are not that uncommon.
80% of China's population is into agriculture, and only 20% of them are priveledged enough to be urbanites, but if you do the math, that would mean that there are more people living in cities in China than there are in the United States. In a place where image is everything, it is inevitable that cellular phones have become extremely popular, if not ubiquitous. On the street, almost everybody (and I mean somewhere like 9 out of 10 people) has a cell phone. It is no wonder why Motorola is considering this vast market, because this is only the tip of the iceberg. This many cellular service subscribers only indicate a market penetration of 13%. Imagine the profits of market penetration somewhere upwards to 50%.
is Symbian OS, not Linux, not WinCE.
Names like Nokia, Sony/Ericsson, Siemens Fujutsi, etc. are pretty dominant in the mobile industry.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
in the future more devices will run linux. all someone would need to write is a worm based of
of a kernel vulnerability to make a bad day for
everyone.
Port the frameworks from Symbian to Linux? Why? What Motorola seems to be saying is that it doesn't really care which OS is running on the phone, everything that the user will see will be done in Java. All else being equal, why would Motorola choose Symbian. It doesn't need any of the UI/PDA stuff that Symbian provides because MOT just wants to run Java on top of it. For that reason, Linux is ideal, it can be very minimal and has a good java VM.
You're right about the fact that Linux being the lower layer isn't that important. I just don't understand why Motorola would port, or have any other interest in Symbian with regards to their Linux phone offerings.
...you could only get their "official" (j2me) development tools from Metrowerks... one thing though:they dont run under Linux (!). /m
So - they expect you to develop platform independent java apps that deploys on a Linux based device by using a Windowsbased ide. Stupid or what?
They should take a look at what Nokia is doing.. series 40/60 symbian ide? - download their ide (based on Forte/NetBeans) for free, develop under Linux and deploy to the device without having to artificially and needlessly introduce another OS in the equation..
Wake up Motorola!
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
PDAs and Cell phones are going more and more to java for applications so phone and PDA makers are now looking more at what makes the best operating system to drive java.
Linux is free and you get to dictate the hardware specs. You don't get this with Palm or Windows CE.
This makes Linux an idea operating system to run java applications.
But this won't take us any closer to a Linux on the desktop than we were before and with the applications in java there will be a big os battle with the applications remaining portable between them.
It sells phones and it costs less. But that won't alwasy mean a cheaper phone.
I don't actually exist.
Oh my gosh. I just spent 3 years writing an application for Windows, and now Windows is done. Before that, I spent a year on OS/2, and OS/2 was killed by Windows. Before that, I spent a few years working on Commodore Amiga, and that was killed by PC Clones, and before that, I was big into Atari 800, and that was killed by Apple...
If I write something else for Windows, christ, MS will file bankruptcy...
This is my sig.
PDAs and Cell phones are going more and more to java for applications so phone and PDA makers are now looking more at what makes the best operating system to drive java.
Makes sense. Maybe we may even start seeing kernel optimisations designed to optimise the performance of Java - there may already be, but I'm not aware of any. Another advantage is that Linux has already been made available for a large number of CPU archictures, so the phone companies don't suffer from lock-in when it is time to get the next best chip for the job.
GSM was formed to reduce incompatibility and cost for the phone companies. Linux and J2ME would be the next logical step.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
They have gotta sort the design out
Motorolla a760
It looks like a toilet seat (for barbie) and you can make phonecalls on it. Bring's new meaning to the phrase "Phoned your mates up while you are on the toilet"
Same school of designers as the Atari Jaguar
and the infamous iMac which was designed by a bloke that used to design toilets
What is it with technology design and toilets? I mean, is it a sign of the disposable nature of things?
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I want to buy this phone will it work with Sprint PCS
The obligatory "You're new here.." comment is due ;)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
i dont know it did seem pretty funny to me...
Sure it does. I can think of 3 reasons off the top of my head: lower production cost, no licensing fees and competitive advantage.
How does that not make sense?
Industry changes when one player decides to screw the status quo. Look at the airlines and Southwest for a good example.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Feels like their UI team is the same that created the Microtac and other very old models and they were forced into a new paradigm. Just like the first attempts of Cobol programmers into Java: it works, at great expense of user experience.
I just hope they do not use the default Swing look for cellphone UIs.
Not by themselves (there are phones that are worse than those Motorola makes), but when compared to Nokia and Sony they do. Motorola was my first cell phone and it was bulky as hell, had a huge antenna and drained batteries really quickly. After 3 or 4 months of struggling with it, I bought myself a Nokia and Philips for my wife. They both (even Philips) were MUCH better than Motorola. Lighter, stronger batteries, better UI.
As to Linux in my mobile phone... I don't know about everyone else, but I _TALK_ on mine. And for me the ability to keep a phone book and make calls are the main features. If I need games on the road, I'll buy gameboy advance. If I need web, I have a laptop. If I need a digital camera, I have a digital SLR.
A phone maker mostly benefits from being able to tinker with the system and not having to pay license costs per unit sold. Regardless of how Palm or Microsoft charge for licenses, they try to make money somehow with something similar to what linux folks have written for free.
A more important question is why Slashdot folks should bother (as normal user you never see the underlying software of mobile phones anyway). Here the point is that if a player comes close to dominating the market, they tend to lock out competitors from associated markets.
Example: If MS dominates the mobile phone market, they'll make damn sure that only Windows PCs or WinCE devices can connect to their phones. Similar things could be imagined if Palm dominated the phone market and you'd try to connect random PDAs to your phone.
If linux is the underlying OS, there is a moderate to high chance, that open protocols are used for linking a PC or PDA to your phone (Motorola, Nokia, Siemens has no direct reason to actively lock out other OSs or PDAs). Linux and *NIX folks might have to reverse engineer some protocols, but aren't expected to be actively prevented from doing so (e.g. through patents or DMCA-crap)
Yes, they are completely hackable. The shell is right there every time you turn it on, and you have to login with root to add numbers to your address book, and type "startESN" and various other commands before you can even make calls. Don't forget to configure your antenna!
That's for sure. :0)
What?.... Who am I... North Pole?!?!
<kleng>
Damn penguins
A short week earlyer "Microsoft wins Motorola" (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/68/31962.htm l).
:))
According to a story in digi.no (http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=92532) rumours are that Motorola and Microsoft are getting closer. The digi.no headline translates "The front against Microsoft is cracking up". And Motorola recently sold their share in Symbian.
That said.. I'd love to own an A760
As far as Nokia are concerned they head for disaster. Simply due to their lack of clamshell design phones.
Larger displays will scratch too easily. The way things are heading, the future killer gadget is a combined PDA/GSM/WiFi/3G phone. Motorola, Samsung, LG, Nec and the rest simly LOOK so darn much better. Check the polls at Gsmarena and the likes. People love the clamshell design. So sell now and thank me later.
Quite the opposite. On a Symbian phone, a third-party developer can access virtually every item of "phone" functionality - making calls, sending SMS, Bluetooth, etc. - from C++. As far as I know, if you write Java apps for these Motorola Linux phones, you'll be stuck in a sandbox.
Why you Brits can't get Subject-Verb agreement straight are beyond me...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Today's "win" for Linux is tomorrow's GPL violation.
I have owned now three subsequent GSM generations of Motorola phones -- starting with the clunky big StarTac, moving on to the little one, and then finally settling on one the Motorola tribands ( I am in and out of the US a lot ) .
I have hated all but the first with a passion, and for only one reason -- interface design. Everything about these phones was non-intuitive and counterintelligent. To read ones own text messages would take at least 5 keypresses. The phone book display was set up so that only part of the number could be seen at one time, seriously stressing my short term memory.
Most irritating was the fact that the Yes and No buttons are inverted on Motos (vs. Sony Ericsson or Nokia) and hence when others would answer my phone for me, they would often disconnect the calling party.
I have since jumped ship to Nokia, now that their tribands are affordable, and have never been happier.
Somehow I predict a similar convoluted and dire interface (not to mention closed to the average hacker) for Moto's linux solution. Don't be too excited, I've worked with Motorola phones before, and hope to never again.
shooting is not too good for my enemies
Wine can be installed without windows and can run emulator.
SDK distro want install itself on windows and this is bad.
I don't think symbian want developer use windows, but writing the emulator was hard and most developer use windows so they write a wins emulator, not a mac one, not a linux one.
I guess it's hard to split work in a kernel emulator that work everywhere and various interface: try to port wine to MacOS 9!
I i wonder if many those who now champion linux will search for the next exclusive thing. It's already happening to some degree with the more mainstream distros of linux.
is the first link right? it says page not found?
could you post it perhpas? i really want to see what it says.
How about Bruce Linux?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Ha, thats really quite amusing. Whats next journalistic integraty on Fox News. Btw China is not a socialist or communist state. They just claim they are. Kind of like how the US claims to be a democracy.
Is it getting a little warm in here.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
As it is the operating system with the most annoying users and the worst interface designers!!
:)
(Thankfully it exist Apple so that linux UI designers have something to copy)
Now mod me down
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
And you can download the SDK for free.
:)
It's Good(tm) to have a nokia 3650
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Seems I added an erronous space - try: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/68/31962.html