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?"
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 :)
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.
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....."
Now they should just port the UI and other frameworks from Symbian
Yes you can develop C++ code for Symbian, but to use their SDK you must use Windows.
Considering that Symbian presents themselves as the alternative to using software from Microsoft in their phones, I think it sux big time that all Symbian C++ developers must use Windows anyways. Clever!
)9TSS
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
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
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
...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!
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.