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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
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
Yes, they do run Linux. Most people in the cities own mobile phones. In fact, there are more mobile phones in use than land-line phones.
You'd be surprised at how capitalist China is. It's fast becoming a highly affluent society, and the companies that get in on the market are going to win enormously - those that don't are going to be left behind.
I don't know where you got the idea that people can't afford electronics there, but it's a pretty dated notion. At least 10 years out of date, I'd say.
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.
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
The average annual salary in our high-tech company (about 75% engineers.. offices in Beijing & Shenzhen) is less than RMB100k (about US$12k), but yes, everybody seems to have cell phones...
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
. But if they were open source. Think of the posiblitlys. ahhh to dream of a day when all is free to tweak :)
They are free to tweak already. You can download a public SDK for various Symbian OS versions, and build applications for your phone (3650, 7650, etc.). The Symbian OS is not particularly open, but in SDK's you have the docs, the header files and the libs. All of the stuff you would need for basic application development. There are also books that detail Symbian OS development available.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I can imagine the CS classes.. "And before we start, I'd like to ask everyone to please turn their cell phones ON!"
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....."
Rubbish!
How much of the population of China is in one of the major cities?
A very small part - the bulk of the population is poor, poor peasants who either tend fields or work in sweat-shops making Louis Vitton bags for the West.
It's going to be a long, long while before China stops becoming a poor nation and >20% have mobile phones!
Don't think a few pretty skyscrapers in Shanghai heralds a turnaround in the entire country yet!
Well, the relative prices of things are pretty different in China. Basic goods are very, very cheap. We're talking 1/10th the price for most food, clothing, and basic household items. Electronics are more expensive than in the US - for example when the V60 first came out it was something like US$500. Real estate also is very expensive - I don't remember exactly how much, but definitely comparable to the US. There's also the issue that you can't own land outright in China, you can only buy 99-year leases from the government (but that's another issue entirely).
The biggest lifestyle difference I can see is that most people don't own cars in China. I wonder how much money a year they save from that...
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
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
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.
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)
Just think though... you're right that the majority of the Chinese population is very poor, but remember that the 20% or so of the population who reside in urban areas is still a HUGE amount of people, and just a bit less than the entire population of the United States.
How would either of them be cheaper? Both Symbian and Linux are for low powered devices. Putting the code onto a chip would be the same cost.
Symbian 0 - Linux 0 (both equal, no points)
no licensing fees
True, however the reason behind the licencing fees is so that Symbian can recruit people and pay them to develop full time. If you were going to go with a Linux based solution you'd have to pay for the development yourself. Also, most of the companies who are using Symbian have shares in the company and agreed the licencing model themselves to directly ensure they don't get screwed. Symbian cannot do a Microsoft here and pull a bait and switch tactic since they are owned by the very same companies that they do business with.
Symbian 1 - Linux 0.5
competitive advantage
Symbian is already out there, already proven and already has applications written for it. Linux in the mobile arena isn't as proven, isn't already written with the mobile in mind (there would still be a lot of work required), requires that companies give away their competitive advantage (through the GPL licence) and has far less applications written for it.
Symbian 2 - Linux 0.5
I still see no reason to jump ship. Even if other companies jumped ship, it won't signal the death of Symbian.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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