Twenty New Linux Cell Phones On The Way

An anonymous reader writes "Trolltech announced today that more than fifty companies are currently developing or shipping Linux-based devices using its Qtopia graphical application platform software, including more than twenty mobile phones. 'We think that 2005 is going to be a real breakout year for Linux on cellphones,' Trolltech CEO Haavard Nord told LinuxDevices.com. Motorola has already been shipping Linux phones in China, and has achieved its initial objectives there, according to Nord. 'We expect that in 2005, Motorola is going to start shipping Linux phones outside of China,' Nord added."

Comments

good and bad

[jeif1k]

It's good to see Linux on more phones. But the dependence on Qtopia is worrisome. Unlike Qt on the desktop, where Qt applications can run alongside applications written in other toolkits, Qtopia takes over the display: the only way you can write applications for these devices is by using Qt/Embedded.

That's a good deal for Troll Tech, who gain lots of Qt developers if Qtopia catches on. It's not such a good deal for users, because their choice of toolkits and applications is greatly restricted, and because Qt/Embedded is not a particularly efficient toolkit. Furthermore, the PIM applications that Qtopia ships with simply are nowhere near as good as those on Palm (I have had several Sharp Zaurus PDAs and I wouldn't want to use them as a PDA). It's unfortunate that Linux's first shot at the PDA and phone market is hampered by Qtopia.

Re:good and bad

[advocate_one]

it's not intended that the user can have a choice of toolkits or applications... the only choice the user will have is what "wallpaper" or ringtone he/she's going to rent this week... the entire market is designed entirely around the concept of the service provider locking the user up into the content delivery model. Not around any concept of the user having any choice.

Sadly, although these things are using Linux, it's basically locked away from the user and they're going to make it very hard for the user to actually get at it.

Re:good and bad

[jeif1k]

Once again, for 0.1% of the cellphone-using population (i.e. the fanatical Linux zealots), this may be a major issue, but Joe Sixpack doesn't know/care what Linux is.

You are quite right: users don't care what the toolkit is. They care about size, battery life, performance, ease of use, and choice of software. So do I, in fact. Unfortunately, Qtopia affects all of those negatively relative to other possible GUIs on top of Linux. In the end, the dominance of Qtopia for Linux PDAs/phones may well mean that people will continue to buy mostly Palm and PocketPC-based devices.

Well, at least Palm is switching to a Linux kernel, and unlike Qtopia, their user interface doesn't suck. So, Linux may yet live on PDAs.

So, what do you use to compose text messages?

[advocate_one]

EMACS or VI???