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Qualcomm Adopts Linux for 3G Handsets
quan74 writes "According to an article at MacNewsWorld, it seems Qualcomm is the latest to add Linux to its handheld devices. 'By introducing Linux on the MSM, Qualcomm supports manufacturer partners who wish to leverage existing Linux applications, third-party developers and application catalogs to reduce their software development costs and improve time-to-market.' What I found interesting is that Linux will be the first third-party operating system supported by Qualcomm."
Will the other device makers ever support linux? Imagine the potential for custom mobile apps, etc.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
I'm all for pushing technology forward, but integrating so many functions into one device can have a downside..
I don't think we're too far off from having spyware for mobile phones that sends advertising SMS messages to everyone in your phone address book. Or even calls everyone and plays a pre-recorded message. As these things become more ubiquitous, they'll be a larger and larger target.
I'm a big tall mofo.
What the device manufacturers and the network equipment vendors like is that Linux doesn't lock them into a single operating system.
except they are locked into Linux, unless the phone will let me choose wether i want to run Windows,Solaris,Mac,QNX,Symbian,Java etc etc
why cant they just use plain english?
the "article" reads more like a press release drummed up by some marketing droid than any insightful commentary about OS'es
I remember reading somewhere that the cost of a single liscense of Windows Mobile is only a few bucks. What is the total cost saved by using Linux in handheld devices? It'd be interesting to compare.
Does anybody else find it weird that a Mac news site is posting Linux news, and finishing off with a paragraph labelled "Freedom of choice" which talks about avoiding vendor lockin?
What I found interesting is that Linux will be the first third-party operating system supported by Qualcomm.
Are we sure that this is a good thing? Remember, Qualcomm are the ones who tried to convince everyone that CDMA is better than GSM.
'... and improve time-to-market.'
If your competitor has a product on the market already, you have a hard time. First mover advantage is a very real thing.
FOSS is so well understood and documented that you can produce products much faster than if you have to depend on proprietary products. This is especially so if you have to integrate more than one such product. Being proprietary is all about keeping secrets and that, by its nature, makes your job much more difficult.
i doubt the companys will release the source code for the software even if it is linux. and considering the applicatiosn that run on these devices are ususaly very small and take little input from the user it should be easy for the developers to make it pretty secure. they could probaly even use some kind of hashing system to check the images to insure you cant use a cellphone with modified OS image.
Let's be short and sweet about this. It's is a contraction of "it is". It's a beautiful day!
Its is a posssessive adjective, something belongs to it. The computer crashed again. Its program is wrong.
Mastering the natural language can be as hard as mastering C++. But it's all precision symbol manipulation necessary to understand subtle meanings.
Feel free to mock my intelligence for forgetting the 'address of' & operator or messing up the pointer structure, but I don't want to hear anything about being a grammar Nazi. I only do this to keep people from knowing that you were smoking sinse in 4th grade instead of paying attention in English period.
The marketing jargon in that blurb made my head spin! I'm still not sure what it means but it sounds good...I think.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
3G = 96ft per second squared. (29.4 m/s)
I'd hope a cellphone could take more acceleration than that (what happens if you drop it on concrete)
does this mean the will be releasing a driver for the airport card on macs for linux.
at least I think it is them that manufacture the card.
I think we start throwing our weight around a little bit - where if these companies are going to use open source to make money then how about making some drivers for the everday devices - i.e. why doesn't ibm make a dvd player for linux that can ship with their laptops. I know I would buy one if that was the case.
Cell phone virus writers will be furious! This will diminish the available host cell phones available to virus writers. This is a sad day for these folks :->
You sure thought outside the box on *that* one! You have the posting instincts of a well-seasoned tiger team member and have completely rethought the Slashdot paradigm.
Congratulations on actualizing your FP.
Qualcomm left the handset business a few years ago, they sold their handset division to Kyocera.
That's why Kyocera's first phones seemed so similar to existing Qualcomm handset designs - Because they WERE Qualcomm handset designs.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Qualcomm is putting Linux support into their chipsets.
It'll be up to the handset manufacturers (who buy from Qualcomm) whether to actually use such support or not.
This kind of surprises me, most of the really high-end handsets use ARM-based processors (Intel XScale or TI OMAP) instead.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
http://www.qvadis.com/images/hardware/qualcomm-pdq .gif
Qualcomm PDQ ran PalmOS.
It's Broadcom that make the chipset used in Aiport cards.
Indeed.
.
A 2Q rollout of our FP concept was unexpected. The team achieved such productivity by embodying a mindset of complete dedication to total customer fulfillment.
The design team inputed in excess of two hundred man-hours of work on the concept in less than two weeks to take the project from inception to completion on an unheard-of timescale that competes with many of the best FP manufacturers in Europe and North America.
Full-scale production of the FP is scheduled to begin in 3Q 2005. Engineers have commenced construction, and already achieved a number of milestones on the construction roadmap for our new FP facility, which is predicted to be able to produce as many as 30,000 hand assembled FPs per year.
FPs will be sold commercially through selected dealers and are expected to cost less than $USD 1000
Hey boss! I've got this great idea! Let's turn our product into a commodity!
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
It's all in 1's and 0's. Well, world is based on positive and negative thoughts, what i am focused and worry about is corporate America. Sadenlly someone trys to push Open Source into higher level of technology and there is someone from a corporate America that likes to talk about spyware, what they really trying to say is to advertise their own stuff, like Mr Symentic did. Dotted his DOT com. Truly amazing.
Long Live Open Source and Cisco
Linberg wasn't the first to cross the Atlantic, but most people think he was, most of those who know he wasn't (such as me) have no clue who was first.
I once worked for a company making routers years before Cisco started, yet Cisco has convinced everyone they were first. (I don't think this was intentional on their part) That company often introduced a new technology that Cisco released about a year latter. We never went anywhere though, while Cisco made billions.
First is interesting. It is useful for those who need it now. However first is not the jump most people think it is. Quality, price, reputation and marketing matter at least as much.
They should use BSD based systems as a basis. GPL isn't as free as it should be.
In what way does proper spelling aid the transportation of cannabis to the lungs?
If you're going to spell the stuff you should at least try smoking it.
AKA a nazi fanatic loser.
....
...etc.
1. You rejuvenate and dance when you hear a windows flaw exposed, but you conveniently ignore the thousands of security flaws exposed in linux.
2. You yell loudly TROLL! at any person's post or at any person you see posting facts that you do not want to hear about your oh so cool linux.
3. You know it's a classic case of penis envy, you don't have all the support, software and hardware available for linux and you have to let that anger out somewhere, but you don't have the brains to admit it.
4. You hate windows, hate Microsoft, but race to emulate windows, have programs to run office from within linux, and spend a $300 on a Windows emulator, only Windows fools.
5. You cannot admit that you don't have professional usage of Linux outside server markets.
6. You cannot admit that most of the joe user out there when told that there is linux will respond, what is that?
7. You cannot admit that there is no professional printing capabilities in linux.
8. You cannot admit that you are a masochist (otherwise why would someone spend hours playing with scripts,
and recompiling programs that are available for Windows?)
9. You cannot admit that there is no professional desktop publishing done on Linux.
10. You cannot admit that no one in their right mind would do professional video editing in Linux.
11. You cannot admit that linux sucks when it comes for gaming/home entertainment or education.
12. You have problems in understanding Windows, and you will blame your own incompetence on Microsoft.
13. You have problems in pointing a clicking, but have no problems in wading through cryptic scripts written by lunatics.
14. Nothing will get past that shit that fills your head, you will not admit to any facts.
15. You can't admit that naming of linux components, packages, and others are weird and fits profiles of troubled teenagers. gentoo, lgx, rpm
16. You feel angered because you were left out by microsoft's Media technologies, they support Mac, Sun sparc, but not linux.
17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.
18. You cannot tell that not a single office package outside Microsoft's is worth looking at or bothering with.
19. You don't know that your CD recorder software sucks.
20. You don't have DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW support in your pathetic OS.
21. While the rest of the world moves on, you're stuck in a stone age technology that needs third party software to boot into GUI.
22. You act out of prejudice, you kill file domains and users of specific news readers while you ignore the bullshit that your fellow linux losers post.
23. You don't know commercial support in Linux is almost non existent.
24. You miss the fact that companies are leaving linux because of the chaos, and the cheap linux losers who are unwilling to pay and support hard work, Corel, gaming companies,...etc.
25. You are unaware that linux has no terminal services (there is a lame one that no one uses), and commercial support for it is not happening.
26. You are unaware that setting up servers on Windows takes couple of minutes while on linux, good luck playing with configuration scripts.
27. You cannot admit that support for USB on linux is laughable at best.
28. You think that Linux is better because slashdot told you so.
29. You spend countless hours flaming people because they post their opinions about your oh so cool linux and your attitude, instead of researching things for yourself and understanding fact in order not to look this stupid.
30. You think that anyone who uses linux has a clue.
31. You think that linux cannot crash.
32. You think that everyone is interested in your conspiracy theories about Microsoft (or should i say M$ in order for you, teenagers to understand?), and how they destroyed linux,
33. You keep ignoring the fact that thousands of linux servers get hacked every year, but it takes one Windows server hacked to get you and your fellow linux idiots to dance and celebrate.
Qualcomm makes some good stuff. Nice codec work , lots of product integration. But they're not a top dog company by any means, which makes them a great candidate to use Linux. Why? Well in my mind, the underdog with the secret weapon can turn the show around can create a world of change.
It's fluff talk hehe, but hey, Linux will get a shot on some nice portables besides showing up every blue moon on some PDA by Sharp.
'By introducing Linux on the MSM, Qualcomm supports manufacturer partners who wish to leverage existing Linux applications, third-party developers and application catalogs to reduce their software development costs and improve time-to-market.'
Jeez! It's like Buzzword Bingo all over again! (no time to find the Dilbert reference, though)
Yes, he used an improper word.
What he should have said is CDMA is better than TDMA.
You switch the CDMA side of the argument because it lets you make a longer post. But let's switch the other side. We'll use GSM as a proxy for TDMA since the old-style of TDMA (IS-54) is essentially dead now. We'll use IS-95 as a proxy for CDMA since you're a stickler for this stuff.
IS-95 doesn't make anything with an amplifier go "bzzt" "bzzt" from time to time. Just this week I had to explain to someone that putting his phone by his alarm clock was the source of those noises that kept waking him up during the night.
IS-95 doesn't have distance limitations as GSM does. You can make very large supercells out in the countryside without loss of capacity.
IS-95 has superior call-carrying capacity to GSM. Up to 3X.
CDMA doesn't require you to re-layout a large area to add a new cell. This is very important with the rise of micro-cells.
And is Europe switching to CDMA? Yes, most of Europe is switching to WCDMA, because it is easier to administrate (see cell layout above) and has superior call-carrying capacity. In any non-tortured sense of that sentence, Europe is switching to CDMA.
So, when I just change a single word (what I would call the right word), all of what you said seems even more wrong than what the original poster said.
For the record, I use a GSM phone. I had to switch, because all the new technologies are coming to GSM first. Like Bluetooth. I switched to Sprint to get the first (all-in-one) CDMA Bluetooth available in the US. But I had to switch to GSM to get a phone that worked well, since Sony-Ericsson did such a bad job with the T608.
I prefer CDMA. In my experience, it works better. But you can't be blind to the total package. And right now at least, the CDMA providers have such a stranglehold on their markets that I can't get a phone I like on CDMA right now. And sadly, GSM is moving the same way. Operators don't like Bluetooth Dial-Up-Networking, so phone makers remove it.
Anyway, CDMA is the future, Europe knows it. It would have come sooner, except for two things:
1. It is illegal/impossible in most countries in Europe to set-up a non-GSM wireless phone system. How's that for stifiling competition!
2. Qualcomm holds major patents on CDMA. European companies had to work around these, because they didn't feel like paying Qualcomm.
And for some people, 1+2 = 3...
3. European countries promoted GSM (by making it the only legal choice) because they saw how much money would flow to Qualcomm instead of Nokia and Ericsson if a CDMA system became the standard instead of TDMA-GSM.
If the industry is moving to commodity products, then you don't really have a choice. Adapt, understanding that your per-unit profit and control are going to suffer, or to be wiped out by your competitors. It's hard, but well-run businesses can do quite well on commodities.
QCOM does not have a handset division. They do have a division that makes chips for cell-phones (thats what the MSM in the FA refers to).
/in addition of Brew.
:-) and prefer to charge the users for every itty-bitty service)
The Qualcomm MSM has an ARM9 processor (at least in the more recent ones available to the public). In addition it has a couple of DSP engines and a bunch of specialised h/w on the MSM.
Qualcomm provides a reference software for use on the MSM. That is what shall now also support Linux. Until now, it was based on a home grown propreitary OS.
The reference software`provided is tweaked by the phone manufacturers - and expanded to write their own s/w. The layer of Linux provides a nice abstraction layer for application developers and the OEMs in place of
Will this be good for the OSS community - Depends entirely on how much of this Linux layer is exposed by the OEMs to third party application developers. In general handset manufacturers are (justifiably) paranoid to let unproven (in their labs) applications run on their devices - (and they are also a little greedy
I've never had my phone r00t'ed before. Should have great potential for haXX0rz!
McCaw had TDMA up and running in the US in 1993 or 1994. I knew a guy who had a TDMA phone at that point. Remember the old blue-green digital Moto phones?
No one had to mandate compatibility in the US, it came naturally. It would have in Europe also.
Anyway, like in all other cases, the government mandating certain standards has caused inefficiencies and restricted advances.
Whoops. Boy, I wish I could edit.
Europe could have used IS-54. But they didn't, they created an incompatible standard instead. This is why we didn't have much GSM in the US for a long time. Because the Europeans had made a standard with no backward compabitility. That didn't matter to them much because there were few analog phones in Europe. The US, on the other hand, had a fairly large installation of analog phones (I personally had a handheld analog phone before GSM even existed), in cars, contractor phones (dynaTACs) and bag phones.
IS-54 and IS-95 had compatibility, so of course US operators used them instead.