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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?
'... 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.
CDMA is better than GSM. That's why all of Europe is now moving to CDMA (WCDMA, UMTS, 3G, add your own moniker here...)
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)
The letters CDMA have two meanings: they refer to an air-interface technology, and they refer to a particular standard built on that technology, also known as IS-95. The technology is good. The standard is awful.
The sentence "CDMA is better than GSM" can only be refering to the standard, because GSM is a standard, not an air-interface technology. It's completely false, as anyone who's used both can attest. CDMA isn't location/network independent and it doesn't support, in its most widely implemented form, support personal mobility. It's essentially stuck in a 1970's mobile phone network mindset. It's sole advantage over GSM is the use of a CDMA-technology air interface.
The sentence "All of Europe is moving to CDMA" is only true if you switch meanings and start refering to the air interface technology in place of the standard.
I don't know if you're confused, or you're a Qualcomm shill. Qualcomm shills were taking advantage of people's confusion throughout the late nineties to try and ensure exactly this kind of "argument" could be made. People would post, apparently sincerely, "Well, GSM is based on TDMA, and my friend has a TDMA phone and the sound sucks and he doesn't have any features that aren't on my flash CDMA phone!", and more recently "Oh yeah? Well if CDMA sucks, why is Europe switching to it?" It's slight of hand. Stop it.
UMTS incidentally, which is what we're talking about Europe switching to, is essentially GSM2. The system is more modular, so operators can use different air interface technologies depending on their precise needs. Most are choosing WCDMA ("Wideband Code Division Multiple Access"). There is no connection whatsoever between this and the system Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless uses beyond a similar principle being used to transmit data between the towers and the handsets.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
Not to mention that Qualcomm apparently holds patents in the WCDMA space... Could this be a betamax vs. VHS type of thing where Sony held patents in both technologies?
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?
It's Broadcom that make the chipset used in Aiport cards.
go here to clear up confusion on wcdma/umts vs cdma2000 standards
CDMA2000
W-CDMA
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
Hey boss! I've got this great idea! Let's turn our product into a commodity!
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
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.
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.
Let me rephrase. The over-the-air interface of Code Division Multiple Access is better than the Global System for Mobile Communications over-the-air interface which uses Time Division Multiple Access as a standard. CDMA, in all its flavors, is more spectrum efficient and spectrum cost money. Thus, CDMA is better than GSM. If this were not the case then all the European carriers would not be rushing to replace the current GSM standard with a new standard based on WCDMA. Personally, I use a GSM phone because I like having a SIM.
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)
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.
Yes. Although, the trouble for the mobile phone companies is that most users seem to be happy with making phone calls, sending SMS and (strangely enough) downloading ring tones and are more or less apathetic to network technologies. If I remember correctly, the German phone networks got an extension for their GSM licenses until 2015 or so...
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!
Until the end of the 1980s, basically every (West-)European country had its own mobile phone system, which was (a) analog and (b) incompatible to the other standards. GSM was developed (from the mid-80s on) as a (EC funded) research project
to get a digital replacement for all this national standards. From the very beginning "removing incompatibilities" was one of the main goals. So when around 1990 a dozen (or whatever) states issued the new digital licenses, of course the technology was mandated. After all, nobody wanted again the situation that you need a different phone in Spain than in, say, France. (And IS-95 was not even an option at that time, since (AFAIK), it was introduced in 1995, like the name suggests).
Competition is good, but that does not mean "the more incompatible standards, the better". Mandating GSM created a level playing field across Europe for handset & network manufacturers and network operators (the latter, of course, regulated by the number of national licenses). That created a mass market and was very benificial for the consumer.
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.
The problem with backward compatibility in Europe would also have been, that - as I already said - there was not a single standard to which it one could try to be backwards compatible.
McCaw had TDMA up and running in the US in 1993 or 1994.
And GSM was going live (after one year delay) in 1992. The licenses were of course issued even earlier. And of course it is understandable that the European telecommunications industry did not just sit on their back and waited until some American company had something up and running (for which they probably would have had to pay licensing costs).
I don't know the technical features of IS-54 and IS-95, their advantages and disadvantages with respect to GSM. But GSM was not just mandated by the governments, it was developed collaboratively by all involved parties (network manufacturers and network operators) with their needs in mind, specifically (for Europe) the importance of international roaming.
Anyway, like in all other cases, the government mandating certain standards has caused inefficiencies and restricted advances.
Actually, it caused a big market and low prices, causing Europe (at least for a long time) to have the most advanced mobile phone market in the world. If that is "restrictive and inefficient" for you, fine. I think the introduction of GSM was a huge success story.
No one had to mandate compatibility in the US, it came naturally. It would have in Europe also.
I don't know how the US market evolved. But if 15 states in Europe each issued 1 or 2 national licenses without specifying the technology, I somehow doubt that compatibility across Europe would have evolved naturally. If there really were other standards available in 1990 which would have been as good as GSM, you would have ended up with some countries using GSM and some countries using the other option - and you could not just go from one to the other and take your phone with you...