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Nokia Releases Linux Handset
galaxy writes "Nokia releases their first Linux mobile handset, the N900 The handset is based on the latest release of Maemo, the Nokia mobile Linux platform, and includes e.g. GSM and 3G access (with HSPA, giving datarates of up to 10Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink on suitable networks), WLAN, Bluetooth, camera, assisted GPS and, most importantly, a touchscreen complemented by a hardware QWERTY under a slider. The beast is powered by an ARM Cortex-A8 processor at 600 MHz, has PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0 support, 32GB internal memory etc."
specs are better than the iphone and the interface looks nice. how much is it? I think the $299 price point is the most that most people are willing to pay
When? Coming soon is not releasing... yet.
- it is right there above Linux Penguin.
This is Slashdot, we are not supposed to click on TFA link to see more details....
:: There is no light at the end of a tunnel. There is a tunnel after a tunnel : Thom Y.
It's a mobile internet device that does telephony, not a phone. Phone capability is quite low on their feature list! And yes, it supports wifi..
FTFA:
* 3.5G and WLAN connectivity
* Quadband GSM with GPRS and EDGE
* Data transfers over a cellular network 10/2Mbps
* Data transfers over Wi-Fi 54Mbps
* Flash 9.4 support
* Full-screen browsing
Dumbass.
32GB internal memory etc.
If it has 32GB of internal memory, bend me over and call me nancy.
memory != storage. Please don't do that.
.
RTFA, It does.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
I could be wrong, but I think it has Wi-Fi. Looking at the link provided by the summary:
Yeah, at such a high price range, it better have Wi-Fi! :-)
Best "String" Ever!
It has wifi, just read the link
It does. "WLAN" - from the site:
(me clicks 'see all specifications') and poof... Right at the end of data network I see 'WLAN IEEE 802.11b/g' OK, I am exhausted, will quit posting now.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
I don't suppose there's any chance in getting this phone in a flavor that supports TMobile's 3G network?
Sure, but does it run Lin... oh. Nevermind.
The iPhone was a 'fail' for me for several reasons, but most of all:
1) No real keyboard.
(The N900 has a pull out keyboard)
2) No support for Flash
(The N900 has Flash support)
3) No real multitasking
(The N900 has multitasking)
4) Skype
(The N900 has Skype)
Add the fact that this baby runs Linux, and I'm 100% sold. This has huge promise.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Open source? Check.
Looks stylish? Check.
Hardware built by reputable supplier? Check.
Did I mention it was open source?
I know what my next phone will be!
 Wireless. Bigger than an iPhone. Lame. Â
Look at the N900 feature list - "Phone" is fourth down.
Maemo may power Nokia's high-end devices, but this is no reason to sound the death knell for Symbian. With regard to Nokia, they make a lot of phones that are not the N900, and do not cost 500 euro. There are also dozens of other companies supporting the Symbian Foundation, including many other manufacturers like Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
Symbian^4 will use Qt as its UI layer, and Maemo is moving into a similar direction (that's why Nokia bought Trolltech!) - targeting both platforms should be quite simple.
*snooze* Wake me when there's a CDMA phone worth getting. I live in a place with next to zero GSM service and absolutely zero 'home' GSM service. AT&T won't even let me get an iPhone with a number local to anywhere in my own state, for instance.
Symbian (from the famed Psion PDAs of the early 90's) can't be expected to evolve into the kind of operating system that competes with these new "smartphones" which are really computers with phone capabilities - iPhone, Pre, Android-based phones. Symbian is more a device controller than an O/S. It was designed for devices with very limited resources which is no longer the case. I'm glad Nokia has recognized that and has chosen a more powerful computer O/S on which to base their platform. I have an iPhone 3Gs, but I'm very happy that Apple has some tough competition because even though I may stay with the iPhone, it will only get better faster as Apple responds to the competition. I'm also happy that those who don't want iPhones have some worthy devices to choose from . Now, what worries me is Palm because the Pre is off to a good start, but is Palm big enough to sustain competition with giants like Apple and Nokia?
from the where's-my-root-prompt dept.
$ sudo gainroot
There it is!
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
The spec says "Music playback file formats: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a"
Being Linux-based, I suppose it would not be too hard to hack it to support Ogg Vorbis. It's however rather annoying that such support is still not provided by default...
I'm a bit surprised that "Maemo media player" does not list Ogg Vorbis or Theora as supported formats...
I assume there are add-on packages that do support them, but it seems like an odd omission for a Linux-based platform that's been around plenty long enough to have developed support for legally-free codecs.
(I still want one...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
The iPhone does have Skype now, you know. True, it's only allowed to work over the 802.11 connection, not the cellular, but it's definitely there.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I would think that by then both of these things will have been thoroughly outclassed.
The US is funny - most europeans (with contracts) get a new phone every year, though the companies are trying to elongate that at the moment.
Go ahead and ask. This is /. after all. We *like* to post questions here which would be answered by reading the headline, article summary, or first paragraph of the linked to article.
Connectivity
* 3.5mm AV connector
* TV out (PAL/NTSC) with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable
* Micro-USB connector, High-Speed USB 2.0
* Bluetooth v2.1 including support for stereo headsets
* Integrated FM transmitter
* Integrated GPS with A-GPS
I'm sure they mean receiver, from the other pieces I've read, but I still wonder if they have low-wattage TX capability for hands-free calls, a'la iPod transmitter for use in the car, the john, or other places where an FM receiver and speakers are available.
Yep, 1 million hits in 50 minutes will tend to do that.
No one here ever mentions resolution as a feature on phone screens, and they should. I have eyesight just good enough to pass the DMV tests without corrective lenses and that's sufficient for my old iPhone's 320x480 screen to be painful for me in comparison to the 640x480 screen on my new phone. I can read significantly smaller text, meaning I can see much larger chunks of real web pages, on the higher resolution screen.
The N900 described in TFA has an 800x480 resolution. That should get people very excited!
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
iRiver seems to be the only vendor that consistently supports Vorbis formats. /.ers please correct me if there are others.
This is the long-awaited phone incarnation of the N800/N810 Linux/Maemo tablets. It's similar to the N810 in having the slide-out keyboard, built-in GPS, and micro-SD slot. I've been using the N800 for the last 2 years, and while I like it as in internet tablet, I'm not sure I would like it so much as a phone. Some reasons: - The tablet is cheap and not tied to a contract, so possible to forgive many faults - Tbe tablet has a bigger screen (4.3" vs. 3.5"), which makes it more practical for browsing and ebooks - Lots of Maemo Linux software available, but mostly amateurish/undocumented/90%-complete quality - User interface is not nearly as smooth as iPhone, particularly the web browser - Most programs can't rotate, designed for landscape mode only
Qwerty only? You insensitive clods!
Just keep swimming.
I believe all previous touchscreen Nokia phones have featured resistive touchscreens. I hope this one is an exception.
The n810 is great, except when you need to make a (non-skype) phone call.
The new keyboard looks good, although it will take me another 9 months to adjust to the new key layout.
The black plastic finish should take more of a beating (drops, in particular) compared to the metal finish of the current unit, but Man! It looks so thick! http://www.sizeasy.com/page/size_comparison/23639-Nokia-N810-vs-N97-vs-Nokia-N900
The diplay appears to be the same, which is great, unless you're viewing through polarized lenses. The biggest complaint I have with the n810 display is the PDA-class GPU. The PowerVR chip should turn things around. Is it the same core as in iPhone?
Good to see the stand present on the rear.
Alert me when the price & demand drop so I can pick one up for $250.
I have both an N800 and an N810. I've recently been developing Maemo apps for them. I SO FREAKING WANT THIS PHONE but damn that's expensive. Still, I'll try to get one. Verizon can blow me.
And that's not what she said in this instance. It's 19+mm while the iphone is less than 12.5mm. I'm really growing tired of my iphone for a multitude of reasons. I'd go for this (depending on battery life) but that's just too thick for my tastes.
Anybody know if this device has UMA support on it?
... I'd rather just have my cell communicate directly to my carrier over my household broadband connection and not mess with an extra "skype" address to hand people for when I'm out of cell coverage area ... UMA is preferred since I don't need any special network hardware (other than a wireless access point) to support it.
... I'm using it with my BB 8900 at the moment.
Skype is not the win imo
T-Mobile supports UMA pretty well
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
I own an N800 and this thing is a huge improvement compared to it and the N810. The keyboard is not new, but there are features that are just making this thing right:
1., It's a phone. How much I which the N800 would have that. It's an actual phone!
2., They added a very good camera, but no video conferencing, which is smart. Skype video conferencing still does not work on Linux (yay, closed source software) and the early tries to make video conferencing work just went horribly wrong (they closed the video conferencing portal for the N800 series, the camera became quite useless). I can just guess, that in reality nobody wants video conferencing. (bring, bring: yea, what's up? Answer: Gosh, you look like shit today..)
3., Massively more storage and battery life.
Added with what was there earlier (Maemo Linux) this thing is quite impressive, and could in fact become a disruptive peace of technology in the market, especially if you consider that it is not monopoly chained to one phone service provider. Finally some real competition.
*takes out popcorn*
You missed a big difference for people in the USA... Quoting the specifications page
Operating frequency
* Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
* WCDMA 900/1700/2100 MHz
That's right. This device will be available with CDMA support. Which means that people in the US who are customers of carriers who didn't adopt GSM like everybody else in the world ( eg: Sprint, Verizon ) will, in theory, be able to use the phone, too.
And before you say that we should all "get with the program" and switch carriers to one that uses GSM, for many of us, for various reasons, it really isn't an option.
Thanks for obseleting my N97
If you're mad that they've released something better, that just doesn't make sense. Should companies stop releasing newer, better products because this would mean existing customers are getting "screwed"? It's not like your current device is any worse than it was before the announcement, you know.
I bought an N97 expecting it to be THIS phone.
If you're angry that you bought the N97 expecting it to do things that it actually cannot do... then, um... shouldn't you be mad at yourself for not properly researching the product, rather than mad at the manufacturer for not automatically including features you assumed would be present...? Or perhaps they should have read your mind and prohibited you from buying it, knowing that you'd be dissapointed?
It was supposed to have a fresh Symbian with a lot of power and a solid software base. Instead it's a feature packed piece of hardware with neglected software, an inappropriate processor, and absolutely no future.
"Supposed" to? Can you explain. Are you saying that Nokia lied and misrepresented the capabilities of the N97 in marketing material and spec documents after it was released? If that's actually true, then it is a valid complaint... but you have not provided any specific evidence thereof.
thank you nokia for keeping me from making an informed decision.
What exactly are you saying that Nokia should have done to help you make more informed decisions? Obviously companies can't announce products in the pipeline before they reach a certain level of maturity (e.g. many projects get canceled or altered). So they couldn't exactly tell you, when you bought your N97, that the N900 would eventually be released and what exactly it would look like.
When you bought your N97, you should have just made a decision about whether it suited your needs or not, and whether those features were worth the price. If the purchase was "worth it" then it remains "worth it" regardless of what new things are released. If, on the other hand, you are accusing them of producing bad products, or lying in their marketing material, then please give the specifics (with links, if possible).
did you catch that the N900 lcd has 800 x 480px resolution
Imagine a beowulf-cluster of these!
The regular OGG/vorbis library requires no special processor, but it uses floating point arithmetics, whereas mp3 uses only fixed point arithmetics. That makes ogg/vorbis a little bit battery consuming. However, there is a library called tremor, which uses fixed point to decode vorbis.
The iPhone is a fashion accessory, and fashion accessories do not require removable/swappable anything.
You dispose of, and replace.
The Symbian software marketplace dwarfs the Maemo marketplace, which to date seems to be mostly open source apps (in line with the audience of the N770/800/810, which was mostly Linux geeks). And new versions of the firmware are still being released - with more major releases due in Sep/Oct.
Is it really fair to say it has no future?
ditto.
...for more unusably shit Nokia components. They have A-GPS, because the things takes 10 minutes to get a fix. I can locate a map, find my position, chart a course to destination, and re-fold the map (properly) in less time than it takes to get a GPS fix.
Then, it's just a flat map, with your current position displayed. Granted, it will show my path from the Coffee Shop counter to the toilet, and back, but what the world needs now is Nav, sweet Nav..
Any word on which providers can support it? Without the right provider or options for providers, this might go the way of the Moko (in the US).
Hint: i've never seen a Moko in the US.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
you are no expert. No extra processor is needed.
I believe I said, "something like a math coprocessor".
Not to worry as an another AC reminded me when he/she said, "it uses floating point arithmetics..." Most older mp3 players do not support this in hardware, making it nearly impossible to get them to play ogg files. I don't think this phone will have that problem.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
There is a fixed-point version of the Vorbis codec called Tremor. Floating point is nice but not required.
My piddly little iRiver T20 plays OGG just fine, and it's about 4 years old and runs off a single 900 mAh AAA battery for many hours. This has a 1320 mAh battery and processors that must be several generations better in terms of power consumption.
If you really needed floating point, you could probably leverage the integrated GPU anyway.
People claim that Nokia nNNN functions as a GPS.
Any owner will testify to the contrary.
The product page says it has 256MB of physical RAM, and 1GB virtual...
Using virtual memory on a phone's flash storage strikes me as questionable. There have to be reasons that the iPhone/Pre/Android don't do that.
Isn't all the swapping going to wear out your flash pretty fast? And, assuming this thing only has one or two flash chips like most phones, and therefore can't bond a bunch of channels together with a fancy controller for speed like a SSD, isn't it going to be really slow?
Do the previous Mameo devices do this? If so, how does it work.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Have you (or anyone else for that matter) tried the Maemo 5 SDK yet? Is there a version available as a VMware Appliance, like for the N800 (which I have and use)? Anyone use the SDK installer on SuSE 11.1, instead of Debian?
It would be fun to get this and play around with it while I am waiting for it to hit the stores.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I think we have to rephrase that, because apparently, Linux got the future covered, and now only waits for the desktop to die. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
OGG is faster when it runs a floating point decode, but it has an integer decode engine (tremor http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/) that will run on anything fast enough to keep with the bitrate you are using.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Since we have clarified that there is indeed an FM transmitter, and that OGG format is available, does this mean that I can now broadcast a Truly Free (TM) radio station of my own design to any listeners within 4 meters?
Can we now, thanks to Nokia, create a new HAM radio scene, operating on Free (TM) Codecs over public wavelengths?
The return of Slow-Scan, via 5MP Carl Zeiss (TM) optics and WLAN?
I want to use OGG format for my audio, because I identify OGG and its apparent lack of mainstream support with all things underdog. The struggle is a significant component of my mission statement.
Will the n900 support OGG Theora for encoding and streaming video directly from the device? Does this require specialized hardware?
If I could synchronize my PIM data from my Evolution, then I'm sold! I've been looking for seamless and headachless synchronization with Linux PIMs for years!
Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse delendam.
With all that CPU grunt, and a GPU for 3D overlays, Augmented Reality apps would be a natural fit for this phone, but it doesn't have a magnetometer (listed) like the iPhone and the HTC Android phones.
There's no accelerometer either :-(
It's not enough on it's own to put me off it, but dammit, it smarts a little to not have all the toys that the others have :-)
The web browser is based on Mozilla stuff rather than Webkit. The other software capabilities sound pretty much the same as my current N810 device. Scanning the other various Maemo sites, I see nothing about any OS newer than the 2008 series being released. It seems the phone is being released before the newer Maemo.
One neat little part of the device that I hadn't noticed before in previous announcements of the N900 is the built-in FM transmitter. Pretty handy for interfacing to your car stereo.
The most important feature is that you can legally write applications for it without having to get the approval of Big Brother Apple. Although this may result in a severe shortage of Fart Applications (of which the iPhone currently corners the market), it will still appeal to people who want to write actually useful applications.
They are part of single, integrated unit. They commonly refer to it as 'jam box'. Must be shorthand for something or another..
While the marketing checklist is targeted at the iPhone (emphasis on running Flash, copy-paste which iPhone did not have until iPhone OS 3.0 etc), what is going to happen is that it is going to fragment the smartphone market even more.
We now have Maemo, Android, webOS, WinMo, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and iPhone OS as the major visible players, with Apple being the only one who has figured out how to incentivize their developers through the App Store, despite all its shortcomings. And Nokia has tried before too, with its N-gage system, and that didn't turn out too well either. So no, I don't think this handset is going to affect iPhone sales very much, if at all.
I would estimate something closer to 65%.
The app catalog alone is embarrassing. Twenty-five categories, some duplicated, some contain one app, and few really deliver.
I have had the best experience installing Debian, and running ARM ports. I wish I could bypass Maemo altogether.
http://dvorak.mwbrooks.com/unix.html#xmod
http://austinche.name/maemo/xmodmap.dvorak
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/ukeyboard/
Happy to help.
For a product to succeed, it's not necessarily true that it has to take sales away from other products (that is often the case, but not always). "Smart phones" are, as an 'industry' or 'market segment' or whatever, are still pretty new - most people don't have high-end portable digital handsets yet. So, it's easily possible that this Maemo platform can succeed without hurting Apple or the iPhone at all. Not saying that will necessarily happen, but possibly.
I have little interest in an Apple iPhone (I go back and forth on whether I want one or not), but I am definitely interested, at some point, in getting a phone with more computing and web browsing capabilities. I'm just biding my time, looking for 'the product' that I can finally feel comfortable buying. So far, I'm not interested in the iPhone because it's way too locked down - too much Apple control. I had some initial interest in the Android, but I wasn't particularly pleased with the T-Mobile G1, and no one else seems to be offering any Android devices in the US, so that seems to be going nowhere. Maybe Nokia can do what Google couldn't, in terms of getting an open, Linux-based platform for handheld devices, for which different hardware is available (or, maybe not, time will tell).
Shame you don't know what you're talking about.
A-GPS == "integrated GPS with Assited [sic] GPS"
I.e., it's GPS with Assistance, like the name suggests. Both devices are equivalent.
Ah, I thought it just meant that the phone had, you know, a GPS.
Bow-ties are cool.
And you don't think a real freakin' keyboard, including the keys that you need for using a shell & co, which the iPhone does not have at all, and real physical tactile functionality, is a killer feature? ^^
Seriously, no matter how good a phone is. If it has no phone, it is right out of the contest. :)
I lust after this phone the way your mom lusts after the many strange and exciting men who come her way...
But I have to say that I'm not sold on their keyboard design. I have to try it first. I've been quite happy with my Treo 650's keyboard, which is more cramped than this thing but (due to not being a sliding design) has room for the keys to be really be defined, vertically. This thing's keyboard has the advantage of more real estate, but it's flat, and I can't help but think that if the slider were to slide a little further the keyboard could benefit from the extra space.
I'm not saying I think the keyboard is going to be bad - I'm just saying I gotta try it out... 'Course probably various people with older Nokia tablet devices can vouch for the keyboards on these things...
Bow-ties are cool.
Everybody on here and Ars seems to be acting like this is the first of the N770/800/810's with a cell connection - when the N810 WiMax edition had support for Sprint's XOHM network since it was released April 1, 2008.
The biggest reason I would say that failed is because the XOHM network only covered like New York and Chicago at the time AFAIK.
Maemo 5 aka Freemantle: http://flors.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/software-freedom-lovers-here-comes-maemo-5/
Official Nokia Site: http://maemo.nokia.com/
Developer's Guide: http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide
Forums: http://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=40
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It's a mobile internet device that does telephony, not a phone. Phone capability is quite low on their feature list! And yes, it supports wifi..
So, what's the difference?
Seems to me it's just a matter of terminology. It's not a "smartphone" because Nokia has not chosen to call it such. But in terms of what you can do with it, it's a phone, and its form factor makes it a bit large for a phone these days but still within the smartphone size range (smaller than the old Palm Treos, 1cm longer and 2mm thicker than the Palm Pre, or 5mm thicker than the iPhone but with a slightly smaller profile...)
Whether you call such thing a "phone that can browse the web" or "an internet device which can make calls" seems a matter of preference - a matter of which features you want to emphasize as the device's main selling points.
If you don't think this thing is a phone, consider this: holding the device in vertical orientation launches the phone application. Why do that if the machine wasn't intended for use as a phone?
Bow-ties are cool.
Personally I don't care for Android because it's so Javafied. I really truly detest Java.
People who "detest" programming languages are posers.
How's that, exactly? Some of us have simply worked with a particular language or tool long enough to know some good reasons to hate it...
Personally I'm down with Java as a language, I just don't see the point of running everything through a VM on a pocket machine. Translate the app to native code when installing it to the phone or something, there's no point JITing or VMing the code at runtime.
Bow-ties are cool.
I'm in your camp, however this is too good to be true.
SOMETHING is amiss. There's a heavy negative attached to this thing somewhere, we just haven't heard about it yet.
Well, it's expensive (don't know what the subsidized price would be like, but I've heard some dire warnings about T-Mobile lately so I don't know if I'd be comfortable going under contract with them) - the battery doesn't have as much capacity as I'd like (around 1300mAH - similar to the iPhone but less than my old Treo 650) - and it's a GSM phone, which may pose a coverage problem for those of us in the US. (Same is true of iPhone)
If I've missed anything, chime in. I still think this thing is gonna be awesome.
Bow-ties are cool.
I refuse to buy any phone unless SIP is supported in the OS, like the fine phones on this list: http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/voice_over_IP/voip_support_in_nokia_devices.html
FWIW, I have an N95 connected to Asterisk all day/night long, and I get far better battery life than when I run a 3rd party application like Fring. )Note to iPhone folks, SIP via apps like Fring aren't even possible in your need-to-be-approved world.)
But since it is open Linux, I image someone will come up with something, better than Fring. Not that Fring is all that bad. But SIP in the OS on my N95 makes this a Telephone for me. What I really want is a nice clients to my servers. I remain optimistic on this device.
Maemo 5 includes the Telepathy framework, which seems to either be working on or has SIP integration.
The phone includes Skype that works over WiFi or 3G, so there is no inherent restriction on VoIP. I'd expect to see Google Voice for it fairly quickly as well.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
AT&T's coverage map. See all that vast, empty area?
That map is nearly six years old...
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to say GSM service is everywhere I want it - I just think the discrepancy between that "cellularmap.net" map and the AT&T map might be somewhere in that six years...
Bow-ties are cool.
Errrr; it runs "linux".
Remote management ; cfengine / ssh / vnc / apt. I guess eventually tivoli and evil stuff like that may be ported.
Encryption; all standard linux encryption devices.
Firewalling; iptables built in.
If you aren't able to cope with a device like that then I guarantee you that there are business units out in your company that are just going ahead and running systems you are failing to support. Yes. They have sign off on that.
Personally, though, I think the corporate use is really a thing that comes after. First people build applications and get to want to use the device. Then, after some time the device is "needed" in a corporate situation because it has a feature someone wants.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Ogg on devices with no floating point sucks... I have a iPod 2G and a DS which I have installed Ogg software on. Even to a non-audiophile it sounded terrible... I'm guessing way to much rounding.
Where's the source? If other Nokia products are anything to go by, it'll need fixing.
I have an Archos PMA, the community built software is ten times better than the original.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The reason is that the designers were looking at the big picture and not just the release date. Yes, today VMing every app seperatly keeps the phone from being even more cool than it already is, but just like every other piece of computer technology, every year, they percentage of the systems resource that is used by the VMs will go down. The VMs are pretty well fixed on their performance draw. The hardware will improve. Certainly, it has to be clear that running each app in it's own VM will be huge in helping with this OS's security.
I'm still not convinced that it does much for security, really. Anything you can do, security-wise, for security can be done with an OS with memory protection anyway.
It just seems like one more thing that's nickel-and-diming away the benefits of that improved performance. If they want the VM to keep the platform from being tied to a specific architecture, it'd just be rather nice if they'd translate the instructions once, like when loading the app onto the device...
Then on Android - there's hardware (on the G1) specifically for accelerating Java - and they don't use it because Android uses its own bytecode format that's not compatible... <sigh>
If I buy a phone today, that phone will not improve every year. Other phones will appear which are better... I'm happy for platform designers if they feel comfortable making choices that make their lives easier in terms of the long-term maintenance of their platform - but these choices are not what I want on my phone, right now... I want all those cycles working for me. :)
Bow-ties are cool.
just got an email from my account rep:
I am not aware of any nokia devices on our road map.
[name redacted]
Sr. Account Executive
Sprint...Together With Nextel
Personally I'm down with Java as a language, I just don't see the point of running everything through a VM on a pocket machine.
If we were talking about running a huge J2SE-compliant VM on a phone, your outlook might be justified.
Java the Language and Java the Platform are not the same thing.
The Android virtual machine, Dalvik, does NOT have a Just-In-Time compiler and does NOT understand Java bytecode (no .class files here!). It's register based, which means it uses fewer VM instructions to execute the same application code as a standard JVM. It's actually quite efficient to run multiple Dalvik instances on a single device! This is not your father's JVM.
Java is not bound to heavy VM implementations. You can compile it to native code (gcj); you can compile it with the Mono stack; or you can use any number of JVM implementations, from Kaffe to IBM Java to OpenJDK to whatever else.
VM advantages for mobile devices: security (VM sandboxing), system updates (update the VM software, not the actual phone OS), deal with hardware differences (port the VM to your device, hello instant app ecosystem, no ARM build vs. Intel build vs. MIPS build problems), crash protection (whoops the VM crashed, but the phone can just start another).
Everyone has their language preferences, and that's fine - but chiming in with an ambiguous opinion because you recognize a keyword in a discussion is not particularly helpful.
Sure someone will add it, probably pretty quick. But most users won't go get it and its lame that it won't be there out of the box.
Disappointed that most devices still place the camera on the back. I was hoping for the next iPod Touch w/ camera to do video conferencing via skype (example), but you have to flip it around to show your face. I'm surprised this is still the norm. It could be very cool functionality.
Personally I'm down with Java as a language, I just don't see the point of running everything through a VM on a pocket machine.
If we were talking about running a huge J2SE-compliant VM on a phone, your outlook might be justified.
The Android virtual machine, Dalvik, does NOT have a Just-In-Time compiler and does NOT understand Java bytecode (no .class files here!).
It also, as I understand it, means that the Java software on the phone cannot take advantage of the Java acceleration features of the hardware...
Java is not bound to heavy VM implementations. You can compile it to native code (gcj); you can compile it with the Mono stack; or you can use any number of JVM implementations, from Kaffe to IBM Java to OpenJDK to whatever else.
I don't believe I ever said otherwise.
Now, how many of these options are available on Android? Which of the above do you target if you're writing for Android?
One. You write code for Android, you compile it for Dalvik. This is one of the reasons Android tends not to appeal to me.
VM advantages for mobile devices: security (VM sandboxing), system updates (update the VM software, not the actual phone OS), deal with hardware differences (port the VM to your device, hello instant app ecosystem, no ARM build vs. Intel build vs. MIPS build problems), crash protection (whoops the VM crashed, but the phone can just start another).
VM sandboxing and VM crash protection are no better than the process-level sandboxing and crash protection you'd get from native code on a decent OS. At best, maybe the hardware will contain some nasty privilege escalation bug - which, I'll grant you, is worth something - but then only if the platform is designed so that nobody (including those who do actually need it) has native code execution privileges. But it's worth a lot more to Google, the folks investing in the OS and the platform, than it is to me, who would be running and maybe coding for the platform.
I don't really understand your point about being able to update the VM. What's the benefit there? What's so great about being able to update the VM without updating the rest of the phone's OS? Seems like, either way, you're replacing a critical component upon which large chunks of the phone's ability to operate depend.
Everyone has their language preferences, and that's fine - but chiming in with an ambiguous opinion because you recognize a keyword in a discussion is not particularly helpful.
Fuck you. I made my statement perfectly clear. To repeat: Someone's not a "poser" just 'cause they don't like a programming language. I actually do like Java, just not the VM baggage that comes with it. I don't think that's an unreasonable or uninformed position.
Bow-ties are cool.
No.
I am padding my response with extra (crocodile) redundancy, in keeping with the theme of the thread.
Hold both the home button and the sleep/wake button for ~15 seconds. That should solve your problem.
So that's what makes them explode!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Guys! You all missing the point that N900 as previous N700, N800 and N810 is truly open Linux platform with big and growing community around maemo.org I have Debian on my N810 co-existing with official OS with all it's bells and whistles. N900 is much faster so Debian will run on it smoothly and easily. It means you can have many thousands of applications of your choice running on your phone. Just install "Easy debian" package and put Debian's image on your microSD card. It means that you have full-featured computer in your pocket with a lot of possibilities opened by free software.
Besides it, new community developed OS "Mer" is synced with Ubuntu and developes quickly. It may became an OS of next generation for such devices.
Most media devices with music playback abilities do not have the function to play ogg (or flac for that matter).
nope, there are dozens of devices, including portables, that play vorbis, and dozens that play flac. flac is particularly cheap to decode. a partial list:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers
FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
Mobile phones are very handy for making phone calls, but when you go beyond that what I would really like is a device that fits in my pocket with a decent battery life that I can use with OpenVPN/OpenSSH so I can actually do productive stuff when I'm stuck in (relatively) the middle of nowhere.
If this phone (or any other) can do that at a reasonable price then, yes, I'm definitely interested.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
I heard the folks at Canonical are working on an Android execution environment for Ubuntu, so you can run Android apps in a real environment. Somebody out there will port this to Maemo, and there will be no reason to have a phone that runs Android natively.
Can someone comment on the development environment for this item? Thanks.
I didn't find any good comparison, so I wrote a simple comparison table: http://markogronroos.blogspot.com/2009/08/n900-vs-iphone.html
Looks like N900 wins iPhone easily on hardware specs, though iPhone does have a few advantages (slimmer, possibly better touchscreen). N900 wins on some very important software issues as well, such as Flash and Skype, though iPhone does have much more software (commercial), at least until old maemo software works in Maemo 5 (if it doesn't directly).
My guess is that iPhone will win in usability and responsiveness, but that's just a guess, Nokia has a chance to surprise us there. I'll be waiting for N900 eagerly and will possibly buy it at some point, although my E90 is just 2 years old and has much much better keyboard than even N900...
Oh, I really hate the three-row keyboard concept in N810, N97 and now N900. I've actually had real nightmares about using Nokia's bluetooth keyboard, which also has the numbers and qwerty row combined. That's definitely the worst thing in N900.
Nokia doesn't have a good track record at maintaining support to their previous Linux devices. I've owned a 700 and currently own an 800. Both models had issues. When I first bought a 700 I had to exchange it because the screen was DOA, the second one's screen eventually degraded into a colorful unuseable display. Again with the 800 I bought one then had to exchange it because it was DOA. While it hasn't died yet, they never seemed to correct problems with the OS that causes it to rapidly discharge the battery. Of course they aren't going to port Maemo OS5 to the older hardware, it's only for the newer device. I ended up buying a netbook and my n800 will probably end up sitting on a shelf somewhere as a clock, weather or photo viewer till it dies. I've sworn off buying Nokia products.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Every (?) smart phone has (at least) 2 CPUs: the Applications Processor and the BaseBand unit.
The AP runs all your fancy UI + user software, while the BBU just deals with phone calls
(well, interfacing with the cell phone network, at any rate).
I presume that BBUs are still very proprietary and locked down, or else cell phone companies
would (rightly so) freak out over the possibility of network hacking?
That is better than the laptop I am typing this from, the specs are simply cramtastic!
But does it run Linu-- Nevermind.
It doesn't matter that it runs linux. It runs a pretty locked-down linux-based distribution. It doesn't even have a terminal application. How do I create shell scripts? What kind of freedom is this? It's absolutely not for power users. I'd rather buy an OpenMoko or Android rather than this.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Uh, I was there yesterday on my Ubuntu desktop and it worked fine for me.
Please!?
I'll trade you the Euro or the British Pound symbol for the Pipe.
Hmmm, maybe I can swap the symbols in the OS.
BRB
In terms of hack-ability it seems like the ranking is
Nokia Maemo(with slimmed down X.org), Pre (directfb - framebuffer driver), Android (java rendering), Apple (I don't know about Symbian).
I have to hand it to Palm - their approach of porting webkit to run in directfb is a nice Idea.
Personally I think the future of app development on these phones is simply to use HTML 5