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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."
500, in October..
That works out to $712 USD as of this post (click for a more up-to-date rate), but that will probably be European style - unlocked and with no contract.
It will be up to carriers in countries like the US to decide how much to subsidise the phone, over what contract term.
- 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.
RTFA, It does.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
It does. "WLAN" - from the site:
It's headed for T-Mobile. It cleared all the FCC requirements a few weeks ago and the specs list the 1700/2100 band that T-Mobie USA uses.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
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!
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
How are these specs better then the iPhone 3GS? The 3GS contains:
Aside from the hardware keyboard, I'm not seeing how it's better hardware-wise.
 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.
You missed the part where it said "it runs Linux". At that point whatever stats it has you multiply by 911 to get the real stats. If comparing to the iPhone, you multiply by 911 *twice* to get the comparison stats.
Act, Gary, act.
*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?
It uses flash memory as it's storage method. Call it memory or storage, whichever you prefer, & it doesn't matter, since it's both...
FTFW:
Mass memory
* 32 GB internal storage
* Store up to 7000 MP3 songs or 40 hours of high-quality video
* Up to 16 GB of additional storage with an external microSD card
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
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...
much better camera and 16GB removable SD cards are supported in addition to the internal memory
i have an iphone 3GS 32GB and if this thing is good in 2 years i'll trade my iphone for it. I like the iphone but it has enough problems for a competitor to come in and take market share.
My BB Curve has much better battery life than my iphone when comparing push email
Apple screwed up contacts importation and allows double and triple contact creation. RIM is better at this.
Apple seems to have taken a cue from Microsoft and if you read the forums, the magic fix is to restore as a new phone. Just like reinstalling Windows.
I like the iPhone mostly for it's flexibility. i have 150 apps on mine which take up over 1GB of space. with RIM's ancient OS it's impossible to do this. The Pre is still in beta but is looking very promising.
even though I'm an MCSE, Microsoft is dead in the mobile space. I don't even think they care. They licensed Active Sync to Apple, Palm and Google but you can't access MS Exchange from most WinMo phones or the Zune.
Built-in FM transmitter
Given that these are illegal in much of the world (although the relevant laws are not enforced for low-power transmitters), I wonder if this will limit adoption.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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
How are these specs better then the iPhone 3GS? The 3GS contains:
Aside from the hardware keyboard, I'm not seeing how it's better hardware-wise.
Up to 1 GB of application memory (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory) .mp4; codec: MPEG-4 .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263
Data transfers over a cellular network 10/2Mbps
Removable battery
Wide aspect ratio 16:9 (WVGA)
Video recording file format:
Video recording at up to 848x480 pixels (WVGA) and up to 25fps
Removable battery
Video playback file formats:
5 MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens and LED flash
3D graphics accelerator with OpenGL ES 2.0 support
Removable battery
32 GB internal storage
Expandable to up to 48 GB with external microSD card
Removable battery
800x480 resolution screen
Removable battery
There's more, but I'm tiered of copying and pasting. Don't get me wrong, the iPhone is nice, but these specs are better as far as I know (not sure about the widescreen). Oh, and there's a Removable battery
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
€ symbol is available by HTML entity: €
If you just poked it in by keyboard, I think slashcode will eat it.
Why? Cuz it's slashcode.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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.
Much, much higher resolution screen, 800x480.
I think you forgot the most important new feature.
It has a removable battery!
Yeah, it's a bit poo, I have all my music CDs ripped into ogg myself. However, it uses GStreamer so just install the proper plugins and away you go, I guess. This really looks like the phone I've been waiting for, I'll just wait for a few reviews to come out to see if there are any glaring faults, then my money is theirs :-)
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)
FM transmitter, micro-USB.
TODO - Insert Creative/Witty Signature
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
> Removable battery
That does it for me - I'm getting the iPhone!
"Another dumbass that doesn't bother reading the tech specs [nokia.com]:"
Whoa, some people don't *understand* those tech specs. Seeing "* Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900" doesn't necessarily make it obvious to people who aren't familiar with which signaling standards and frequencies a given carrier uses.
I think it's a little harsh to calls omeone a "dumbass" just because they don't understand the particulars of cell phone networks. Granted, this is /. so you hope most of the readers understand, but, even though someone is a 'nerd' doesn't make them knowledgeable iin *every* area of technology. They might know more than you ever will about astronomy, or quantum physics, or computer programming, and not know anything about cell networks.
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.
Low power FM transmitters are very common in the US. Many people use them to connect their MP3 player to their car's radio system. I'm guessing that is what this one is for. With 32GB (or 48GB) of storage you could use this instead of an iPod or other MP3 player.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines
It's a low-powered FM transmitter, so that you can use it to play music over your in-car stereo without needing an interface cable.
Pirate Party UK
N900 has a single-touch resistive touchscreen, compared to the iPhone's capactive, multitouch screen. The demo video shows an interesting single-touch zoom method on the N900 - draw a spiral, like winding a display closer or further away.
Actually the real things that set it apart from the 3GS are the following:
* Expandable storage with up to 48 GB with external microSD card (vs nothing) .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 (vs. some Quicktime codecs & FLV, not sure which)
* 800x480 resolution screen (vs 320x480)
* Video playback file formats:
* Removable battery
The rest is basically the same, especially CPU and GPU wise. I am not sure about the virtual memory stuff. Might be interesting for multitasking applications, although I am not sure how well this works out on the Maemo platform.
The iPhone has on the other side the advantage of a really slick interface and IMHO very good usability. We will definitely also buy one or two N900s for development, and so far I haven't seen one in real life. But I am looking forward to compare them to the iPhone in both performance as well as usability. Also I am looking forward to see what the SDK looks like, never worked with Maemo before.
Cheers.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
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
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).
Vorbis is surrounded by IP FUD. All the guys with deep pockets are scared of it.
However, gstreamer's plugin-based, so it should eventually be possible to find community support for the standard.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The iPhone is a fashion accessory, and fashion accessories do not require removable/swappable anything.
You dispose of, and replace.
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.
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
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.
Hmm... what is thin "European" style you are speaking of. I don't know how it's in other European *countries*, but here in Germany, you got two options:
Either you buy it without any contract or anything (like simlock and branding), and pay the full 500€, or you buy a plan for two years, and depending of the size of that, you will pay between 150€ ($213) and 1€ initially. With branding at the network providers themselves, without branding at independent (and usually cheaper) resellers, and simlock would be a rare surprise to see (perhaps on "prepaid with phone 'plans'")
But if you wait some months, you usually get it for 50€ ($71) or less.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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.
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.
Removable battery was mentioned in the parent. This should be redundant not insightful. Oh well, can't expect moderators to read posts before modding them can we?
Personally, I can't believe no one has mentioned the removable battery now that is a big deal!
[signature]
You must have a part time job for under 15 year olds.
*Everyone* I know at my workplace has an iPhone/Blackberry/Nokia Smart phone worth that much or more.
Slashcode supports UTF-8. Slashdot doesn't.
Yeah the iPhone is so free as in speech you can't install arbitrary apps unless you jailbreak it. Also as the other replier to your message mentioned, OSX doesn't have a BSD kernel, it has a Mach kernel with a BSD compat layer and some BSD userland.
Where's the iPhone's 3GS 5 megapixel camera with flash (and Carl Zeiss optics and integrated lens cap), and 800x480 @25fps video? Oh, wait, iPhone 3GS only goes up to 640x480 on the video and 3 megapixels on the camera, no flash, no lens cap.
Also, what's the display resolution? The N900 ix 800x480, a whopping 384K pixels. The iPhone 3GS weighs in at a paltry 480x320, sporting less than half the screen real estate at 153K pixels.
Identical specs indeed.
Program Intellivision!
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.
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.
Surprised? You need to keep up on your geek news.
This is a NOKIA phone. Nokia is one of the two main companies that objected to OGG formats (vorbis & theora) being specified in the HTML5 spec. They aren't fully confident about the patent situation regarding OGG.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Bad dog! Get off my lawn!! And, take your dumb kid with you!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That's bollocks.
Not exactly. We bought two N810s for a project. The first one is extremely slow to get a fix. The second one, which was purchased several months later, establishes a fix MUCH more quickly.
In other words, it appears that you and the GP are both right.
Well... I'd have to say maybe, but it's certainly not limited to T-Mobile.
Scroll down to 'Operating frequency'
* Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
* WCDMA 900/1700/2100 MHz
My guess is it will be sold unlocked in the US, much like many of their high end phones.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
Also I am looking forward to see what the SDK looks like, never worked with Maemo before.
http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide
Nokia also hosts VM images with the development environment already setup. http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/maemo-dev-env-downloads.php
Here I sit, all broken hearted.
Came to poop, but only farted.