Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Fears Carriers May Try To Undermine N900
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia is worried that networks may reject selling the N900 because it won't allow them to mess with the operating system. Nokia has previously showed the N900 running a root shell and it appears to use the same interface for IM and phone functions. Meanwhile, Verizon is claiming that 'exclusivity arrangements promote competition and innovation.' Is it too late to explain to people why $99+$60/month is not better than $600+$20/month?"
I know where my next phone is coming from.
I really hope European carriers will carry the N900, because I'm planning on getting one. It looks really sweet for basic phone + capable mobile computing device with apt-get usage that I'd like to use it for.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
He also said the phone might not sell well because it's only the fourth iteration in their five-step plan, and people might wait for the fifth, which is going to be the real deal. Hasn't this genius heard of the Osborne effect?
Finally a company gets it! We want a phone we can hack LEGALLY, that doesn't have Steve Jobs giant head staring at us 24x7 telling us what we can and cannot do with it. If they can really keep the carriers from imposing idiotic restrictions of their own, this will be the phone to beat.
> Is it too late to explain to people why $99+$60/month is not better than
> $600+$20/month?"
For some it may be. Why do you think you know what is best for everyone?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So for $20 extra, you get to use all the features of your phone.
except some carriers require a TWO year contract; so, that becomes:
60*24 + 100 = 1540
20*24 + 600 = 1080
Definitely better off buying the phone outright
"exclusivity arrangements promote competition and innovation."
The foul stench creeping through your nose right now is the smell of total bare-faced bullshit.
I'm coming to the conclusion that "competition and innovation" can only mean for "keeps the board in cocaine and blowjobs". From the number of times we see anti-competitive and anti-innovative measures hailed as promoting those same qualities, it seems clear that they can't mean it literally.
By this stage, I think "cocaine and blowjobs" is about the only credible interpretation remaining.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
The foul stench creeping through your nose right now is the smell of total bare-faced bullshit.
What, you don't believe it's "competition and innovation" to blow identical Verizon interface firmware into every model of every brand and castrate Bluetooth transfers so all Verizon customers have to pay network charges to get their own multimedia to and from the phone, no matter what the manufacturer's specs say? (Those of you who didn't know everyone else could transfer pictures and sounds directly between phones without paying for MMS: That's right. You must be a Verizon or Sprint customer.)
Their business model is based on locked down symbian
No, their business is on hardware. None of the Nokia devices I've owned have been locked down at all; they've all come with SDKs and allowed me to run software. Many of their customers add restrictions, but if you buy your phone from a carrier then you get what you deserve. Symbian and Windows Mobile? A bit disingenuous, given how few Nokia devices run Wince; they've shipped a lot more Linux devices than Wince so far.
I got a 770 (the first tablet in this series) under Nokia's Open Source Developers' Program, for a fraction of the retail price, simply based on existing open source contributions. I probably won't be buying an N900 - the hardware's nice but after trying to develop for Maemo I decided it was more effort than it was worth - but that doesn't mean they don't regard open source as important to their business model (oh, and I forgot to mention their WebKit contributions in my original post).
The fact that open source Symbian is hard to hack on doesn't surprise me in the least. Closed Symbian was also not at all fun for developers, and neither is Maemo. Based on what I've heard from a friend to used to work for Nokia, I'm much more inclined to blame this on the general level of competence of their developers than on any hostility towards Free Software.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What is this "support" shit? It's running Linux, If you want OGG just apt-get install it.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
From the article:
Which is total BS since Nokia has full control of the software on the device. The only reason for not customizing or locking down the N900 must be that they don't want to. A ballsy move, I really hope Nokia (and other manufacturers as well) will manage to wrestle control away from the networks and their nickel-and-dime walled gardens.
/greger
You need to add a new word to your vocabulary, I think. Here, I'll help you out - it's called "perspective". Nowhere in your linked article does it state that Nokia itself is actively engaging in, nor encouraging, such activities.
Now, to forestall the "They should be more responsible" protests, you should consider something.
Let's assume, for a moment, that Nokia, taking your Slashdot post to heart, decides that it will no longer sell any of its products to the Iranian government. There's nothing to stop the Iranian government from purchasing them from third parties: Would you then call upon every third-party distributor, reseller, etc., everywhere in the world to stop selling Nokia's products to them?
Let's extend this example to the ridiculous and assume that you do, and everyone agrees.
So, they go elsewhere, and let's further assume that nobody, anywhere, will sell them what they want... so, they go to Open Source, perhaps. Certainly, the raw tools are there, no? It'd take time, and money, but they're a government, after all, and they've as much of the latter as needed to accomplish the same task.
Now, learning this, you gnash your teeth in frustration: OMG teh evil Iranian gummint is using Open Source to oppress people! What are you going to do then? Call upon the whole world to stop creating Open Source programs?
Yeah, I see *that* happening.
So, to wrap this up: Don't blame the tools, nor the companies that sell them, blame the people that misuse them in whatever role or capacity.
Finally, to bring this back on-topic somewhat: The N900 appears to be exactly what I've been waiting for in a "convergence device": Sufficient computing power and features, open enough to play with and do neat things with, AND made by a company with enough world-wide presence to actually make it fly, if they do it properly.
While my employer provides me with a Blackberry with unlimited voice and data, it is crippled by Verizon and has no WiFi capabilities, and so I can't use it, for example, as a SIP phone to connect to my Cisco 871W at home and make voice calls leveraging our internal VOIP network to other employees (or outbound calls from it), nor access my corporate voicemail that way, nor can I use the 871W for data/corporate network/email/Internet access while at home: 54 Mbps would be quite a lot faster than EVDO-A and my broadband connection much faster as well, and, since it'd be via the VPN tunnel from my home to the office when I'm home, it'd be far more secure. A smart/converged phone with such capabilities would allow me to stop carrying my Cisco 7921G (one cradle at home, one at the office I go to most), and use just one device for voice, and add things such as remote server access as well either via WiFi/tunneled at home or at our offices, or EVDO-A/VPN when elsewhere, with a much better screen and in as convenient a form factor as my Blackberry, with a better keyboard, to boot. Hell, I might even be able stop lugging my work laptop with its Verizon mobile broadband card around with me everywhere I go, too.
My adopting a device such as the N900 would represent a loss of income to Verizon: I'd drop one unlimited data plan from them, and would probably be able to switch from an unlimited cellular voice plan to something less expensive as well. and THAT is why the cellular carriers in the US don't want fully open, powerful, "converged" devices, I think: The potential loss of income from business subscribers is enormous. Our corporate phone system is already VOIP over our WAN: Being able to extend that to mobile devices, seamlessly, represents a huge potential loss of income to them.
Regards,
dj
Wasted space ? I doubt it since most people want one. Averse to change ? No, the shape thing has been used before (Palm) and it's much less efficient than a keyboard. Plus having shapes for words makes learning Kanji seem easy. Seriously, the keyboard is one of the best input device for text. And last I checked, SMS, MMS, the frickin root shell, entering contact information is all text based input.
And seriously, it's not because people don't agree with you that you are somehow special and everyone else is averse to change. I personnally just don't like change just for the sake of change. Until someone comes up with something better than the keyboard, and not a virtual one that takes up half the screen space, they can keep their change.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM