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?"

Comments

Another one for Nokia

[Jurily]

I know where my next phone is coming from.

Re:Another one for Nokia

[SerpentMage]

Even with the unlocked iPhone you have to keep relogging into the f***g device...

Here I am in Switzerland and there are two providers: Orange, and Swisscom. Swisscom refuses to unlock the device at any cost. Orange sells you an unlocked device, but the operator very carefully said, "be careful it is not all you think it is."

So I called Apple and asked what gives?

Every time you switch SIM card you need to relogin into itunes to reregister your device.

I asked, oh you mean everytime you put in a new card, once right?

WRONG!!! No everytime you switch SIM cards you need to relogin... Otherwise the iPhone will not work.

This is completely bogus and is why I am buying a Nokia N900 and not iPhone. In fact I have not yet bought a smartphone because each smart phone outside of the N900 seem to have one lock in or another.

My next phone

[A beautiful mind]

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.

Re:My next phone

[RalphSleigh]

So buy the phone and put your sim card in it.. I think what you mean is the carriers won't subsidise the phone, so you may have to cough up the full hardware price.

Re:My next phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Only an american (no offense) can think something like that.
In Europe carriers subscribe to a common standard for telephony that dates back to when the GSM was invented.
There is *no* concept of "carrying" a phone in Europe, either the phone conforms to the network standard or it doesn't (and if it doesn't nobody sells it).
*all* you need is a SIM card for the basic service, and a data plan if you want 3G stuff.
Of course you can't do 3G if your phone does not support the frequencies and standards, but they are *standards* meaning the only limiting factor is whether your phone is built to use them.

Welcome to a freer and more honest (though not as it could be) telecom industry.

Re:My next phone

[bhtooefr]

But, in the US, you won't get your plan any cheaper, at least from what I've seen, by bringing your own phone.

Re:My next phone

[Kumiorava]

To be honest I think this should be main focus for FCC right now. Why they allow this oligopoly to exist? If the $20-$30/month subsidy for the phone was taken out it would be easy for customers to save money on using phones longer or getting them from second hand market. Prepaid or pay as you go plans are not currently competitive as well, the pricing is even worse than with a contract for average users. Other thing with pay as you go plans is that you are required to pay for at least 250 (or something close to that) minutes per month even if you don't use them.

I have two two lines right now, one from AT&T where I pay close to $100/month even if I don't use it much. I have only 450 minutes with iPhone plan, some text messages and international calling plan. This plan is just about the lowest I could get for my iPhone. Second line is DNA Finland where I pay 0.66EUR/month for 0 minutes and 0 messages. If I use the line my call time and SMS that are around 7 cents per minute/message, other plans with higher number of discounted minute prices are available. Data is unlimited with 10EUR/month, but I don't use it right now so I don't have it. With DNA I can buy subsidized phone with $30/month, but I choose not to.

Great pitch

[Shin-LaC]

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?

Re:Great pitch

[TheRaven64]

I won't buy one because, as soon as the N800 and N810 were released, Nokia immediately stopped bothering to support the 770, which was only about a year old. Even Apple doesn't drop support for products that quickly. If I'd paid anything like the full price for the 770, I'd be quite upset, but as it is I just know not to buy Nokia's Maemo products in future.

Re:Great pitch

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

They released two more versions as "hacker editions" -- backports of the new, N8x0-only software to the 770s dated CPU. No, not everything works perfectly, and they weren't exactly pushed out quickly, but second-class support != no support.

Moreover, with the N8x0/N9x0 transition, they're making obvious good-faith efforts to allow community maintenance of the old OS (although this is limited due to IP issues, they're actually working to resolve these), as well as providing significant support to a community-run backport of the new OS to the old hardware (which is going quite well). The latter is especially auspicious, as a community-run backport means you never have to worry about some corporation arbitrarily ending support, whether after 1 year or 10 years.

If true, this is now the phone to beat.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:If true, this is now the phone to beat.

[Darkness404]

The N900 is -far- superior to the HTC Dream. Lets see here, the HTC Dream ships with 192 MB of RAM, the N900 ships with 256 MB of RAM. The HTC Dream ships with 256 MB of Flash and a MicroSD expansion, the N900 ships with 32 GB of Flash and a MicroSD expansion, The HTC Dream has a screen resolution of 480×320, the N900 has a resolution of 800×480. The HTC Dream uses a 3.2 megapixel camera while the N900 uses a 5.0 megapixel camera. The HTC Dream is without a doubt inferior to the N900.

Perhaps it is.

[John Hasler]

> 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?

Re:Perhaps it is.

[oh2]

The lack of competition in the US is funny from a distance. In Sweden we have 4 major carriers with their own nets, plus a number of virtual carriers that buy capacity from the majors. And Sweden is a horrible socialist country where the bad guv'mint decides everything for us...or something...

Not a 12 month contract

[confused one]

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

Re:it it a phone?

[oh2]

Yes, its a phone. Several tech journalists in Sweden has tried it out and it DOES make calls.

It's a very odd thing for Nokia to say at launch

[ribuck]

This is a very negative statement, and from a Nokia vice president no less. It seems a very strange thing to say at the time of launching a new device.

I hope Nokia is not buttering us up for DRM and lockdown in "Step 5 of 5"...

Meanwhile, the N900 will succeed wildly if Nokia's marketeers allow it to. We tech people like the device because of its specs, but where are the simple statements of the benefits for its other market sectors?

"Open source Linux with a root shell" is good enough for me, but what about "A phone with a real Mozilla-based browser", or "A music player with stereo speakers built-in", or even "N900 - comes with apps".

Verizon Says:

[Nautical Insanity]

"exclusivity arrangements promote competition and innovation."

The foul stench creeping through your nose right now is the smell of total bare-faced bullshit.

Re:it it a phone?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Straight from the horse's mouth.

Look at section "Call features"

Re:Nokia isn't a FOSS software firm...

[TheRaven64]

Nokia isn't a FOSS firm? The company that bought all third-party code used in the OS that most of their products ran (Symbian) and open sourced it? The company that's been developing the Maemo stack with community assistance for years and has released three Linux/ARM tablets based on it already? The company that owns Trolltech? Are you talking about the same Nokia as the rest of us?

Let them know they don't need to worry

[gpuk]

If you're considering getting one of these (and I certainly am), why not go to the N900 mini-site and submit your email address to get an alert when the phone goes on general sale. If nothing else it will show Nokia that there is legitimate, widespread interest in this phone and hopefully help them keep their resolve against the evil telcos!

N900 site is here: http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/ (scroll all the way to the bottom for the form that lets you submit your email addy).

Also, to whet your appetite of what's likely to come, check out this forum post over on the maemo boards: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=24272

Re:We are talking of the same Nokia, yes indeed

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Only patented formats

[Eunuchswear]

Here it says that it won't support OGG,

What is this "support" shit? It's running Linux, If you want OGG just apt-get install it.

Ofcourse it an be customized

[Greger47]

From the article:

Nokia executive vice president Kari Tuutti told Mobile News the N900 user interface cannot be customised to include network applications, which will be a bone of contention with the networks.

Tuutti said: "We have a good, long lasting relationship with the networks, but we understand that they may not be happy with the user interface because it cannot be customised."

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

Re:Let's see how locked down Maemo is, then

[TheRaven64]

I have a Maemo device, which has been running custom software since I got it back in 2006. There is a Nokia-supported way of installing a new kernel and it includes an apt front end that can be configured to connect to third-party repositories (although doing so requires clicking on a 'yes, I realise that Nokia will not support the software on my device if I've replaced it with bits from a third party' box). I use a third-party bluetooth keyboard driver, a third-party xterm, a third-party install of vim and OpenSSH regularly. I've never tried replacing the X server, but given that I have root access on the device (via a supported mechanism, no jailbreaking required), I imagine it would be pretty trivial.

The firmware update utility may require signed code (I've not checked; I don't think it does, given that there is the community-developed 'hackers edition' firmware that installs fine with it) but once it's installed I have complete control over everything in the filesystem. The proprietary bits are things like Flash and (in earlier versions) Opera - you can't redistribute these without permission from the copyright holders, but there's nothing stopping you from removing them from your device or providing scripts that replace it with something else on other peoples' devices.

So let's, indeed, come back in 2-3 months and see if Nokia suddenly reverses its policy. You seem to be acting like Maemo is something brand new, rather than a platform that Nokia has been shipping for three years.