Comparing the Freedoms Offered By Maemo and Android

An anonymous reader writes "Maemo 5 and Android have received a lot of publicity lately, despite the former not even shipping yet. Both have become famous partly for using the Linux kernel, but now that we have a choice, how do we pick one? Is the issue as mundane as choosing your favorite desktop distribution, or is there a more significant difference? This article compares the two from an end user and developer perspective, emphasizing root access and ease of sharing code."

Comments

Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Maemo 5 and Android have received a lot of publicity lately, despite the former not even shipping yet. Both have become famous partly for using the Linux kernel, but now that we have a choice, how do we pick one?

I assume that you'd probably pick the one that you can actually buy. Or you could opt to buy nothing, but that's not really picking one.

"We" don't really have a choice, do we?

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[TheRaven64]

Well, I've had a Maemo device since 2007, and a couple of my friends have Android devices, so I'm not really sure what your point is. I don't really like either, but I'd probably choose Maemo because it runs X11 and so it's much easier to port programs to. You can run OpenOffice, for example, on a sufficiently powerful Maemo device, but porting it to Android would be a lot more effort.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[SCHecklerX]

Simple. Get a Palm Pre. Seriously. WebOS is good stuff. Download the SDK, plug the phone into your computer, and type 'novaterm' (ok, first you have to type the konami code on the phone). Hey. Look. Linux. And the apps are all text (javascript to be precise). You even have things like vi and wget without having to install them.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[A12m0v]

Well, I've had a Maemo device since 2007, and a couple of my friends have Android devices, so I'm not really sure what your point is. I don't really like either, but I'd probably choose Maemo because it runs X11 and so it's much easier to port programs to. You can run OpenOffice, for example, on a sufficiently powerful Maemo device, but porting it to Android would be a lot more effort.

That's a reason NOT to choose Maemo!

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[Fred_A]

Maemo 5 and Android have received a lot of publicity lately, despite the former not even shipping yet. Both have become famous partly for using the Linux kernel, but now that we have a choice, how do we pick one?

I assume that you'd probably pick the one that you can actually buy. Or you could opt to buy nothing, but that's not really picking one.

"We" don't really have a choice, do we?

My choice wa a tough one. My mobile network salespeople were peskering me because I had accumulated a number of points that made me eligible for a new handset for a symbolic price. So I went to look at their online boutique and after a long pondering decided to go with a Samsung [something] (I think it has "star" in the model name, which may or may not be what my network calls it, or just a local name, or maybe it's what it's really called... but it's not on the Samsung web site)

Anyway, I wanted : reasonably decent phone (as in making calls and manageing contacts) interface, possibly Visio, definitely radio (we happen to have quality radio in Europe), maybe a few toys, BlueTooth would be a plus... and um...
"Ideally"... if I was able to ssh and open an xterm or even (hah) an X11/ssh tunnel to my network that would have been kind of neat. Although poking at networks on a cell phone that didn't have a real keyboard (as in the clamshell Nokia units that came along a few years ago, no idea what they were called) would, while geeky and fun, be mostly pointless. (Presumably there's a menu item for ^] or something...). And displaying my workstation's display in QVGA (or pretty much any normal app) would be an exercise in futility.

So I just went for a regular, marginally augmented phone. It can display a calendar, it can handle about ten alarms, it has a dozen fields per contact, it does 3G+ and handles GSM and whatever that US norm is. It also has a number of useless widgets to keep me amused. It has the mandatory useless camera.
It cost me 20 €.

And I'll stick with my 12.something inch laptop that weighs a bit under 2kg and lasts roughly 4hours whenever I actually want to talk to a proper computer on the other side.

So while I certainly *would* have considered an open source terminal (and that's assuming the Samsung handset I have runs 100% proprietary code), it didn't look alike any were available. If some were, I didn't bother going to page 5 (130 € and up). And on top of that, I'm still not convinced I need that much functionality inside what is mostly a disposable unit (sit on it, drop it, forget it, get it snatched, flood it --beer, water, coffee, soda--, have your friend's kids turn it into a spaceship, etc.)

OTOH I know I won't forget my laptop. I also know it was fairly easy to script an automated backup as soon as it auto-logged into my home Wi-Fi (not so easy with a phone, unless it *really* is wide open ; but how many actually are). Losing my laptop won't ever be much of an issue (unless I happen to be memory starved for my camera on a trip and have to re-use flash cards, unlikely given how many I have and how I work but who can tell) since my personal insurance will cover most of the loss anyway and my data won't be accessible to the thief (ok, maybe if it's the TSA and they pass it on to the NSA, that is if I decide to go back to the US).

In conclusion, while I understand that it certainly would be convenient to have a "one for all" device, IMO current phones are way off the mark. Every now and then, an interesting idea pops up, usually to be quickly killed by the network operator's (or some kind of patent troll's) greed.

Of course it *will* happen eventually. And a lot of tech and design firms are trying to push their designs forward. That they mostly suck is natural (getting it right will take some time) but the blunt of the blame isn't to rest on the designer's shoulders but on the ones who benefit most from neutering the hardware.

As always, follow the money.

We techies sometimes, for right or wrong, believe that we can fix pretty much any problem with a judicious application of technology. But we always forget that greedy people believe they can make an extra [$currency] by preventing us to do so (and they're often right).

[/rant]

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[lavacano201014]

Open a terminal and configure it to not start X11 at boot. If you want/need it, startx is your friend.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[TheRaven64]

Yes, it really sucks to have a mature system that supports remote display (want to run CPU-intensive apps elsewhere and display on your portable? Want to run apps on the portable and display them on a bigger screen?), is compatible with most UNIX GUI software written since the mid '80s, supports compositing, OpenGL, accelerated text rendering, and cleanly separates policy and mechanism so that window and compositing management can be easily swapped out and replaced.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[Microlith]

Basically, you have a Busybox session where vi and wget haven't been compiled out. You're still bound to whatever Palm decides to push your way.

Which makes me wonder if you can replace the kernel on a Palm Pre, or if it will only boot a signed kernel.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[jo42]

If you think WebOS is good stuff, you will orgasm non-stop for weeks once you see what is in the iPhone OS and SDK.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[Keruo]

Since Maemo is basically stripped down version of debian, you could theoretically:

# apt-get install pearpc

Install macos(the iphone version) on sd card, plugin and emulate it. (native speed since same architechture)

N900 has powerful enough CPU and enough memory to pull that off.
Ok, you might need some finetuning with sledgehammer to get the emulator to work, but this is theoretically possible.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[Anonymous Coward]

The kernel is not signed. OTA updates will clobber binaries you have already installed (shouldn't in general removes ones that are installed third-party). There's also nothing forcing you to perform the OTA since you have root access (although I would recommend against that for several reasons).

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[edivad]

Agreed. Maemo is the ONLY free platform currently available for mobile devices. Free as in OS source code. Free as in freedom to develop application with full system access. Free as in freedom to develop application in native code. And least but sure not last, free as in freedom to install whatever you like in YOUR OWN device.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[node 3]

Yes, it really sucks to have a mature system...

It does when that system is X11.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[kwardroid]

Could please specify which of the freedoms you list don't apply to android?

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[eric_herm]

Well, no, there is a lot of plateform running on OpenMoko phones ( Neo Freerunner ). To name a few, Hackable:1 , QTMoko, SHR, or debian, openwrt. And while most of them are quite new, QTMoko is using the qtopia project, the product of trolltech before nokia decided to let the community take care of it ( it was also called qt extended ). And SHR was ported on htc phones, debian was ported on PalmPre. And regarding Maemo, for something free and open, it has a lot of closed source software : http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages and http://blog.1407.org/2009/09/01/nokias-free-software-bullshit-and-insults-in-maemo/

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[eric_herm]

Pearpc is a powerpc emulator, afaik, macos for iphone run on arm, so I fail to see the relation between the two. Maybe you want to speak of MacOnLinux ( which is still limited to ppc so this would not work either, but at least, this would make more sense with the needed emulation ) ?

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[Patch86]

Indeed. Odds are that they won't be shipping on the same handsets, so it's likely that you'll just pick the handset hardware you want to buy and stick with the OS that ships with it.

I can't imagine many people deciding between phones based on their underlying OS. Maybe the geekiest among us, but even still.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[TheRaven64]

Do you actually know anything about X11, or are you just repeating the 'X11 sucks' meme that you heard from someone who heard it from someone who actually knew what they were talking about in the '80s? There were a lot of valid criticisms of X11 made in the UNIX Haters' Handbook (a good read, by the way), but most of these were fixed or became irrelevant (e.g. OMG X needs 4MB of RAM!!!) by the mid '90s. One of the authors of Apple's Quartz posted a good list of criticisms of X11 on Slashdot back around 2001 and by 2005 X11 had all of the features he complained that it lacked. It gained them without breaking backwards compatibility, so applications from the '80s still work on a modern X server, and it gained them without (as Quartz does) incorporating policy decisions into the display server, meaning that it's very easy to use the same X server on very different machines and pick a compositing policy which suits the system's constraints.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[Urkki]

And regarding Maemo, for something free and open, it has a lot of closed source software : http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages and http://blog.1407.org/2009/09/01/nokias-free-software-bullshit-and-insults-in-maemo/

Just a quick note: closed source drivers are a problem, because if the driver provider goes under, device owners are left out in the cold, without ability to keep their devices up to date. We'll see what direction Nokia goes with those. On the other hand, closed source "normal" software, is completely ok by me. I mean, what kind of open system would it be if it were closed to non-open source software? Not very open, that's for sure. If you don't like the closed source app, just install an open source alternative.

Re:Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend

[eric_herm]

Afaik, n900 is using SGX 530, and there is no free driver for it, Imagination technologies being quite unfriendly to open source. For example, poulsbo/intel gma 500 is using such a core, and we know what happened to the driver

Not a chioce right now

[Paolo DF]

I think it can be marked as redundant, but there isn't any actual choice right now; and by the way, do we have a shipping date?

Re:Not a chioce right now

[Anonymous Coward]

pwned by BadAnalogyGuy. Sorry, but when I wrote my post there wasn't any post. Funny that we both said the very same thing...

Re:Not a chioce right now

[Canazza]

the N900 gets released 16th November

http://www.product-reviews.net/2009/10/22/nokia-n900-uk-release-date-pushed-back-to-november/

Re:Not a chioce right now

[nirjhari]

On their website, Nokia says "end of October": http://store.nokia.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/productdetail_10500_10101_-1_10000367

Re:Not a chioce right now

[Verdatum]

That's the UK release date. For US, it's supposedly the end of October, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:Not a chioce right now

[Kenja]

Been using my N810 for a while now. Mamo is great. Its one thing to have a stripped down office app on your pda and another to be running Abiword and Gnumeric.

Re:Not a chioce right now

[hardaker]

Sadly, I think it's November for everywhere.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=355093&postcount=423

Re:Not a chioce right now

[Dragonslicer]

Newegg's preorder page says it'll be available on the 14th.

Re:Not a chioce right now

[rdnetto]

I sincerely hope that you do mean everywhere, not just the Northern Hemisphere. I haven't been able to find any info on when it's coming to Australia.

Re:Not a chioce right now

[hardaker]

My wording should have probably been "at least November for everywhere"

maymo? memo? meemo?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I choose that one, there's a danger that some geek will say, "You don't even know how to pronounce it, you clueless f***!" Big-time pain and humiliation.

How do I choose?

[Lumpy]

I choose the one that will install on the hardware I own. or the one that has the most pro user functions and anti carrier functions...

I.E. mp3 ringtones that are not locked out.
Backgrounds can be any file I choose to upload to it, same as themes. Give me a way to design and upload a look change without makign the carrier rich.

All features enabled and systems in place that keep the carrier from disabling features in the phone or forcing an update to my phone that is crippled.

Allows me to use a voip client at a wifi hotspot to circumvent airtime charges.

there are features on my S60 phone that I dont see anywhere else. If I press end on a ringing call it will SMS that person with a "I'm really busy right now, I'll call you back as soon as I can" That is a ROCKING feature that I dont see on any of these phones.

Finally scripting. I want scripting on my phone. a sequence to happen when number xx-xxx-xxxx calls me.

So I choose whatever empowers me and works on my hardware.

Re:How do I choose?

[dunkelfalke]

all the features you mentioned are available with windows mobile.

Re:How do I choose?

[schmidt349]

That auto-SMS idea is amazing, and one of the reasons why even as an iPhone developer I'm annoyed at Apple for locking us out of making apps to fill in that kind of functionality. I respect that they need to make sure the phone doesn't blow up whatever network it happens to be running on or ring up a $500 bill for the user, but you would think that something that cool would be really trivial to write now that everything else is in place.

Another idea: why not have the phone give you a couple of options on the auto-SMS that you can write yourself, i.e. "in a meeting right now," "at the theater," "soldering my fingers to the windowsill," or vary the auto-SMS depending on the caller? I don't know if you can roll this kind of functionality yourself on Android, but if you can Apple is going to be sweating bullets in a year or so.

Re:How do I choose?

[LynnwoodRooster]

My Samsung i760 running Windows Mobile 6.1 does just that - if I ignore (press end while its ringing) a phone call a little window pops up asking if I'd like to send an SMS to the caller, and I can choose from a set of pre-canned messages or create a custom message. Really quite handy!

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://gnobal.net/dindy

Done already at least once, though I wish Dindy would work well with the brilliant Locale.

Re:How do I choose?

[sonnejw0]

Why would you want to send an auto-SMS and waste a text message when you don't answer a call? Isn't it implied that if it goes directly to voicemail that I'm busy and I will call back? Are the people that call you really that paranoid that you don't like them that they need an SMS to tell them that you didn't answer your phone but you still want to be friends?

I mean, sure, it's great that the phone's OS allows that kind of open development and all, but ... honestly?

Re:How do I choose?

[EQ]

"There are features on my S60 phone that I dont see anywhere else". You don;t see them -- I have, have you looked at the N900/Maemo? Sounds like the Maemo phone is what you want - it likely does all that because you have root access, and its Linux/GTK, so compile it yourself. Plus it runs python no problem etc.

Re:How do I choose?

[morgan_greywolf]

You don't even need a Windows Mobile device or even a smartphone for that feature. It's built in on most LG phones.

Re:How do I choose?

[TheRaven64]

I've never used this functionality on my phone, but it's worth noting two things. Firstly, lots of people these days are on unlimited texting plans, so sending the text doesn't cost them anything (and only in the US can you find people stupid enough to agree to pay to receive texts). On my phone, the response message is tied to the profile, which can be changed in a couple of button presses. You can define the message to say when you will be free, so the caller gets some feedback, rather than just having to guess when you might be answering your phone. If you go into a meeting, you can set it to auto-respond with 'I'm in a meeting until 3, call me back after then' and then you can send that to anyone with a single button press.

Re:How do I choose?

[CaptainZapp]

If I press end on a ringing call it will SMS that person with a "I'm really busy right now, I'll call you back as soon as I can" That is a ROCKING feature that I dont see on any of these phones.

My 9300 (Symbian under S80, sadly discarded) has another SMS killer feature: You can schedule SMSes and I haven't seen that anywhere else.

Re:How do I choose?

[ap7]

In S60v3 Nokia phones, when you choose to send the SMS, you are presented with the standard SMS writing interface, with a basic template already filled in saying 'Sorry, I will call later'. Simply press send. If you so choose, you can edit it to whatever you want and then press send. Its been around for a long time and I am kind of surprised other phones still have not copied this.

Re:How do I choose?

[dunkelfalke]

Not at the operating system level, but there are about 10 different sms schedulers for WM.

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

All those features minus usability for touchscreens, you mean. :)

Re:How do I choose?

[angryphase]

Most phones offer message templates. Create any generic salutation or excuse you can think of and then simply select the call from any call log application and in most cases you can send a templated SMS message without fear of being told off for not answering your phone.

Re:How do I choose?

[SpooForBrains]

Windows Mobile is like the two Matrix sequels or the Star Wars prequels. We pretend it doesn't exist.

Re:How do I choose?

[SpooForBrains]

The Handspring Treo (yes, before they were taken over by Palm) had this. In fact, usability wise, the handspring Treo 600 has not been bettered by any device since.

Re:How do I choose?

[PitaBred]

Which is great, as long as the phone is running. In my experience, WinMo phones need a firmware reset every couple of months or else buttons and functions start flaking out, which is completely unacceptable for a phone. It has happened with every WinMo phone I have seen.

Re:How do I choose?

[Tumbleweed]

Windows Mobile is like the two Matrix sequels or the Star Wars prequels. We pretend it doesn't exist.

Dude, what are you talking about, they never made another Matrix or the Star Wars prequels! I *wish*!

Too bad they never made a sequel to Highlander, either. *sigh* Oh well...maybe someday.

Maybe some day they'll make a third Alien movie, too. Man, how kick ass would _that_ be! Hicks was a great addition - can't wait to see what they do with him _and_ Ripley in the mix again. And you know Newt is gonna grow up to kick some serious ass.

Still, sometimes you have to respect the maker's original vision. Some things aren't meant to be continued beyond an originally envisioned ending, like Babylon 5. Imagine trying to make more of that after such a perfect ending!

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

treo had it, sharksms i believe

Re:How do I choose?

[Blakey Rat]

I have some bad news for you...

They're making a Mad Max 4.

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do all that on S60.

Re:How do I choose?

[dunkelfalke]

Not in my case and I used WM phones since the first one (HTC Wallaby) came out.
A soft reset is sometimes needed, yes, but if you need a hard reset then something is seriously fucked up.

Re:How do I choose?

[Late Adopter]

I choose the one that will install on the hardware I own. or the one that has the most pro user functions and anti carrier functions...

I.E. mp3 ringtones that are not locked out. Backgrounds can be any file I choose to upload to it, same as themes. Give me a way to design and upload a look change without makign the carrier rich.

All features enabled and systems in place that keep the carrier from disabling features in the phone or forcing an update to my phone that is crippled.

Allows me to use a voip client at a wifi hotspot to circumvent airtime charges.

The Palm Pre is what you're looking for (though I don't think there's a voip app yet... just that Palm doesn't have the ability to lock one out when it comes around).

In all seriousness, I love the philosophy behind my Pre. It doesn't come with an install CD. There's no such thing as "Pre software". It works with internet services and data protocols you already have. Mail, chat, calendar, and contacts sync through Google. All uploads to the phone (ringtones, wallpapers) and downloads from it (photos) are done on a flat file-system on a USB mass storage device (standard USB micro cable, BTW, the same one that powers it). Music goes through iTunes, not some branded "Sprint Pre Jukebox" (yes, they should've used the less proprietary MTP, but you can upload as flat files if you like). Apps can be (and are) created by third parties and installed without Sprint/Palm's approval. Including a bluetooth tethering app.

Using common preexisting standards. Not creating its own protocols to lock you into their services. All features available and unlocked. Slashdotters should approve of this.

Re:How do I choose?

[hardaker]

So... In essence you're saying that for WiMo every once in a while you need to format and reinstall? Now... what other OS have I seen that advice attached to before.

Re:How do I choose?

[forgottenusername]

there are features on my S60 phone that I dont see anywhere else. If I press end on a ringing call it will SMS that person with a "I'm really busy right now, I'll call you back as soon as I can" That is a ROCKING feature that I dont see on any of these phones.

Do not want. Therein lies the issue with 'features'; you love it, I think it's godawful. I'm assuming you can disable that function but most of the time I don't want to pick up and instead press end it's because;

- it's someone I really don't want to talk to or know I am available
- it's a telemarketer or a number I don't recognize
- I'm pissed off and don't want to talk to anyone

In none of those cases would I want to send an auto-text.

Re:How do I choose?

[bemymonkey]

You mean there are smartphones on the market that DON'T support those features?

Hell, with the exception of that auto-SMS feature (which is awesome, by the way... I gotta find a way to do that) and the scripting, all my WinMo phones have been able to do these things... I was under the impression that only dumb phones still locked you in (i.e. only carrier-approved themes, ringtones, backgrounds and crap like that).

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have some bad news for you...

They're making a Mad Max 4.

Please tell me you jest?

I thought Mel Gibson went all "jim Jones" and a Jonestown constructed somewhere in southern CA?

Re:How do I choose?

[crashumbc]

Neat! is it a feature you need to turn on? Mine doesn't do that. (I have a i760 wm6.1 also)

Re:How do I choose?

[Lumpy]

Actually hard reset is needed.. and some handsets like the Samsung Blackjack. you need to let the phone "rest" without a battery in it for a couple of days to get rid of strangeness like refusing to let go of out of range cell towers, going automatically to speakerphone when you answer and you cant get out of it without removing the battery..

Both I experienced with the BlackJack II with the WM6

WM5 NEVER gave me those problems. It just simply never did a consistant Email pull. I had to manually pull at times.

I switched to a symbian smartphone and gained all I wanted after flashing the phone with the stock firmware instead of the screwed up one from AT&T/Cingular.

Also Windows Mobile is NOT going to stay "open" Microsoft has announced they will add features that carriers are requesting... which means locking up some of the features to increase revinues.

Re:How do I choose?

[dunkelfalke]

Okay, let me rephrase: a hard reset was never needed (except right after ROM update) on my HTC Wallaby, HTC Himalaya, HTC Blue Angel, HTC Universal, HTC Athena and HTC Blackstone.

I cannot speak for other handsets, though.

Re:How do I choose?

[StayFrosty]

(and only in the US can you find people stupid enough to agree to pay to receive texts).

I know it's fun to bash Americans, but in my experience this is because some people are not given a choice. Where I live, I was lucky enough to find a smaller regional provider who does not charge for incoming texts (or calls.) My previous provider (Cellular One) didn't charge for incoming texts until they were bought out by AT&T. This is one of the reasons I switched carriers. Where my parents live the only two available providers are Alltel and AT&T. Both carriers charge for incoming texts unless you have the unlimited text plan. Since they don't text enough to warrant the unlimited plan on all of their phones, it's cheaper to pay for the incoming texts. You are absolutely correct when you say it's stupid, but when almost every carrier charges it's hard to get away from it.

Re:How do I choose?

[CortoMaltese]

Finally scripting. I want scripting on my phone. a sequence to happen when number xx-xxx-xxxx calls me.

On the N900 you could use Python and listen for the D-Bus messages related to phone calls.

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell about Windows Mobile phones as I don't own one, but the experience I had with a Windows Mobile based GPS navigator made me swear I'll never buy anything with that operating system inside.

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Palm Treo's. . .

Re:How do I choose?

[Trahloc]

Yup, HTC knows what the hell they're doing. I love mine, I saved my old ones and bought my friends old ones purely to keep them around as mobile book readers/gaming toys/streaming radio players/kickass pdas.

Re:How do I choose?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Didn't know that... Thanks! I guess since the iPhone doesn't have it, Steve Jobs didn't think it was worthwhile and thus we should not need or use it...;)

Re:How do I choose?

[LynnwoodRooster]

You can use this freeware tool, there are a few other freeware tools, or use SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 - a REALLY great UI, easy, big buttons, and slick enough it makes my iPhone toting friends go "whoa". HIGHLY recommended. I plan on getting the new HTC Touch Pro 2 (my i760 has a LOT of battle scars), and TF3D will be gone - it will be Mobile Shell 3.5 instead.

Re:How do I choose?

[PitaBred]

My wife and her brother both had Motorola Qs. They were both abysmal machines, dropping calls, needing reset, lots of random crap. As was the T-Mobile work-alike, the Dash, the HTC Excalibur.

Re:How do I choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a one-liner on the n900. Seriously. All doable from the command line in just a single line.

Of course, someone will wrap that single line up in a horrific bloaty GUI app that sucks memory and battery, but that's the world of GUIs for you.

Disclaimer - I work for Nokia.

Re:How do I choose?

[jfanning]

Just because YOU don't see the point doesn't make it a worthless feature.

Re:How do I choose?

[TheRaven64]

No, it's easy to get away from it, you complain to the regulator that this is price gouging. Of course, that requires you not to have crippled your regulators because they interfere with some quasi-religious view of the free market.

Re:How do I choose?

[SkyDragon]

Reading this makes me glad I have a phone that I can use to RING and receive calls from anybody..... I think it can do that SMS thing.... . . . Did I say it can receive calls? P

The writer is clueless about end users

[InsaneProcessor]

The reason the providers lock the phone to their service (besides profit) is support. They only need to support one variation of the platform. More than that is way too costly. The end user in the U.S. wants support from one place not two. If they didn't do this then the average (idiot) user would hear "this is an issue with your device, contact the manafacturer" and "it is your service provider that is causing your problem, contact them". When you want support, you don't want to chase around to get it.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[vadim_t]

There's more than one kind of end user.

As an end user, and potential programmer for the platform this is precisely the sort of review I wanted. It doesn't work for the non-technical user maybe, but there will be plenty reviews for those.

Personally as an user I want lack of restrictions and don't give a damn about support -- I've never ever called it for anything I own.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[Interoperable]

You need to install a dummy package that simply involves agreeing to the risks associated with root access. They could simply say "if you agree to it, to waive the right to software support." It would be reasonable to do this because obviously they can't help someone who was convinced to run "rm -r /*" as root. (By the way, do it, it's super-fun!)

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[JohnFen]

There must be a nontrivial market consisting of people like me who don't care about support as much as they care about functionality.

The Maemo looks good. It's the first smartphone that I'm actually excited about!

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[BlackCreek]

I second this.

Most users don't need root, nor have any need for source code access. Most users have access to support from the manufacturer, and are fine with that.

Judging from this guy's questions, he already had a conclusion, and started asking questions to justify his points of view. The article is flamebait beginning to end. Some notes:

1. In practice, any Gnome/KDE GUI app will simply not run properly in the display resolution of a phone, and not lend itself well to a touch screen interface. When you want to talk about the great stuff you can do with MAEMO, and you decide to illustrate with XEYES, I say you are out of touch with reality.
2. Android forces a rewrite of even Java code, but it also provides full application isolation. Nowhere the security advantages of it were considered.
3. Android is also offered with root access from Google (ADP) and with the Geekphone from Spain. The fact that you can also buy it in a locked state, doesn't disqualify the platform.
4. As a developer, I also care about the fact that the new MAEMO APIs are scheduled for deprecation before its release. Having a stable, well documented API matters. A lot.

The N900 will (hopefully) be a great phone, no need to go on bashing the competition in order to promote it.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[ultrabot]

The Maemo looks good. It's the first smartphone that I'm actually excited about!

That's because it's the first "phone" that's actually a real computer, not a locked down piece of plastic.

I just got an N810, and I'm loving it. As a double-plus, you can actually get a used one cheap now that everybody is buying an N900.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[PrescriptionWarning]

that seems no different than the world of PCs and 3rd party applications. Since phones are becoming more like PCs by the year, why should the expectations based solely on support be any different? I mean its not like the support people are incapable of figuring out a problem is caused by a 3rd party software and telling the user to bother them instead.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[FictionPimp]

Luckily, I was able to find another computer to post from.

You sir are an asshole. :-p

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[synoniem]

Well, I do rm-r /* quite frequently and do not see the fun of it. But maybe that the lack of fun is because I do it in a chrooted environment to clean it up.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[_Sprocket_]

By the OP's reasoning, the whole Internet thing could never have worked. Who could think that an ISP could possibly run a helpdesk that supported an entirely random selection of hardware and operating systems? It would have been impossible. But it happened.

Yeah - I put time at a helldesk. We had all manner of odd calls (one dude even asked for us to print out bible passages for him so he could come by and pick them up). But the majority were pretty straight forward and entirely in scope with getting someone online.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice, any Gnome/KDE GUI app will simply not run properly in the display resolution of a phone, and not lend itself well to a touch screen interface

You have many valid points, but are you aware that the resolution of the entire Maemo range thus far (ie 770, N800, N810, N900) are all 800x480? That's the same as the original 7" Asus EeePC and significantly better than most of the smartphone competition (often 480x320).

True, desktop applications will work better on a desktop machine with keyboard/mouse, but Maemo is surprisingly capable. As long as you're willing to use the stylus, most desktop applications would work reasonably well as long as right-click/hover-overs weren't required and it was reasonably thrifty with CPU/RAM.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[vadim_t]

Most users don't need root, nor have any need for source code access. Most users have access to support from the manufacturer, and are fine with that.

But I'm not "most users" and will choose precisely on criteria like this. I assume I'm the intended audience. Not everything has to be written for the layman.

In practice, any Gnome/KDE GUI app will simply not run properly in the display resolution of a phone, and not lend itself well to a touch screen interface. When you want to talk about the great stuff you can do with MAEMO, and you decide to illustrate with XEYES, I say you are out of touch with reality.

But this is mostly unimportant. It may not look perfect, but it should be fairly simple to fix the UI, especially when compared with writing from scratch or rewriting significant amounts of the codebase.

The xeyes thing IMO simply illustrates that you can run any random thing on it without fuss -- which has huge value in my view.

Android forces a rewrite of even Java code, but it also provides full application isolation. Nowhere the security advantages of it were considered.

As somebody who wants an advanced phone that can be used as a computer and not as a restricted platform I don't really find it much of an advantage. What I want is pretty much a tiny Linux box that fits in my pocket and makes calls. And it looks like that's what it'll be.

Android is also offered with root access from Google (ADP) and with the Geekphone from Spain. The fact that you can also buy it in a locked state, doesn't disqualify the platform.

Ok, this is interesting, didn't know. Still, that I'm one of the few people with good access to the device lowers its value for me. I may be able to mess all I want with it, but if other people have to jump through hoops to use anything I come up with then that's annoying.

As a developer, I also care about the fact that the new MAEMO APIs are scheduled for deprecation before its release. Having a stable, well documented API matters. A lot.

Please elaborate on this?

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[beerbear]

except that it's not a phone.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[Ptur]

I just got an N810, and I'm loving it. As a double-plus, you can actually get a used one cheap now that everybody is buying an N900.

Oh please don't. My n810 is frustrating me like hell whenever I try to do anything else on it than read email, chat or open *simple* webpages. It is underpowered and unsupported (no future updates for you), the only good thing about it is the display.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[Ptur]

Let's correct my support claim a small bit: There is actually good news for the n8x0, it's called Mer (http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer)

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[pjr.cc]

I couldn't agree more...

as a loves-to-hack-around-in-linux type, both the platforms are intriquing and the nokia's more-like-linux abilities make it something i'd buy to play with (i.e. a secondary phone that im not reliant on). The android based ones also have a similar attraction, but ultimately if you wanted to do something more-like-linux on them you'd be doing alot more work.

Personally, i've always had in the back of my mind the idea of writing a text-based (ncurses) interface to a phone just to see how functional it could actually be and see how fast you could actually make it.

Maybe someone will (or already has) port maemo back to the android devices...

Still, its an interesting read.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[ciderVisor]

'rm' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Hmmmm, yeah, super fun !

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[Anonymous Coward]

The "official" UI of n900 is based on GTK. The "official" UI of the next iteration will be based on Qt. You can run apps using either set of libraries on the device, but that is what the defaults will be, and using the "other" library will take up more disk space and runtime memory.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[BlackCreek]

As a developer, I also care about the fact that the new MAEMO APIs are scheduled for deprecation before its release. Having a stable, well documented API matters. A lot.

Please elaborate on this?

I don't know if things got clearer since this article was written. Anyways, this is what I was referring to:
"""
Furthermore, the difficulty of the toolkit switch between Fremantle and Harmattan is compounded by the fact that Fremantle will break compatibility with the Maemo 4.x-series, thus forcing two consecutive rewrites onto developers."""

http://lwn.net/Articles/341391/

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[pradeepsekar]

In the GSM world, all you have to do is try your SIM on a different device, and you know if it is the network or the device. I prefer manufacturers who get users the features they need in their handsets, and telcos who look after networks. All artificial restrictions go away when you combine this with number portability.

There is no shortage of bundled and locked handsets and plans in the GSM world too. So subsidizing upfront purchase prices for the particular segment of buyers is very much possible, and happens quite a bit.

The CDMA platform may be more spectrum efficient, but IMHO, GSM wins out overall - from an user perspective at least.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[BlackCreek]

In practice, any Gnome/KDE GUI app will simply not run properly in the display resolution of a phone, and not lend itself well to a touch screen interface

You have many valid points, but are you aware that the resolution of the entire Maemo range thus far (ie 770, N800, N810, N900) are all 800x480? That's the same as the original 7" Asus EeePC and significantly better than most of the smartphone competition (often 480x320).

True, desktop applications will work better on a desktop machine with keyboard/mouse, but Maemo is surprisingly capable. As long as you're willing to use the stylus, most desktop applications would work reasonably well as long as right-click/hover-overs weren't required and it was reasonably thrifty with CPU/RAM.

My point is that too many KDE/Gnome stuff has its size hardcoded. A second issue, is that most have too many buttons for a small screen device that I at least would rather operate using my fingers.

Besides porting applications to a 3G connected device is different than just fixing these GUI issues. The network is very often unreliable. Android solved that by making strict requirements about how you could make network access (you need to use another thread to avoid freezing the UI). Does anyone knows how MAEMO deals with this?

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[s73v3r]

I'm similar, and I've rooted my Android and such, but you have to realize that people like us are in the minority. We're not most customers.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[vadim_t]

The way you wrote it makes it sound like the N900 will provide an API that's already scheduled for deprecation. But what the article actually says is that the N900 will use Maemo 5, which won't be backwards with the Maemo 4 used in earlier products.

I think the "new" word is the confusing part, if you said "the current MAEMO APIs will become deprecated" then it'd have made more sense.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[BlackCreek]

No. I had it right ;-)

What that article states is that

1. MAEMO 5 ("Freemantle") breaks compatibility with MAEMO 4
2. In 2010 "Harmattan" (MAEMO 6??) will break again compatibility with Freemantle, since it will replace GTK with QT at all the core stuff.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed...ummm anyone want a brand new "really" clean android phone?

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[hughk]

>except that it's not a phone. Please don't tell that to my VoIP client. Yep it isn't a cellular phone but it works nicely in my WiFI coverage area. I really think that Nokia was thinking about a full phone all the way along and the Maemo 3/4 were the user interface prototypes.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[qurk]

I love my N810 too. Last I looked though the prices spiked after they stopped selling them new at Amazon. For my new phone I chose the best "dumb phone" with the most features I could find, because really as long as I can tether my n810 that's good enough! My old phone's bluetooth was not reliable at all, and that really sucked. It sucks that n900 is T-Mobile only, in any case. They have no plans to offer coverage where I live.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[sabre307]

The author was an idiot. He says "...who are we to say that no novice has a legitimate need for root access, ever?".

If a novice has a legitimate need for root access, he won't know what the f*** he is doing and turn his phone into a brick, then whine to the carrier/manufacturer that it is all their fault. IT administrators don't usually lock users out of admin rights just to be a d***, they do it to protect the computer from the loose nuts at the keyboard! The cell phone manufacturers are doing the same thing. I love FLOSS, but not forcing a user to jump through a few hoops to gain root access to a consumer electronics system isn't being open with the consumer, it's committing financial suicide for your company.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[rdnetto]

Which is why a lot of us are excited to see something like the N900/Maemo coming out, since it's basically a phone targeted at geeks.

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[Anonymous Coward]

You basically can't brick an n900 using software[*]. Sure, you can fuck up the filesystem logged in as root with several bottles of MD2020 down you, but that's not bricking it. As long as the ROM bootloader runs, and there's nothing that can stop it running, you'll be able to load into RAM a new bootloader which can be used to then bootstrap the flashing of a new FIASCO onto the device. From what I understand, the flasher software will be freely distributed, so you won't even need to take your device to a customer care point - you'll be able to fix it at home.

[* Heheh, there is one way, but only two people in the world know what it is, and it requires all kinds of crazy jumping though hoops. It's easier to just drop the device in a crucible of molten iron if you want to destroy it. The method is almost certainly common to all modern TI OMAP devices. And even then the bricked device can be rescuscited with the right kind of expensive-as-fuck hardware.]

Re:The writer is clueless about end users

[olden]

Sorry sabre307, I have to side with the author of TFA here.
I suspect that the majority of Windows users at home are running as Admin (not a great idea), Linux distros offer easy root access (on-demand, better); yet somehow novices don't generally wipe system files etc, and PC manufacturers aren't all bankrupt yet. Maybe not perfect but sounds workable to me...
More on-topic: I have an Android Dev Phone 1, ie "factory rooted" G1. Can you believe it's not bricked yet? Perhaps there are more dangerous things on this planet than root access...

Maemo

[gr8_phk]

I was disappointed that there's no Ekiga for Maemo on the N800. There is however a non-video-supporting version of Skype. I also downloaded all the maps for the non-free mapping software wondering how long those would be available.

Re:Maemo

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you have a Maemo device. Have you tried Gizmo which appears to be a SIP client and hence broadly similar to what Ekiga does (albeit not open source). That said, when I last tried it (mainly for the video-calls), the video-calls were unusable and the audio-calls were worst than Skype.

Re:Maemo

[21mhz]

I was disappointed that there's no Ekiga for Maemo on the N800.
If you don't particularly care about using the branded Ekiga client, SIP support is shipped with device software images. However, it (and any other implementation based on Sofia-SIP) does not work with the SIP proxy at ekiga.net, because the proxy imposes restrictions on certain SIP header contents, which: 1) go beyond what's actually specified in SIP RFCs; 2) if followed, break NAT traversal with other, perfectly good SIP proxies. The reason is, the Ekiga client does not work if the proxy does not enforce these restrictions.

Right... Go buy an Android phone then.

[Colin Smith]

Choice made.

 

Not really an article

[Ash Vince]

This is just a blog by someone unknown that is also very light on facts.

He seems of the opinion the Maemo owners will be better treated if the root their hardware because Nokia make it slightly easier to do. The problem is that we do not yet know what Nokia will make you agree to in order to install the gain root privileges application. In my opinion they will make you agree to voiding your warranty anyway so that will put you in the same boat as most android owners.

Even if Nokia do not then most carriers will, and the vast majority of phones are purchased through a carriers discount so the user does not end up paying full price for the handset.

Re:Not really an article

[megamerican]

On their official wiki homepage one of the main articles is Getting Root Access.

It only provides a warning that you may damage your device and does not mention breaking a warranty, EULA, TOS, etc...

Re:Not really an article

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that we do not yet know what Nokia will make you agree to in order to install the gain root privileges application

Using Maemo 4 running on a Nokia N810 (the predecessor to the N900) as an example, the exact disclaimer is:

Nokia has neither created nor delivered this software and is therefore unable to guarantee that the software will not harm your device. Installation will be at your own risk. Continue anyway. Ok/Cancel

My experience with the N810 indicates that the Maemo system is extremely open. It's not merely slightly easier to get root access, it is significantly easier compared with jail-breaking an iPhone or hacking root onto an Android device. It is literally installing a third-party package (either gainroot or openssh) via the usual GUI package manager and takes a couple of minutes. Your data is not wiped, nor will your root-access be revoked upon the next firmware upgrade (which doesn't wipe your data either on the N900).

Re:Not really an article

[Anonymous Coward]

It only provides a warning that you may damage your device and does not mention breaking a warranty, EULA, TOS, etc...

It's also worth noting that the warning links directly to the instructions for reflashing the device (with the obvious caveat that any data that isn't backed up will be lost). So even if you shoot yourself in the foot as root, they're more than happy to point your toward the stack of bandages in the corner.

Re:Not really an article

[Anonymous Coward]

YANAL. Gaining root on your phone does not void your warranty.

Re:Not really an article

[markkezner]

Light on facts, but also seems to have a viewpoint to push. TFA points out that the Android Java VM (Dalvik) is nonstandard, giving it all the associated stigma that a free software oriented audience would perceive. He also claims that this will somehow lock you in to Google's web apps:

... forced to use Java with non-standard bytecode. One might even suggest that Google has done this on purpose, in order to limit interoperability and push users towards its proprietary web services.

How Dalvik or its bytecode would accomplish this feat is left to the imagination. Anyone wanna clear this up for me?

I posted a response in TFA that points out that the Dalvik VM is also free software licensed under Apache 2.0

Source Code for Dalvik VM
Apache 2.0 License, embedded in Dalvik source repository.

Re:Not really an article

[MemoryDragon]

The article is pure FUD in this area, while it is true the bytecode format is non standard the VM and the format are opensource even under the very liberal apache2 license, add to that that the SDK consists of following parts, the JVM part which is a subset of the standard java classlib, parts of the apache commons and then the android part, everything is opensource. Yes if you program against it you lock yourself against the Android API, but seriously who cares the entire API is opensource, I do not see a lockin here, at least not worse than other platforms.

Re:Not really an article

[Ash Vince]

It only provides a warning that you may damage your device and does not mention breaking a warranty, EULA, TOS, etc...

Since no hardware running Maemo is currently available by retail it is a little hard to determine what will be in the warranty for said hardware when it is released. Lets check back when the Nokia N-whatever is actually released. Hopefully you will be right and it is a more open platform, but we cannot be sure until it hits the streets in a commercial configuration rather than a developer preview.

Re:Not really an article

[Ash Vince]

Nokia has neither created nor delivered this software and is therefore unable to guarantee that the software will not harm your device. Installation will be at your own risk. Continue anyway. Ok/Cancel

This seems abundantly clear to me: This will void your warranty for the hardware.

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[maxume]

Pronounce it 'Nokia smartphone'.

Oh good

[Verdatum]

I've been waiting for just such an article. I've been curious about the ease of use and development comparisons for awhile now, let's see....Websense noooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[Vovk]

Running Debian ^_^

Why does T-Mobile suck? There's a map for that.

[tepples]

I choose the one that will install on the hardware I own. or the one that has the most pro user functions and anti carrier functions...

Unless you live in the United States, where carriers don't offer a discounted service plan that comes without a subsidized phone. The article mentions the "Even More Plus" plan that T-Mobile has recently added, but as Verizon puts it in newer commercials, "there's a map for that" with T-Mobile even to a greater extent than with AT&T.

mp3 ringtones that are not locked out.

Ringtone lockouts have at least a token rationale: ASCAP and BMI (and foreign counterparts) have to be paid for public performances of major label music.

Re:Why does T-Mobile suck? There's a map for that.

[mftb]

Ringtones are not public performances. Here, have an article from an obviously biased but generally honest source: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/10/court-rules-phones-ringing-public-dont-infringe-co

Re:Why does T-Mobile suck? There's a map for that.

[RivieraKid]

Ringtone lockouts have at least a token rationale: ASCAP and BMI (and foreign counterparts) have to be paid for public performances of major label music.

No they don't - ASCAP were recently handed their ass in their lawsuit against AT&T

Re:Why does T-Mobile suck? There's a map for that.

[s73v3r]

Agreed. I love T-Mobile where I live now, but whenever I go home, I have zero signal before I even cross the state line. :( Good thing I have Google Voice, so I can pick up a cheapie burner phone, put its number on my account, and continue as normal.

Send to voice mail

[tepples]

why not have the phone give you a couple of options on the auto-SMS that you can write yourself, i.e. "in a meeting right now," "at the theater," "soldering my fingers to the windowsill," or vary the auto-SMS depending on the caller?

In other words, you want "away messages" for voice calls. Can land lines receive SMS where you live? Otherwise, it isn't too much of an improvement over the existing "send to voice mail" button.

Re:Send to voice mail

[Sparr0]

screw "send to voice mail". I want the phone to *PICK UP*, play one of a selection of pre-recorded messages, and then allow the caller to press a button if they really really want to interrupt, or answer the question in the message. 200MHz on an ARM is plenty of power to implement this.

Re:Send to voice mail

[TheRaven64]

Can land lines receive SMS where you live?

I don't know about now, because I haven't had a landline for a while, but they definitely could back in 2005. The text of the message was read out by a voice synthesiser and you had the option to replay it when you received an SMS. This is in the UK, so it may be different in other places. They occasionally get celebrities to record the voice samples used for the synthesis. For a while, Tom Baker was doing the voice, so it sounded like you were being sent a message by The Doctor.

Re:Send to voice mail

[Anonymous Coward]

There are programs like that for Symbian phones. You can use it as an "answering machine" to screen calls, or selectively block/accept calls from certain people or during certain hours. Maybe I want to send calls to voicemail after 9pm unless it is from my kids, in which case I want it to ring through no matter what.

Re:Send to voice mail

[Anonymous Coward]

This currently happens on the horrible network that is Sprint. I accidentally sent an SMS to my friend's land line instead of his cell the other day, and he got a call from Steven Hawking reading him my text. If crappy Sprint does it, I'm sure all the other carries do as well.

Re:Send to voice mail

[Anonymous Coward]

This was patented by RIM. Though not implemented on any phones due to carriers. Carriers dont want to lose out on those Voicemail plans. You gotta understand that all these cellphone companies suck up to carriers like no tomorrow.

Also from my personal experience, I tried to do exactly that on a Windows Mobile phone (HTC TyTN. This was about 2 years ago.) Turned out the hardware was restricted not to allow playback on up link. Dont know about all these new devices.

Also i think you guys forgot that this "great" feature is not gonna work when you are out of battery or in a area without coverage.

Re:Send to voice mail

[jrumney]

You can also buy landline phones that will accept SMS as text messages, rather than having the nice woman at BT read it back to you.

Re:Send to voice mail

[jfanning]

You can get full answering machines that run in the Nokia S60 phones. They have existed for a long time already.

I'm so indecisive

[rwa2]

I pre-ordered my N900 through Amazon a few weeks back. I figured it'd be easier to get Android working under Maemo than the other way around.

Also, Maemo has a pretty long history of development. I was actually planning on buying an N810 a few months ago until I found out that the N900 might actually have a decent GPS.

Plus, Android phones will be cheap and easy to come by... so hopefully I'll get one for my wife and get to play with it there. But what I've always really wanted in my pocket was a little debian box, and the N900 is pretty much the first thing that fits the bill in that respect. I could care less about the smartphone bit, other than the network connectivity, and of course the fact that I shouldn't need to carry a separate mobile phone around with me anymore.

I played around with Familiar linux (from http://handhelds.org/ ) on an old IPaq for a while, but it was always a bit frustrating that the hardware support wasn't completely there. So it shouldn't be too hard for Nokia to improve upon that experience :P

I really do hope Google caves in to the demand for a native google maps / google earth application on the Maemo, though.

Re:I'm so indecisive

[s2theg]

'But what I've always really wanted in my pocket was a little debian box'

Heck yes. That is a major selling point for me. Plus, I personally find Maemo to be a lot slicker than Android.

Opensource geeks need to be more savvy. google does make a decent search engine, but they are a lame, rusting, evil company that does not have your best interest in mind. Don't reward their convenient use of opensource software, and don't consider them to be better than Microsoft. In the end, google will always do what's best for google.

Re:I'm so indecisive

[X86Daddy]

But what I've always really wanted in my pocket was a little debian box

If your local Target still has any, grab a Zipit Z2 (warning: horrible flash and music). My girlfriend got one on clearance for $12.50; I got one for $25... We're running Debian on one and Angstrom on the other currently. Check out this guy's tutorials. It's got a 312MHz ARM chip, wifi, querty keyboard, MiniSD slot, and a 320x240 color screen. I'm currently attempting to tune Angstrom to the point that I get all the stuff I had on my old Zaurus.

Also, you may want to check out the Pandora, which is nearing release. The unofficial blog has a lot of recent info. I was about to buy an N810 when my OQO died, but saw that the Pandora was getting less vapory and pre-ordered that instead.

Re:I'm so indecisive

[nmos]

But what I've always really wanted in my pocket was a little debian box, and the N900 is pretty much the first thing that fits the bill in that respect

I know what you're saying. I've been using a Sharp Zaurus 6k for years and it's a great device. The N900 looks like the perfect successor but there just aren't any GSM carriers with nearly the coverage of Verizon in my area. In contrast it looks like I'll be able to pick up an Android based phone soon from Verizon for around $100 and finally stop carrying around 2 devices.

Re:I'm so indecisive

[E IS mC(Square)]

>> but they are a lame, rusting, evil company that does not have your best interest in mind. Don't reward their convenient use of opensource software, and don't consider them to be better than Microsoft

For me, the fact that they are better than Apple is good enough.

Re:I'm so indecisive

[toriver]

wifi, querty keyboard, MiniSD slot

No wonder it was cheap, you are missing a key!

Re:I'm so indecisive

[jfanning]

I was actually planning on buying an N810 a few months ago until I found out that the N900 might actually have a decent GPS.

GPS in the N810 works perfectly fine if you enable the A-GPS support. I usually get a lock before I have left the driveway at home. Although it will be easier/better with the N900 since I assume it will have the A-GPS support built in and having a data connection is much faster than setting up the Bluetooth connection to a phone.

openmoko

[Anonymous Coward]

if you really want open then go for openmoko. it can even make phone calls these days. i just got one :-)

Don't forget Palm's WebOS!!!

[SCHecklerX]

- unfettered access to the linux subsystem (ie, need adblocking? You can replace /etc/hosts with an ad/malware blocking version! You can patch many aspects of the phone this way, go check out the patches on precentral)

- if you are a web developer (html, css, javascript), you already know how to write code for this phone. It's that easy. The SDK is freely available, and RUNS FINE ON LINUX. No need to keep a windows box around just to write some phone apps.

- like all the other apps, controlling the US is also done via javascript. Many features can be unlocked just by uncommenting some code.

- and for just plain old users... the interface is very clean, consistent, and beautiful. It stays out of your way. Some of the included apps aren't as powerful as they maybe should be, but that is what the openness of the phone and the homebrew community is for.

Re:Don't forget Palm's WebOS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maemo has all of this, with the added advantage that you don't have to write applications in an arcane scripting language unless you really want to.

Re:Don't forget Palm's WebOS!!!

[ianare]

WebOS is definitly a step up in terms of freedom and ease of development compared to anything out there today. It's biggest problem is a lack of apps. This is where maemo really shines, any linux app can be ported with minimal effort, in most cases it's just a few UI changes.

Re:Don't forget Palm's WebOS!!!

[goeldi]

controlling the US is also done via javascript.

so you indicate that Chavez and Ahmadinejad are unsuccessful only because they use perl instead of javascript to control the US?

Re:Don't forget Palm's WebOS!!!

[SCHecklerX]

Heh s/US/UI/

No lawsuits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, the choice is easy for me. Which is less likely to file a lawsuit when I use it the way I like.

Google has already sent a cease and desist order http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/24/google-hits-android-rom-modder-with-a-cease-and-desist-letter/ to a system modder. Can't use Android anymore.

I've been running Maemo on a Nokia N800 for a few years now. Mostly happy, but the apps and gui could be a little more polished. I've built and installed a number of apps, but usually, I just use the app installer - debian based, so it rocks.

Re:No lawsuits?

[DesertBlade]

Hey AC, The lawsuit was a cease a desist on including copyrighted software in his releases. Namely Gmail and other Google Apps.

Re:No lawsuits?

[adric]

Hey AC, The lawsuit was a cease a desist on including copyrighted software in his releases. Namely Gmail and other Google Apps.

Not to mention that it's now moot. :)

Re:No lawsuits?

[Anonymous Coward]

And a pre-release version of Android Market.

It's not great on their (Google's) part to have done this, but it's not like random good-faith modders would get burned by this policy either. Cyanogen were being idiots.

Android and what?

[mafian911]

This article seems to push pretty hard for an OS that hasn't been getting a whole lot of press. That being said, I'm not sure Maemo is in a position to take on Android.

First, consider the fact that "anything that can run on a desktop can run on Maemo". This sounds like an incredible freedom, but it makes me wonder how much care and innovation went into their mobile framework for developers. Android goes out of its way to provide access to everything a mobile developer would care about: text messaging, the camera, open GL surfaces, the sensor controls... even core functionality can be completely replaced. Want a new home screen? Want a new dialer? Their Activity and Intent framework is very well designed to accomplish anything you may want to accomplish on a *mobile device*. If the Maemo is all about putting a desktop computer in your pocket, I'm not sure how convenient that will be for mobile developers.

Second, consider market penetration. Android is showing up everywhere: phones big and small, net books, GPS devices and e-book readers. Maemo is on one device. Nokias phone. Sure, it may end up on more devices in the future, but will any of these devices *not* be a Nokia? Maybe. Google has done a lot of pushing, however, to give Android visibility. Google has done a lot to cater to developers. They even went as far as releasing the operating system and an emulator for developers to get started before an actual device ever hit the market. Android is going to see more market penetration than Maemo, if not only because Google is going out of its way to make it accessible.

Third, what does their content model look like? Do they have a market application? How difficult is it for developers to publish apps? How do they safeguard against malicious software? Android has a very accessible market. Securing their very open market is a strong permission model, which allows developers to write the code they want to write, without getting their hands slapped (unlike the iPhone experience). I don't know what content model is in store for Maemo, but it will need to be equally well thought out.

In conclusion, I applaud Nokia for taking one further step in the direction of openness. But I'm not convinced that Maemo can stand up to Android. "Super open!" and "desktop like!" aren't going to win the mobile war.

Re:Android and what?

[loufoque]

Second, consider market penetration. Android is showing up everywhere: phones big and small, net books, GPS devices and e-book readers. Maemo is on one device. Nokias phone. Sure, it may end up on more devices in the future, but will any of these devices *not* be a Nokia? Maybe.

Just consider the iPhone and your point is moot.

Re:Android and what?

[mafian911]

iPhone does indeed have a lot of market penetration. But that doesn't mean that other OSes don't stand a chance. We have seen a lot of supposed "iPhone killers" fail to dethrone the iPhone, but I believe Android has an actual shot to level the market share. Ironically, they may achieve this the same way Microsoft achieves this on the PC: make your OS available on as much hardware as you can.

Re:Android and what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maemo has deb repositories and a graphical apt front end for installing software local to the device. The process of stamping an app for public consumption is increasingly becoming more formalized.

Downloads can also be found on maemo.org http://maemo.org/downloads/Maemo5/ . Nokia also has "maemo select" http://maemo.nokia.com/maemo-select/applications/ and they're promising an ovi store presence.

Re:Android and what?

[Carewolf]

His point was that Apple has a much smaller market share than Nokia. If something only ships on Nokia that means 10+ times bigger market share than something that only ships on Apple. And iPhone apps doesn't seem to have problems despite the severely limited market.

The biggest problem is that Nokia has so many platforms, and if you limit the market to only smartphones Nokia is only 2-3 timer bigger than Apple.

Most smartphones can. It's the carrier that locks

[Fastfwd]

Most phones have that. It's the carrier that locks those features.

There is no technical reason why mp3 ringtones would be locked out. But US carriers will sell the phone as subsidized(binding you to a long term contract in the process) and then earn extra money on mp3 ringtones downloads which are sometimes as expensive as the full track from itunes.

Your choice. Buy an unlocked phone full price and then pay for service without a contract
or
Get into a contract and limitations on the phone software

Maemo wins hands down

[the ReviveR]

From my personal opinion Android simply doesn't stand a chance. While Android does run Linux kernel it doesn't have X Window etc. It's glorified java platform that doesn't even support full java spec. You can do anything with it, but things will take a lot of work.

Maemo on the other hand is what I see as a 'real' Linux platform running software stack which makes it pretty trivial to port existing apps to it.

Stuff I currently run on my N810:
-Real browser looking firefox with flash support
-MPlayer for playing nearly any format I can throw at it...
-Gnumeric for spreadsheets
-Battle for Wesnoth, Beneath the steel sky, Duke Nukem 3D when I feel like playing something
-Vnc server & client
-Gjiten for translating stuff to Japanese. Japanese symbols display nicely etc.

Only thing I'm really missing is the phone functionality. Even if the only improvement to N900 would be adding that, I would be happy. Adding processing power etc. makes it a must buy for me.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[demachina]

I think Google is designing phones for ordinary people to use. 99.99% of cell phone users don't give a rats ass about most of the things on your list. I grew up on X11 but I can see no good rationale for putting it on a mobile device for ordinary people to use.

I imagine some people want Flash in a browser but Android is adding that. Me personally I suspect Flash on a mobile device will just drain the battery, hog the CPU and memory and make browsing generally sluggish up to the point your battery is dead. Might be OK if you are plugged in to a wall socket 90% of the time but at that points its not really mobile anymore is it. Video is the only compelling reason to have Flash, unless you have a taste for stupid Flash sprite games. Video in a mobile device would better be done by an optimized player in hardware like iPhone does on YouTube or like you could have with HTML/5. Unfortunately this requires the web to stop being so Flash centric.

I doubt anyone really cares about Firefox. They want a browser that works and ViewKit or Opera is just as good or probably better in a mobile device than Firefox.

MPlayer might be worthwhile but everyone has video players of one degree of quality and performance or another.

I think I'm saying that everything about this thread coming from Maemo fanboys, including the original article, is probably an advertisement for why Android will win in the real world, while Maemo will thrive in the tiny little niche of open source fanatics, that the rest of the world is mostly indifferent to. Not to mention Maemo is locking you in to one hardware manufacturer and an incredibly small range of hardware, while Android is now on dozens of different platforms. How exactly is that freedom.....

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to repeat your statement here:

Only thing I'm really missing is the phone functionality.

So, your meamo kicks androids ass. There is nothing it can't do better... accept make and receive calls.

Am I the only one who wants my phone to make calls and doesn't care if it doesn't play shitty video or games on a tiny ass screen? When on earth do you sit down and watch a movie on your phone? or play a game?

Why do I feel like the only sane person left...

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[randomlogin]

I'll add another thing that's missing from my N810 which looks like it's still missing from the N900, which is an 'official' JVM. The Java CDC profile was designed for devices like this - and the GPL'd Sun version is very ARM-friendly. I managed to get the foundation version up and running on my N810, but it needs quite a bit of work to get the GUI layers working (I ran into some QT3 versus QT4 threading voodoo when I tried).

So, if anyone from Nokia is reading this - I'd like to see a supported CDC personal profile JVM with Jambi support!

Yes - I know that this is all GPL'd code and I should be able to take it and fix it all myself, but having it as a standard part of the platform makes a huge difference.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an N770 sitting in a drawer, unused for at least a year. Nokia abandoned the N770 not long after it came out, and there are critical bugs in the wireless driver that make the device unusable. I'm definitely not going back to Maemo.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

The N810, which is what the poster has, is an Internet tablet and not a phone. The N900 is a step up from that and provides phone functionality too.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

I own an N800 (Maemo 4). Yes, you can port applications to the device, but if you want to provide a nice user experience, the UI must be ported to Hildon. This is significant effort. GTK applications look strange and are not really that user friendly.

If you want to develop finger-friendly applications with a consistent UI in Java, Android is the better platfrom.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[MemoryDragon]

Your personal point of view is not the one of the average user, the reason is, the average user does not care whether he has linux underneath him or if the programs are native c++ programs or java programs, he just wants to have a fine phone ui and wants a machine which works.
Same goes for the average programmer who just wants to have tooling and documentation which can get the job done.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[MemoryDragon]

Not sure if it makes yet sense to put a full blown desktop/server jvm onto a mobile phone, the reason for this is, the VMs are optimized for desktop computers, which means they do not spare ram instead they try to gobble up everything you give to them, and they also do some heavy optimizations in the background which might cost the ARM a load of cycles it could spend otherwise.
Add to that that most java se programs are not designed with a portable phone in mind an you might end up with a mess here.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[randomlogin]

I agree that a full blown desktop/server JVM would be OTT. The CDC (connected device configuration) profile is designed for devices which are smarter than the bog-standard Java-ME phone, but not up to running a full SE stack. Have a look at the overview here. A cut and paste of the 'target devices' section:

The CDC configuration was designed to bring the many advantages of the Java platform to a broad range of network-connected consumer and embedded devices, including smart communicators, high-end PDAs, and set-top boxes.

Devices that support CDC typically include a 32-bit microprocessor/controller and make about 2 MB of RAM and 2.5 MB of ROM available to the Java application environment.

What's more, the open source implementation released by Sun has an excellent ARM targeted JIT compiler. All in all, apart from the out of date GUI implementation (QT3 based) it would be an ideal Java platform for something like the N900.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

and with Google Voice paired up with Gizmo5 and Sipsorcery, I'm actually able to use my N810's native Internet phone app to make and receive calls. It works incredibly well. I worked with the NITDroid team to port Android to the 810, but without sound (or the key apps Google doesn't want redistributed), it ended up falling just a bit short of useful.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[MemoryDragon]

Ok thanks for the clarification having had to do with java for almost 10 years now I was not aware of this subset of the jdk.
(well if you spend your time mostly in server programming, oh well...
)

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[jonwil]

How does the ARM JIT compare to using the Jazzelle instructions built into many ARM CPUs nowadays?

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are a freetard in every sense of the word. Actual users don't want or need X Windows or their cell phone, let alone the full desk top experience.
As proof, I offer Microsoft Windows, which managed to get to roughly 90% market share without being X Windows, yet when that Windows desktop experience was ported to mobile devices, it failed dismally.

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[jawahar]

Has anybody tried http://g.ho.st/ in Maemo and Android?

Re:Maemo wins hands down

[randomlogin]

I can't point you to a definitive comparison, but here is my understanding: Jazelle can be used as a speed-up for conventional interpreted JVMs without any extra memory overhead, which makes it ideal for resource constrained devices such as low-end Java enabled phones. JIT compilation gives faster execution than using an interpreted JVM (including Jazelle accelerated ones), but it comes with a memory overhead. So, for a device like the N810/N900, ARM JIT compilation is best.

the "freedoms"

[nimbius]

are an illusion. so long as either device you buy is tied to a draconian carrier its just another big ass phone screwing up the line of my pants and sucking down 5 hours worth of charge time in 3 days. the phones may be free, but their features, options and abilities will quickly be restricted at the carrier level.

A phone with freedoms is a phone that doesnt require service contracts or "new every 2" plans for hardware. Its also a phone that lets you question and subvert greedy carrier tactics and, god forbid, gauge and monitor a carriers network performance independently from their own claims of most reliable and most coverage. buy either one, but remember the freedom stops after the transceiver driver comes up.

Re:the "freedoms"

[Anonymous Coward]

n900 is only being sold unlocked right now. Given it's not tied to a carrier, the cost isn't subsidized so you have to pay the actual price of the hardware. http://www.nokiausa.com/find-products/phones/nokia-n900

Re:the "freedoms"

[PeterBrett]

the "freedoms" are an illusion. so long as either device you buy is tied to a draconian carrier its just another big ass phone screwing up the line of my pants and sucking down 5 hours worth of charge time in 3 days. the phones may be free, but their features, options and abilities will quickly be restricted at the carrier level.

A phone with freedoms is a phone that doesnt require service contracts or "new every 2" plans for hardware. Its also a phone that lets you question and subvert greedy carrier tactics and, god forbid, gauge and monitor a carriers network performance independently from their own claims of most reliable and most coverage. buy either one, but remember the freedom stops after the transceiver driver comes up.

So, since you can buy an N900 without a carrier contract, it's your dream phone, right?

On the other hand, the contract I'm getting with my N900 gives me unlimited data transfer, unlimited SMS and a big chunk of free talk time. So I'm not particularly worried about "sucking down 5 hours worth of charge time in 3 days." Believe me that if my carrier tries to restrict the capabilities of the phone, it'll be returned to them before you can say "Jack Rabbit" -- and they'll have to take it back.

But I guess you should ignore me; my lack of a tinfoil hat probably means that I'm imagining all that due to the brainwashing mind control beams irradiating my brain. Enjoy your paranoia!

Re:the "freedoms"

[DaveV1.0]

My "Dream", aka the G1, is not tied to any particular carrier, does not have a service contract, and does not have a "new every 2" plan. I bought it outright and called T-Mobile to unlock it.

Re:the "freedoms"

[SputnikCopilot]

Fortunately, these phones provide more chips than just transceivers, plus a few backup transceivers on different wavelengths to boot.

Hundreds of functions available, and you say an arbitrary, presumed limitation of one external interface makes all other freedoms moot?

*NO* phones require "new every 2" plans, and not every provider even requires a contract. You want to save some money up front, that's your choice. With the N900 in the US, you needn't be concerned about that contractural obligation.

Yippee! Cry the app vendors

[phonewebcam]

Another format to write for, because like iPhone, Android, J2ME, Symbian, WebOS, & win mobile just isn't stretching us enough.

Re:Yippee! Cry the app vendors

[markkezner]

This is precisely why mobile web apps make sense for apps that don't really need to be fully native.

You may even wrap that web app in a native container if it makes sense to do so.

Win Mobile features

[js_sebastian]

all the features you mentioned are available with windows mobile.

Additionally, you get a lot of nice extra features, like random restarts, battery monitor that always reports full battery, battery that lasts 1 full day when you're lucky, touchscreen that sometimes responds to your touch (sometimes even to do what you want it to do!), apps that cost much more than I am willing to pay and don't do what I need, plus a generally clunky and inconsistent UI.

I have a windows mobile phone and I will NEVER make that mistake again.

And before I get flamed: I know, many of the problems I have are specific to the device, not to windows mobile, so I have also blacklisted LG for my next purchase. Still, the OS makes you feel like it's windows 98 all over *shiver*.

Re:Win Mobile features

[TheTick21]

I disagree entirely. I have an HTC touch pro and I have put WM 6.5 on it. I get about 2 days of medium use out of it when I don't charge (though I charge almost every night). I reboot it about once every 2 weeks or so. It is generally snappy and responsive as long as I'm not running ridiculous amounts of apps. It has all the features I want and if I can't find a free app for what I want to do I can write one. The battery reporting has never been wrong since I got the phone on the day of launch.

My mother has an Iphone as do several people here at work. The only thing I'd really like to have is the multitouch. The "zoom wheel" thing on this leaves something to be desired. I've played with the G1 many times (my cousin has one as does my best friend and brother in law) and the only draw for me for that one would be googles apps. (most of which work fine anyway).

Re:Win Mobile features

[Hucko]

Why do you need to reboot?

Re:Win Mobile features

[Anonymous Coward]

You just have to. Sometimes because of freezes or sometimes it just does that for you :)

Use of X servers on phones...

[Tetsujin]

Yes, it really sucks to have a mature system that supports remote display (want to run CPU-intensive apps elsewhere and display on your portable? Want to run apps on the portable and display them on a bigger screen?), is compatible with most UNIX GUI software written since the mid '80s, supports compositing, OpenGL, accelerated text rendering, and cleanly separates policy and mechanism so that window and compositing management can be easily swapped out and replaced.

You know, I am generally happiest when my machine is running an X server as the native environment - things just felt too awkward trying to run X apps on Mac OS X for instance - and I don't think X is as bad as people make it out to be...

But, on the other hand, I have to say, remote display really is not a priority for me on my phone at all. :) It might be fun to play with from time to time but in general it's not something I think I need.

Compatibility would probably be the main reason I'd appreciate Maemo's X server. One of the things that always drives me crazy with PalmOS is that it was always so much damn work to port things to it. Some of this work is unavoidable - when you're working with a small touchscreen display as your main interface, some of the UI assumptions that would go with a 1600x1200 display with a three-button mouse don't apply... To have a reasonable UI it has to be tailored to fit the small display and the precision limitations that go with a touchscreen (especially a resistive touchscreen operated without a stylus...)

Re:Use of X servers on phones...

[Urkki]

But, on the other hand, I have to say, remote display really is not a priority for me on my phone at all. :)

Just think about it. Running not just compatible, but running the same (either remotely with X or local version compiled from same sources) apps from your home PC, from work PC, from laptop and from your phone.

That's a paradigm shift, and it's hard to match with any other available technology. Www-based "cloud" apps have clunky UIs. Other remote desktop systems aren't as efficient or as widespread or as flexible as X11 and have more trouble fitting in a small screen. And X11-based stuff has enormous amount of existing software, libraries and tools that are actually available (thanks to GPL and BSD licenses), and many many existing developers.

In fact, if Maemo takes off, I see the X11 apps moving to the cloud. Not sure if anyone offers this as a real service yet, though obviously it's easy to implement just by buying a virtual server and installing whatever X apps you want (eg. "apt-get install whatever"). But there's definitely both need and opportunity for a specialized service business here, especially considering that there are quite decent X servers for Windows too (free like Xming, as well as commercial), so the customer base wouldn't be just non-Windows users.

Maemo might be a bit late compared to iPhone or Android, but it has potential created by two decades of software and technology development. It'll be interesting to see what happens with it!

Javascript as a mobile device's ABI?

[Tetsujin]

And the apps are all text (javascript to be precise).

That is actually the #1 reason I won't buy a Pre. I think it's a horrible design decision. The device has limited processing power, storage, and battery. I don't want it to waste time or power translating Javascript code.

Re:Javascript as a mobile device's ABI?

[glop]

You know, it's just one trade-off and it might not be much worse than linking C++ dynamically... Or Jitting Java byte code.

I have owned an Agenda VR3 and a Zaurus. I can tell you that there are many ways to wast CPU cycles and that in any case it takes effort to avoid them. The Agenda guys spent a lot of time trying to optimize the binaries and resolve issues caused by C++. They might have had an easier time coding in Python and avoiding C++. Or not. It's a complex issue, so it's hard to say even now after the dust has settled.

I don't think there is any silver bullet nor that Javascript, Dalvik or C++ are bad per se. What matters is the effort that the makers put into integrating the software and the hardware, testing, optimizing etc.

The Pre uses the V8 Javascript engine and it might be more efficient to jit a few tens of lines of Javascript than to link a C++ binary with all kinds of libraries (say stdc++, qt, X11 etc.).

Also, I remember that programming in GFA Basic and running the programs on my 8MHz Atari was quite fast actually. So why would it be such a mistake on Palm's part to use Javascript on a machine that is about 500 times faster (the fastest instruction took 4 clock cycles on the 68k)?

I think the Pre is really interesting as almost everything in it is Open Source (V8, Webkit, Linux etc.), based on standards (HTML, Javascript). Also people seem to be able to compare it with the iPhone without laughing so it must be a rather good integration of hardware and software too...

Anyway just my 2 cents and an occasion to fondly remember the gadgets of my youth ;-)

Re:Javascript as a mobile device's ABI?

[guruevi]

The thing is, people like to make things look pretty before they put it on the market. The problem is pretty = costly. It costs in disk space, graphics design, rendering, cpu & gpu cycles, battery, .... All I want is my PDA to be like a Newton or an old Palm - it has everything you need, it does everything you want (even the 'difficult' things like written text recognition) but it's in b&w with crude (in today's standards) boxes. It would probably last for days on today's technology. But these days an alarm clock takes 3 seconds to render - not kidding - and when you leave the application open, the battery dies in less than 8 hours. Sure it's pretty to look at, but I don't need pretty, I need functionality and I would like to take that functionality with me when the flight is delayed and I need to stay overnight in a hotel in Paris.

Re:Javascript as a mobile device's ABI?

[mwvdlee]

Would you prefer your alarm clock in a text screen or in a GUI?

Developers (usually) don't do "pretty" because they like it themselves, but because it sells (or whatever the equivalent would be for a free program).

If you had the choice between an ugly alarm clock
and a pretty one with slightly less performance, you'd pick the pretty one. The question is how much "slightly less performance" you're willing to accept.

my 2 cents

[Corson]

I've been exploring development options for both Maemo and Android. These are OS-es for mobile devices with relatively low hardware performance. That is why, IMO, native code is better than managed code for these platforms. On Adroid it is possible to run native code but not in GUI mode, which requires the Dalvik SDK (Java-like, therefore managed). There is an Android emulator available where you can run your code irrespective of the development tools you choose, with the restriction mentioned above. The Maemo emulator, on the other hand, is part of an SDK which is built into a particular Linux image and is Eclipse-based, thus limiting the choice of development tools for this platform. If I choose Linux as a development platform for mobile devices then I expect to have the freedom of Linux; AFAICS, with Android and Maemo that is not the case.

Re:my 2 cents

[hardaker]

Err... I think you have some facts missing. I've written a quick Maemo5 app using vi and their SDK debian-based environment. (I've never used Eclipse for anything before).

Re:my 2 cents

[MemoryDragon]

Not sure if your assumption is right. First of all the Android VM is an entirely different beast than the standard JDK, it is not a stack based vm anymore but a register based, also the tie in between the vm and the processor is way deeper with the included arms having java accelerating command sets included. Thirdly the bytecode itself is not java anymore either it is post processed and some specific optimization is applied upfront. Third, the class lib provided is huge and a load of methods root directly into native functions instead of trying to implement as much as possible in java.
So so far java as language of choice in the android world works out pretty well, I dont hear complaints that the android development is hard or that you have a speed problem by using java.

Re:my 2 cents

[MemoryDragon]

Besides that the usage of eclipse in android is not mandatory, you can use the command line build tools, but why ignoring eclipse if the sdk has a good plugin, this would be like shooting yourself into the foot just for proofing you can shoot yourself into the foot.

Re:my 2 cents

[Corson]

No Java (or .Net) developers will complain that speed is an issue. Otherwise they would be looking elsewhere.

Re:my 2 cents

[MemoryDragon]

You dont hear it from the users either...
But otherwise they probably would have bought a different phone ;-)
I think the biggest issue nowadays is not the underlying language but how fast the graphics rendering can be and if you have occasional hicckups (lag)
Java while not being as fast as C++ is fast enough nowadays and you gain a lot by using it, faster development times better isolation and security etc... sure there are applications where the usage of java is probably not feasable but then you can move down to C++ and assembly if you need.

Re:my 2 cents

[Corson]

The user doesn't have other options.

Don't have a texting plan...

[Tetsujin]

If I press end on a ringing call it will SMS that person with a "I'm really busy right now, I'll call you back as soon as I can"

Great, you just cost me $0.20, just to send me information I already could have figured out from the fact that you pressed "end" while I was trying to call you...

(I feel that with or without a texting plan, the carrier charges for SMS are complete bullshit...)

Moblin, iPhone, WebOS and more..

[turb]

There's a number of options out there. I'm going to speak as a developer for this reply.

Nobody and I mean nobody that allows development on their device is really and truly operating as an open source project. Them's the facts of the matter. There is definitely a sliding scale of open here with lots of gray areas here and there. Take the iPhone, at least as a dev you get access to early release software prior to release. For android can you go and find the 2.0 SDK anywhere? Nope. So much for Verizon's claims about 'droid being 'open'.

Be it Android, PalmOS, iPhone, Maemo, Moblin, whatever do any of these projects have open mailing lists setting directions of the project? Nope. Everyone of them get's an EPIC FAIL in my book for openness. Granted all of them at least allow you to develop apps. If you're someone making a living making apps, then that's going to be 'good enough'. As a developer you just nee to pick the ecosystem that makes the most sense to you.

However if you're a traditional open source developer looking to participate, the bad news is, "sorry" ... no one is really catering to that in my opinion. But is that kind of "cold" treatment really something that has ever stopped open source developers? Let's not forget that a Maemo, Android, Moblin, Palm's WebOS all include open source packages at least does mean that they have to continue to get their code from the community. Granted they can effectively fork and port their patches forward time and again, but you'd hope over time they'll learn... get involved with the community, work with the community .. be open... time will tell. Least across the board things have come a long way and we're not saddled with a 90% windows (mobile) market share. Competition between OSes for cell phones sure makes for exciting times.

Re:Moblin, iPhone, WebOS and more..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maemo DOES have open development:

http://maemo.org/

http://maemo.gitorious.org/

http://bugs.maemo.org/

Re:Moblin, iPhone, WebOS and more..

[markkezner]

For android can you go and find the 2.0 SDK anywhere? Nope. So much for Verizon's claims about 'droid being 'open'.

The Android 2.0 SDK is right here. And btw, Verizon has little or nothing to do with the SDK.

Coding in a web API? OH, JOY...

[Tetsujin]

- if you are a web developer (html, css, javascript), you already know how to write code for this phone.

What if you're a real developer who knows a little bit of web development and despises the entire process?

(Actually, though, I'm sure the process is a lot less painful without the client/server side split and the involvement of server-side code in PHP or whatever emitting HTML and Javascript code...)

Kind of an interesting metric.

[LWATCDR]

None of the metrics really have anything to do with the average user.
1. Freedom from crashes. random, and forced resets.
2. Freedom to find the applications that I want to run without having to write them myself.
3. Freedom from having to learn a complex and inconsistent UI.

Most smart phone users really want and need a good smart phone first. Most users will never want to root the phone. How free and open a consumer software system is of little concern if it is not functional. I would love to see Android and Maemo put in the hands of a new smart phone users that doesn't know FOSS or the GPL from a hole in the ground just to see how functional they are. I would also like to see a comparison of the SDKs from a programmers point of view. Finally we can talk about how "free" they are. All of that is important but usability really is very important and it wasn't talked about in this story at all.

I have yet to play with Maemo but my next phone will probably be an Android device. I don't want to be on the AT&T network so the iPhone is out. WinMo doesn't really thrill me, and the PalmOS still lacks voice dialing and video recording. My wife loves her PalmPre but I am disappointed with the SDK and the fact that it still lacks video recording and voice dialing! MY STINKING SANYO FEATURE PHONE CAN SHOOT VIDEO AND DO VOICE DIALING.
Right now I am torn between the Samsung Moment and the HTC Hero I just hope that we see them get 1.6 and 2.0 updates very soon.

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[KillerBob]

Right now I am torn between the Samsung Moment and the HTC Hero I just hope that we see them get 1.6 and 2.0 updates very soon.

FWIW, I've got an HTC Dream and am quite happy with it. And one of the main reasons I'm so happy with it is because it's got a fold-out QWERTY keyboard. I couldn't imagine trying to type out text messages or e-mails using an on-screen touch keyboard. Nowhere near efficient enough.

On the other hand, between the two you've listed, I'd go for the Samsung. Built-in 3.5mm jack is what sells me, but having a d-pad instead of the trackball is also a major plus. My biggest annoyance with the HTC phone is that it uses a single mini-USB connector for everything... charger, headphones/hands free, etc. It doesn't actually have any other input/output ports besides the single mini-USB. That means I can't charge the phone while listening to music on the headphones, or I can't transfer files to/from the computer while listening to music. On the plus side, at least, it does charge directly from the USB on a computer, meaning I don't need to bring the wall wart with me to work in order to charge it. :)

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[Anonymous Coward]

while Im a real die hard Maemo fanboy (been developing for Maemo for ~4 years) and I do belive Maemo is superior (Dalvik? C'mon, lets speak seriously) , I know that root acess alone is rubbish. I have root acess on my Motorola A1200i (also known as MotoMING or MotoTASK) running montavista linux 2.4 and it doesnt help much aside from the locked out enviroment. There is no oficial SDK (only homebrew tools) , no packaging support for 3rd party (except a few selected from Moto) and no freedom at all. Thats why I dont like programming for this plataform at all. While my phone has LOTS of more horsepower than my old-and-good N770, the N770 looks much more polished and versatile.

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[MemoryDragon]

In case of android root access really helps, besides that you still run in a supervisor, root access currently is the only way to get following things working
a) swapping onto SD to increase your virtual memory
b) Offloading applications onto the SD to free up the internal memory
c) Wifi Tethering (which is enabled if you run a custom kernel, currently no phone vendor has this enabled by default)

Dont get me wrong with a sane phone configuration none of this really would need root access, but no phone vendor currently (and probably in the near future) has this turned on on Android.

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[MemoryDragon]

Better wait a little bit regarding Samsung, here in Europe we have the Samsung Galaxy i7500 already while on paper the phone really looks great, a lot of people are very unsatisfied with it, the reason is shoddy failing hardware and partially a buggy firmware add to that that there currently is no multitouch support and the phone is close to a desaster. A first effort by Samsung but it probably needs another 1-2 hardware revisions until the kinks are worked out.

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[LWATCDR]

I have nothing bad to say about Maemo at all since I have not used it. My choice of phones is based on availability on my chosen carrier which is Sprint. I have been happy with Sprint,s service and pricing.
My complaint was that the piece was totally fluffy feel good FOSS is the one true way and light junk.
Nothing about usability, features, SDK, , stability, or quality of applications available.
Frankly I hope Maemo is great. Nokia makes very good hardware but S60 is kind of funky and doesn't work all that well with touch screen devices I hear.
I would love to see more Nokia phones in the US. The E71 is a very well made phone. If I wasn't going Android and Sprint it would be very temping. Since I like German cars and British TV I figure I have a good chance of liking a funky Finnish OS.

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[TakeyMcTaker]

None of the metrics really have anything to do with the average user.

I think the article is speaking more to the developer and OSS evangelist set, but I get what you're saying. Another non-user metric that I find rather revealing about the comparisons made by the article, yet not addressed by the article, is:

* Can you install one operating environment on the other?

In desktop, this would be handled by VM's, WINE, Wubi, etc. On phones, it's interesting to note that the N900 is powerful enough to run VM's of other OS's, like Palm Garnet, Debian, and even Android itself. Most of the Android stack is on top of a similar Linux base, so potentially Android could even be compiled to run "natively" as an interface alternative on the N900. This has already been done on past N-series tablets, and the N900 is more powerful than any of those past devices. I doubt the inverse is true, that running Maemo on Android is possible, but that might be an interesting hack. I would say the effort required is definitely asymmetrical between the systems at this point, with Maemo being clearly more the flexible operating environment.

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[mino]

My biggest annoyance with the HTC phone is that it uses a single mini-USB connector for everything... charger, headphones/hands free, etc. It doesn't actually have any other input/output ports besides the single mini-USB.

Unless the HTC Hero US version (the 'chinless' sprint one) varies from the European model in this regard, it has a 3.5mm jack. The 'ExtUSB' (HTC proprietary but at least compatible audio-carrying extension of Mini-USB) jack is on the bottom, and the 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top left.

Trust me, it works, was listening to music on my (UK) Hero without an adapter not one hour ago. Unless I've been hallucinating. Which is, you know, actually quite plausible.

Magic, no, but Hero yes.

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[LWATCDR]

I would say it only for the OSS evangelists. I am a developer and I an OSS contributor. I hate the word fan or evangelist because I am not a zealot.
As a developer I find it about useless. There was not mention of how complete the SDK is. When I last looked at the official Palm SDK I was ticked off how limited it was.
There was no way for me to find the charging state of the device. AKA is it being charged. I wanted to make a program wake up when the device was put on a charger.
There was no way to control the flash so you could use it as a flash light or a signaling device. I thought it would be fun to write a program that could send morse with the flash and use the camera to read it. Just as a toy but there was no way to do it without rooting the phone and messing the the device directly.
That is very limiting.
Also what emulators are available? How does debugging work? What IDEs are supported? What languages are supported.
One Advantage that the Google's VM has over running native code is that you don't have to worry about devices using different ISAs The Cortex A8 has some instructions that the ARM 11 lacks.
All these things matter to developers but again none where even touched on in the story. This was a simplistic rah rah Maemo is is more free than Android because I say so story with no real meat.
Maemo may be great but I got no information of use from this story. As the old Wendy's commerical said... "Where's the beef!"

Re:Kind of an interesting metric.

[Bootarn]

Why is this modded as troll? The poster has a valid point. Granted, the HTC Hero does have a 3.5mm jack, but that's no reason to mod this as troll.

Get a grip, moderators!

minimal porting effort?

[Tetsujin]

WebOS is definitly a step up in terms of freedom and ease of development compared to anything out there today. It's biggest problem is a lack of apps. This is where maemo really shines, any linux app can be ported with minimal effort, in most cases it's just a few UI changes.

Don't underestimate the difficulty of "a few UI changes"... You're talking about taking a UI which in all likelihood doesn't even fit on the phone's screen, and redesigning it so it'll not only fit, but work nicely...

Re:minimal porting effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

The N900 resolution is a pretty amazing 800x480 (compare with the iPhone's 480x320). So most apps do fit without any problem, but indeed it takes some more effort to make them finger usable.

Re:minimal porting effort?

[Tetsujin]

The N900 resolution is a pretty amazing 800x480 (compare with the iPhone's 480x320). So most apps do fit without any problem, but indeed it takes some more effort to make them finger usable.

My EEE 901 has a resolution of 1024x600, and yet there are still dialog screens in various programs (GNOME configuration dialogs are among the offenders) that don't fit on-screen and refuse to take up less than 600 pixels of vertical space...

The N900 has the same display resolution as a EEE701 - and, pixel resolution aside, there's the fact that screen fonts need to be reasonably large to be legible and, as you said, there's the problem of making things finger-usable (making the controls large enough and eliminating dependence on things like mouse hover or multiple mouse buttons - for the most part, anyway...)

Still, sure would like me one o' them N900's... :)

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[PeterBrett]

I've only heard it pronounced "mee-mo", FWIW.

Software freedom or "current hardware"-freedom

[f0rk]

That guy is so bias toward maemo its not even funny. He has something against google/android but cant put his finger on it.

This article should be about some random home brew telephone running both OSes, but its not. Its about the currently available android hardware running android against the currently not available maemo hardware running maemo.

First thing, he begins his comparison with the "root or not to root" issue and says that WITH ANDROID you have to root it to get full system access, and not in maemo. Not true. You do not have to root android, you have to root the specific setup of android on .

I guess there will come maemo devices from other manufacturers then nokia, and how can THIS random blogger know THEY wont impose system access crippling.

Other then that, he has a point, but i can't tell if it's true, and if i can trust him.

Nokia isn't completely non-evil either

[Anonymous Coward]

google does make a decent search engine, but they are a lame, rusting, evil company that does not have your best interest in mind. Don't reward their convenient use of opensource software, and don't consider them to be better than Microsoft. In the end, google will always do what's best for google.

I'll be happy to agree that Nokia has made some great contributions to open source and they make pretty great products. (After a while of trying Samsung and Siemens, my next phone will be Nokia again, no doubt there) However, Nokia isn't a beacon of holyness and ethics either.

Here in Finland, they lobbied through a law (known as Lex Nokia) which expands the rights that corporations (and some other entities) have when it comes to spying employees' emails. The official excuse was to prevent corporate espionage. (Sond believable? Thought not.)

In addition, they were in the headlines during Iran's elections as they had helped Iran develop some censorship technologies.

Those are the only evil things that come to my mind now so Nokia's track record is a lot better than with many companies. They are willing to do morally questionable things when there are profits at stake, however. Just like any other company.

Re:Nokia isn't completely non-evil either

[s2theg]

That was informative. Thanks for the info. I guess it's more like "company a does what's best for company a"

Where Have You Been?

[mpapet]

give you a couple of options on the auto-SMS that you can write yourself, i.e. "in a meeting right now," "at the theater," "soldering my fingers to the windowsill,"
Symbian OS. It's all there. It's been there for years.

or vary the auto-SMS depending on the caller?
Again, Symbian OS. Been there for years.

Apple is going to be sweating bullets in a year or so.
I'm going to be modded down for stating the obvious here, but the Symbian OS is years ahead of Apple in many technical ways and certainly more developer friendly. So, technically, the race was over before it started. But this isn't about being the better technical product.

Symbian is more open than ever, but Nokia doesn't advertise it like Apple in the U.S. and the American carriers may not like the fact Symbian is not the media/applications jail an iphone is. Hopefully, they will be a thorn in the side of Apple for years to come.

http://www.symbian.org/ (flash heavy, but you'll get passed it after a few layers)

Re:Where Have You Been?

[s73v3r]

Nokia has some badass phones running Symbian. Too bad they hardly market them here in the States, and no carrier wants to carry them.

Re:Where Have You Been?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's related. The carriers don't want them because Nokia refused to lock down the functionality the USA way. And as the cost of the phone is always included in the contract anyway in the USA, Nokia gave up on marketing in such a mesed up market.

Re:Most smartphones can. It's the carrier that loc

[s73v3r]

Not all carriers do this. When I was on Alltel, I had a Moto 810e, and Bluetooth file transfer worked just fine. Of course, now they've been bought by Verizon, and I've heard they've gotten more evil.

Agreed!

[GameboyRMH]

I have a Treo 650 (basically a Treo 600 with some software updates and much nicer hardware) and with my bluetooth GPS module, the only functionality I'm missing is WiFi (and a PROPER camera). I always LOLed at the iPhone's AMAZING NEW FEATURES that the Treo series already had from day one. Even the ancient Treo 180 (I had one of those too!) had system-wide search and copy-and-paste out of the box.

Since Palm jumped the shark with the Pre, I plan to get an N900 to replace my 650, as much as it makes my skin crawl to give Nokia any of my money...

Biggest difference should be number of handsets

[BlackCreek]

I believe that both frameworks will have their own space. Android right now rules the scene as the N900 hasn't even been released.

The question of openness of Android doesn't really matter at this moment, most users have a G1 and there is a vibrant active community around this particular piece of hardware. Rooting, and turning a G1 into a full ADP (Android Developer Phone) is very well documented.

I am sure that many FOSS advocates will buy the N900, and it should be extremely well supported.

The advantage of Android is that there are more than 10 phones released this year, and many more coming next year. The problem with that is that it may fragment the Android FOSS crowd, and so we may not have a new phone with the level of individual support as the G1/ADP.

At the same time, MAEMO will probably only have a single phone out. Which will probably meant that it will overlooked by many application developers.

Re:Biggest difference should be number of handsets

[MemoryDragon]

The problem of not providing root access out of the box is a telephone companies/producers thing. Google probably has nothing to say in this regard, the official developers phone has root access out of the box.
The complaints in this area goes towards HTC/Samsung/Motorola which seem to have a problem with giving users full root access, even on non branded phones.
As long as they are hackable this is a non issue, but it is rather pointless that HTC for instance tries to remove the holes which allow easy root access on their phones. After all what do they gain by doing so, nothing, but they get a load of early customers by not making it too hard.
I guess that is the eastern/asian mentality.

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[Nirvelli]

The Nokia guys seem to be pronouncing it "my-mo" in their interviews and stuff.
YouTube

Android 2.0 SDK is out!

[BlackCreek]

Android 2.0 SDK is out! Check out the goods here:
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/10/announcing-android-20-support-in-sdk.html

Highlights:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.0-highlights.html

Javascript is the universal scripting language

[Colin Smith]

Built in on Windows, MacOS.
Built in on every web browser.
Built in on virtually all smartphones.
Available as Spidermonkey on Unix systems.

It's pretty much everywhere already. It'll replace most of the others; perl, python, ruby as the libraries and VMs available for it improve.
 

Re:Javascript is the universal scripting language

[Tetsujin]

Built in on Windows, MacOS.
Built in on every web browser.
Built in on virtually all smartphones.
Available as Spidermonkey on Unix systems.

It's pretty much everywhere already. It'll replace most of the others; perl, python, ruby as the libraries and VMs available for it improve.

That's a lovely poem. Really. The Vogons would absolutely hate it.

Being a good scripting language is all well and good. That doesn't make said scripting language a good choice for an embedded platform.

Re:Javascript is the universal scripting language

[spiffmastercow]

[javascript will] replace most of the others; perl, python, ruby as the libraries and VMs available for it improve.

That will be the day I stop programming.

Desktop distros

[YourExperiment]

Submitter: are you sure you've picked the right place to call "choosing your favorite desktop distribution" a mundane issue?

An anonymous reader writes

Ah, that explains it.

I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are running hildon applications specifically developed/ported to Maemo, you'll easily get the same inconsistent user experience as with Linux. For me, this is not much of a problem on the desktop. On a phone or other mobile device, GUI consistency is much more important, IMHO. Development of applications is easier on Android using Java and Google's well documented API. And they have Romain Guy working on the GUI... :-)

wtf is the point?

[magamiako1]

I'm an end user of most technology. I spend many of my days playing with things and always looking for ways to incorporate technology into my life. But the fact of the matter is that none of the things this guy rants on about is anything I care about. There are very clear limitations with everything this guy is saying.

I don't even jailbreak my iphone, to be honest. The ported applications are absolutely horrendous. They aren't even worth breaking open the phone--for free! Because iSSH is a better application, I'd rather pay $10 than go through the hassle of having to jailbreak my iphone just to use a "Free" ssh application.

That says a lot about the usability of the iphone in its default form.

What if I need something *NOW*? N900 is not yet.

[KWTm]

Here's a question for my fellow Slashdotters:

I get to buy a phone/PDA device with before-tax money, which effectively gives me a 40% discount on the device. The catch is, I have to pay for it before mid-November to qualify.

I am in love with the N900 and will definitely get it. Unfortunately, when I tried to pre-order it for the nice $580 price tag on Amazon, Amazon said they wouldn't charge me until the unit was ready to ship ... which may not be before the mid-November deadline. (I can always buy it next year under this arrangement, but this year's opportunity to use before-tax money would be wasted.)

This illustrates one drawback of the N900: it doesn't exist yet. "Soon" might not be soon enough for me.

So I have to look elsewhere. I'm using a Treo 650 because it's most compatible with the Dellbuntu laptop I have, and a netbook doesn't really count as a "PDA-like device". I'm looking for something portable with networking capability, a rich software library (preferably open), and versatile.

My question for you is: if I want to take advantage of this arrangement to buy a PDA-like device this week, what should I get? Should I get a N810 tablet until the N900 comes out?

Re:What if I need something *NOW*? N900 is not yet

[Lumpy]

get the N810 and a nice cellphone to go with it because the N810 cant make or receive phone calls. It's not a cellphone.

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually MY-mo. Weird, I know...

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rhymes with Lame-o! Just sayin'.

Maemo is too big

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Maemo is too big. Get it running on regular phones if can. Then we'll talk. Android being incompatible as it is should just fade away then... I hope?

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[Bootarn]

Just say "debmo".

Re:maymo? memo? meemo?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a Latin geek, he/she will insist that you pronounce it "m-EYE-mo" (the ae ligature is pronounced as a long i)