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

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

[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:maymo? memo? meemo?

[maxume]

Pronounce it 'Nokia smartphone'.

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: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.

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: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: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.

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: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.

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: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: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: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: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: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.