Nokia Trades Symbian For MeeGo In N-Series Smartphones

An anonymous reader writes "Nokia announced that moving forward, MeeGo would be the default operating system in the N series of smartphones (original Reuters report). Symbian will still be used in low-end devices from Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. The move to MeeGo is a demonstration of support for the open source mobile OS, but considering the handset user experience hasn't been rolled out and likely won't be rolled out in time for its vague June deadline outlined at MeeGo.com, could the decision be premature?"

Comments

Hardly premature.

[Microlith]

Nokia is moving to MeeGo with their next device, but it will be a strange hybrid between Maemo and MeeGo, featuring the UI and Qt Toolkits prominently, but still using the Maemo backend. Future devices after that will use a pure MeeGo front-end.

Even then, they're already prepping Qt 4.7 for Maemo5 which means the core toolkit intended for MeeGo devices is available on a released device.

That said, it can't come soon enough. A well built, fully open and far more stable standard Linux stack is where I wanted devices to be years ago. Better late than never I suppose.

Re:Hardly premature.

[Microlith]

You and a few more folks on slashdot, but not 99% of mobile phone users. I want my phone to check email, sync my calendar, make/receive call, and most importantly work without me having to tinker with it.

Which is how it should be, in the end.

While there maybe a hardcore group of hobby hackers that think this is cool, trust me, the vast majority of don't really care about the openness factor.

The vast majority, rather, are ignorant of what being totally closed means for them and their data. Of course, that's also what gives us the continued dominance of Windows. The openness -is- good and is totally orthogonal to the concept of the previously mentioned functional system that works without having to tinker.

We can have both, to dismiss such things (especially on a site like Slashdot) strikes me as a little silly.

Re:Open source is the key?

[lennier1]

True, Symbian has been open source for a while but it also is an antiquated dinosaur which should've been taken out to the pasture and taken out of its misery long ago.

Re:Very pleased

[lennier1]

Join the club.

I'm rather skeptic and after the "N900 experience" (read: serious lack of commercial apps, treated by Nokia as a second-class device, the whole (ongoing) Ovi Store debacle, ...) I'm not sure I'll ever buy a Nokia device again.
And that's coming from someone who's been a steady Nokia customer since the late 90's.

Dino?

[Ilgaz]

As Symbian handsets have amazing low power usage, stableness and performance so they can even work with single CPU, I really want to learn what part of them is "dinosour" besides the famous C: D: drive issue (which dates back to Psion).

UI was problematic and they purchased Qt for it and implementing it in a way that, people will code _single UI_ for both Symbian/Linux which has nothing to do with eachother.

I still think we overrate "mobile developers" and their constant whining but, it is another issue. I mean, Opera/Nimbuzz/Fring can somehow code their best featured stuff for Symbian... I don't hear a word from them.

Android

[cheesybagel]

If Nokia had any brains left, it would switch their smartphones to Android, like their old competitor Sony Ericsson has been doing. Qt is nice for what it is, but the technology is old hat. Where is garbage collection and sandboxing?

Re:Android

[dysonlu]

If Nokia had NO brain at all, it would switch to Android, abandoning their still dominant platform (~40% worldwide marketshare), giving up control on the OS and becoming just another me-too phone manufacturer, just another Sony Ericsson.

Re:Android

[SpazmodeusG]

Slashdot can be very hypocritical sometimes.
eg. People in this thread are saying the n900 sucks because it's currently running the open source GTK toolkit instead of the open source QT toolkit. People are being modded to +5 for pointing this out. In the meantime Android runs neither! It uses a propriety toolkit that only supports Java. Androids Google application stack is closed source. There's tutorials out there on how to get root on an Android (requires a warranty voiding re-flash). Root on the Nokia means getting rootsh from the official maemo repository.

Despite this, it would seem people here hate Maemo and love Android. I don't get it.

Re:Android

[Spugglefink]

As a commercial Maemo developer (go ahead and laugh) I have to say I agree that Nokia should just give up and switch over to Android. They don't know what the hell they're trying to do with Maemo/MeeGo or the N900. The whole experience has been bitterly disappointing, like sitting around on a waiting list for months to get my new super exotic sports car, only to discover they neglected to install three of the pistons, and the transmission doesn't shift into reverse. It's really beautiful, but it doesn't run worth a damn, and it's basically useless.

However, as an experienced C++ and Qt developer trying to grapple with Android for the sake of taking my product to a platform that doesn't have its head shoved completely up its own ass, I find there' s just nothing to love about Android at all. Qt kicks this thing's ass all over the place, and this feels like trying to build a skyscraper out of LEGO instead of concrete and steel. It's just a damn shame Nokia have fucked all of this up so completely, and they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever competing. We're all stuck playing with Tinker Toys if we want to make any money. Or giving Apple a shit ton of money.

Re:Android

[Hurricane78]

Hahaha. You’re right about garbage collection and sandboxing. But you’re still silly.
In case you don’t know: They are the ones developing Qt. They invested tons of money into it and Linux.
I want a real Linux OS. Not some Java abomination. And so do they. :)

And Qt is a widget toolkit. Not a programming environment. It’s not responsible for those things. The language is. If you want those things you can still write it in a non-C/C++ language.

Hell, just install a JVM on it, and you can have all the Java, garbage collection and sandboxing you want. Also there are lots of Java apps so you can stay all-Java if you want.

The other way around is not possible. And this freedom of choice is exactly why they chose Linux with Qt.

Re:Android

[kangsterizer]

it's easy. Like people support their country of origin team in the soccer world cup, they're going to support their company of origin (= the one they own a phone at).

Stupid, but predictable human behavior.

Sense is only secondary, as long as it sounds "logical enough" on the moment to boast your "team" and diss the "other teams", they're going to post it. I'm sure i'm doing that mistake too from time to time, but I hope not too often, at least I certainly try to take things with criticism from every direction.

Well, duh!

[blind biker]

Try this: develop on Symbian for a while. Then develop on Qt for a while. See?

Re:Open source is the key?

[edivad]

Symbian is a dead OS. The kernel code is junk, and the userspace API is just braindead. Symbian is the kind of Open Source path taken by dying companies. Open Source by desperation. Good bye Symbian, you sure won't be missed.

Re:Open source is the key?

[saihung]

My Symbian smart phones have been multitasking since, I suppose, 2005? Earlier? My Psion could do real multitasking long before that.

iOS4 has half-arsed multitasking as of yesterday. Colour me unimpressed.

Re:Very pleased

[SpazmodeusG]

Well yeah. If you want an app store the n900 isn't the phone for you and you'll be unhappy with it.

In the meantime i love my n900. It seems to be able to do almost everything my full Linux machine can do. I have the GCC toolchain on the phone, openSLL client and server, all the old console emulators. Tutorials to install these features are provided on the official maemo forums.

Yeah it's unpolished. It doesn't even hide its shell from the applications menu. That's also why i love it.