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Nokia Trades Symbian For MeeGo In N-Series Smartphones

Posted by timothy on from the unfortunate-name dept.

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?"

5 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Hardly premature. by Microlith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Hardly premature. by Microlith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Re:Very pleased by lennier1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Dino? by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Android by Spugglefink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.