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

Aww shit, throw down

[Weezul]

Yes, it's an OSS mobile dream come true, but also :
(1) Nokia ships more advanced hardware than any other phone maker.
(2) Nokia is the biggest phone maker in the world.
(3) Nokia has maintained user interface loyalty since before Apple even rehired Jobs.

We've been bullshitting about "the year of Linux on the desktop" here since the beginning, but well this might actually be the year of Linux on the mobile. Maemo/MeeGo require special apps for UI purposed, like all mobile devices, but unlike iPhone, Android, and Palm they don't require those apps be owned by Apple or be rewritten in Java or whatever.

N900's are currently fairly raw, but they are fucking bad ass. I'd assume that Meego will bring rotation, after that, the only shit that annoys me is :
(1) the integrated aim and msn suck, although sms, skype, and sip are solid,
(2) few games dispite being the only phone with solid GL, and
(3) no cups/gs printing.
On what other phone would you bitch about the lack of fucking printing?

Re:Android

[Microlith]

If Nokia had any brains left, it would switch their smartphones to Android

Yes, to an OS wholly controlled by Google, not developed in anything resembling an open fashion, and forcing a pseudo-Java runtime with kernel extensions, a filesystem that were never meant to be open source in the first place, and a custom framebuffer system that isn't compatible with anything that already exists on Linux.

No thanks, I'd rather go for a system that has more in common with modern, open Linux distributions.

Garbage collection? Code better if you're using C/C++, or use Python. Sandboxing? Can be done without a pseudo-Java VM.

Re:Hardly premature.

[sznupi]

First, S40 is not Symbian (the latter is only 20% of what Nokia makes). Secondly, Nokia almost has a larger part of smartphone market than all the other players combined (where do you see strictly "technology" advances now anyway?)

But most importantly...well, I guess you think it's just horrible that Nokia focuses, for a long time, on as broad spectrum of the market as possible, right? Not only on "premium" people living in "premium" places, segment about which some manufacturers only care about; such a shame. That tends to spread resources.
Nokia contributed greatly to close to 5 billion mobile subscribers that the world has now; for many of those people their first real means of communication, a great shift for humanity, that sort of "crap". Unfortunatelly - feelings and expectations of "investors" overlook such long term societal effects (a thing which will also bring new opportunities for "investments"...) - oh well, as long as they are comfortably profitable it's fine (and we'll see how some dispute ends up regarding possible freeriders on, also, Nokia R&D); BTW, not so breathtaking bottom line might be also because Nokia actually owns over a dozen of their manufacturing facilities, most of them not in China, half in the EU, and one even quite close to Cupertino. But I guess you think not outsourcing to sweatshops is also "fucked"...