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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?"
I'm just hoping the Maemo phone doesn't get completely locked out of Meego. Yes, there is a Meego image currently available, but does have some missing functionality(unless you want to operate it as an overpowered N810).
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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.
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.
1. Symbian is opensource too! 2. MeeGo is only replacing Symbian on N series Nokia There are E,X and C and numbered SmartPhones also in Nokia'a range 4. Its not clear if Nokia are branchin off N series as a level above N97 style smartphones
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.
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?
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It has some things nicely covered - enabling really inexpensive devices, squeezing a lot from what little resources they might have; or power management. And should get more pleasant with the shift to Qt.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Open maemo/meego, Qt, symbian (which is kinda long in the tooth, but still has a place, and sells a ton). Polar opposite of what some phone outfits do. *I* own the fucking phone, not some guy in Cupertino.
Qt's cross platformness is awesome.
Meego is a horribly lame name though, I liked maemo a lot better, name wise. Now if only I could afford a phone with maemo/meego on it. I currently have a couple symbian phones, and an older maemo tablet, which is pretty neat, but hurting for ram and a keyboard.
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This is not someone's pet project, it is Nokia and its flagship multimedia phone platform (E(nterprise) series stays on Symbian).
I am sure they will put stability and power usage to first place. After all, this is the company who takes huge beating because they insisted and still insist on "code with discipline" on mobile platform. Most of the parts of Symbian which developers hate is actually a specific way to code for mobile platform to use less power and stay stable. They expect(ed) some company who manages to do "talk" and "smart" on single CPU without problems to let them code like they code for desktop. It doesn't happen of course.
N series on the other hand, is flexible and they can say "lets put 2 CPUs", "lets put 512MB RAM" as they are multimedia/high end phones with high price flexibility. I guess that and massive multimedia support already existing on Linux along with developers is the major reason for this decision.
Don't let their liberal "no app store" fool you. If your app doesn't act fine on Symbian, it is gone. It won't slow down or anything. Flooding memory? "Memory full, please close some applications" and guess what? It closes it before it alerts. I am sure they won't let things like that happen on Linux too.
So, it is not something like desktop linux fitting on phone. Just like iOS isn't some NeXT/BSD compiled for ARM either.
What's the article talking about when it says "the last N-series phone to feature Symbian is the N800?" I thought the N800 was a Maemo device.
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.
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?
N8 is nothing all that dramatic. Symbian ^3 is just an evolutionary rather than revolutionary departure from Symbian ^1 (aka S60 v5). Symbian ^4 is due towards the end of the year which is apparently much more advanced. Also bear in mind Nokia isn't the only brand using Symbian. Sony Ericsson and Samsung both use it. So Symbian is in acurrently somewhat transitional phase. I wouldn't bank on it not remaining very popular in the medium to long term. Symbian certainly dropped the ball on interface and GUI innovation but it's code is tried and tested and considered rock solid at the back end. I wouldn't write it off yet nor consider its future based on N8 or some current phones with a few issues. Lets also not forget that despite some bad press the N97 has sold really well.
You are thinking 2010, the year when N900 blew everything else out of the water. A (very incomplete) list of software that it runs already includes busybox, bash, GNU utils, apt-get, emacs, vim, texlive, python, gnuplot, ssh -X, mplayer (!), fennec (firefox with full plugin support), midori, lynx, pidgin, conky... Its main limitation is, hands down, the amount of RAM, and even here, with its puny 128M, it performs very similarly to somewhat cleaner and faster Android. It is a fair tradeoff, Android being a toy OS compared to Maemo.
Try this: develop on Symbian for a while. Then develop on Qt for a while. See?
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There will be a "DRM" mode, but there will also be an "Open" mode. The goal is to answer the whiny calls of media companies and the like and give them a "secure" platform, but not screw over those who use devices like the N900, which implements zero DRM. I fully plan on ensuring any device I buy can be switched to (and will quickly be switched to) a no-DRM mode.
You can send an SMS from the device right now via dbus. The call stack in Maemo is closed, but they're using oFono in MeeGo. I have no doubt the OS will give the user control but to say that it -must- be locked down in some fashion and they -must- deny the user control is nonsense.
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.
Don't be too surprised by Symbian breaking this year the "100 million devices sold annually" barrier, and generally maintaining quite well its half of smartphone market. Nokia finally really started pushing it in the mainstream class.
So called "junk" also enables this, allowing very modestly priced devices with greast power management. And Symbian^4 has Qt as its main API.
You might call it apocalypse of the undead if you really wish to, but I would be suprised if Symbian won't remain a major player for a very long time. Plus zombies are cool.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I am thinking 2011. Nokia didnt put a lot of love supporting and expanding the N900 (btw, have one), plus is the only cellphone featuring maemo, not even other from the same company. In a lot of areas still beats badly any competitor, but need more support from app makers (and, btw, as already was pointed, is 256M what have of ram)
With MeeGo, being in netbooks, cellphones and maybe other devices maybe more cellphone makers join the platform, plus all the N models that could release Nokia next year.
And Android is gaining big momentum too (probably more now with the iOS4 debacle) and still have Linux somewhere down there.
it wasn't usable for the 95% of the population
It is painfully clear that you never used one or know anything about it. It is dead easy to use, with or without unlocking. Installing texlive is not easy. Making phone calls, using SMS, email, chat, web browser, media player, transferring files, using GUI config -- dead simple and very much idiot-proof. It's not FSF we are talking here, it's Nokia.
how about R'lyeh OS?
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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.
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.
Well, bad phonetically for those of us that've read the Lovecraft books.. Somehow having a Mi-go in the phone may not be such a great thing!
What are you blabbing about? The thing has the whole set of Linux apps avaliable for it. And since when does “flagship device” equal “second-class device”?
Also the Ovi Store is just a dummy. It’s there to be able to say they have an “app store” to the Appletards*. But there never was a point to an “app store” on full operating systems. Just as there is no point to an app store for your Linux or Windows desktop. And just as there was nobody who felt a need for a app store back in and before 2004, when the first Symbian smart phones came to the market.
You just went to Google and typed “Symbian $myAppKeywords”. Up came and come countless sites listing tons of Symbian apps, allowing download and linking to the manufacturer’s site.
And then you can also just search for MIDP (Java) software. Which again lists you lots of sites with lots of apps.
* It’s really just Applethink in an Apple world, where there is a point to a single app store.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
A lot of people in the media seem to want Nokia to fail, but the N900 is in fact highly successful in its market segment. When it was launched, Nokia said Maemo wasn't ready for mass consumption yet, and now say that it is exceeding sales expectations. According to Engadget, it sold 100 000 in the first five weeks, not months.
What Nokia also said is that the next product *will* be ready for mass consumption, so we can safely expect significantly stronger sales based on their surprisingly honest statements about the N900. It does have a real chance of changing the world for GNU/Linux (as opposed to Android/Linux).
And why wasn't the N900 ready for mass consumption? They haven't yet ported 100% of their features from Symbian, and most of the default applications are stuck in landscape mode due to their heritage. Don't trust the mainstream press on this. Despite reporters' bad conclusions about the cause, the UI in general is extremely well designed, and counting the number of apps in the Ovi repository is ridiculous given that the Maemo repository is full of apps.
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What's with this Linux thing and the n900? Sure, it's a linux netbook that fits in a pocket, but it's an AMAZING phone! Why is everyone ignoring this? I have one, and the Skype, google talk, contact list all-in-one is the most useful functionality I can imagine. I use it all the time. The QWERTY keyboard is great for texting and emails, it has a real browser, it DOES have useful regular user type apps, like Foreca Weather, Facebook, and less useful ones, like Latitude and n900 Fly :)
What else? It integrates with my google calendar, it lets me share video live, upload pictures to social networking sites, and even tell me, where I need to go. I also own an Android phone (v1.5), and Maemo kicks Android butt. I'm sure Android 2 is better, but Maemo on N900 is polished. What is boggling my mind is why Nokia doesn't seem to see it. Why did they dilute it with MeeGo? And why aren't they screaming about it from every ad?! It's Linux on mobile, it's ready, for chrissake!! Oh, yea, and give it a bigger battery.