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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.
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?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
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.
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.
It's being confused with the N8-00, which was (for obvious and sane purposes) renamed the N8. It's the flagship Symbian^3 device.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Nokia knows exactly what they're going to do with Maemo/MeeGo. They're going to make as much community-driven software stack as possible, this will drive down development costs for non-core applications. Meanwhile, they will, for example, roll out Ovi-services on top of that to bring in extra cash. Kind of what Apple is doing with their iTunes and AppStore and other content selling services. And don't think only music, videos or e-prints, it will be much more than that.
It's really a beautiful win-win situation. Nokia delivers a hackable, good product to the hands of millions of nerds and hundreds of millions of other people. They are quite free to do, pardon my French, more or less whatever the fuck they want. Meanwhile Nokia gets all kinds of business benefits.
And anyway, I'm not sure what exactly is your beef with Maemo. Maemo/MeeGo stack is currently emerging tech that's about to break to the market big time. It's not setup.exe-productized for mom and pop developers, yet. What did you expect at the moment? Use the emulator in the absence of hardware, and be sure to contact European side of Nokia for specific support questions to get something done. This might help you.
That's my take. Maybe you agree or maybe not, but consider it food for thought anyway.