Nokia Introduces MeeGo-Powered N9 Phone

An anonymous reader writes with news that Nokia has unveiled its first MeeGo-powered smartphone, the N9. "[T]he smartphone doesn't have any buttons on the front, with only the volume controls and a lock button located on the right side of the device. ... The performance of the prototype device felt very snappy, and it looks almost ready for retail. As a MeeGo device, the N9 will be running apps based on the Qt platform." The Washington Post calls it "the platform that could have been," referring to Nokia's decision to make the transition to Windows Phone for future devices. Others are impressed with the device, but see it as either a dead end or just another distraction to Nokia's long-term plans.

Comments

Soo....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why couldn't they have released this phone with windows on it?

Re:Soo....

[ozmanjusri]

Why couldn't they have released this phone with windows on it?

They wanted it to be good.

And yeah, I know Microsoft's reputation managers will mod this to oblivion, but it's true. Once you get past the flashy tiles, WP7 doesn't do anything particularly interesting, and is inconsistent/crappy about a whole bunch of things, like syncing, SD Cards, email, etc, etc.

Try one - you'll quickly understand why the few people who bought them ended up disappointed.

Re:Soo....

[Anonymous Coward]

and is inconsistent/crappy about a whole bunch of things, like syncing, SD Cards, email, etc, etc.

how so?

Re:Soo....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much that as it takes more than just a few months to get a product through the pipeline. Right now WP7 requires a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, whereas this phone uses one from TI. This phone was probably under development long before Nokia decided to change to primarily using WP7, and it wouldn't be possible to get this phone to run WP7. It's also likely that they'd made some commitments to buying components so either they could piss off the various manufacturers of these components or they could just release the phone. Considering it's better than their current product, there's no reason at all to scrap the release.

Re:Soo....

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL.. I find it hilarious that tin-foil nuts like you think microsoft has people modding slashdot nerds. Although its understandable that you being a anti-ms troll have a defective brain so I suppose its not entirely your fault. Jezz.. now I'm all sad.. :"(

Re:Soo....

[Hal_Porter]

I've been using Windows Mobile 6.x for ages and I wouldn't touch Windows Phone 7 with a barge-pole - it's off to Android for my next phone.

WM6.x was a bit ugly by default but enormously customisable and there was loads of software for it floating around as cab files of dubious legality. Also a lot of Windows applications were built for WM. I don't see that happening on WM7 which disallows native code. Only a C# API is allowed and third party applications have a crippled API. No multitasking or sockets for example. There's little chance of the people who wrote good apps for WM6.x rewriting them in C# - they've already moved to Android and or iPhone.

In a sense Microsoft are trying to go from an open but ugly platform like Android to a slick but locked down one like iOS. Mind you even iOS allows third parties to use the first class tools. On WP7 you need to have an agreement with Microsoft to do that. Adobe have one for example to implement Flash as native code. Some of the game vendors do too. In the absence of that you need to rewrite everything in C#. Most ISVs are not going to do that when there are tools that let them run their existing C/C++ code on both Android and iPhone which combined have a much larger market share than WP7. E.g. Android sold 36 million handsets last quarter. Microsoft sold 3.6 million of which 2.0 million were WM6.5 and 1.8 million were WP7.

So Opera and Mozilla have both stopped supporting Windows Mobile and won't support WP7.

WP7 is going to fail badly.

Re:Soo....

[cpscotti]

E.g.:There's NO Bluetooth API whatsoever and you can't use the phone's accelerometer if the screen's locked.

Re:Soo....

[Asic Eng]

Once you get past the flashy tiles

Seriously? Each time I see one in the department store, I'm surprised how ugly WP7 looks. I mean it's plain white text on a blue background - it's not even an interesting font - plus some seriously old-fashioned clip art. When was the last time you've actually seen a phone that looked like this?

Maybe it's supposed to be retro and perhaps that works for some people, but then why not just go and use this here?

Re:Soo....

[Fri13]

And the tiles does not feel to work well when you start having more friends, RSS/etc feeds and messages than 5-10.

If you have 10 facebook friends, 20 RSS feeds, few podcasts and you get IM and Email messages more than 2 a hour, the tiles becomes messy and cluttered. And if you add more tiles than 8, the possibility to find easily something comes harder.

I dont know about MS/Nokia fans but for me and my friends, WP7 phone have been terrible and good luck is that I did not have money to buy such at that time and I toke only 100 dollar Android phone (ZTE Blade) what is almost perfect.
bottom of screen five icons telling missed calls, new SMS's, new IM's, new Emails and web browser. Exactly same gesture possibilities as N9 was promoted (slide outside of the screen to get last used apps, home screen or all messages in one center).

Windows Phone is very great if you use it for family/friend contacts and follow few friends in facebook and so on. But for that, price is too high, better would be there 150-200 dollars.

Re:Soo....

[jon_doh2.0]

Jezz doesnt care

The phone I've been wating for . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . is at long last finally here. Alas, it is stillborn, killed in the womb by corporate arrogance and indifference. Now, no one cares, not even me.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Alas, it is stillborn, killed in the womb by corporate arrogance and indifference. Now, no one cares, not even me.

Don't worry, we'll still mod you up every time you bring up how great the Nokia phones are even though nobody asked.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Jeremi]

Don't worry, we'll still mod you up every time you bring up how great the Nokia phones are even though nobody asked.

Yes, but will anyone mod you up for so astutely exposing the shameful, self-serving ulterior motive behind the previous poster's message?

That's why you posted, right? ;^) Heaven knows it's why I'm posting now... I've just got to have more of that that sweet, sweet karma....

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[fatphil]

But don't forget that some people worked their guts out on the device.

Everyone will have some criticisms, that's only expected, but no-one who has worked on the device wants to see a criticism with a brush so broad that it covers their contribution or component. (Your comment did was not so broad-brush, this isn't a criticism of your post.)

There are several aspects of the device and/or software that are absolutely stellar. Incomparably better than anything else I've seen. I hope that journalists and bloggers recognise those when they finally get their hands upon one. It's a shame that some of these aspects are 'invisible', that's often the way with software - the less you notice it, the better it is, but alas the less likely it is to grab the attention.

Of course, there's one reason why I have the views and insights that I do, so I'll end this post with the following:
The opinions expressed in this post are mine own and do not necessarily represent the official view of Nokia.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I didn't post to have intelligent discussion, if that's what you mean. ;)

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS device right there shows us the beauty of open source like nothing else:
Even when Nokia dies (and there's no doubt about that), even if they stop supporting it tomorrow, and even if it's the last MeeGo ever, ...

The drivers are there, the kernel is there... and you will be able to do everything you want with it, until it's so old the battery has to be replaced* and even your current phone has become useless.

* (and you will be able to put a more recent battery in with Nokia)

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Randle_Revar]

I care. Well, I would have cared if I hadn't just got a secondhand N900 because I thought the N9 was canceled, and if I knew I could remove Meego and put on Maemo.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[quickOnTheUptake]

There are several aspects of the device and/or software that are absolutely stellar. Incomparably better than anything else I've seen. I hope that journalists and bloggers recognise those when they finally get their hands upon one. . . . Of course, there's one reason why I have the views and insights that I do

Could you just tell us what the subtly stellar aspects are?

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Microlith]

if I knew I could remove Meego and put on Maemo.

Well, this is Maemo. It depends on what you're after, though. I imagine the Maemo 5 UI will be ported to the N9 (Harmattan) eventually, and it's already running on MeeGo. There are no locks on these devices either, like there weren't any on the N900.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Totenglocke]

But don't forget that some people worked their guts out on the device.

Just because someone spent a lot of time and effort working on something doesn't mean it's GOOD. I can spend all day every day for 5 years trying to paint the New York skyline, but that doesn't mean that the resulting picture will be any good.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

If only Karma was redeemable for bitcoin ... that sweet daily dose of bitcoin spam would taste all the more sweet.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[jones_supa]

Just because someone spent a lot of time and effort working on something doesn't mean it's GOOD. I can spend all day every day for 5 years trying to paint the New York skyline, but that doesn't mean that the resulting picture will be any good.

Well, why wouldn't it? The results surely would improve by practice...

But yeah, I know what you mean. Development time alone is probably a bad unit of measurement in quality.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Randle_Revar]

So I see, further down in the comments. UI... eh, I am not too worried. It's the Debianish guts I am after.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[afabbro]

Everyone will have some criticisms, that's only expected, but no-one who has worked on the device wants to see a criticism with a brush so broad that it covers their contribution or component

Dear people who worked on this device:

Your contributions were meaningless. Your device is already forgotten. You wasted your time.

The opinions expressed in this post are the official view of Nokia.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Max Littlemore]

I haven't play with an N9, but I recently switched from an N900 to a Samsung. The Samsung has a 1Ghz A8 processor, the N900 had a 600Mhz A8 processor. The Samsung runs Android 2.2, the N900 runs maemo.

The Samsung is slow and freezes frequently, the N900 is quick and responsive. Skype on the Samsung is a separate app that takes for ever to load, frequently fails to load, crashes or freezes the phone and doesn't support video even though it has a forward facing camera, the N900 has skype integrated as part of the normal phone functionality and supports video. The Samsung has a slow and painful way of connecting the phone as a mass storage device that often fails and attempts to start Kies on a windows machine, the N900 asks how you want to connect and then connects.

There are so many things about the N900 that felt way superior to a Samsung Galaxy S. The OS just felt rock solid compared to Android. The only downside I found with the N900 was the lack of apps written for it.

If the N9/meego made the most of what was learned from maemo and improved on it, I would imagine that it would probably be the best smart phone around. It's just a shame it's stillborn IMHO.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[PaladinAlpha]

I've had a Galaxy S for several months. I've never had any trouble "connecting the phone as a mass storage device" -- you hit one button and it's done. If Windows screws it up I can only advise using a more stable operating system.

Haven't used Skype on Android but since you invented fake mass storage problems I imagine your concerns with that are fake as well. It's popular to complain about Android stability, but anyone who knows what they are doing and doesn't install random shady-looking garbage never has any trouble.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[MrHanky]

Much of the slowness of the Galaxy S is said to come from the file system, some ridiculous Samsung hackjob that degrades very fast. Other androids don't have the problem -- nor any of the others you mention. Meego might still be better than Android in several ways, just not the ones you mention.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Com2Kid]

Please tell me you are trolling?

but anyone who knows what they are doing and doesn't install random shady-looking garbage never has any trouble.

Yes, because all OEMs make their devices to the same quality bar! Why, ever single android device out there, from low end to the high end are top notch highly performant and bug free!

bullshit.

Just like any other open device ecosystem Android has issues with some device makers not even realizing what a quality bar is.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[AmiMoJo]

Maybe they plan to use those features on future Windows phones, like the way HTC have similar hardware, the same skin and the same (ported) apps on both their Android and Windows phones.

I agree it seems pointless releasing a non-Windows phone now but I'm sure they will recycle a lot of the design and code.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[shmlco]

"The drivers are there, the kernel is there... and you will be able to do everything you want with it..."

Yeah. It will be like all of those people who're still writing apps for Android version 1.0 and Windows CE.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[the plant doctor]

Surely someone who had an N900 is capable of installing a custom ROM and/or converting the filesystem to ext4 which would overcome many of these issues you described.

I know, Samsung should've done this in the first place, but at least the phone is open enough to do this with it.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[YoopDaDum]

They're the views of Nokia CEO, board and big shots (but not Greene it seems). I'm pretty sure a lot of employees have different opinions on the matter.

In the end, the opinion from the top do matters of course, but not as much as money. If WP7 continues to flop, and N9 has a (certainly unexpected from many) good acceptance, then we'll see.

Lack of applications may not be such a problem, taking two things into account. First, there is a need for a decent base, but the porting of Qt/linux open source applications could provide a decent base (see the work on getting Caligra, Marble to mobile). The UI need to be redone and some Q&A/polish required. But Qt Declarative goal is to make writing a mobile friendly UI simple (and leverage the core), and Nokia seems to help on Q&A. I'm not following this closely but it seems they're close to many KDE application developers. Second, if the Android runtime announced for the N9 indeed allows running Android applications (at least the ones not using the NDK, but it's the majority), then many Android user could consider it too. I have an Android phone, and wouldn't mind getting a N9 for example if it runs most of the apps I use or provide good alternatives.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[L4t3r4lu5]

Parse error: Infinite recursion. Execution terminated.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[rcs1000]

I too loved my N900 - a genuinely remarkable phone. I'm using an HTC Sensation now, which is wonderful is some ways, but I will always love the N900.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? No keyboard, RPM packages, "almost" ready for retail (much like the n900 STILL was a year after retail began), etc.?

No thanks. Nokia are dead.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[GameboyRMH]

The only downside I found with the N900 was the lack of apps written for it.

I assume you mean commercial tripe like the Kindle app etc?

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Max Littlemore]

I rate the contact system and phone integration as better on an N900. Thanks for the filesystem info. I'll look into alternatives.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Max Littlemore]

Nah, measure pro, I think it's called is really handy. The Angry Birds version was expensive and didn't have as many levels. I do miss having a programmable IR remote for my Cannon camera built into my phone though. Samsung doesn't even have the hardware.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[tibit]

And the problem, as almost always, lies in understanding, or rather lack thereof. Many people still view technology like black magic. This is a widespread phenomenon. This includes "engineers" at many asian device makers. They don't understand what quality entails, they don't understand how easy/smooth a device should be to operate, their management doesn't understand what they are selling either. They are happy that they got this magic technology from Google, and since google is the big wizard, they are happy that they got the magic wand going at all.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[fatphil]

Gee thanks. I'd have done the same, I guess. I approve of +1 funny, but won't comment about the "informative" aspect. It's easy to read your post as a criticism of upper levels of Nokia management, which again wouldn't be too broad brush, it certainly doesn't splash me.

However, my contributions, and those of many others, are not forgotten, they are living on in the upstream linux kernel with our personal names attached to them.``git log | grep nokia.com''

I expect to see many contributing with @intel.com, @ti.com, and @nvidia.com email addresses now, as their contributions were recognised as being very significant.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Eunuchswear]

I didn't post to have intelligent discussion, if that's what you mean. ;)

No, you post hoping someone will offer their butt to be licked.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Eunuchswear]

Surely someone who had an N900 is capable of installing a custom ROM and/or converting the filesystem to ext4 which would overcome many of these issues you described.

People who have N900's don't know how to "install a custom ROM" (how? With a soldering iron?)

They know how to do apt-get upgrade.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Eunuchswear]

* (and you will be able to put a more recent battery in with Nokia)

Maybe not. It has a fixed battery.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

NI posted the butt licking comment to be insightful, and the ppl with mod points agreed!

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[fatphil]

I probably shouldn't say too much. However, some of the miracle workers in the kernel team were the power management guys. Fully charge an n9 and your favourite other smart phone, and then leave them to go flat. Your other smart phone will die first, of that I'm sure. (I'm not patting myself on the back here, I'm not in the PM team.)

I would love to share some figures, but I believe those are a complete no-no at this stage, official channels only. And even if Engadget do have a real device in their hands, they still won't be able to report on the battery life for quite a while... ;-)

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[fatphil]

OK, I've just seen an official 450hr (two and a half weeks) standby time figure in some publicity material, so I presume I can say more. That's 50% higher than what Apple seem to be claiming for their devices. And I believe every part of it. I'm a developer, I reflash my device almost daily, so have never put it to the test, but I know that the idle-time battery usage estimations are frequently well in excess of 18 days. To me, that's stellar, and that's not because I work for Nokia, I think it's quite objective.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[exomondo]

the N900 is quick and responsive.

The problems i found with the N900 is the extremely basic stuff like the email client and package manager were awfully slow...this was one of the most common complaints on the forums too. Also having lots of media on the device slowed it to a crawl because of the indexing and the Ovi Maps app on there was way too slow.
It has a lot of great features and as a pocket computer it's brilliant, so cool to have a fully featured linux system in your pocket, but if email and navigation are important to you then you'll need a smartphone as well.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Max Littlemore]

For sure. What I love about the N900 is the tech is not black magic, well at least not for me being a debian user for ~7 years. The "lack of apps" comment I made was true. Referring to the lack of quality apps targeting the form factor, but some wondeful apps still exist. I remember being stuck at Canberra airport waiting an hour for a delayed flight home and killing time making art with mypaint - complete with pressure sensitivity. Try that on a capacitive iPhone or Android.... (Although the N9 appears to be capacitive - ahh well, fodder for the unwashed masses who feel the existence of opposable thumbs means all we should really use is our thumbs. At least this thread is so old my trolling will not likely be modded troll........ :p )

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Max Littlemore]

As posted earlier, Yeah I know how to install a custom ROM, but I haven't needed to void the warranty because the phone limps through. I am now seriously considering cyanogen though. I liked that on my old HTC G1 and last night's 5 reboots to update 20 apps has made it clear the current OS is broken. Still better for me than the iPhone4 (for completely utilitarian reasons, no fanboism), but still broken.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Max Littlemore]

Oh if I had mod points and hadn't already sprayed my funk all over this thread. big +1 insightful there. No need to break in, just do it with a real portable coms device....

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Urkki]

Now, no one cares, not even me.

Who cares? Finally a "real" Linux (meaning the OS, not the kernel) phone that isn't a brick (meaning the size and weight, not being "bricked") like N900.

"Real" Linux means: Nokia support not needed for it to be awesome. But looking at things, it'll have decent support for longer than any given model of iPhone (without upgrading to newer model).

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Max Littlemore]

There was a faster package manager... forgot what it was called, but I liked it better than default. Still slow at actually installing and updating, but it didn't require attention, I could just queue the things I wanted it to do and go to sleep. Wake up and the thing is updated. That's fine for me. The Android thing (could be a Samsung/filesystem problem) requires me to restart upgrades multiple times. I never had problems with email.... Always seemed fine. Lack of push may annoy some people, but for me every half hour is more than enough.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Someone finally built the phone you've always wanted and you refuse to even touch the device because you're not sure if Nokia will be behind it in a year or two? Either go at least try the darn thing, or I'd like to hear people complain less than no one has made an OSS phone. They did. Now it's up to us to see if it's popular -- not Nokia, not Microsoft, not AT&T. Doing otherwise is like a bunch of people not going to a party because they think no one will show up.

Re:The phone I've been wating for . .

[Prien715]

I don't get it. Someone finally built the phone you've always wanted and you refuse to even touch the device because you're not sure if Nokia will be behind it in a year or two? Either go at least try the darn thing, or I'd like to hear people complain less than no one has made an OSS phone. They did. Now it's up to us to see if it's popular -- not Nokia, not Microsoft, not AT&T. Doing otherwise is like a bunch of people not going to a party because they think no one will show up.

MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lwn.net/Articles/448590/
"""
Warning: This is not MeeGo
Posted Jun 21, 2011 14:48 UTC (Tue) by arjan (subscriber, #36785)
Parent article: Nokia's N9 handset launched

Despite Nokia's best efforts to confuse things, the N9 phone DOES NOT RUN MEEGO.

It runs the Harmattan OS, which isn't related to the MeeGo project at all, and is not compatible with MeeGo even.

It's very unfortunate that these mixed messages are happening, but at least at LWN we can be accurate about it.

-- Arjan who works on MeeGo
"""

Re:MeeGo

[exomondo]

It runs the Harmattan OS, which isn't related to the MeeGo project at all, and is not compatible with MeeGo even.

Isn't Harmattan the latest version of Maemo before the merge with Meego?

Re:MeeGo

[the linux geek]

More or less. Harmattan is theoretically a hybrid release, with MeeGo elements on top of a Maemo core. If I recall, it was supposed to be API-compatible.

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

It runs the Harmattan OS, which isn't related to the MeeGo project at all, and is not compatible with MeeGo even.

What a load of BS. "Harmattan, originally slated to become Maemo 6, is now considered to be a MeeGo instance" (Source: Wikipedia article about MeeGo).

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

It runs the Harmattan OS, which isn't related to the MeeGo project at all, and is not compatible with MeeGo even.

What a load of BS. "Harmattan, originally slated to become Maemo 6, is now considered to be a MeeGo instance" (Source: Wikipedia article about MeeGo).

ah wikipedia, nothing but undisputable facts

Re:MeeGo

[exomondo]

More or less. Harmattan is theoretically a hybrid release, with MeeGo elements on top of a Maemo core. If I recall, it was supposed to be API-compatible.

I remember it being positioned as the last in-development version of Maemo with the Meego Qt APIs added, not sure about other Meego APIs.

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's supposed to be API-compatible, and generally binary-compatible, but not package-compatible.

(Maemo, including Harmattan, is derived from Debian, and uses debian package management. Meego is not really derived from redhat, fedora, or any other desktop distro, but does use redhat package management.)

Re:MeeGo

[Randle_Revar]

Oh wow, it's Maemo?! Dammit, I thought the N9 was going to be Meego, and then I thought is was canceled because of the WinPhone crap. I might not have bought the N900 a few months ago if I had known about this.

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, slashdot, even more undisputable.

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, slashdot, even more undisputable.

except you don't refute an unreliable source with an unreliable source, idiot.

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I do. Double dumbass on you!

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I do.

hence the reason you're an idiot.

Re:MeeGo

[funky_vibes]

It's meego without the shitty rpm packaging system
Let people call their distros what ever they want and stop that handwaving.

Anyhow, these phones, are all mostly in the spirit of foss, which means you can recompile your kernel, change distros and customise it to the full extent of your wishes, just like any pc. That's why Maemo was a game-changer in the mobile industry, and why Microsoft are so afraid of it gaining traction.

Re:MeeGo

[Fri13]

Ain't MeeGo the merge of Maemo and Moblin?

Maemo distribution + Moblin distribution = MeeGo distribution
Maemo distribution - Moblin distribution = Harmattan distribution

What matter it actually have as both use/includes same Linux Operating System, almost same system programs, almost same system libraries but the graphical system is same but with slightly different software platform running it and apps?

Re:MeeGo

[Microlith]

Ah yes, Arjan and his hissy fit. I'd care more if there were anything else on the market other than the terrible tablets that have been out for months that got poor reviews (WeTab, exoPC.)

Re:MeeGo

[GameboyRMH]

Maybe marketing-wise, but under the hood they're as different as Debian and Fedora.

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what the hell is this?

http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/06/21/introducing-meego-1-2-harmattan-to-the-qt-sdk/

Re:MeeGo

[exomondo]

Ain't MeeGo the merge of Maemo and Moblin?

Well it's the new product that came out of taking parts of both Maemo and Moblin as well as adding a lot of new APIs.

Maemo distribution + Moblin distribution = MeeGo distribution

Kind of, they took parts of each and some new stuff to make Meego.

Maemo distribution - Moblin distribution = Harmattan distribution

That doesn't make any sense. Harmattan is Maemo + some parts of the new Meego OS (many of those new APIs that were added).

What matter it actually have as both use/includes same Linux Operating System, almost same system programs, almost same system libraries but the graphical system is same but with slightly different software platform running it and apps?

Maemo is mostly GTK+ (with Qt being supported) whereas Harmattan follows Meego and makes Qt the primary framework.

Re:MeeGo

[walshy007]

It's meego without the shitty rpm packaging system

how is rpm worse than .deb?

and yes I use both daily.

Re:MeeGo

[funky_vibes]

If the choice was between them, I'd say neither, since they're about equally bad.
But in this case the distro *already* uses .deb, so changing to an equally bad package format would be very stupid.

btw, I've rarely heard of a distro changing it's package manager, they might do it in th beginning, while experimenting, but once you have more than 90k packages in a repo...

Re:MeeGo

[walshy007]

If the choice was between them, I'd say neither, since they're about equally bad.

what is so bad about either? They do what they set out to do just fine.

Re:MeeGo

[funky_vibes]

what is so bad about either? They do what they set out to do just fine.

They don't properly solve reverse-dependencies, not to talk about any kind of dependency graph that is more complicated than a tree.
RPM even tries to do misguided things like transactions/rollback to solve other deficiencies that are there by design.

Neither supports source packages, which implies quite a lot of deficiencies by design:
* Multiple arch support can never be any good, and requires insane amounts of maintainer effort.
* Dynamic linking is flaky at best. (stable ABI is a package maintainers dream, not a reality,it is a goal not shared by the actual developers of said packaged software)
* No git/svn/hg/bzr support for packages.
* The system you get through this process is very far from being optimal for your needs. ie. reduced freedom.
* crosscompilation is a nightmare.
* setting up a cross compiler makes the above sound like a pleasant dream.
* bootstrapping one of these systems requires the knowledge located somewhere between 68k asm, black magic and voodoo.

Re:MeeGo

[walshy007]

They don't properly solve reverse-dependencies

People type 'yum install' or 'apt-get' then the name of their program, and it resolves all dependencies and gets said program, I have not had a repository dependency problem in the last decade.

* Multiple arch support can never be any good, and requires insane amounts of maintainer effort.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind maintainers actually.. you know... testing.. their _built_ packages to work on x system. Source packages are of no use to you in cross compiling you make the program useless through bugs, or worse yet the damn thing doesn't compile at all.

Dynamic linking is flaky at best. (stable ABI is a package maintainers dream, not a reality,it is a goal not shared by the actual developers of said packaged software)

I don't know what you are on about here, all my packaged software uses shared libraries just fine and dandy. Everything would be a shite sight bigger if we weren't using dynamic linking you know.

* No git/svn/hg/bzr support for packages.

That just plain does not make sense. The source code repository is one of those things that the package has no use for. I fail to see the need or what possible purpose it would have. to somehow integrate git into your package manager.

* The system you get through this process is very far from being optimal for your needs. ie. reduced freedom.

How is my freedom reduced? I can do whatever I damn well want with packages, or not. Again you are not making sense.

* crosscompilation is a nightmare.

I've done cross compilation before, it was rather painless so long as the code wasn't endian or 32/64bit specific.

* setting up a cross compiler makes the above sound like a pleasant dream.

I've baked my own compiler for superhitachi for an embedded project I was playing with some years ago, aside from the crazy compile time it wasn't too bad. Agree it isn't for newbies though but if you are baking your own compilers for strange archs you shouldn't be a newbie anyway. No package manager will fix this, it is not the job of the package manager to fix this.

* bootstrapping one of these systems requires the knowledge located somewhere between 68k asm, black magic and voodoo.

Why the devil does the package manager make it harder to boot? it just manager packages, so long as whatever binaries you need etc and boot loaders are there you do not have a problem. Booting is not part of the package manager.

Overall I think you should research things a bit more, many of your complaints have nothing at all to do with what a package manager should do. Package managers manage packages, not check out source code from a git repo and other such random things. Packages themselves are just files with lots of related metadata with dependencies etc.

Re:MeeGo

[Anonymous Coward]

http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n9/specifications

under Software platform and user interface,

- MeeGo for Nokia N9 (MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan)

Re:MeeGo

[funky_vibes]

many of your complaints have nothing at all to do with what a package manager should do.

Apparently some people have way higher expectations of what a package manager should do.
The "works for me" answer doesn't apply here since you clearly set the bar much lower.

You don't need crosscompilation made easy, fine.
Don't need to move your hdd onto a different arch?
Don't ever need to bootstrap systems?
Don't need git or alternative repo format support?
Some people do need these things,

People type 'yum install' or 'apt-get' then the name of their program, and it resolves all dependencies and gets said program, I have not had a repository dependency problem in the last decade.

Good for you, me on the other hand, I've heard about people reinstalling ubuntu/red hat systems after an update gone wrong.
You ignored what I said about deps, clearly some distros try to keep their package topology very simple, since the package manager cannot resolve more complicated dep graphs.
Try updating glibc/gcc and stuff like libpng to the latest version, and most often: you'll end up with multiple versions, you'll cook your system, or someone has already thought about this case and prepared a set of packages making the package repo 2x larger.

Source packages are of no use to you in cross compiling you make the program useless through bugs, or worse yet the damn thing doesn't compile at all.

eh? did you just say that you don't know how to crosscompile?

How is my freedom reduced? I can do whatever I damn well want with packages, or not. Again you are not making sense.

The packager chooses how packages are configured, compiled and linked, this obviously offers less freedom than a system where you can control these aspects.

if you are baking your own compilers for strange archs you shouldn't be a newbie anyway. No package manager will fix this, it is not the job of the package manager to fix this.

Portage does, see crossdev.

Re:MeeGo

[walshy007]

You don't need crosscompilation made easy, fine.

It is already easy.

Don't need to move your hdd onto a different arch?

If I do it will still be able to access the data, if you are speaking of the os drive I will simply install the appropriate arch distro. How is this an issue?

Don't ever need to bootstrap systems?

right here I presently have x86, ppc, 68k, SH, mips and arm linux systems. I have no problems booting all of them. What is your problem with it?

Don't need git or alternative repo format support?

No, because the packager checks out a version, builds it and then _tests_ the build

What you are talking about amounts to automatically building from latest git commits, which is a recipe for disaster for inexperienced users, and even experienced users have to be careful.

Some people do need these things,

I do everything you have said, but without portage. Funnily enough, most other developers do too, without issue.

Good for you, me on the other hand, I've heard about people reinstalling ubuntu/red hat systems after an update gone wrong.

I've not reinstalled a fedora system since fedora 3, and am on the latest at present. I've heard stories of people as root going rm -rf / before too, doesn't mean it's a problem with anything to do with the os.

You ignored what I said about deps, clearly some distros try to keep their package topology very simple, since the package manager cannot resolve more complicated dep graphs.

It is the way it is because package maintainers _test_ each package with everything else first. Letting everyone compile random versions of everything can result in chaos and lack of testing if the result actually works, especially if you are using a latest git commit as the base of your packages.

Speaking of portage though, my primary developer system is not the greatest but not too shabby, quad core, 12gb of ram, but even with this setup the sheer number of pieces of software I use would result in _weeks_ of compile time. This is _not_ acceptable. If I don't update for a while I can wind up with up to 3gb of binary updates. I do not like the idea of periodically heavily loading my machine for a week just to update to the latest items. Neither should you. Systems are there to _use_.

eh? did you just say that you don't know how to crosscompile?

No, I said some software packages don't like being cross compiled due to endian and 32/64bit specific items, or reliance on libraries that have said same problems. Automating compilation of such items without testing is absolute chaos unless you limit it to items that are _known_ good, and if you are doing that why not simply let the package maintainer compile and test for you?

Overall you've drank too much portage cool-aid, the jobs you are proposing a package manager be in charge of goes strongly against the linux philosophy of modular pieces that do single things well. You are talking about trying to get a package manager to do everything a maintainer does, this can work but is dangerous when things aren't tested, human testing of packages is a _good_ thing.

Re:MeeGo

[funky_vibes]

So a summary of your comments is still "it works for me" and therefore irrelevant, since your requirements are much lower.

Human testing is a good thing, if it doesn't stand in the way of, yes, you said it, human testing.
it's unreasonable to expect someone to test the latest versions of 90k packages on all archs with all various build combinations.
You can quickly see that the amount of combinations quickly goes up to the millions if not billions,

In the end, it's the job of the software author to make sure software works, and on all relevant archs, not the maintainer.
A maintainers job is to qualify software to a distro, and (hopefully not) adjust something small to the peculiarities of that distro.

Any sane developer will have made their software with endianness (and arch specific optimisations) in mind. If not, that piece of software deserves to be marked 100% broken.

On a modern system (intel quad) it takes less than one day to rebuild everything from scratch, that's about 2000 packages including gnome, kde 3.5 and 4.
It's about choice, and you can have both binary and source packages mixed without a problem, if you don't mind a less optimal system.

Re:MeeGo

[walshy007]

it's unreasonable to expect someone to test the latest versions of 90k packages on all archs with all various build combinations.

Yes, and this is why normal people don't like portage for stable systems.

In the end, it's the job of the software author to make sure software works, and on all relevant archs, not the maintainer.

Package maintainers job is an integration and testing one for the distro he's packaging for. he makes binaries for the relevant archs and sets up dependencies etc. Before submission he _tests_ the build on the arch with relevant packages. While upstream do their best to make things work, they are still human and cannot take into account the sometimes slightly differing needs of different distros. The maintainer is the guy who tries to make it so that "works for us" is the case of everyone on that distribution for that package.

Any sane developer will have made their software with endianness (and arch specific optimisations) in mind. If not, that piece of software deserves to be marked 100% broken.

So no git build at all, should ever even slightly break things? accidents happen, even otherwise well designed software has bugs introduced at times. Even if the bug is accidentally breaking a strange architecture that said developer is not even using.

The package maintainer _tests_ the build on all archs, and if some new bug appears that is as yet unresolved, either fixes and sends patches upstream, or just reverts the version available.

On a modern system (intel quad) it takes less than one day to rebuild everything from scratch, that's about 2000 packages including gnome, kde 3.5 and 4. It's about choice, and you can have both binary and source packages mixed without a problem, if you don't mind a less optimal system.

That is still 20X the time required for a full fedora dvd install. As for being less optimal, I'd consider using untested versions of everything to be less optimal in general.

Re:MeeGo

[funky_vibes]

Yes, and this is why normal people don't like portage for stable systems.

As for being less optimal, I'd consider using untested versions of everything to be less optimal in general.

I don't think my point is coming across; if it's untested, there's no chance it would've even existed in any other model of package management. So it's a win-win situation, you get to choose whether to (simply) test it, or ignore it, since it's masked.
It's no secret that Gentoo has the best documentation of any distro, and the highest rate of merging maintainer changes upstream. Clearly these guys know what they're doing. Learn from them instead of cussing what you don't understand.

So no git build at all, should ever even slightly break things?

Not on a stable branch. And in any case, it's not the package maintainers job to make sure some piece of software works. They can only assume it works in normal cases, but may need a tweak for that particular distro.

That is still 20X the time required for a full fedora dvd install.

Eh, that's only if you install from source, which Fedora cannot even do. With binaries it's the same time.

N950 too...

[the linux geek]

The N950 was also announced with similar specs, as a keyboard-including successor to the N900. I'll laugh my ass off if the N9 takes off to the point where Nokia reconsiders going with WP7 - WP7 isn't a bad system, but a proper, complete, Linux on fast quality hardware is truly awesome.

Re:N950 too...

[Lehk228]

WP7 cannot execute in the background, it's flavor of "multitasking" is just a pause to background, even blackberry OS 4/5 are more advanced than that

Re:N950 too...

[the linux geek]

WP7 can execute in the background, it's just (currently) generally disabled for third-party applications. The Mango update in a few months is expected to offer full multitasking support for all applications.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the N950 will only be available to a select few developers, and will have zero warranty or support. Still, if you can get your hands on one it'd make for a fantastic N900 replacement.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think even in Mango, WP7 will only have partial multitasking support to ensure apps don't cause issues with battery life or performance. Apple has also gone this route with multitasking on the iPhone.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

The n950 is only available to developers through the Nokia Launchpad program. It comes without warranty, a smaller battery and lack of NFC support. It will not be sold to consumers. I think this was a serious mistake judging a large segment of the geeky market that will actually buy this phone considers a lack of hardware keyboard a deal breaker.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Cowar]

The problem is the N950 will only be available to a select few developers, and will have zero warranty or support. Still, if you can get your hands on one it'd make for a fantastic N900 replacement.

This.

After seeing what nokia had done with w7, i lost faith. After seeing the lack of keyboard on the n9, I bought an atrix. While i'd like to see maemo/meebo take off, and i dearly loved my n900, I'll be keeping my atrix as having a rooted webtop environment and a walled garden phone makes due for me.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

After seeing what nokia had done with w7, i lost faith.

they haven't done anything with it yet.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Cowar]

unfortunately, without another phone already in the pipeline, developers aren't going to flock to this device. It's a chicken and egg thing, the iphone was really the only platform to have customers without apps, and nowadays, you don't have app developers without customers.

Re:N950 too...

[PopeRatzo]

I'll laugh my ass off if the N9 takes off

It would be even funnier if someone figured out how to run Meego on Nokia phones that ship with Windows.

Hell, it would be a scream if there was a way to install Meego on Android phones and jailbroken iPhones, too.

But that's expecting too much. Hoping that the best products will come to market is expecting too much. Hoping that corporations will try to give customers what they want is definitely expecting too much. We've long passed the point where there's anything like real competition. What a shame that the only way we'll ever see real competition is if we have stricter government regulations. I think you could say that our corporate masters have really let us down. We just can't trust them to do the right thing without lots of oversight, no matter how much they squeal about "Free Markets".

Re:N950 too...

[Microlith]

Hell, it would be a scream if there was a way to install Meego on Android phones and jailbroken iPhones, too.

Totally possible. You can make good progress with a 2.6.35 kernel, albeit sans hardware acceleration for video. If it runs Android, it can run MeeGo as well.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

After seeing what nokia had done with w7, i lost faith.

they haven't done anything with it yet.

Well, they may not have actually done it yet, but they keep giving wp7 a slobbery blow job every time Elop makes a public appearance.

Re:N950 too...

[aliquis]

Why not go all the way with QNX core, QT toolkit and WebOS foundation for the user interface? ... or just run MorphOS ;)

Re:N950 too...

[quenda]

N950? Why not just use N9 with a bluetooth keyboard for development? A full-size one even, since you are programming at a desk.
What's the point in having a whole separate model for developers? I expect this was never planned, and the N950 was just not good enough for commercial release. Or cancelled for political/commercial reasons.

Are people really demanding a built-in keyboard for development purposes? Or are programmers just the kind of people who like to type a lot on their regular phones?

Re:N950 too...

[RobbieThe1st]

Yea, that's true. I'd like to get my hands on the N950, but the N9 doesn't interest me. I guess I'll keep my OC'd N900 for a couple years, then upgrade to something with a 720p, 6" screen, hardware keyboard, and x86 proc, running Meego(which I'll then strip out for a Kubuntu Mobile/debian setup.

Re:N950 too...

[RobbieThe1st]

s/6"/less than 6"/g

Darn less-than symbol not showing up in plain text mode.

Re:N950 too...

[RobbieThe1st]

Both, I'd imagine.
I love my N900's keyboard, though it's only three rows. Makes slashdot posts decent, at 25+wpm. It'd be half of that on a touch screen, which would be intolerable.

Re:N950 too...

[quenda]

. Makes slashdot posts decent, at 25+wpm. .

Wow, that is fast! When it comes to typing on the N900, I'm all thumbs.

Re:N950 too...

[DarwinSurvivor]

Unless they've slipstreamed custom drivers into Android that can't be pulled out and plugged into MeeGo. Also remember that a LOT of the Android customizations are/were written so badly that Linus has (rightly) refused their entry into upstream. Making their inclusion in MeeGo a PITA.

Re:N950 too...

[dwater]

The N900 bug where it drops the first character typed is what irritates me...and the browser doesn't autocapitalise, making it different to input on the rest of the device.

Re:N950 too...

[TheRaven64]

As with iOS, this is a design choice rather than an OS limitation. Most of the time, it's the desired behaviour. A typical phone uses about 1% of the power in sleep mode that it does when the CPU is active. Having background apps able to drain the battery while the phone is in the user's pocket is not considered a feature by most users.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it will have applications. Every somewhat modern Symbian application is written with Qt; it means it will run on the N9. Now even S40 will have Qt applications, so the installed base is HUGE.

Re:N950 too...

[RobbieThe1st]

Huh, don't know about the first bug(though there is a bug where you have to type each letter twice on ebay.com); The second was easily solved: I disabled auto-capitalization in the preferences... I can do a better job than it can, I'm sure.

Re:N950 too...

[dwater]

LOL - that's fine if you *don't* want auto-capitalisation, but if you *do* want it, then you have to live with the inconsistency.

No, I don't mean ebay...I'm fairly sure it is any text area.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot really needs an "Inaccurate" modding tag. It would really help to weed out people--like you--with just enough knowledge to sound like they know what they are talking about, but clearly have no clue.

Re:N950 too...

[fatphil]

Dropped first character? If that's a bug in the core nokia GUI code, then that might be the kind of thing that the Community SSU package could fix. If you can give me steps to reproduce (I'm the only 'phil' from nokia that has contributed to the linux kernel, so you can find my work address trivially) I can ask the CSSU guys if it's a known issue. Or feel free to join the maemo forums and ask it yourself. (I don't know anything about userspace issues, alas, so I have no ideas what's going on up there.)

Re:N950 too...

[dwater]

1) click reply to this post
2) tap to focus in text area
3) tap outside
4) tap to focus
5) press 'L' ... nothing
6) press 'L'...works

Re:N950 too...

[fatphil]

Argh, browser specific - that's a tarpit. The simplest workaround is to use one of the other browsers that are available. Both opera and firefox worked at least as well as the packaged one. (Quicker, mainly. Startup time's not so good, but that's due to prestarting.)

Re:N950 too...

[dwater]

yeah...I try them occasionally, but I really like the swirl to zoom...

Re:N950 too...

[RobbieThe1st]

I've found that it's as much a matter of muscle memory as anything. I'm using two thumbs to do the typing, though for some key-combinations, I'm using the side of those thumbs as well, to speed hitting those keys. I do make a mistake once in a while, which can be painful to remove and re-write, but overall it *works*... Most of the time. There *is* a glitch on slashdot where sometimes the reply text-boxes don't seem to accept non-simultainious output - instead of hitting "alt char" you'd have to press them both at once to get the clternate character. Because you aren't expecting it, it can slow you down quite a bit.

Oh well.

Re:N950 too...

[fatphil]

RESOLVED / WORKSFORME

I'm probably running far from standard configurations.

~ $ dpkg -l | grep microb
ii microb-eal 2.9.5-1.18+0m5 MicroB Web Engine.
ii microb-engine 20091230-1.9.2-6.16+0m5 Package of MicroB libraries based on Mozilla
ii microb-engine-common 20091230-1.9.2-6.16+0m5 Package of MicroB libraries based on Mozilla
ii microb-geolocation 1.1.5-5+0m5 MicroB GeoLocation provider extension
ii microb-l10n 0.4.6-1+0m5 Localization package for microb-engine
~ $

And on my other device:

ii microb-eal 2.9.5-1.23+0m5 MicroB Web Engine.
ii microb-engine 20100401-1.9.2-5.2+0m5 Package of MicroB libraries based on Mozilla
ii microb-engine-common 20100401-1.9.2-5.2+0m5 Package of MicroB libraries based on Mozilla
ii microb-geolocation 1.1.5-6+0m5 MicroB GeoLocation provider extension
ii microb-l10n 0.4.6-1+0m5 Localization package for microb-engine

Maybe consider downgrading to an older version? (I presume I have older software than you, I stopped working on Fremantle a long time back)

Re:N950 too...

[dwater]

On mine :

ii microb-eal 2.9.5-1.23+0m5 MicroB Web Engine.
ii microb-engine 20100401-1.9.2-5.2+0m5 Package of MicroB libraries based on Mozilla
ii microb-engine-common 20100401-1.9.2-5.2+0m5 Package of MicroB libraries based on Mozilla
ii microb-geolocation 1.1.5-6+0m5 MicroB GeoLocation provider extension
ii microb-l10n 0.4.6-1+0m5 Localization package for microb-engine

I seem to be at the same versions as your 'other device'. Can you really not reproduce on that?

Seems odd...do you use the vkb or the real keyboard (I'm talking about the latter).

Re:N950 too...

[Urkki]

a lack of hardware keyboard a deal breaker.

I also used to think that way but... At the moment I actually think that it's ok. I can live with a sleeker device in my pocket. The typical physical phone keyboard isn't that great either, so it kind of evens it out. I'm pretty sure you can use any bluetooth keyboard with N9 (if not out of the box, then with trivial tweaks), and there are plenty to choose from even in the "fits into a jacket pocket without being bulky" form factor, which still are far superior to any integrated physical keyboard.

Re:N950 too...

[Anonymous Coward]

True nothing stopping someone duel booting phone OSes in many cases except some hard work :P

I used to have a Windows Mobile 6.5 Xperia X1 and duel booted Android onto it before making the switch to an android phone to try it out.

Re:N950 too...

[fatphil]

that was real keyboard.

Really, /. isn't the place for this, I don't mind receiving mail at my work address. Not that I can guarantee being able to do anything. Join the CSSU IRC channel (#maemo-ssu), that's where they're most interested in getting things fixed.

Re:N950 too...

[dwater]

indeed...though it was a bit odd...

Re:N950 too...

[ladoga]

I think your exchange was interesting. If there are more people like you at Nokia, then they still have some hope.

The best-looking corpse in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's like buying an Amiga in 1994?

Re:The best-looking corpse in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly; you can buy one and be insufferable for the next 5 years about things your friends' phones can just now do that you've been doing for years.

(And I can joke about it, because I'll be getting an N950 if at all possible, and probably an N9 as well.)

Re:The best-looking corpse in the world

[aliquis]

Exactly; you can buy one and be insufferable for the next 5 years about things your friends' phones can just now do that you've been doing for years.

Hey, Macs just recently got Battle Squadron!

Five years .. Try 20 .. ;D

Re:The best-looking corpse in the world

[Eunuchswear]

(And I can joke about it, because I'll be getting an N950 if at all possible, and probably an N9 as well.)

I doubt it. AFAIK you can't buy the N950, it's given (lent?) to developpers only.

Buggeration

Re:The best-looking corpse in the world

[elPetak]

That's exactly what happened to me and my N95. I was laghing at my friends when they were amazed because they finally got multitasking and copy/paste in their iPhones. I had that since day 1 and years before the iPhone was even a concept.

Re:The best-looking corpse in the world

[tripleevenfall]

What does that mean to any of them today, now that they have had cut and paste for years as well?

Impressive, but sluggish

[exomondo]

Looks impressive yet even on very powerful hardware it seems pretty sluggish moving around the UI. Perhaps there's room for optimisations but given this has been in development so long I would have thought it would be pretty slick by now. Certainly looks like this will be used for the really high-end phones, hopefully this will be the ideal 'geek smartphone' that they don't have to box in and dumb-down then with them also taking on WP7 it means they have a dumbed down consumer smartphone device to appease the masses too. It's a win-win.

Re:Impressive, but sluggish

[dwater]

where did you get the impression is was sluggish - having used it in person (for a while), I didn't get that impression at all.

Re:Impressive, but sluggish

[xynopsis]

Seems? How can you say it is sluggish you haven't even tried it out personally? Or were you just judging the performance based on the videos. I have the prototype and it is extrememely fast and snappy indeed. Even Engadget which is biased towards Apple is impressed

Re:Impressive, but sluggish

[peppepz]

I have an opposite impression. It looks slick and the transitions aren't annoying and distracting as the WP7 ones.

Re:Impressive, but sluggish

[exomondo]

I was basing it on one of the videos, maybe it was just the video that was jerky.

Re:Impressive, but sluggish

[exomondo]

maybe it was the video

Re:Impressive, but sluggish

[dwater]

> faultless, buttery smooth operation of the N9's MeeGo

From Engadget, no less :

http://www.meegoexperts.com/2011/06/nokia-n900-meego-1-2-summer-release/

Who supplied them with AMOLED screens?

[bogaboga]

I'm just wondering who supplied NOKIA with AMOLED screens in this device. Anyone know?

Re:Who supplied them with AMOLED screens?

[spectrum-]

Good question, also is the curved surfaced capacitive screen a first too? It's very striking in pictures from some angles

Re:Who supplied them with AMOLED screens?

[exomondo]

Good question, also is the curved surfaced capacitive screen a first too? It's very striking in pictures from some angles

I can't think of another phone with a capacitive convex screen but the Nexus S has a concave one.

Re:Who supplied them with AMOLED screens?

[shutdown -p now]

Dell Venue Pro has capacitive convex AMOLED screen.

Re:Who supplied them with AMOLED screens?

[exomondo]

Dell Venue Pro has capacitive convex AMOLED screen.

Good call. Not as curved, but you're right.

Re:Who supplied them with AMOLED screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just wondering who supplied NOKIA with AMOLED screens in this device. Anyone know?

Why you wanna know?

If this phone existed 2 years ago, MSFT

[rsborg]

....may not have effectively "owned" Nokia like they do today (Microsoft effectively paid Nokia $1B+ to guarantee WP7 was their prime platform).

I'm not saying it's too little to late, it does look like a fantastic phone with really fluid UI. And it runs Linux without a JVM layer. Nice.

Re:If this phone existed 2 years ago, MSFT

[dogmatixpsych]

That's certainly true but unfortunately this phone could not have existed 2 years ago with the technology available then. It's a fabulous looking phone though.

Re:If this phone existed 2 years ago, MSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

The SoC in the machine is basically just an overclocked N900. Quite a few people run their N900's at 1GHz with custom kernels without much problems.

Re:If this phone existed 2 years ago, MSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the ONLY technology on the phone is its SoC.

Hands on video..

[kvvbassboy]

Engadget has a couple: Nokia N9 first hands on. It looks quite slick!

Is it even a phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the link "Nokia N9 focuses on the most important things that people do: use apps, get notifications and switch between different activities."

I hope it performs better as a phone than my WM6.5 device. My caller ID doesn't even function while the screen is locked.

Re:Is it even a phone?

[Randle_Revar]

>I hope it performs better as a phone than my WM6.5 device. My caller ID doesn't even function while the screen is locked.

Well, Caller ID works fine for me on the N900, so I would guess it should be fine for that at least.

Some clarifications...

[Microlith]

The N9 and N950 are not running MeeGo, but the previously in development Harmattan, which is a continuation of the Maemo line. All of the Qt APIs in use by MeeGo as of MeeGo 1.2 are available on the platform, however, and efforts are already underway to ensure that the Community Edition of MeeGo (which is a pure MeeGo platform) is available on the N9.

The N950, sadly, will only be available in limited quantities to commercial/professional developers, with roughly 250 to be handed out to open source developers in the community. Notably, the N950 doesn't have NFC so it can't be used to develop or test NFC applications.

The N9 both is and is not an upgrade to my N900. It's lack of a hardware keyboard, lack of an SD card slot, and capacitive screen are negatives, while the faster and slightly revised omap3630 processor and 1GB of RAM are definite upsides. Additionally, most major European countries plus the US are likely going to be delayed (hopefully just delayed) for the N9 release as Nokia seems to be prioritizing them for WP7.

I will probably get one, as a minor upgrade. Hopefully the price will be reasonable.

Re:Some clarifications...

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes sense. I had heard just this week from someone on the project that meego had been killed just a few weeks before the beta date, so seeing this announcement was confusing. Maybe these two phones were too far along in production to kill outright. It will be amusing to see if they turn out to be much better overall than WP7.

It's typical corporate silliness. Kill a project and tell people to throw away all progress made so far then have them start up an essentially similar project only with a different framework.

This is where smart phones are being extremely stupid. The market is not about a phone or smart or anything like that. Instead they're trying to be general purpose computers in your hand. So the apps are considered more important than the project itself. Much like how MS/DOS and Windows became essentially a monopoly because people cared more about whether their favorite applications worked rather than the quality of the OS itself.

When you get right down to it the majority of apps are utterly worthless pieces of junk that are churned out quickly by devs hoping to get in on the boom before it crashes and really only a few apps are worth the effort to obtain and install. And yet the smart phone that supports the most apps will be the winner and the ones that support the best apps or that support apps the best will probably lose out.

Re:Some clarifications...

[Microlith]

I had heard just this week from someone on the project that meego had been killed just a few weeks before the beta date, so seeing this announcement was confusing. Maybe these two phones were too far along in production to kill outright. It will be amusing to see if they turn out to be much better overall than WP7.

The N950, as a consumer model, was killed some time back. This device is likely just a continuation of said same project with a different form factor (it was killed due to the hinge, which the carriers did not like.)

Instead they're trying to be general purpose computers in your hand.

On the contrary, with all other platforms out there they are trying to be like game consoles. With tight vendor control and development restricted to those approved by the platform owner, they get to control everything that goes in and out of the system. They then try to reinforce this by making something up about "ecosystems" and how the only way a phone can be good is if it's inextricably linked to one offered (for a fee) by the platform owner.

Re:Some clarifications...

[Anonymous Coward]

The market is not about a phone or smart or anything like that. Instead they're trying to be general purpose computers in your hand.

If only! The phone market is currently about getting people to rely on particular services. And if someone can get you to get used to a service, then you're locked into a monopoly and can't demand tech upgrades. And that's where your MSDOS/Windows comparison comes in.

It won't be as bad this time. Individuals will suffer some lock-in, but there won't be billions of dollars of institutional lock-in. That's why business is still stuck with Windows but people were able to eventually move on. Not that everyone did, but the barriers are very low these days.

Their job is to prevent this freedom and your job is to settle for nothing less than this freedom.

Re:Some clarifications...

[dwater]

MeeGo is just a name and they wouldn't be able to call it that if it wasn't actually legally MeeGo. Sure, it is not the same as you can get on meego.com, but a name is just a name. You could argue that it isn't MeeGo in any meaningful way, but I think there is value in getting MeeGo into the market, even if it isn't the same thing as other not-yet-released devices.
Anyway, MeeGo proper has no limitations on UI, so you can expect each manufacturer's phones to work quite differently, and I doubt the s/w will be 100% portable either. If the apps are designed with portability in mind - eg with (at least) the UI done in QML - then it shouldn't be too much trouble to move from one platform to another. YMMV

Re:Some clarifications...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you claim it's not running Meego when Nokia claim it is all over the place such as in their "MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan Platform Guide"?

Re:Some clarifications...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not correct. The N9 really is running MeeGo 1.2 with their own Harmattan UI on top.

Re:Some clarifications...

[Microlith]

MeeGo is just a name and they wouldn't be able to call it that if it wasn't actually legally MeeGo.

Nokia could. The prevailing theory is that they were granted an exception due to the fact that nothing else is on the market with the MeeGo name. It is legally MeeGo, mostly out of necessity and not at any technical level (no oFono, no RPM, etc.)

Re:Some clarifications...

[dwater]

yes, that's what I meant..."legally MeeGo" is the same as "*is* MeeGo" - though it isn't in any useful sense apart from marketing/etc, and even then I wonder. It is good to have the 'MeeGo' name out there on people's lips, but I wonder how much confusion it will cause for other MeeGo projects. I guess developers will know/understand easily enough, but end-users might expect other MeeGo projects to have the same look&feel, which is very unlikely...though that could well be the case irrespective of the N9/950 since I'm not sure what is required to be able to call something 'MeeGo'. I should check; it'll be interesting.

Pandora, Spotify, etc. and WP7

[tepples]

If only media players developed by Microsoft can play music in the background on Windows Phone 7, this privileges Microsoft's music service over third-party music services. I can see how Pandora, Spotify, etc. might have grounds for antitrust complaint against Microsoft.

Re:Pandora, Spotify, etc. and WP7

[exomondo]

If only media players developed by Microsoft can play music in the background on Windows Phone 7, this privileges Microsoft's music service over third-party music services. I can see how Pandora, Spotify, etc. might have grounds for antitrust complaint against Microsoft.

Well there really aren't grounds for anti-trust, i mean apple pulls apps because they use APIs that are only available to Apple software, which is what MS got done for with their anti-trust case, but there are more factors to anti-trust than just anti-competitive behavior. Also Apple had the same situation before they introduced multitasking too.
In any case the 'Mango' update allows developers to integrate into the music and videos hub directly and will support multitasking.

Re:Pandora, Spotify, etc. and WP7

[peppepz]

Antitrust? WP7 has an insignificant marketshare.

Re:Pandora, Spotify, etc. and WP7

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that support is coming in Mango. There was no relevant API for those apps to access. Now there will be. This also was the exact same situation that Apple was in, and it's really a crying shame how low quality the comments have become over the years on Slashdot.

Re:Pandora, Spotify, etc. and WP7

[tepples]

This also was the exact same situation that Apple was in

And comments like this were common in the iOS 2 and 3 days.

"More room for apps to shine"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand bragging about having no physical buttons and how it allows more room for screen, and yet the phone still has pretty much the same amount of screen-less area as every other touch screen phone.

Re:"More room for apps to shine"

[spectrum-]

Moving parts are traditionally points of failure. Remove the stuff that can wear out or fall apart and the device is more reliable and less warranty calls. Combine that with alloy case and Gorrilla glass screen and you can see the advantages. It's also the direction that the industry has been heading as originally steered by Apple design so it's what they think will sell.

Re:"More room for apps to shine"

[Eunuchswear]

Combine that with alloy case [...]

Polycarbonate.

Flexing muscles

[spectrum-]

I think this N9 device is more about Nokia flexing it's muscles and showing that they can still compete with HTC and Apple with desirable hardware.

It does cause massive, MASSIVE confusion if you look beyond that. Currently Nokia has the following platforms: Symbian ^3, Symbian S40 (Feature phones aka dumbphones), Windows Phone 7, Maemo 5, Symbian S60 v3 and Symbian S60 v5 (aka Symbian ^1) are all forthcoming or still on sale.

Then there's MeeGo forthcoming as well as this partial implementation of MeeGo on a development only N950 as well as the production N9.

Confused yet? oh there's also a rumour of a final Maemo 6 for the N900 in addition to unsupported development releases of MeeGo for the existing N900. And you can write for ALL of these using the Qt development suite? well now that's another mess...

Re:Flexing muscles

[exomondo]

My hope is Symbian for dumbphones, WP7 for most smartphones and Maemo/Meego for the highend linux touchscreen computer phones. That allows Nokia to just continue support at the low end, not have to worry about the software side of the larger smartphone market and to be able to focus on pushing highend devices with their own platform that should appeal to power users.

Re:Flexing muscles

[dwater]

> Windows Phone 7

I don't think so...something a little later, I guess.

Re:Flexing muscles

[Asic Eng]

Maemo/Meego for the highend linux touchscreen computer phones

How would that happen? They've already clearly stated that they'll go with WP7 and they are dismantling their own platform: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/jobs/2011/04/27/nokia-announces-layoffs-and-symbian-outsourcing-40092621/

You can't easily change the course after that anymore - once you have lost your development team you've lost your ability to develop. IP and existing products are essentially useless for that - you need qualified, experienced and motivated people. If they were to start now, it would probably take them years to rebuild their teams to the same level they once had.

Same with their customers - I want a Linux phone, but there is no way I'd even look at this. It's a dead-end product.

Re:Flexing muscles

[Anonymous Coward]

S40 isn't Symbian. Symbian is the quintessential smartphone OS; S40 is the evolution of the first real dumbphone UI & OS. They have nothing in common but a few UI bits that are designed alike.

Re:Flexing muscles

[exomondo]

Maemo/Meego for the highend linux touchscreen computer phones

How would that happen? They've already clearly stated that they'll go with WP7

They obviously can't use WP7 for their dumbphones and they've already stated that they are going to continue to have a team working on the 'next big thing'.

and they are dismantling their own platform: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/jobs/2011/04/27/nokia-announces-layoffs-and-symbian-outsourcing-40092621/ [zdnet.co.uk]

You do realise the title of the source article is 'Nokia halts MeeGo and N9 releases, says report' ? Yet here we are with the N9.

Same with their customers - I want a Linux phone, but there is no way I'd even look at this. It's a dead-end product.

So you don't have faith in open source then?

Re:Flexing muscles

[Eunuchswear]

It does cause massive, MASSIVE confusion if you look beyond that. Currently Nokia has the following platforms: Symbian ^3, Symbian S40 (Feature phones aka dumbphones),

The confusion has been there for a long time, S40 isn't Symbian.

Re:Flexing muscles

[Asic Eng]

OSS is good for software, but it doesn't get hardware built. If there is a project which allows you to install a proper Linux system on Android phones, then I'm interested. MeeGo on dead end hardware only? I'll pass.

I'm on WebOS now...

[gQuigs]

I had been waiting for MeeGo, but am now happily on a Palm Pre Plus. It's not completely open source but so far they really respect the homebrew community. That doesn't appear to be changing with HP now in charge.

I have longer post on it for those interested

An excerpt:
HP/Palm really deliver on openness. It’s NOT completely open source. However, they support their homebrew community, and be support I mean they have donated servers to them. All the devices I looked at (haven’t looked at the Veer) ship with the ability to go to developer mode, which really does mean typing in “upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart”. Which is just awesome.. The homebrew site even has (unsupported by Palm) instructions on how to upgrade a WebOS 1.4.5 device to WebOS 2.1 (the veer os).
Part of the homebrew community is patches to change functionality. About 500 of them or so, for instance changing how the date displays, adding alarm options, and a lot more.
Oh, and Ubuntu is a supported developer environment

Re:I'm on WebOS now...

[Anonymous Coward]

which really does mean typing in “upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart”

You misspelled "bastard" at the end there.

Convex Screen

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care how hard the glass is, chances are I can fuck up any convex screen with a minor fumble.

Re:Convex Screen

[spectrum-]

For many Nokians like me, they'll be moving from resistive screens which although prone to frustrating scratches are remarkably strong. I think the convex will give it more strength actually, curves are generally robust. Like arches in architecture for example. I'm still quite fond of my stylus too on the N900 and N97 and 5800. Great for writing lists in my own handwriting or selecting precise areas on google maps mashups in a browser etc

The three most important

[Roduku]

activities on a phone are running applications, getting notifications and switching between activities. What happened to making phone calls?

Re:The three most important

[m4rtink]

Well, I have an old 2005 candy-bar Nokia for that, and my N900 for the rest. :)

Re:The three most important

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like you will have to navigate to the phone app. which would likely be about 3 gestures away. It will be hard to break the habit of hitting a send button to bring up the phone interface.

Looks cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

QT while not my favourite API is much better than the competition. Few companies recover from a "partnership" with MSFT, Nokia started to smell funny the moment they signed the deal.

Are there any other companies making meego phones?

Re:Looks cool...

[gmuslera]

Meego seem to be going in the opposite direction of android: from netbooks and tablets to phones. The initial example devices of Meego included an Aava phone, but is not one of the main phone manufacturers companies as far i know.

Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[divisionbyzero]

I don't get it. This phone looks great.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this looks no more like a "me too" flavour of Android, it has no differentiation from Android with a custom launcher. It would just get tossed into the pile and lost amongst the hundreds of Android phones on the market - the fact is the non-geeks consumers who treat their phone as a piece of electronic gadget and not a pocket-size PC don't care about the underlying bells and whistles of Meego.

WP7, for better or worst, looks and feels completely different.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Darinbob]

The majority of Nokia employees and share holders are asking the same question.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[fotoguzzi]

There are a billion reasons.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fairly simple. Nokia have pulled a Commodore.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, while the multitasking looks "great" the UI isn't all that glamorous. It essentially appears to be an Android app list. While its fast, so is iOS doing the same thing, running static icons. Its 2011 now isnt it?

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[hazydave]

A Commodore? Nope. A "Commodore" is when you have some crazy good technology, spend practically nothing developing or marketing it, and pay managers who know absolutely nothing about your industry way more than the guys at your much larger competitors make. And hey, while you're at it, replace one of your best assets -- the proven engineering managemet team --with q bunch of fools. Who then proceed to delay your next gen products by 6 months, and screw them up along the way. Oh, and sure, also keep huge volumes of the old product around, because you didn't actually believe your proven engineering team would deliver the delayed products in time, so you didn't order enough parts. That was Commodore, '91-'93.

I think Nokia's pulling more of an Osborne. They have a very successful product line, bit aging but still well liked. They could have just concentrated on the current stuff, maybe evolving SymbianOS into MeeGo via a compatibility layer, if SymbianOS was beyond modernization. Or even suggest that Win7Phone would simply join the Nokia lineup. But no, they felt compelled to tell everyone that every current Nokia smartphone is already obsolete, an evolutionary dead end. And that, not only are they going all MS, but basically, there's just no reason to buy a Nokia smartphone for a year or more.

That really was the message delivered if not intended... Adam Osborne didn't intend to starve his company either. Or send all that business to Kaypro, either. This message has not been lost on consumers or the industry, either.... Nokia is in crash and burn mode right now. They can only fall so far -- someone will want the patents.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nokia board hired a MS Executive as CEO, and he is still hearing his Master's voice.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[devent]

Because most of the CEOs in the US are working for a) them self and b) for the shareholders. Most of them are not working for the interest of the company. That's also why they have 20 times the income of other countries like Germany which similar large and successful companies and they are not held responsible for a failure, but get big bonuses.

What do you think how an ex-MS manager will run a company? He will get with his buddy how can they manage to increase their personal income and increase the shareholders values. They are not interested in what will happen to Nokia in 10 years from now. Even if they totally wrack the company, they get a big bonus and the shareholders are happy because they got a big dividend while it lasted and can now sell their stock and buy stock from another company.

Also if your company is big enough it doesn't matter how you run it anyway, if you increase the shareholders value. If the company gets to bankruptcy you just call your buddies in the fed to get a nice bailout. "Market forces" and "let the market be itself" my ass. If you bailout people it's socialism but if you bailout cooperations it's (now I'm missing a word).

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it was some variation of the Commodore story. Too many meddling managers, too low a ratio of good people to incompetents to develop a compelling platform. Harmattan got to this point only with titanic struggle and it is too late.
Basically, the old Nokia could not develop software in a competitive way.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[MrHanky]

I sometimes find it amazing what utter bullshit gets modded up on this site. You can in fact get WP7 skins for your Android. So far, there's nothing like this.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[peppepz]

In this particular case the problem is that the WP7 announcement apparently didn't make b) happy either; the share price dropped heavily on 11 february and I think it hasn't recovered yet.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Anonymous Coward]

What in the hell are you talking about? There is nothing like this? A screen full of apps. Yeah, that's really missing from the Android and iPhone scene...

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[MrHanky]

Oh, look: a screen full of apps. Must be a cheap iPhone knock-off from 2005.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[Flambergius]

Basically, Nokia didn't think they could create a strong "ecosystem" for MeeGo. To compete with Apple/iOS and Google/Android they would have needed to do almost *everything* those companies do, and that didn't seem feasible - and they were probably right. Nokia's window of opportunity was 2005-2007 and they missed it. Today, their options were Android and WP7. Most people think they should have gone with Android, but as I understand it, Nokia felt that Microsoft needed them more than Google, and so Nokia would retain more of it's independence with WP7 than it would with Android.

Re:Can someone tell me why the went with WP7?

[divisionbyzero]

Basically, Nokia didn't think they could create a strong "ecosystem" for MeeGo. To compete with Apple/iOS and Google/Android they would have needed to do almost *everything* those companies do, and that didn't seem feasible - and they were probably right. Nokia's window of opportunity was 2005-2007 and they missed it. Today, their options were Android and WP7. Most people think they should have gone with Android, but as I understand it, Nokia felt that Microsoft needed them more than Google, and so Nokia would retain more of it's independence with WP7 than it would with Android.

All very good points. It's still a shame though.

Something's rotten in Finland

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop

No hw keyboard

[gmuslera]

One missing things from all the demos and videos was the virtual keyboard, but part of the love i have for my N900 is for the hardware keyboard it have, The N9 is nicer to look, have more battery (even if you can't replace it), more cpu speed, harder, and a very nice user interface, but is not anymore a computer with phone capabilties, is definately a phone now. Unless the N950 becomes more available than what is announced, probably will have to move to Android or WebOS, or wait till another company fills that niche.

Re:No hw keyboard

[Microlith]

not anymore a computer with phone capabilties, is definately a phone now

Nah. I don't like the loss of the keyboard but that's no lesser than the N800, which didn't include a keyboard either but was very much a pocket computer. This still retains all the hallmarks of the N900, we'll just have to get creative for the input.

Re:No hw keyboard

[peppepz]

I found some glimpses of the virtual keyboard in this long video. Disclaimer: I don't understand vietnamese.

Re:No hw keyboard

[Robb]

My initial reaction was "crap, no keyboard" but even with a nice keyboard on my N900 I have to be really bored to do anything more than a very short SMS or an instant message. I'll read an email but generally won't write one unless it is nothing more than "OK", "go ahead" or "thanks".

Re:No hw keyboard

[blop]

I use the N900 keyboard quite often, sysadmin tasks via ssh are surprisingly easy once you remap a few symbol keys!

Invoke not the Old Ones

[UniAce]

One would be well advised to avoid accepting favors from the Fungi from Yuggoth.

The team should spin out

[renzhi]

Some investor with vision, should grab the whole team, and set up a new company to build MeeGo phone, a real convergent mobile device. That way, you won't have the Nokia baggage, you don't have to fight internal politics of a giant corp, you get the excitement and energy of a new start up working on something cool, and best of all, you rid yourselves off that Elop.

Re:The team should spin out

[kovari]

Look up Aava mobile.

Re:The team should spin out

[Anonymous Coward]

The spin off already happened. The company is called "Intel".

Re:The team should spin out

[Microlith]

They only produce devkits, not consumer-grade hardware. Sad, but that's the state of things. If they were then Intel might have more people interested in their end of this.

Re:The team should spin out

[ecki]

Intel hired a lot of the Nokia people working on Maemo and Meego. I'm very curious what they can pull off, and I wish them good luck! Elop's concerns were not the technology though, but the execution. Shooting him as the messenger makes no sense.

Re:The team should spin out

[MacroRodent]

...you don't have to fight internal politics of a giant corp, you get the excitement and energy of a new start up working on something cool, and best of all, you rid yourselves off that Elop.

And you get hit by a ton of patent lawsuits, if it looks like you will be succesful :-(

Re:The team should spin out

[BlkRb0t]

They would have to license a lot of stuff from Nokia, but I do wonder it would be a great undertaking. It's usually not seen in hardware companies.

Average Consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the average consumer buy this over Android?

Re:Average Consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everything has to be average.

Re:Average Consumer

[satuon]

I've bought Nokia in the past because of the good camera, good battery life and good price. Those things aren't os features or apps but they do matter to me.

Android on it?

[mrops]

Considering this is Linux, wonder how long before I can run something like Cynaogen Mod on it.

I have always loved Nokia hardware, it is better than the best, their software unfortunately makes the whole device suck. If I could get Android running on something like this, it will get real close to being a perfect phone.

Re:Android on it?

[exomondo]

The main issue i see with that is dealing with the lack of hardware buttons.

Re:Android on it?

[Anonymous Coward]

And for what reason would you want an android on it.Are you one of those guys who goes about saying things just for saying sack. what you mean is like putting a Toyota engine that has been super charged with nitrogen in an AMG Benz car.

The AMG Benz cars are well crafted with the hands and well made and signed with the engineers signature before release why would you put a Toyota engine inside a Benz. Meego is pure and i mean pure Linux, it is just like Ubuntu, fedora or Slackware or any Linux distro, a fully running Linux OS, whiles android is a system where you only have the Linux kernel and have a system like Vmware or Microsoft hyper-v sitting on top of it before it can run smoothly, the tow are not the same and the two are not interchangeable.

Re:Android on it?

[Cederic]

I'm a very happy n900 owner and I'll be switching on Android just as soon as an Android phone that actually feels like an upgrade is available.

It's fuck all to do with the OS and everything to do with the app support. Frankly I can get shell access and write an app to fill any gaps in Android; I can't duplicate the efforts of the tens of thousands of app developers to re-implement their work on Maemo.

Re:Android on it?

[MrHanky]

Mmm, did you two even look at the videos? 1) It's not sluggish. 2) It doesn't look much like anything you've seen. "Oh but Nokia software is always poor, so this software must be poor as well!" Sorry, but that's the argument of a retard. The software looks great (from the few hands-on videos posted by various, not only Nokia's own), and Android's only obvious advantage is the huge market for apps.

Please Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[simm_s]

For all of you Android haters that want a true Linux phone experience! Built with blessed APIs and running the latest mainline Linux kernel. This is your chance to prove us that a phone OS built using a fully open source development methods works. I am sick of going to conferences and hearing about how Android is bad for the community etc and then these same people pull out Apple iPhones. Needed to get that off my chest! :-)

Re:Please Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[simm_s]

Don't get me wrong though it looks pretty good so far: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/21/nokia-n9-first-hands-on/

Re:Please Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[Anonymous Coward]

> This is your chance to prove

This thing will be discontinued whether successful or not, there's no point in investing money into it to "prove" something. Nokia already decided to abandon open source development whether it works or not before they had even one decent model. Every dollar/euro you give Nokia _now_ will not be invested into Linux but into Windows.

Re:Please Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[Microlith]

For all of you Android haters that want a true Linux phone experience

Did once already for my N900, likely will again for this one.

Re:Please Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[affenhund]

For all of you Android haters that want a true Linux phone experience! Built with blessed APIs and running the latest mainline Linux kernel. This is your chance to prove us that a phone OS built using a fully open source development methods works. I am sick of going to conferences and hearing about how Android is bad for the community etc and then these same people pull out Apple iPhones. Needed to get that off my chest! :-)

If it had a keyboard i would buy one, guaranteed! But without one it doesn't appeal to me at all, alas! Sent from my N900

Re:Please Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[aaaaaaargh!]

Sure I'd buy it. Unfortunately, I live in Southern Europe. Whatever nice gadget is announced somewhere else in the world will arrive only 1-2 years later at 2-3 times the cost. :/

Re:Please Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[State your name]

I would consider buying the N9, pending a closer examination. Unfortunately the Nokia website does not list the UK as a country where it will be available in the foreseeable future.

Android? Modding?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just handed a N950, and I was wondering if anyone knows of a modding community for N9 / N950.
I recall there was an Android port for the N900, maybe someone is working on something similar?

Re:Android? Modding?

[RobbieThe1st]

http://talk.maemo.org/ ...Or you could always donate it to me ;) :P

You mean this billion?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2032053/microsoft-paid-nokia-usd1-billion-adopt-wp7

Doesn't mean it's good?

[Guppy]

Just because someone spent a lot of time and effort working on something doesn't mean it's GOOD.

Hey, no reason to bring Duke Nukem into this!

Who cares about apps..

[Anonymous Coward]

N9 is so complete by itself (look at the list of software pre-loaded!) that who really cares that there won't be millions of rubbish apps available. There will be many apps in any case as QML-based programs will run with little or no modifications on N9 and all the latest Symbian phones.
I plan to buy two of these: blue one for me and pink for my wife.

Re:Who cares about apps..

[Hal_Porter]

Your wife will have an affair with someone who'll get her an iPhone.

Re:Who cares about apps..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch! That was harsh!!! Extremely Harsh!

Gosh, I'm getting shivers by just reading all this!
Such animosity..

Re:Who cares about apps..

[Hal_Porter]

You sound so camp I'm surprised you don't already use Apple products.

Listen to the AC...

[Qubit]

From lurking on the Meego lists it sounds like a number of the Nokians hacking on MeeGo and Qt shifted from working on Nokia's payroll to working on Intel's payroll. I believe that some of the teams even stayed in the same cities.

Intel isn't traditionally a mobile device developer, at least not memorably, so it will be interesting to see what Intel does with their new employees. Remember that MeeGo is intended for a number of different form factors (tablet, handheld, notebook, in-vehicle, etc...), so Intel might focus more on other devices and put less emphasis on creating MeeGo smartphones.

MeGo-Powered?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is MeGo power, and how does it compare to conventional lithium-ion batteries or fuel cells in terms of capacity, longevity, recharge rate, and cost?

Why a mirror like display?

[devent]

I watched the videos and they build a nice phone. But why oh why they always need to spoil it to use a mirror for the display? I could puke when I see the background and the lights are all mirroring on the phone. How can I use that outside in the sun where I usually would use a phone? Why they can't invest the 5$ more for an anti-glare display?

Should i buy one?

[drolli]

Could be the last decent phone developed by Nokia.

Probably the will attribute its non-success to the OS instead of the fact that they clearly said that this eill be the last one.

Re:Should i buy one?

[cederlov]

Lets hope its not the last, but rather the first decent phone. (Not only developed by Nokia...) I am curious as to how Microsoft reacts to this, as they kinda have Nokia around their little finger... Also, its a big win for everybody that Nokia launches a MeeGo device at all! Openness is not common in the world of mobile devices, but releases like this might change that. Openness was not very common in the early days of computers either...

Re:Should i buy one?

[Tanuki64]

Strange. People don't buy a phone because it is the last of its kind? I read statements like yours whenever there is an article about Nokia and the N9. But as consumer, if the N9 is a good phone, why should one care that there probably won't be an N10? Was there something ever a free upgrade plan N(X) -> N(X+1)?

Re:Should i buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem really is the apps, consumers want apps and developers want a large customer base, as nokia is phasing out both Symbian and MeeGo the market for mobile QT apps is effectivly dying pushing developers towards iOS, Android and WP7.

This phone basically needs alien-dalvik (not available yet) or another manufacturer selling phones using QT (it doesn't have to be MeeGo but it needs to atleast be sourcecode compatible with it)

Re:Should i buy one?

[dwater]

You missed the announcement about Qt being for 'the next billion'? IMO, that's more interesting than the n9, and provides incentive to move development to Qt from other native platforms. I don't suppose Qt will be on WP, but it is on Android already and Symbian (though ymmv)...I heard some talk of it on iOS too.

I don't care that it's the last Nokia MeeGo phone[1] - I see that it's the first MeeGo phone. While there are sure to be issue porting an app from the N9 to other future MeeGo devices (why just phones?), I see that there is definitely value in the reduced effort and less-closed/more-choice that the consumer may see from that.

[1] If that does indeed prove to be the case. We are happy to believe their negative statements of intent (ie Feb11), but not much of what they have said in the past has proved to be true, so I don't believe much of what they say...

I will buy this phone if..

[Anonymous Coward]

Sthephen Elop is fired for running nokia to the ground and trying to make it into being essentially a patent bully for microsoft. I think Meego is the most promising platform, but with the disastrous decisions nokia board has made particularly in the last six months , I'm not particularly hopeful. Lets hope nokia realizes it's horrendous decisions before dissolving into oblivion.

Probably other manufacturers will jump into the meego phone platform reaping the rewards.

And the patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

As has recently been shown, patents are the way for the big boys to keep the little boys down. Just look at what is happening to google.

About the only companies that could just do a new phone without needing to buy millions in patents are an IBM or a HP. Xerox would be fun... anyone who tries to patent war them will be nuked back to the stone age.

But an upstart? Forget it. Will be sued so hard, their ancestors will cry out for patent reform.

An Opportunity Missed

[IceFreak2000]

This is a real shame IMHO; I've watched the Engadet video of the device in action and I have to say that compared to iOS or Android I'm seriously underwhelmed by the Harmatten UI - the underlying OS may well be superb, but with that current interface I can't see Joe Public taking much interest.

A way to run Android Apps on N900/N950/N9?

[RanceJustice]

I have a N900 that I really enjoy, but I admit I'm less than enthused at how the platform has stagnated. I was expecting a lot more development, but with Microsoft's intrusion and Nokia mismanagement, I can't say I'm surprised. The N900 is showing its age but a lot of tweaking can help, but even MeeGo 1.2 Dev edition doesn't have everything hardwarewise working! I'd like to update to a non-Android phone, but I'm afraid that we're at a dead end. The N950 is likely out of my hands - I'm not a developer in any meaningful sense, so I'd have to pick up the N9. Hardware wise I'm liking it, though I'd like to see a newer generation dual or quad core A9. Unfortunately, from the posts here that show that Harmattan isn't even MeeGo proper suggest that like its predecessor, the software is going to be a stagnant flop for all save those who want to use it exclusively as a mobile Linux CLI, instead of a modern smartphone. As much as I like what I can do with my N900, what I can't is annoying.

The best way I can see to give the platform some staying power is enabling it to run android apps through some sort of seemless virtualization, if they won't run native? I'd love to have a little android sandbox where I could install anything from the App Market and use Layar or Google Maps Android App when I want them, without being subject to tracking all the time and whatnot, or install the Battle.Net authenticator which I know will never come in a native fashion to Maemo/MeeGo, sadly. Building the phone with this in mind would give it the chops to stand up as a "modern" smart phone in addition to being a geek toy. Otherwise, I fear it will be another footnote of incompatibility.

Re:A way to run Android Apps on N900/N950/N9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Android applications don't run native on Android either.

Re:A way to run Android Apps on N900/N950/N9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Alien Dalvik

Great Device, no Ecosystem

[Gyorg_Lavode]

The problem with Meego was never likely to be the OS. Instead it's the same problem Microsoft has, the ecosystem. There simply isn't room for another mobile platform (behind iOS, Android, Win 7 Mobile, blackberry OS, and the less recognized WebOS, Symbian, and QNX). While two years ago, it was ok to just have a great mobile OS, now it is imperitive that the entire software and services ecosystem exist around that OS.

Nokia can't do it. They tried it with Symbian and OVI and failed miserably. Microsoft can do it. The combination of microsoft's OS (which I think will be even more impressive as windows 8 becomes a multi-form factor reality) and nokia's hardware as well as microsoft's money creating the ecosystem will provide a very competitive brand. One I'd expect to take 3rd in the mobile OS wars.

I do lament the loss of Meego though. I want a phone thats also a computer. Meego's promise of true linux on a phone is extremely tempting. Hell, maybe I'll find a meego phone just to be my persnoal computer. As for now, I'll stick to my Epic 4g until I see windows 8 on a phone or a VERY compelling android upgrade.

Re:Great Device, no Ecosystem

[dwater]

I agree to some extent - at least the sentiment. However, iinm there is demand for a completely free OS and MeeGo may well be able to fill that niche. The demand doesn't come from end-users but from manufacturers and networks, both of whom still want to provide some kind of additional (supposed) value-add to their devices/services. You can see this with all the efforts the various manufacturers put into skinning Android - with variable success. I have trouble seeing how this will all 'pan out' into something successful, but it seems clear that there is some commercial demand for something outside the control of Google/Apple.
I don't know why you would lament the loss of Meego - it is alive and well. It is only Nokia who have changed and the rest of the Meego world is still going strong. I wonder if MeeGo-proper will run on the N9 (in the same way it runs on N900) - if so, that might provide some future for N9 beyond the maintenance of MeeGo-harmattan.

It's a Nokia

[RockDoctor]

Nokia are now part of MicroSoft to all practical intents and purposes.

I don't know who'll be supplying my next phone - when this current Nokia gives up it's 3-year grasp on life. but it won't be a Nokia.

meego phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried the meego on my first generation eeepc and was impressed by how quick and responsive it was. It seems to run very well on very little hardware which is ideal for a smart phone.

It'll fail because...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I bought my wife an N900 nearly a year ago. Nowadays all she does is complain that it can't run Whatsapp or some other cool Android app. I think the N900 is the coolest phone ever, but hardware and capabilities no longer matter. All that matter is the OS and the apps available for that OS. Meego/Maemo is dead and so is any phone based on those systems.