Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Preps Linux OS For Low-End Smartphones
itwbennett writes "Nokia is going after the low-end smartphone market with a Linux-based OS code-named 'Meltemi.' The phones are expected to cost under $100 without subsidies. A Nokia spokesman's no-comment comment went like this: 'Of course, we don't comment on future products or technologies. However, I can say that our Mobile Phones team has a number of exciting projects in the works that will help connect the next billion consumers to the Internet.'"
This means the three friends Linux-Nokia-Microsoft will be in bed together. It's not surprising considering Nokia already developed Qt and they were developing MeeGo which is based on Linux. Their Nokia N9 phone is quite awesome, actually.
Now what's great about this is the fact that with Nokia's history they have proven to put out quality hardware. They can also really use this to fight against both iPhone and what's worrisome for some, Android. Android has lots of fragmentation and patent related problems. Just yesterday it was revealed that Microsoft alone gets $400 million a day from Android.
Sony Ericsson is known to put out quality hardware, Nokia is known for just putting out.
Just a slight correction, $400 million an year of course. And so this isn't just self-reply... Nokia has always needed help with their UI and consumer friendly part in their smartphones. I think Windows 7 is a really good choice for that, as it's actually a really user friendly OS and it already as the marketplace and other stuff ready that Nokia never got off alone. But Nokia has also done good low-end phones and they're still selling really great in Asia and in Europe too. Linux is a good choice for those, as it can run on more low-end machine and Nokia already has knowledge about it gained from MeeGo.
Is there any level on which this decision makes sense in light of Nokia's direction?
Any phone smart enough to run Linux us smart enough to run WP7.
And Nokia? Embracing Linux? After jettisoning MeeGo?
And Stephen Elop? Linux?! HUH?!
Consistency? What's that?
Does Nokia have any strategic direction at all?!
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Ridiculous. Nokia makes the best hardware out there. Their problem is being horribly late with software, due to terrible management.
I think this might be a positive development. Show them how your $100 Linux "dumbphone" can actually do twice as much as the $499 Windows "smartphone", twice as fast.
There won't be Web 2.0 on a $100 phone, but I guess you can write quite nice integrated solutions if you know a bit of UNIX and C.
What I don't understand about this plan(assuming it isn't mere rumor) is that the linux-based OS is supposed to be for cheap, low-spec phones that their new MS/Nokia BFF WP7 deal doesn't provide them with an OS suitable for...
Their MeeGo/QT work, now orphaned, was largely aimed at higher end smartphones, the same ones that are now going to be WP7 devices. None of the linux-with-custom-stuff-on-top phone OSes(MeeGo, Android, WebOS) work particularly well on sub-smartphone hardware. They are powerful, have some nice features, and don't suffer from some of the horrid, idiosyncratic development environments of the old dumbphone and featurephone OSes; but they don't actually scale down very far before you are looking at some seriously dire performance, RAM so limited that multitasking is largely a theoretical benefit, and a screen so lousy that your decent browser is nearly useless for anything that isn't a deeply spartan 'mobile' website that a 1997 WAP phone could have rendered....
That's what I don't understand: Linux-based systems definitely have their points on more powerful hardware, and Nokia has access to one of their own(in addition to doing an adroid hostile-fork, as Amazon did); but they aren't so hot on weaker hardware(Exercise: grab a copy of the debian m68k port and replicate the features of, say, a Palm III, in 2MB of ROM, 2MB of RAM, and a 16MHz processor....). Nokia also has a number of eccentric and crufty; but eminently suited to very-low-spec phones OSes available. Why would they possibly be spinning Yet Another Linux WIth Something Weird On Top Of It OS?
Sounds like an episode of Jerry Springer's show.
Have gnu, will travel.
Uh no, they should really drop Symbian already. It's just pain in the ass. Both to use and develop for. Best would be to only have Win7 for high-end phones and Linux for the low-end.
It's definitely positive, if only they will go and make such phones.
Just having top and powertop on my N900 allows me to identify battery-draining apps in minutes, unlike my friend with Android that wasted a week to do this. You don't have to write them in C. I'm sure python will be ported... QT is C++ only.
To run Qt on it.
I think you're under assuming recent generation low-end phones. They're perfectly capable of multitasking, surfing the internet, many even have cameras. They might not have so many features, the camera quality isn't really that good, but even the cheap phones now a day can do lots of stuffs. And I actually just looked from Nokia's site. Since hardware is the most cost, I think they can do it with their Linux solution since now they're using Symbian.
That's what probably went though some PHB (or Elop's, or Steve's) head. Either way, I'd say it's playing with fire.
For less than $100 you can't expect too much, but maybe xterm?
So you think Microsoft can dictate what kind of software and hardware Nokia manufacturers in projects unrelated to their WP7 deal?
Remember that Nokia is still an independent company with its own board, shareholders and goals, not a subsidiary of Microsoft.
It would not be a bad thing to sink the carrier centred model
I agree. But for that to happen in the real world, the carriers would first have to be willing to allow phones designed for a non-carrier-centered model onto their respective networks. Right now, the United States market is split between two cellular technologies: GSM and CDMA2000. There are four nationwide carriers, soon to be three: Verizon Wireless (CDMA2000), Sprint (CDMA2000), AT&T (GSM), and a smaller GSM carrier that AT&T will soon acquire. Of these, only the GSM carriers consistently store the subscriber identity on a separate removable chip (the "SIM card"). CDMA2000 also allows for this (the "CSIM card"), but both CDMA2000 carriers have been seen to shun this in favor of programming the subscriber identity directly into the phones that they sell, and I haven't seen any indication that a carrier will activate a phone that it did not sell. So this leaves AT&T, and I've read stories on various tech forums of AT&T having a noticeably worse customer experience than the CDMA2000 carriers.
it would be quite funny if Microsoft were somehow forced to sue Nokia for patent infringement.
Ridiculous. Nokia makes the best hardware out there. Their problem is being horribly late with software, due to terrible management.
This gives them an excuse to implement my conspiracy theory:
- Nokia will have MS doing the work of "customizing" Linux for the phones. MS will brand it in a way that it both cashes in on the Linux name, and also tries to sound like "It's our own work that makes it good."
- MS will keep building up ways to make money off Linux. They'll spin two ways; they'll claim that their work exploiting^H^H^H^H extending Linux legitimizes their right to claim license fees for the rest of it, and they'll slowly solidify their position of "ownership" due to some bullshit patents they have.
I believe that Microsoft can do whatever they want with Nokia.
The board chose a CEO who did nothing visible, then forced Nokia into dependence on Microsoft. The shareholders reacted by selling madly. I don't know what Nokia's goals are aside from selling phones, but they don't seem to be reacting fast enough (especially with Elop pulling a multi-Osborne at the start of the year.)
So yeah, I expect that if MS tells Nokia to marginalize or kill something off, they'll try as hard as they can to do so. Elop has to stay on good terms with them or he'll ride Nokia into the gutter.
Cheap low end hardware has changed since the Palm III
They are probably thinking about an 600-800MHz ARM9/11 cpu with 128-256MB of RAM, with a GPU that can still draw 30 million triangles per second and play 1080p videos (like say the 25$ raspberry pi coming out this november). Also Nokia is moving upcoming Qt 5 rendering to run almost entirely on OpenGL (ES). This will probably make the UI on such devices (GPU with a cpu tacked on) smoother than on a high end Android 2.x phone.
Then again, they could just as well do this on existing Symbian devices.
Having worked at Microsoft, there's no way I think this will happen in the next few years.
Microsoft has a very strong culture of "not invented here", and is completely paranoid about open source contaminating their products. Any involvement with open source (and in particular, GPL software) requires a monstrous amount of paperwork and negotiation, and will be shot down in nearly all cases. Since Microsoft already has their phone OS, they will not use Linux.
Though this isn't true:
Any phone smart enough to run Linux us smart enough to run WP7.
You can strip Linux down to sweet fuck all. Windows OTOH isn't Windows unless it has windows.
But yeah... WTF?
Deleted
Lot's of tech fantasy, zero fact. No company could ever legally negotiate the deal you described above. Please, take off your tinfoil hat and get real.
Meanwhile, outside the reality distortion field: Bloomberg Businessweek: Microsoft Is Said to Pay Nokia More Than $1 Billion in Deal (emphasis on which way the money is flowing)
Even here, in Finland (one of the most expensive countries in Europe), you can find decent Android phones for under $100. I don't see how Nokia can compete, after Elop's brand suicide.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
- MS will keep building up ways to make money off Linux. They'll spin two ways; they'll claim that their work exploiting^H^H^H^H extending Linux legitimizes their right to claim license fees for the rest of it, and they'll slowly solidify their position of "ownership" due to some bullshit patents they have.
So wait, Red Hat, Canonical, Google and other companies are all warmly welcome to contribute and make improvements, but when it's Microsoft we should go "noo, we don't play with guys like that. go away."
They're all profiting (or as you say, exploiting) Linux just the way you describe.
Indeed, it is best left unspoken lest regulators have evidence later on.
Yet Nokia, a company with some management issues, gets an ex-Microsoft CEO and suddenly burns down everything they had invested in, in exchange for a dependency on a company known to destroy "partners."
A CEO and pocket change compared to what it would cost to actually buy Nokia.
The utter insanity of decisions coming out of that company now just suggest to me that there's a ton of politics, back and forth, and infighting, and that there's no unified leadership in the company. After all, suddenly this when Elop showed slides basically saying "within a few years anything not Microsoft will be gone."
Within a few months, Cortex-A8 based processors are going to be low end.
It is cheaper to utilize components that are getting outside development than ones requiring you do all the work internally. That's why they merged Maemo into MeeGo (long term planning, really) and why they seem to be transitioning the low end to Linux.
Only question is if they'll drag Aegis over to the low end and cripple the systems even more severely than iOS and Android.
Their CEO did nothing visible? Things take time you know. And what's the line about shareholders. Usually in Slashdot people hate companies because they only do something that pleasures their shareholders. Now you're crying that they made a decision that didn't.
I'd like to point out that those are better specs than the N900 has...
What, and create yet another external dependency on the efforts of some other corporation? No, it's much more sane to contribute to existing open source development efforts that exist largely independently of the goals of some other company.
1. Miss the smartphone train
2. Keep polluting the product range with many slightly different dumb/smart phones over the years
3. Develop several operating systems without selling them in the form of decent products
4. Purchase Trolltech for $150M [citation needed] so that you can (further) develop OSes/frameworks
5. Trash the OSes developed to in favor of MS
6. Make other OSes
7. Aim at cheap ($100) phones (you know what? cheap phone lovers don't buy apps that often)
8. Bankrupt
This is another proof that no Mainstream company can ever ignore linux in the long run. the beauty of linux is such that it scales to sub $100 smartphone and HPC . I bet any OS this planet can do that. sure there are patent problems sorrounding it but thats not going to stop companies from adopting. Nokia should have a plan B if they dont get hit with windows smartphone otherwise they are doomed forever. they know this . thats the reason they are doing this . Nokia backed of Meego and announced symbain wil wont that long but u should have a alternative for tat plan. and this is that alternative . unless MS mole stephen elop tries to do something nasty with windows smartphone i think Nokia wil be a hit with this model. ALL the best Nokia. lets wait for a great sub $100 phone.
It's probably more than just a rumour, at least that's the impression I got from the Finnish media, which tends to be fairly well informed. Meaning that the OS exist and there are products planned, but of course no guarantees that a product will ship.
As to how the Meltemi-stuff make any sense:
At the level that Nokia makes decisions, the smartphone segment of mobile business isn't about hardware anymore, it's applications and services, or probably more to the point, it's about attracting developers. Nokia ditched their own OSes because they knew that by themselves they could not attract enough developers to build a fourth "ecosystem" (iOS, Android and WP being the there current ones). Nokia said that they chose between Android and WP, and, while we can speculate why they chose WP, one of the stated reasons was the fully-fledged and mature tool-chain that WP has.
Meltemi itself may be about many things: hedging their bets, getting something out of the Linux experience they have, or maybe they just feel that the segment suits a Linux-based OS. The next generation of sub-$100 phones will be much more powerful then previous ones and it would be misleading to think them as having very low specs, but it will still be a distinct segment, separate from the smartphone segment, especially it will not be driven by third-party applications and services. That means that Nokia can still, by themselves, make a competitive phone to that segemnt without having to build an ecosystem.
In summary, Nokia ditched Linux (MeeGo) on smartphones because they had to, and they are using Linux (Meltemi) on feature phones because they can.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
The N900 has a 600MHz Cortex-A8 based processor and 256MB of RAM. The GPU in the processor on the Raspberry Pi is an ARM11 (ARMv6) core, which while decent (same as the early Android devices and first two iPhones) it's behind the N900.
Speaking as a shareholder, I hate it when companies do something stupid shortsighted to please traders who are come-today-gone-tomorrow. To have a drop as severe as they did earlier this year, long term investors had to have been annoyed and dumped their stock.
Maybe it will use the Cortex-A5, more efficient and faster than Arm11, but supposedly lower cost than Cortex-A8. There were rumors that it would finally show the light of day in 2011/2012. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380443,00.asp
The Android Market has a Terminal Emulator app which will give you a command prompt that will let you run (a bare-bones version of) top, which is already part of the Android OS. Or you get PowerTutor from the Market for a more fancy graphical user interface. Or you go to Settings/About Phone/Battery/Battery Use.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
You must be joking. What would you call the patent shakedown of Android vendors then? Ya know, the scam that looks to net MS more than their own mobile platform will next year? Oh yeah MS has really changed... tactics- and that's about it.
Microsoft doesn't have a good history of playing nice with partners. They tend to die painful deaths and their history in the mobile space is that of spectacular failure.
Scaling Linux from Meltemi up from a low spec to a high spec smartphone would be relatively easy. If the MS "partnership" goes the way all the previous ones have gone, Nokia would be dead, full stop. This way they may have an escape route.
Oh and "feature phone" these days is 100MHz with 32Mb RAM, 2Gb storage. That sounds like a 30 user system to me.
Deleted
Very true about others "exploiting" Linux, except for a major difference: They all play by the Open Source License rules. You make a change to FOSS code, AND RE-RELEASE THE PROGRAM, you must provide the source code when requested. That requirement totally negates MS's number one, and historically proven, business strategy: embrace, extend, extinguish. If they embrace and extend, they have to let it out into the wild. They can't extinguish it. That's why they have always treated FOSS like the Gods Damned Plague. Their normal method of operations is totally disarmed.
Maybe their CEO and board have remembered that the number one purpose of a company is to make money. Period. Google, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, Oracle, and Canonical, either have or are currently making money off Linux. If MS wants some of that market, they'll have to spin off a division that ONLY does FOSS. They can't afford to contaminate any of their other projects^H^H^H^Hducts with FOSS code. There have been rumors that they have used FOSS code, but since they only give out binaries, it's hard to prove.
I would love to have MS come play with Linux. As long as they follow the rules and play in good faith. (Historically, not a chance in Hell. Even their own head Open Source Evangelist quit in disgust after a year.) MS has some extreme skills in UI design, developer tool building, and marketing.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
They all play by the Open Source License rules. You make a change to FOSS code, AND RE-RELEASE THE PROGRAM, you must provide the source code when requested.
Like Google with Android?
Android is not FOSS. Android is a proprietary project that Google selectively makes open source.
Only the kernel is FOSS in Android, and I'll be the first to suggest that Google basically mooches off the efforts of the kernel community. But they DO act according to the statement you highlighted for the kernel, even if unhelpfully.
You honestly believe that the patents they leverage to extort fees out of companies were the result of intensive, high cost R&D? I'd be surprised if they weren't scratched out in short order by lawyers told to pour through concepts and turn anything they could into a patent, regardless of merit.
When I showed news of this to my boss. He just replied "yeah my old buddy who's still at Nokia works on this". My boss used to work at Nokia himself.
Anyway, the rumour began to sound more plausible after hearing his comment.
I've got an old motorola a780 somewhere that ran linux fine with only a 200MHz cpu in it.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Corporations use existing ones like Google toke Linux
So when Google say they get a buzz off Linux, it's not just vapid marketing hype?!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"We regret going with Windows Mobile."
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Amen, brother! I mean it ain't like one of the four companies has been very conspicuously threatening others with claims that Linux violates unspecified patents. No sir! They are all exactly the same!
I'm Erwin Schrodinger and I approve of this message, and I do not approve of this message!
Obviously you can get an Android with your contract. But these are Nokia phones that just plain don't cost $100.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
they could easily make earlier android version work on "low end" smartphones.
That's a fine technical solution. I think this is more seller's remorse (their soul to Microsoft).
Nokia: we'd like to pay $5 per phone for a Windows license.
Microsoft: no, $15.
Nokia: fine, we'll just go build Android phones then
Microsoft: no, we own patents on Android. See our list of licensees.
Nokia: OK, we'll use Meltemi
Microsoft: WTF?
Nokia: our in-house lightweight linux
Microsoft: oh, um, we have a basket of patents against linux
Nokia: let's see them
Microsoft: OK, how about $5.05 per phone?
In my imagination anyway.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Uhh....hate to break the news to you friend but MSFT spent 9.5 billion in 2010 alone on R&D, hell they probably have the highest R&D budget of any company out there. So yes MSFT deserves to make money off of that which they spent billions researching.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They all play by the Open Source License rules. You make a change to FOSS code, AND RE-RELEASE THE PROGRAM, you must provide the source code when requested.
When have Microsoft not adhered to the license terms for releasing the source code?
That's why they have always treated FOSS like the Gods Damned Plague.
Yes, there is no doubt that they have done scare tactics against FOSS, but then they have also done things like create http://www.codeplex.com/ to host open source projects (which they contribute a great many themselves).
I would love to have MS come play with Linux. As long as they follow the rules and play in good faith.
And yet Microsoft do contribute to Linux. I imagine a lot of those changes were to fix interoperability with their products, but it still does show that they do contribute and play by the rules.
so they still have to use Linux because Windows Phone X, Y, or Z can't scale to the phone hardware Nokia wants to sell? Nice job Elop. I'm sure that's going to work out fantastic for you in your quest to destroy Nokia and hand the remains to Microsoft. No doubt the Linux base you have them building is going to be a constantly changing bastard of some sort so nobody has a chance to like it and the users all get driven to other phones/vendors.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
no.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
the big picture plan is to hand Microsoft Nokia's distribution deals and gut the company of any other value so Microsoft can purchase it and their patents and distribution for a song. This move seems to be sound if you look at the real long term( <5 years ) goal of Elop. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I checked the local prices a few days ago. SEKUSD is now at 6.8756. Huawei U8180 Ideos X1, no plan, 599 SEK, that works out to $87. Samsung GT-S5570 Galaxy Mini, no plan, 990 SEK, $144. The Android competitors are on a race to the bottom. You get them for free now if you sign up for a plan. It is too late for Nokia. They ruled the "damn cheap" price range the last decade. That price range is now seeing competition from cheap Android phones and I would rather have one those if I were to spend less than $100 on a mobile phone.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Your argument, as far as I can see it, is that great effort deserves reward. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work that way.
When MS actually publicizes the patents involved (which they haven't), I will stop relating to their behavior as extortion, and gladly review the patents to see if I believe they are actually valid (and in parallel, whether they are worthwhile --- one judgement being a legal one, and the second a moral one).
You can run uClinux on a Nintendo DS or even lower specced hardware. The OS (let's go by the textbook on this guys and not the beige box=hard drive trendy marketing definition) is powerful enough it's the applications they need to be slimmed down - and that includes display managers. There's plenty of ways to do a GUI without going full Maemo/Meego. It's worth doing if you intend to port other stuff to it, it's not about doing completely new stuff in isolation with nothing to do with other projects as you seem to be hinting (and yes that would be stupid but it's not really what they are doing).
It's already worked on what is now low end hardware, there were Qt interface phones even before Nokia bought Trolltech. The proof of concept has been there for years. What it hasn't done is made it into the mainstream.
It's half of a really smart strategy.
The other half involves inventing a time machine and doing it in 2007.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So what? Can you prove that one cent went on the stuff they claim is in Android, Linux or anything else? No, and neither can they.
P.S. Referring to companies by their stock tickers makes you sound like a pretentious jerkwad.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They've made a really good choice of a partner, then.
I'd love to see the ribbon interface of a phone. I guess they could market it to old folks, as it's be able to double as a walking stick.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
AAhhhh, yes. The solution to mismanaged projects is to ditch the project. Not the management responsible. Not to mention that said mismanaged project has recived raving reviews pretty much universally, only said management doesn't seem interested at all in selling the product. In fact they've done everything possible to scuttle it, by basically running around the docks telling everyone that their ship is rigged with explosives and they will press the button aaaany time, and by severly limiting who's even able to get onboard. Why would anyone think this latest deal smells funny? Why oh why. You, on the other hand, are clearly management material.
The Nokia Linux phones I saw so far (N900, N9 and N950) where quite accessible. You can either boot in secure mode or switch to development mode; the user is free to decide, he doesn't even need to hack the device or anything - just use the well documented setting. In secure mode each app has its own secure data area, cryptographically protected; something I wouldn't want to miss for some sensitive information. In development mode you can access anything you like - even the encrypted secure storage of the apps.
Only you wont be able to decrypt them, of course. And I wouldn't want to suggest e.g. my dad to buy phone for online banking or any other sensitive operations without such a good security concept in place.
The other drawback is that operators might sell customized phones with development mode disabled. But this is hardly Nokias fault if you agree on such terms in return for the operator to subsidize your device.
Trolling is a art!
Wow! So MS is getting $146 Billion a year from Android. Neat, that's more than their entire yearly revenue. How do they do it?
Actually I think that there will be a good market for WP7 devices. What most people expect from a smartphone is different from what I would expect. Most people seem to expect lots of blinking, shiny, irrelevant apps, integration of their social network and email, more like a communication central. And this is something WP7 could do at least as good as Apple or Google, since they currently still have the largest desktop installation base. (Ok, Google might be considered equally strong / stronger if they get users to not only use google web search, but to actually log into google services as soon as they open the browser.)
WP8 looks like it is well fitted for tablets [ I took a look at the free developer preview; runs in Virtualbox on a real OS ], and MS is a shareholder of Facebook as well. It would have been extremely difficult to establish a competitive infrastructure for MeeGo, or would be for any other new Qt/Linux system.
Personally I don't like this tendency, and for the same reasons [privacy concerns] I didn't want to have an Android or an iPhone I wouldn't want to have a WP7 phone as well. For me a decent hardware with Linux/Qt would be just what I want: Programmable, transparent, flexible and probably more efficient than Android on comparable HW (since no additional Dalvik VM layer is required). Basically a universal computer with GSM/UMTS in handy format. This is what I would consider a smartphone, but this is a minorities point of view.
Trolling is a art!
afaig the other manufacturers don't pay for Linux, not even for plain Android, but for some add-ons like Active Sync, vfat32 for smartcards and maybe mass storage mode and whatnot. I guess that Nokia pays already for such licenses, or maybe has a cross-license agreement with MS. I would not expect that this was part of any MS/Nokia deal.
Trolling is a art!
Personally I think the patent system needs to be overhauled, SW patents should be invalidated. There are several enthusiasts trying to fight for this in Europe, but guess what: Neither Samsung, nor HTC, Google or whatever company supports them! They all want SW patents to stay valid the way they are. Therefore it is extremely simpleminded to call it extortion when they are paying due to the laws they appreciate that much themselves.
Trolling is a art!
You are making at least one assumption that is false. Alas I am not permitted to say anything more in that regard, due to $DAYJOB. But certainly with false assumptions you deduce false conclusions.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
> they could easily make earlier android version work on "low end" smartphones.
In fact other companies do exactly that. A 600 MHz Arm, 256 MB RAM, 512 MB Flash and a half decent display make a very nice and surprisingly capable Android phone. ZTE does it, Huawei does it, and even Sony. Sure, it is not going to be the fastest, it will not allow you to install you every game in existence, but it is very flexible, and IMHO beats a feature phone any day.
I can see the patent issue as a potential problem for Nokia. But that doesn't explain a move that can only be called "backwards oriented".
I presume that's Nokia's own powertop, rather than the upstream one? That's been significantly tweaked and improved by Nokia's kernel team and is the actual app which we use internally to identify misbehaving tasks. (Of course, once we see the wakeups in powertop we'll throw ftrace/strace and if need be FTC at the problem to identify what it's doing that it should be.) One of the things I was happiest about in Nokia was their willingness to share anything and everything useful and their general developer-friendly attitude. (Disclosure: They are my $DAYJOB)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
You are of course free to believe whatever you want, but what if you would for once try to consider the possibility that Elop was *not* an MS trojan. Symbian was no viable option for the long future. Android neither. If you read e.g. http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/ you can conclude that opting for Android would have meant to abandon the whole location based services, navigation software and ultimately Navteq. Meego was a good idea, but for the mass market it would have needed a better ecosystem (developers, better online profile management, community features, etc.)
Trolling is a art!
Just three points:
1. According to an earlier leaked internal document (April 2011), it was said that an internal Meltemi project might serve as a lifeboat for the displaced MeeGo developers.
2. Nokia was doing quite a lot to keep the Qt development community at bay as well. (Ok, this would fit with the S40/Qt theory)
3. There are no, none at all, native apps available to install on S40 phones. Why is this? Could it be that the Nokia OS used on those phones does by design not allow for installation of any native apps? (If it was just a decision, I would expect at least Nokia native apps to be available to these phones.)
And last but not least: They abandon Symbian because they don't want to maintain a whole OS all by themselves. Wouldn't it make sense to abandon Nokia OS and replace it with Linux in this case?
Trolling is a art!
If you read e.g. http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/ you can conclude that opting for Android would have meant they probably won't be allowed to preinstall their own maps application and location based services. Location based services is a business unit of Nokia which highly depends on reach / number of units where it is installed. For devices with price tags below 100$, the market is *huge*. Do you really think it would be clever for Nokia to donate this whole market to Google? Jumping to Android would have made sense for a pure hardware manufacturer, but not for a company owning Navteq and betting on location based services themselves.
Trolling is a art!
IIRC there was a public statement to this: He was not allowed for some legal reasons to sale his MS stocks right after leaving MS. And he invested in Nokia stocks nearly immediately. So now, holding Nokia stocks and having sold MS stocks, your theory does not make much sense anymore.
Trolling is a art!
The solution to mismanaged projects is to ditch the project. Not the management responsible.
The management has mostly departed as well.
Not to mention that said mismanaged project has recived raving reviews pretty much universally,
Which project are you talking about? Certainly not MeeGo, the shared effort by Intel and Nokia announced in early 2010. That never released anything worth mentioning for smartphones, and it has recently been morphed into something else again. The N9 is a product-driven wrap up of pre-MeeGo development, marketed as "kinda MeeGo, but not quite". This schizophrenia made no sense, wasted precious resources, so there was in effect no credible platform to go to market with this year, while Android and Apple are tearing Nokia's market share apart.
by basically running around the docks telling everyone that their ship is rigged with explosives and they will press the button aaaany time, and by severly limiting who's even able to get onboard.
So they should have made an about-face and spun N9 as the future of Nokia, only to reveal that the king has no clothes later when a lot of people have bought it. That would boost consumer good will even better than N97 did...
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
No, you are making an unwarranted assumption: that you are the only one here who can pull authority claiming inside knowledge :)
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
It's not enough to convince me! Any former Micro$oft exec has sold his soul and is marked by the Windows logo-shaped seal of evil!
I wear my tinfoil hat every time I drive by Nokia HQ in Espoo.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
What do you mean with "the king has no clothes"?
That they had their own plan, one based around Qt, and which was just about to bear fruit when the fscking disaster Elop panicked seeing the N9 getting good reviews pretty much across the board? You might not like it, why I have no idea. Maybe you're on the Redmond payola as well, but make no mistake. Meego as it were, was Nokia's last hope. It was their chance of doing something that had real potential and could differentiate them from being "yet another wp7/android manufacturer", while tapping into the vast pool of developers familiar with qt, and having the advantage of not having to use a resource-hogging virtual machine like android or the abortion wp7.
However, from the subsequent actions by Elop, it is obvious success with this plan is not desirable. Success to him, is quite obviously defined as "Nokia entering chapter 7, patent portfolio going on fire-sale to Microsoft, if not just silently transferred without further ado", since he's quite obviously doing his very, very damned best to make people think a lot of times before getting a Nokia or picking up developing for their products. Denying it makes you only look even more of a naïve fool than you already do - at best. Frankly speaking, you mostly look like you're attempting damage-control.
Don't! Tinfoil hats are the product of a large multi-government conspiracy theory. While they are supposed to protect you from intrusive satellite rays, they in fact provide a nearly perfect parabolic antenna directed towards the communication- and electricity wires located in the pedestrian lanes! It's common knowledge that current brain-readers and brainwave-manipulation techniques require a proximity of 3 meters or less. At least do yourself a favor and use aluminum shoe soles as well, and maybe change the shape of your hat to a pointy had (like a wizard).
But seriously: When Stephen Elop came to Nokia, Symbian was already losing market share. Meego was basically a good concept, but 1. not ready and 2. didn't have the ecosystem people expect when bying a smartphone (like a good appstore, an accepted, not only phone-related social networking platform, and so on) :-)
Android looked nice, but if you read e.g. http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/ you can conclude that opting for Android would have meant to abandon the whole location based services, navigation software and ultimately Navteq. With the MS deal, they gain reach for location based services instead of losing it.
So, also I would have loved to see MeeGo as the new flagship, I think he actually had a point chosing WP7. Also I would not want to have a WP7 device (or an Android or iPhone) due to privacy concerns, I think it is mass market compatible within the next 6 months. And I will be happy to turn my back on the smartphone hype and buy a cheap feature phone with limited App Store and loads of open source Qt applications instead and to carry my netbook around for the cases the feature phone is not sufficient
Trolling is a art!
The problem with your bluster is that your prior comment displayed a distinct lack of knowledge.
As you can verify on my CV, my knowledge of linux within Nokia telephony products is highly reliable first hand.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Explain the N97 then.
I don't what your experience might be to say such a thing but in my case, I've found that Nokia phones extremely reliable in terms of durability. Enduring all kinds of hardships without much more than a scratch. I'm talking about falling on the pavement at 30 Km/h and uncountable 1/1.5 mts falls in different surfaces.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Not when the US carriers charge what they do. A cheaper iphone isn't going to help boost verizon subscriptions up to corporate expectations... cheaper rates will. Im as tired of hearing "cheaper phones will make..." as I was of hearing "ipod killer" 5 years ago and "ipad killer" today. When the carriers lower the rates - and not until then - I'll buy one.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
That they had their own plan, one based around Qt, and which was just about to bear fruit
They had three: 1) build a Debian-based distro, and a home-grown UI framework based around Qt; 2) build MeeGo, switching the Moblin legacy software from Gtk onto the said home-grown framework; 3) introduce QML and Qt Components to both of the above. They executed all these plans at once. Only the first one was "just about" to bear fruit (7 months, as you can count now, or more, considering that the decision was made before February). If it does not make sense to you, think if it would make sense to a CEO with their head in the right place.
Denying it makes you only look even more of a naïve fool than you already do - at best. Frankly speaking, you mostly look like you're attempting damage-control.
In some half a year we can see who of us is a bigger fool. Unfortunately you post anonymously, so I can't come back to you then.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
It makes a perfect sense because Elop can't fire all linux developers at once. It's just impossible under the law. So he has to find them a useless work for an year or two.
Consistency? What's that?
Everything is consistent. They are going to kill linux devlopment, just can't do it in one month.
Does Nokia have any strategic direction at all?!
Yes. Microsoft.
What you are possibly missing is that Linux doesn't use much hardware in todays terms. OpenWrt will happily run Linux plus a user space in 16M. That 16M gives you real time multitasking, IPv4, IPv6 and CIFS network stack, firewall, QOS, flash, HDD and fat, file systems, ACL's, 80211 stack, bluetooth stack, USB drivers, memory management, a mature development environment with every language known to man.
On today's hardware 16M is nothing, even Nokia's current S40 phones have 16M. In fact they (eg a Nokia C3) have 128M. Of that, Linux + the basic user space stuff uses less than 10%. In view of all that, the question isn't why do the use Linux for new development, the question is how on earth could you justify not using it?
Sony Ericsson is known to put out quality hardware, Nokia is known for just putting out.
SE makes good hardware? Since when? I've had 3 SE phones and they all sucked on the hardware level (software as well -- eg. worst T9 ever).
I'd go so far saying that any hardware related to post-1990 Sony sucks.
Mine, a basic Nokia 3100, is only 6 years old, but still working fine with the original battery.
And it is well supported by free software such as Gammu.
Low-end phones are used by people who don't buy from app-stores anyway, so Linux is perfect, since it already has free mature software repos.
Maemo failed to be ready in time because they tried to reimplement everything and the kitchen sink, along with serious over-engineering issues.
I bet people will be a lot more productive when resources are limited, and maybe dump some dev dead weight.
Linux is meeting very hard resistance from the whole apps/iphone/me-too/android crowd, because well, they just want a flashy phone with toys, not something that works.
So, not focusing on this market (the market for morons) may be the best bet for getting a good working Linux phone, and a successor to Symbian when it comes to energy efficiency.
In the end, Linux will take over the whole mobile market, since nothing else has the same performance.