Nokia bring out Linux Cellphone/TV/Browser

Matt Booth writes "New Scientist has an article about a new cellphone from Nokia which is also a digital TV and web browser. It runs linux, and apparently it won't be available in the States because of the poor Digital TV standard there. " Cursed am I!

Comments

Re:Let's criticize US today.

[EmilEifrem]

I think it was meant as a fine way of critizing the so called "American way of life," which many Europeans (including myself) believe is a deadly serious threat to mankind's future on earth. As my old American gov't teacher used to say, the citizens of United States constitute about 5% of the total world population (?) while consuming *one third* of the world's resources. The "American way of life" would maybe be more appropriately be called the "American way to death."

Re:The US chose a GOOD standard!

[Master-of-Sloth]

The MILLIONS of UK tellys arn't useless. You get a FREE dig-decoder box, plug it into your telly (via the scart) and bobs your uncle one digital telly.

Sometimes it's good to make a leap and leave the old standards behind, you just have to provide a stop-gap to give people time to change.

Open-Source enables crypto cellphones?

[CocaCola]

If the source code (and development kit) will be available as well, then it wont be long until someone implements strong-crypto point-to-point voice connections between two such cellphones - and this with widely available commodity hardware.

hypocrites

[ratman]

They use linux in their own cell-phone project and let the gnokii project go begging.

built in nic?

[grimmy]

Anyone know if this thing has a built-in nic?
Would make a great portable net connection if you could run ipmasq on it.

Thats the problem with the US

[Judg3]

We always take the hard way into things. The metric system is a good example, here laid out in front of us was this wonderful system of measurement based on the number 10. Us? Bahhh, screw it, we will just make it more difficult. Then theres that whoel Celsiuis/Fahrenheit thing. I get Celsius, 0 is when water freezes, but Fahrenheit? Whats that? water freezes at 32 degrees ABOVE 0? huh? Oh well, enough ranting. I know I wouldnt be too keen bout switching now as it is, been using the good ole US system for to many years. But that article has a point, it appears out digital signals really ARENT as hardy as the european ones. But it does look like we might be switching, so Ill be looking for that first handheld all in one in my local over-priced CompUSA soon I hope. Well, enough complaining form me. Judg3
*******

Re: Thats the problem with the US

[jpc]

The reason that America and the UK never switched to the metric system

Er, the UK pretty much has except for the minor areas of beer (we like it in pints thank you, exceot if it is served in bottles), milk, and the legacy roadsigns because they would be very confusing unless all changed at once. We certainly dont use that funny Fahrenheit stuff.

Re: Thats the problem with the US

[fcw]

The problem with the anglosaxon system measuring stuff is that you always have these strange formulas to remember when you have to convert to the metric system.

Put another way: "the problem with the metric system is that you always have these strange formulas to remember when you have to convert to regular numbers."

The advantage some of the pre-metric systems have is that they're better for mental arithmetic with common quantities. For example, there were twelve pennies in the English shilling rather than ten because twelve has more divisors than 10, and a shilling was a lot of money when it was invented, so dividing it up was common. Calculators and decimal places have changed the environment somewhat. The other benefits of metric (compatibility between weight and volume for some substances, for example) have relatively limited practical merit outside the technical disciplines.

The reason that America and the UK never switched to the metric system was that it was invented by the french ...

The UK has been switching for a generation, and is nearly done, despite the continental origin of the system.

Here in the UK, for example, I buy my petrol and milk in litres, my sugar in kilogrammes, my wine in centilitres and my paper weighed in grammes per square centimetre. Everything in the supermarket has a metric size, although people often still ask for pounds and pints. Only really hard-to-change things (like road signs and bar maids) still routinely use Imperial units, and there are plans to change those too.

I think the european [digital TV] standard only exists on paper.

The UK has had digital TV via cable, satellite dish and ordinary, boring antenna for a year. All five broadcast networks offer digital versions of their programming, and many programmes are also shown in widescreen format. There is an unreasonable quantity of channels already, mostly via set-top boxes (given away free), but some TVs have built-in decoders for major players, such as Sky. Of course, this may well be Yet Another Incompatible System, but I hope not -- I'd like to play with one of these Nokia gadgets myself (he said, veering in a topic-heavy direction).

Re: Thats the problem with the US

[Master-of-Sloth]

Fahrenheit is based on blood. When it was first devised 100f was the temperature of human blood, but when better thermometers were invented they scale was found to be wrong (hence blood temp is around 98.5deg f). I think this is correct. Not sure what o deg.f is, mabey the freezing point of blood. Any medical students out there?

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but it is something like that.

The Imperial system is useful. Before the decimal point was generally understood and when times tables were more readily taught,maths was done in fractions. The imperial system was designed so that you could do the sums in your head. Though for some reason the Yanks don't seem to use stone, everyone quotes weight in pounds (?)

This reminds me of railroads

[konstant]

I don't pretend to understand the relative merits of DSB and 8-VSB, but the fuss over selecting a standard reminds me of the difficulties people in the 19th century had with railroad gauges.

During the last century (well, I suppose it was nearly two centuries ago now...) when railroad was the primary means of transporting goods, Russia pulled a similar egotistical maneuver and selected a railroad "gauge" or width (12?) that was inconsistent with the gauge gaining acceptance in neigboring Europe (8?). As a consequence, when trains passed the Western Russian boarder, all the passengers and contents had to be humped out, placed in another train, and sent on their way. Needless to say this retarded commerce between Russia and Europe.

Now information, not gold or even dollars, is becoming the crucial international currency and nations are building their information infrastructure. If nationalism entices us or any other country down the same path as the Russians, they will quickly learn their mistake. Devices built in adherence to the de facto standard will suddenly cease to function the moment they enter the rogue country. This will be far more inconvenient - and costly - than converting between Standard and Metric.

Let's not forget when advocating standards that common usage is an important factor, and that the world isn't limited by the San Andreas and the Potomac!


-konstant

Re:This reminds me of railroads

[Confused]

> ... when railroad was the primary means of transporting goods,
> Russia pulled a similar egotistical maneuver and selected a railroad "gauge"

There were some reasons behind this. When lots of space is available and building is cheap, a wider track means wider cars means more cargo on the train means cheaper transport. This was an important consideration in Russia.

On the other hand lot of railroads in the alps (Austria and Switzerland mainly) use narrow to ultra-narrow tracks. Every inch that had to be carved out of a mountain, mostly by hand, was expensive. Doubling the with of the bed for the tracks quadruples the amount of rock they had to move. Ergo: They build single track narrow gauge railroads there.

Servus,

johi

Not quite..

[Fastolfe]

1 Kelvin = -272 degrees Celsius
273 Kelvins = 0 degrees Celsius

I'm not sure if this was just an "oops" in your message, but you're basically right: 0 K = absolute zero, 0 degrees C = freezing point of water. Aside from those starting points, the scales are the same.

Hmm..

[Henrik Abelsson]

I know i could use mobile TV.. Just for all those long bus rides back and forth to school. And it even runs linux *drool* :)

But why do people whine so much about an unfortunate joke about americans? :)
I get the feeling that if this product would have been developed by an american company, people would have been talking about how cool it is for linux to be used in yet another product..

Yet another standards war, as if we didnt have enough of them already.. The Europeans decide on one thing, and then the Americans go off and develop yet another standard.. But in the end the japaneese wins the game with something thats 3x as smart and cost half of the othe solutions. (Or turn it around all if you like, that's not my point) The world needs everybody to agree on a standard, and not have half a dozen incompatible standards that only work in their own region.

I thought the coming of the internet would signal an end to nationalism.. oh well, maybe in time.

-henrik

More Info

[MrSndrs]

The Register has more on this, but their info seems to differ from the above. They imply that this is merely a wireless networking framework that will use cellular and Digital TV bandwidth. In other words, its not a phone or a TV or a combination of the two. But I guess the potential's there. Maybe. Please.

Re:long history of non standards

[Guy Harris]

The US has a long history of going their own way as far as telecom is concerned. TV signal (analog and digital) is one of them

Are you referring (for the "analog" part) to NTSC vs. PAL? If so, are you saying then that mean that PAL came out first, and the US developed NTSC instead of adopting PAL? If so, the Why Do Different TV Standards Exist? page on the Worldwide TV Standards - A Web Guide site seems to disagree - it says

Beyond the initial divide between 50 and 60Hz based systems, further sub-divisions have appeared within both camps since the inception of Colour broadcasting. The majority of 60Hz based countries use a technique known as NTSC originally developed in the United States by a committee called the National Television Standards Committee. NTSC (often scurrilously refered to as Never Twice the Same Colour) works perfectly in a video or closed ciruit environment but can exhibit problems of varying hue when used in a broadcast environment.

This hue change problem is caused by shifts in the colour sub-carrier phase of the signal. A modified version of NTSC soon appeared which differed mainly in that the sub-carrier phase was reversed on each second line; this is known as PAL, standing for Phase Alternate Lines (it has a wide range of facetious acronyms including Pictures At Last, Pay for Added Luxury (re: cost of delay line), and People Are Lavendar). PAL has been adopted by a few 60Hz countries, most notably Brazil.

Or are you saying that the US "went their own way" because they didn't dump NTSC in favor of PAL?

(That page also says

Amongst the countries based on 50Hz systems, PAL has been the most widely adopted. PAL is not the only colour system in widespread use with 50Hz; the French designed a system of their own - primarily for political reasons to protect their domestic manufacturing companies - which is known as SECAM, standing for SEquential Couleur Avec Memoire. The most common facetious acronym is System Essentially Contrary to American Method, SECAM was widely adopted in Eastern Block countries to encourage incompatibility with Western transmissions - again a political motive.

for those curious about PAL vs. SECAM.)

nokia != nokia != nokia

[pp]

The thing to remember about Nokia is that it's really a pile of smaller units
(cell phones, monitors, phone exchanges, misc r&d etc.) and the different units do things very differently.

Some use VMS as a development platform (or did atleast a few years ago), some think NT is the solution to everything including world hunger
and others (generally the ones that don't do
end-user products) use whatever does the job best. Linux has increasingly been just that thing for quite a lot of stuff.

If I understood correctly this was done by the
multimedia terminal people whereas the information the gnokii people want is from the cell phone
people and they seem to want to keep their stuff pretty secret.

Compatible with Nokia 9110 series?

[JoeShmoe]

Nokia already has a cellular phone available in Europe that can do web browsing..the Nokia 9110 series. In fact, Europeans have a way cool version with Indiglo-style backlighting that (as far as I know) will not work in the US.

But if I understand correctly, the Nokia 9110 has a special operating system that allows third-party companies to write wireless applications that use the cellular connection (sorta like the PalmVII in the states but billed by minute per your cell phone contrct and not by KB).

So if they now have this thing...does that mean they are scrapping plans for continuation of 9110 or can the new device also run the programs developed for the 9110?

I doubt anyone here can answer but I thought I would ask. =)

Also...in reference to this "smug superiority" of Europeans for having a better system than US, it is my belief that if you check the dates you'll probably find that development of the digital TV standard in the US began before the EU started investigating their own. So of course whoever is later is going to have the technical advantage. I doubt that anyone working on the digital TV standard back when it was created could have anticipated the boom in wireless activity.

Personally, I think the EU approach is pointless. We are quickly moving to a point where ALL audio and video traffic happens over TCP/IP (like Voice over IP for phone traffic and video conferencing for video traffic). Making a specialized wireless system for JUST digital TV is a waste. Spend the money on improving wireless bandwidths and then you can just broadcast the MPEG-2 video streams from your DVD directly to the wireless devices.

Data is data and I think if that you get broadbast wireless up and running (like the lucky folks in Tuscon, AZ have wireless T1s) the rest of the stuff...like broadcast of digital TV... will be simple.

My $0.02 and not necessarily yours...

- JoeShmoe

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Re:Duh?

[Master-of-Sloth]

You obviously havn't seen a Nokia Comunicator. The screen is about the same size as a medium sized mobile/small pda. The phone splits in half and opens up like a psion. V.nifty.

I've been waiting for this for years

[Paul Crowley]

I've been waiting for at least two years for the Linux cellphone/PDA to become available. Here's the device I want:

• Personal organiser sofware a la my Pilot
  
• Cellphone (preferably dual band)
  
• Internet comms over the cellphone
  
• Real hard drive, perh. StrongArm processor
  
• IRDA port, maybe Bluetooth
  
• Runs Linux and 100% open source software (of course!
  

And there's my PDA, phone, watch, and many other things I need. If I had such a thing, I might even leave the house from time to time!
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