
Nokia to use Linux for flagship N-series phones - jacquesm
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE65N14720100624
======
doublec
Nokia are insane. They seem to be intent on destroying any chance of success
for their new interesting phones.

They announce the N900 and then soon after give a confusing message about
MeeGo being the way forward and it not being supported officially on the N900.
They deprecated the device almost immediately it became available. What
commercial developer would try to produce applications for it now?

Now they announce the N8 with the amazing Symbian^3. Everything will be
awesome about it according to press releases. Now, even before it becomes
available Nokia announces it'll be the last N series device running Symbian.
Another device deprecated just as it gets out the door.

Nokia, I used to like your devices. You made great phones. But please give
them some future proofing and stop abandoning them the moment you release
them.

~~~
jarek
I agree with the general spirit of your post, but IIANM Maemo apps will work
on MeeGo and vice versa with minimal effort. Not to mention Maemo's been
around for over four years now -- significantly longer than the iPlatform's
existed.

Anyway, let's see how long MeeGo sticks as the go-to platform.

~~~
wmf
Maemo has been around for a while, but it keeps changing. Maemo 4 had a stylus
UI, Maemo 5 switched to a fairly different finger UI, Maemo 6/MeeGo 1.0 is
planning to introduce multitouch and replace Gtk with Qt, etc. What breakage
will MeeGo 2 bring us?

~~~
sjs
It sucks for app devs but it's good for the customer. Until the platform has
matured halting progress is a bad idea. Otherwise you're stuck supporting
legacy crap forever and cannot move forward fast enough, especially in the
mobile space.

You could argue that Nokia should have been doing this R&D behind closed doors
but considering the openness of the platform that may or may not have been a
wise choice.

------
shadowsun7
Finally. I've long believed that Nokia's biggest problem lies with their
software - I have an E63, which has a 400mhz processor, and it either lags
like mad or dies randomly (thankfully rare, but it _does_ happen).

PS: On an unrelated note, I found the line:

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Graphic on Nokia
N-series losing to iPhone: here
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>

incredibly funny.

------
zokier
About time. N900 was released last year, and just recently got it's second
major update. It still feels very much like beta software. It just feels like
a small sideproject for Nokia, which is very disappointing. N900 had such
potential, but lack of focus and US markets ruined it.

~~~
ErrantX
I had the N900 for a while - it is dire.

That's the best I can say about it :)

So hopefully this will be a more concerted effort.

~~~
macco
It's great - the only drawback is the lack of apps.

~~~
natmaster
Um, I'm loving the Apps. Have you only been using the Ovi store? The real good
apps are in maemo-extras.

Unlike the iPhone, n900 apps are not just gimmicky website remakes or games,
they're actually incredibly powerful and useful.

Here's an interesting summary about it:
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/3764/two-omap-3430-phones-
noki...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/3764/two-omap-3430-phones-
nokia-n900-and-motorola-droid/12)

~~~
macco
You are right, but I would like to have a good rtm app for example. But the
best app on the n900 is xterm :)

------
Aegean
I have been expecting death of Symbian for a while. It existed for when all
phone software sucked big time. Not anymore. There is android + iphone and
symbian has no chance there.

The problem is symbian is clunky. The UI looks old and boring. It is slow, it
is written in C++ with complicated interfaces. Not great software for a
limited device like a phone.

Its also worth noting that it is not only Symbian, but Nokia's conservative
and limited vision on innovation.

~~~
blub
Actually, Symbian is great for limited power devices like phones.

It's a real-time OS that has a long history of running on weaker hardware.
Consider that most new Symbian phones have an ARM processor clocked at ~400mhz
(the fastest have a 600Mhz CPU) and have 128MB of memory. This has a big
impact on price, Symbian devices are (much) cheaper than the iPhone/Android
devices.

The problems you are complaining about are connected to the UI, which indeed
is no match for the UI of the iPhone or even Android. Even so, Symbian will
make for a great middle-level and low-level OS. Due to the low hardware
requirements Nokia can lower the prices and offer longer battery lives.

~~~
wvenable
There is no future in software designed for limited CPU and low memory.
Moore's law all but ensures that it'll be completely irrelevant.

Symbian was designed for even weaker devices than I used when I developed for
it years ago. As a developer, you're dealing with technology designed for
hardware that simply doesn't exist anymore. When you have enough hardware to
deliver what people want (like a full web browser) you have enough hardware
for a decent OS.

~~~
hcho
Only that batteries don't tend to obey Moore's law. All other being equal, a
smaller battery means not only lower BOM but also more freedom in physical
desings of the devices.Not everyone likes to have a device size of a brick.

The UI offerings of manufacturers are converging to not being a
differentiator. When that point is reached the war will go on how well your
software manages the limited resources.

~~~
wvenable
> Only that batteries don't tend to obey Moore's law.

My current smartphone is massively more powerful than my old Symbian
smartphone and gets better battery life as well (and is smaller). We've seen
massive gains in the power consumption of components inside computers and
phones.

> When that point is reached the war will go on how well your software manages
> the limited resources.

That's never been true. Nokia is losing the smartphone market to a company
that ported their desktop OS to a phone! The original Palm OS is no more
because it was designed for devices of the day, not for devices of the future.
What is considered "limited resources" changes daily and it doesn't matter how
well your OS handles them if nobody bothers to write software for it.

------
rubyrescue
Symbian is such a difficult platform for which to develop, i just don't see it
lasting over the long term.

~~~
blub
It used to be, but Nokia seem to have gotten the message. Nowadays you can
pick between Qt, Python and HTML + JS among otheers. I use Qt: it still has
kinks, but the difference in productivity from Symbian classic is enormous,
and the Qt team is doing a good job adding features and squashing bugs.

------
jcapote
At least they are only reinventing half the wheel this time

~~~
rbanffy
Nokia didn't invent the Symbian wheel. It was Psion. Nokia just ended up
buying it.

------
pavlov
This was also discussed yesterday:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1455073>

------
jteo
It is becoming clear that the days of a simple dumbphone are coming to an end.

So the question is: can a mobile phone company reinvent itself to build small
handheld computers that happen to make phone calls?

------
sliverstorm
I really hope MeeGo won't be as bad as it sounds. That name is just soo
cheesy.

I really hope they do well though. IMHO they make great hardware.

~~~
Niten
What I don't get is why we need another Linux-based mobile OS. Why not just
use Android?

People flocked to iOS because it was unique and innovative when it was new,
and because it runs on great hardware from Apple. People are flocking to
Android because it's an open-source alternative that's in some ways superior
to iOS, and because it runs on a skyrocketing number of devices from countless
manufacturers and on countless carriers.

For MeeGo to win serious developer-share, it will have to either come on
hardware more compelling than Apple's, or outdo Android on technical
capability / developer experience or overall market penetration. To my naive
eye, neither of these seem likely. So what's the deal here? Am I mistaken
about MeeGo's prospects, or is this just a massive case of not-invented-here?

(Lest I be accused of ignoring the overriding issue of user response to the
two operating systems, I'm working under the assumption that MeeGo doesn't
currently have anything significant to add to the user experience provided by
Android on smartphones. Am I wrong about that?)

~~~
ramy_d
just as a thought experiment: imagine android without fragmentation, over the
wire updates for all platforms, on demand by users a-la-iPhone.

different developing environments cause developers to think, and develop,
differently for the devices lined within those environments. MeeGo offers
something Android does not, and that is not only a "truer" linux stack that is
not based on java. But this also gives a flexibility for programmers to use
languages that are more within their preferences (read: not java, maybe C,
maybe scripting languages, what ever).

I think meego is something more developers are going to feel comfortable with
as the gap between developing for traditional desktop/mobile devices and
handheld devices will shrink. Can you pack an RPM? cuz that's all you need (as
far as i understand) to distribute your app to meego.

just my 2 cents

~~~
zokier
I recently began developing for the N900. First I did the basic cannon Qt
tutorial on PC. Installed the Maemo SDK and recompiled my code in the cross-
compile environment (which is basically a chroot+qemu or something) and
throwed the binary on my phone. Worked without a hitch. Same source code, with
no special considerations for mobile devices, and it just works.

Of course creating packages is bit more involved, but current Maemo uses
standard Debian packages, so its not really anything special.

