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Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

[Posted May 22, 2009 by ris]

Ryan Paul speculates that Nokia may release a smartphone in 2010. "Nokia has been hard at work building Maemo 5, the next major version of its Linux-based mobile platform. This new version, which is codenamed Fremantle, brings a user interface overhaul and some compelling new capabilities. Although Maemo 5 is still at the beta stage of development and Nokia has not yet announced when it will ship on actual hardware, details are already emerging about the version that will come next, which is codenamed Harmattan."
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Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted May 22, 2009 20:38 UTC (Fri) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

You gotta wonder what this implies for the future of the QtEmbedded/Greenphone product line if Nokia is basing their Linux bet on the Maemo stuff instead. At the same time, I kinda wonder if this is too little too late. Android is already reasonably well established, and my guess is it will have an easier time moving into the netbook space than Maemo will squeezing into phones.

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted May 22, 2009 21:03 UTC (Fri) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]

The existing Android telephones don't convince me. Either they feature a keyboard (which is too small to touchtype anyway, so I really don't want one) or they lack a front camera for video telephony.

As for Qt: I don't mind Qt on the telephone, as long as I can just dpkg --purge it.

As I'm happy with my N800 (and liked my N770 before), I'm a potential Nokia customer for this device.

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted May 22, 2009 21:58 UTC (Fri) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

I disageree a bit...
I own both a n800 and an Android Dev 1, and I like the G1 more and more.

The lack of a front camera or the keyboard size are hardware details, which will be "fixed"
by a diversity of available devices (not all users want the same thing).

On the other hand, the Android platform works very well *now* on a phone, while the
n800 is not a phone at all...

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted Jun 2, 2009 8:44 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

Does anyone actually use a smartphone for video calls these days? While this was a key feature for 3G phones originally, you need to specifically request a USIM card (SIM card for 3G phones), which many people won't bother with as it's not required for normal voice and 3G data.

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted Jun 2, 2009 9:50 UTC (Tue) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link]

My wife and I certainly don't use video calls, for at least two reasons:

  1. The cost; a voice call is 5p/min if we exceed our 2000 minutes/month allowance. A video call is 50p/min, no allowance available to us.
  2. More importantly, the inconvenience; we had a period when we did not pay for video calling, and decided it wasn't worth the hassle. In particular, finding a handsfree kit and holding the phone steady compared to our heads didn't get us anything that we didn't already get from voice calls.

I suspect the biggest thing against videocalling is that getting good video is hard, not just in terms of improving the quality of cellphone cameras, but also in terms of teaching people how to work a camera.

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted May 22, 2009 21:27 UTC (Fri) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

QtEmbedded already ended on 4.4.3. Would've kind of funny to develop software whose primary target is another company's phone (Neo FreeRunner). Community is continuing from there as long as there is interest for it, and Nokia has said the relevant parts of QtEmbedded will be used elsewhere (QtEmbedded is basically Qt + some middleware + applications).

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted May 24, 2009 0:32 UTC (Sun) by chax (guest, #52122) [Link]

You seem to mistake Qt/Embedded (port of Qt for the framebuffer) with Qt
Extended (former Qtopia, telephony stack). Whilst the support for the
latter has been ended, the former was merged into the main library long
time ago.

The community project you've mentioned (Qt Extended Improved) has upgraded
the Qt libraries in the last version of the Qt Extended to 4.5.

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted May 24, 2009 7:38 UTC (Sun) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

Hah, right, mixed those two. Though Qt Extended used the Qt Embedded / framebuffer.

Alleged Nokia Linux smartphone plans exposed by leak (ars technica)

Posted May 24, 2009 18:24 UTC (Sun) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

Can't resist commenting on the LWN edited intro: I'm pretty sure Nokia will release a big bunch of smartphones in 2010, just like they've done 2009, 2008, etc... But the rumor about one *based on Linux* is interesting news indeed :-P

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