The Nokia PUSH N900 program [LWN.net]

The Nokia PUSH N900 program has announced its existence; essentially, Nokia is trying to jump-start a development community for this device. "The brief is simple: tell us how you would hack and mod the N900 & Maemo to connect the N900 to something you love. An expert judging panel will be selecting winning submissions and the groups behind them will receive N900 devices, funding and support to develop their PUSH idea."

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The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 16, 2009 15:22 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (6 responses)

I'm a little frustrated with Nokia.

While Nextel cannot engineer their network's way out of a paper bag these days, PTT voice is still a very useful technology, and while Nokia has *finally* produced a handset that I could *use* to implement PTT over cellular/WiFi for my IT staff...

there doesn't appear to be a button in anthing resembling the right place to use it as a PTT button. The FreeRunner didn't have one either, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. But I'm still annoyed.

That's what my project would be; cut off at the knees by insufficiently forward-thinking hardware designers.

They didn't fix enough of the stuff that they broke going from my n800 to the 810, either. Oh, well; they have one more generation to get it "right"...

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 16, 2009 17:16 UTC (Wed) by pfavr (guest, #38205) [Link] (4 responses)

Maybe you could hack the camera button on top to work as push-to-talk:

If you keep holding the button for more than 1 second it launches the PTT app, connects, records and transmits, and hang up as soon as you release the button? The camera app would then be reserved for short clicks...

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 16, 2009 18:41 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

What I would do is write a python app that emulates a button on the screen. (bonus points if it integrates with linphone or other application and you get VoIP PTT.) :)

As long as the touch technology is sufficiently advanced to tell the difference from a thumb vs a bunch of crap in your pocket then it should be good to go.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 16, 2009 20:57 UTC (Wed) by pfavr (guest, #38205) [Link] (2 responses)

(replying to my own comment)

Just realized the camera has a cover. So maybe the best solution is: if the camera cover is closed - the camera button is push-to-talk.

And it would be fun to do this app - I don't see why it shouldn't be possible :-)

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 16, 2009 21:21 UTC (Wed) by pfavr (guest, #38205) [Link] (1 responses)

(replying again to my own comment)

I have just submitted the above idea "push-to-talk using camera button" to the PUSH N900 program. I should give proper credit to Baylink (subscriber #755) for sharing her/his idea with us on LWN. If "my" application gets selected I hope you'll forgive me for "stealing" the idea. Well, we might work together on this?

Looking forward to the N900 hitting the shelves - I want one.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 24, 2009 14:01 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

We will see, won't we. :-)

For my target audience, the hardware's not really ruggedized enough anyway. And, being a happy n800 owner, I think they stole too much from the 810, and not enough from the 8100.

Thanks for putting it in, though; let me know what happens.

Have I really been around here that long? :-)

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 16, 2009 18:27 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

Has it got an accelerometer? You could use vigorous shaking as the PTT button. The gesture would resemble "is this thing on?". When you stop talking for a full second it would turn off the mic and go back to sleep.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 17, 2009 5:54 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (3 responses)

Nokia really needs to work on this issue! It seems that when innovative mobile apps are reported, it is always iPhone or Android these days, never Nokia. Example: Just after seeing this on LWN, BBC reported: "Mobile app sees science go global"("...The EpiCollect software collates data from certain mobiles - on topics such as disease spread or the occurrence of rare species - in a web-based database..."). It reportedly works on Android, with IPhone coming later.

One reason probably is that Symbian/Series60 development has been seen as too cumbersome for non-professional mobile developers. Maemo hopefully fixes this.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 17, 2009 11:04 UTC (Thu) by batsys (guest, #54289) [Link] (2 responses)

I worked on Symbian/Series 60/80/90 for a number of years and it's definitely not for the faint hearted. While I don't want to cast aspertions on anyones abilities I would say that it is a major stumbling block for many developers. Getting Symbian approval was not easy either. As you say hopefully Maemo will help in this respect; it does seem easier to get started. Nokia need to ensure that getting approval for apps is a lot easier than in the past.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 17, 2009 16:08 UTC (Thu) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (1 responses)

Python on the S60 is pretty nice - full Python plus S60 libraries, though I only wrote a simple app to download and rename a file, with a confirmation message.

Getting apps approved and signed is a pain, but if you get a developer key you can sign your own apps - I got such a key but it was quite difficult to sort out.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 18, 2009 7:48 UTC (Fri) by batsys (guest, #54289) [Link]

I toyed with Python on S60 and yes it did speed up development by a factor of *lots. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to use it in-house for development, it had to be Symbian. I was down to do some Python examples for Nokia (we did a lot of the Symbian SDK examples) but left the company before it happened. I've not touched S60 (etc.) in anger since because I hated coding in Symbian so much. I'm looking forward to trying an N900 with Qt.