LWN: Comments on "Gil: Here comes Maemo 5"

Fragmentation of Linux phones

endecotp — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:43:41 +0000

POSIX defines most of the things that you mention.

Getting user input events is the one thing that's left over, and would probably need to be done in platform-specific ways.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

lysse — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:28:33 +0000

> I'm feeding a troll here

For heaven's sake, "troll" does NOT mean "someone who posts an opinion that I don't readily comprehend without explaining it"!

accidental roaming

pdundas — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:26:43 +0000

In border areas of Northern Ireland the UK home networks are even worse than in the rest of NI (A remote rural area of a mostly urban country, perhaps). But the Irish networks usually have very good coverage (maybe the Irish republic is proportionately less urbanised, or values inclusion more in its network planning).

The result - anywhere near the border, any signal you get is very likely to be roaming.

Particularly annoying when O2 "simplified" their roaming charges to 3x previous levels, and told everyone who complained that "you are the first person to raise that point". But that's getting off topic...

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Los__D — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:13:15 +0000

FFS. Sorry about that. I really should look at the preview... Here it is with HTML (and few fixes):

And just try using it on a train! I've never seen a 3G connection last more than 1 minute on a moving train.

Hmmm... I use it on a train almost every day. I see one dropout (going through a tunnel).
Must be a provider issue.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Los__D — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:10:09 +0000

<p><i>And just try using it on a train! I've never seen a 3G connection last more than 1 minute on a moving train.</i></p>
Hmmm... I use it on a train almost every day. I see one dropout (going through a tunnel).

Most be a provider issue.

Fragmentation of Linux phones

epa — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:27:12 +0000

OpenGL is just a graphics library, not a framework for writing applications.
It does nothing to define network access or user input or persistent storage
or any of the other essentials.

Fragmentation of Linux phones

epa — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:26:18 +0000

The iPhone is compatible with one standard: itself. You can write an iPhone app and it will work on any iPhone. You can't do that with 'Linux phones' taken as a group - there are several incompatible systems, each of which by itself has tiny market share. So while 'Linux' may have a substantial and increasing share of the mobile phone market, we don't get many network effect benefits from that because 'Linux' is not even compatible with 'Linux'.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

jlokier — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:51:46 +0000

In my experience 3G and even 3.5G (HSDPA) isn't reliable enough to listen continuously to radio, even with a "7 out of 7 bars" supposedly best quality reception, and it also uses a _lot_ more power than running an FM receiver.

It's painful enough trying to use it for an SSH session to read mail: very usable sometimes, 5 seconds latency and 50% packet loss at other times. Great bandwidth at times, but packet loss and latency fluctuate wildly, and it's very sensitive to location (as in move a few metres). I've observed this on three different handsets; it's not a handset issue.

And just try using it on a train! I've never seen a 3G connection last more than 1 minute on a moving train.

Internet radio on a mobile device is a nice idea, in those places where mobile internet is good enough. It's not been good enough any of the places I've used it, yet (all in the UK).

The FM transmitter is a nice touch. I've often wanted to listen to music from my laptop on the car radio. But perhaps the lack of FM receiver is enough to put me off the N900 and wait for a next model, because that's a feature I have used on all three of my previous handsets.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

gb — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:35:23 +0000

Success will exist only then sales of N900 will be high. I guess voice of open-source party inside Nokia will depend on sales too.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

xav — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:43:43 +0000

[citation needed]

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

aryonoco — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:45:17 +0000

There is both, a FM transmitter and a FM receiver. There is no Radio application for Maemo 5 yet though so N900 will not have FM radio out of the box, but writing applications is easy one would be coming soon.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

fb — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:07:36 +0000

I guess that as my contract says that I have to have coverage within the whole country; if I start using the network of another Dutch provider within the NL, then it is TMobile's problem. They can't charge me extra for it.

But I think that in practice, if there is no deal between operators, then they just keep the "non-international" mobile phones from roaming into their networks.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Los__D — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:28:06 +0000

Ah, that makes sense. More or less all of our eastcoast is inhabited.

- But something confuses me a bit... Roaming from another provider in-country is also going to be expensive (especially for data), and the situation ought to be similar. Why is this no problem?

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

fb — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:04:27 +0000

Just so that you can reduce this chain of "heard of" a little bit: more than once I've noticed my mobile phone picking up foreign operators while cycling close to both the German and Belgium borders. When cycling around rural areas close to borders, it is common to come back home with multiple pairs of SMSes welcoming me to "t-mobile DE", and then back to "t-mobile NL".

In none of these cases there were cities around. I actually suspect that when close to urban areas in both sides this is least likely to happen, as coverage (from your own operator) would be good, so you will always have your own signal available.

Perhaps the flatness of the landscape has something to do with it.

As aways YMMV.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

salimma — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:37:24 +0000

They made the decision to omit FM receiver back when the N810 was designed. With radio and TV going digital, and especially now that the device has 3G always-on connectivity, the argument is even stronger this time around.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

salimma — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:35:31 +0000

The developer phones ("D1") do have root access. And unless Nokia manages to hook some mobile carriers up to provide subsidized devices, the N900 is not going to be cheaper either. My N810 cost over $400 when newly-launched.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

salimma — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:33:19 +0000

The DRM argument is totally a red herring. They are (intentionally?) mixing up a container issue and a codec issue. There is no reason whatsoever that a DRM-capable container format cannot be developed that within it contain Theora/Vorbis video/audio streams.

Fragmentation of Linux phones

njs — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:04:33 +0000

OTOH, this is pretty standard in FOSS generally -- an area opens up, a bunch of different groups try to build what they think the best solution is ("let a thousand flowers bloom"), and then after a bit there's a die-back and people consolidate around one or a few projects. (Or, often, a second generation project comes along that cherry-picks the best parts from all the earlier innovator's experience, and ends up wiping them off the map.)

Very roughly, it's a process that tends to optimizes for the total quality of the final product, rather than time to market or efficient resource use along the way.

Fragmentation of Linux phones

eean — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:41:09 +0000

OpenGL is a bit low-level to just start writing apps with. Thats why we have GUI toolkits in the first place.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Los__D — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 06:29:14 +0000

Erm... No, it isn't.

I live in Copenhagen, around 13 miles from Malmö, Sweden, around half the distance to the border.

My uncle lives even closer.

I've never experience this "NORMAL" accidental roaming, neither has my uncle, or anyone I know. The only stories I've heard, is something like a friend's friend's younger brother's girlfriend's cousin's neighbor...

It is nowhere NEAR normal, ok?

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Wol — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:07:20 +0000

And in Europe, I guess it's also quite easy to roam "by accident".

Bear in mind, in Britain, we have an "air gap" of 22 MILES between us and our nearest neighbour. But I hear horror stories reasonably regularly of people IN BRITAIN making phone calls via France Telecom without realising it, then wondering why they get billed megabucks despite going nowhere near France.

Let's take an American example I know a little about. We'll pretend you're an American living in Kansas City. The state line cuts through the middle of the city. Now imagine that if your cell-phone connects across the state line to a tower in the "wrong" state you get charged a dollar a minute surcharge on your call ... there'll be an awful lot of infuriated customers! That situation is NORMAL in Europe.

Cheers,
Wol

Fragmentation of Linux phones

endecotp — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:02:16 +0000

My feeling is that OpenGL is the best common API between the various phones, and if I wanted to write a cross-device app that's what I'd use. Has anyone tried to build GUI components on top of OpenGL? I bet they have...

Fragmentation of Linux phones

louie — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:42:21 +0000

Not that GNOME's API/ABI track record is perfect, but I don't think GTK/GNOME are at fault for maemo's various API breakages- they are often at very low levels (well below where GNOME/GTK tread). So the switch to QT probably won't solve those.

Fragmentation of Linux phones

nhippi — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:01:00 +0000

Umm, I kinda agree, but 2 counterpoints:

1) Phones evolve faster than standards are written. The user interface of a motorola linux phone application would pixel-by-pixel tuned for 320x200 displays and stylus they had. Such application UI would simply not be usable on the high-dpi (260+) 800x480 thumb-oriented display of N900.

2) iPhone is proof that you don't need to be compatible with any standard at all to be able to gather a mountain of applications.

Still, the api/abi compatability story with nokia internet tablets has been an epic fail. Hopefully with Qt the track record will get better. The Trolls have so far managed to follow the amazingly simple rule of "if you brake the abi, you bumb the soversion".

Fragmentation of Linux phones

epa — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:57:22 +0000

It seems like such a massive waste of effort, when a reasonable 'Linux phone'
standard could be a worthy challenger to the iPhone and its mountain of apps.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Los__D — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:39:34 +0000

Well, I'm from Denmark, an country about the same size (but with a much smaller population) with the same passport rules, and I don't think that we really travel much.

Ok, we go to Germany for cheap beer a lot, but that is just over the border for half an hour, and then back again. :)

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

rsidd — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:33:18 +0000

The Netherlands is a small country, and travelling to neighbouring countries is passport-free, so I imagine people there "roam" much more often than the rest of us :)

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

debacle — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:24:38 +0000

> Buy mini SD cards with an adapter (that's what I use with my camera and
> N810).

AFAIK, the N900 has Micro-SD (11×15), not Mini-SD (21.5×20). Anyway, those are about 33% more expensive, e.g. 40 instead of 30 for 16 GB. I cannot even find 32 GB Micro-SDs.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Los__D — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:54:14 +0000

You didn't even trigger my grumpiness-detector :)

Ah, roaming. The curse of any mobile Internet device, but I don't really think that one should design for situtations that (most) users are in less than 5-10% of their time.

- Of course, that only applies for "normal" consumers, I have no idea what the profile of Maemo users is.

I don't own a 3G phone myself, but I regularly use one of those 3G sticks on the train. I ALWAYS get disconnected when going into a 5 minute tunnel on the way. I never tried FM in there, but I have a feeling that it would be, at least, a noisy experience.

FM chips are cheap today, but it still needs design time, I think that it takes quite a bit of shielding and clever design to avoid noise-bombing from the 3G and GSM radios, and component costs scale with the amount of devices produced (though I don't really think that the Maemos are high-volume devices).

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

pabs — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:06:22 +0000

Nice to see the success of another Debian-based distro.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

fb — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:32:02 +0000

> An FM receiver is just waste of money for an Internet connected device, IMHO unlike a keyboard and built-in camera.

I live in The Netherlands, and travel abroad fairly often. Internet radio is ridiculously expensive, when roaming.

Even inside the Netherlands, my personal experience is that internet radio is NOT reliable enough. At least with my service provider.

Also, is not as if FM receiver would add much to the costs of the device.

(sorry for the grumpiness, BTW I also like the Secret Agent channel)

Fragmentation of Linux phones

mjg59 — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:43:48 +0000

No. In terms of userspace, Android basically isn't Linux. The Pre shares a lot of functionality with standard desktop Linux, but the standard app API is all Javascript based. Maemo is the closest to desktop Linux. Motorola have shipped custom Linux (with Java or Qt based UI) for a while, but it looks like their future products will be Android.

Fragmentation of Linux phones

epa — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:37:24 +0000

So we have all these Linux-based devices: the Palm Pre, the various Android phones, now Nokia's new model, and I think Motorola and other manufacturers at least have something in the works.

Is there any common API at all between these phones?

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

csamuel — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:11:21 +0000

I guess we shouldn't be that surprised, Nokia did reportedly describe
Ogg Theora as "proprietary" to the W3C in 2007 when saying it shouldn't be
made part of the HTML5 standard, as well as saying that it should be
knocked back because it doesn't support DRM...

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/09/nokia-to-w3c-ogg-is....

What about the carriers?

drag — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:05:12 +0000

I don't know about other carriers but to add on tethering to your plan is something you can do online. It just costs extra, quite a bit extra I suppose depending on your perspective.

The whole tethering thing is kinda weird.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

halla — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:14:50 +0000

I spent a lot of time moving pictures to my n810 these holidays. We had a
camera with an ordinary sd card slot. A phone with ditto. The phone had
bluetooth as well, the n810 had bluetooth but a silly mini-sd card slot,
for which cards are no longer available. My kids had pressured me into
leaving my laptop home, but the eldest kid fell sick during the holidays
and wanted to see some snapshots.

So... Move each picture with bluetooth from phone to n810, and she could
browse... Took ages!

And I absolutely want an n900 -- a phone with a shell -- as blissful as my
old Psion Series 3 that ran bash!

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

oak — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:54:55 +0000

> the N800 has two full-size SD slots, the N900 only one Micro-SD

According to the N900 page, it has 32 GB storage inside it. At least to
me with that sized internal memory card, lacking second memory card slot
isn't anymore a concern.

> and with at least one full-size SD slot, so that I can check SD cards
from a real camera etc.

Buy mini SD cards with an adapter (that's what I use with my camera and
N810).

Btw. compared to N800, I would assume this device also to have (like N810
does) a better screen in regards to how visible it's on direct sunlight.
Compensates a bit for smaller size. :-)

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

debacle — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:57:53 +0000

I certainly should have put a smiley in here. Sorry, my fault.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

Los__D — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:54:07 +0000

Normal SD doesn't really much sense.

Canon and Nikon uses CF for most of their dSLRs (except for their cheapest ranges), while SD is used by most compact cameras it's definitely not ubiquitous, and will be probably be slowly phased out for microSD as cameras grows even smaller.

Besides, what is the purpose of moving photos from one way too-small-screen, to another way-too-small screen for... Checking? You need a proper display for that.

An FM receiver is just waste of money for an Internet connected device, IMHO unlike a keyboard and built-in camera.

About GTK+, you have my full agreement, although it shouldn't matter too much for the consumer.

Gil: Here comes Maemo 5

macson_g — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:39:46 +0000

> If Nokia would also give up their plan on dropping GTK+ from Maemo, I would consider the N900...

I'm feeding a troll here probably, but what difference does it make if application uses one LGPL'ed toolkit or another, as long as it looks good and is usable?