Nokia dumps Symbian on N-series The Nokia N8, to be released later this year, will be the last N-Series handset running Symbian. From then on it's MeeGo all the way. That's not to say that Nokia will be dropping Symbian entirely, but the Finns have long seen it as the perfect OS for spreading the smart phone joy into the less well-off demographic, so it …
What do you mean "even for Nokia"? Do you mean "especially for Nokia"?
Nokia make great hardware but their software is universally shit.
On every 'phone I've had, it's taken 8 or 9 months of updates before the 'phone software is even remotely stable. The provided software (usually PC only) is utter shite. Getting the 'phone to talk to anything other than the provided shite is incredibly painful and, if you want to talk to a Mac, almost impossible.
Saying that, I've now had my N97 for a year and, as well as the 'phone software improving, they're released an iSync plugin!
AFAIK you can already run Meego on the N900 - it doesn't have a GUI yet but hey, you can't have everything ;) Seriously though, Meego (in the smartphone incarnation) will only support capacitive screens so full support on N900 is not going to happen. There will surely be community-created ports, just like newer versions of "Internet Table OS" (or whatever it was called) were ported by the community to the N770. But all that doesn't really matter, the latest OS for N900 includes QT by default, so unless there are some very fundamental changes between Maemo and Meego (which I doubt, the move from a Debian-based system to an RPM-based is a non-issue), the apps should work on both platforms.
(posted naturally from my N900)
I'm hanging with the n800, I will not pay $40/month for service I do not need. Wifi fits all my needs, except when I'm driving... which isn't a bad thing. I also don't need a Google impregnated JE on top of a locked linux kernel. F the data miners.
The shite of the n800 is the latest OS doesn't run many crucial apps because the loader doesn't recognize the libs(newer?) and always tells me installation failed b/c of missing depend's. I can't even get samba shares to mount regularly. Community support entails JFGI replies or endless vi's and vims and cli commands beyond this hobbyist's skill level. Sounds like the n900 users will feel that same pain sooner than later, too.
Symbian>>>Maemo>>>Meego>>>YouGo buy something newer.
You just covered the main problem with Nokia and therefore why Meego is just such a ludicrously bad idea as a mainstay for any future releases.
"There will surely be a community-created port" Everything the N900 needs to work is a community created port. If nokia is involved, it doesn't happen. Just like Ovi store now selling the docs to go premium trial, but you end up downloading the view trial. Institutional stupidity and legendarily bad decisions they just can't correct.
As for Nokia hardware, reading the forums about the dodgy power connections internal mounts and Nokia's logic of bundling all the hardware but not the software to run it. (N900 face camera being the main case in point) You have to ask the question are the software and hardware teams managed, is there an overuling series of checks and do the Nokia people really care about their product?
Iphone really isn't going to worry about Nokia offerings, the N900 has been out 7 months and there is still no word editor that doesn't crash or corrupt all your files in a half HTML format, no MMS, no working or supported map software, navigation software or any hint of an app store people want to visit. Neither is the sync' software OVI suite even supporting this phone. Can't have individual ring tones and the OS still hangs and crashes for random reasons. (The community have created 6 apps (not downloaded through the app store) to do the other basics, like turn off your network after use, tell you that someone called you, or sent you a text. You know, the basics) Nokia have to go through all that again to get Meego up and running.
Jobs is laughing all the way to the bank.
I would have posted this from my N900 but the fennec firefox on there doesn't support flash at all and the bundled browser doesn't do tabbed browsing. So can't use this website or work effectively enough to bother trying work arounds.
Oh, it's like seeing the once primetime TV giants Little & Large now doing the end of a pier for £2 per ticket with more empty seats than not.
Except Little & Large were always shite. Symbian was just botched by Nokia the moment they wrestled control from Psion.
As an ex-Symbian employee, it always looked to me that Symbian was botching Symbian. Their own lack of expertise in the basics of software development, and costly reliance on squads of defect fixers instead of good coders and designers, made them slow and unresponsive. Lots of Golden Hammers and magic formulae to be protected by people with a vested interest in preserving their own status and none in promoting innovation.
Too many people in Symbian basked in the reflected glory of the original set of clever people who started it all up and then bailed. In the end what emerged was a pretty dumb company. These guys actually reviewed code as if it was theatre performance, fer chrissake!
"and if Nokia can push Qt hard enough"
..can they push harder please. Ovi suite is a QT app; but only runs on Windows (Macs version allegedly 'soon'). It's quite a nice app (well.. compared to the LG equivalent I used to use) and I'd love to run it natively on my home system without rebooting into Windows in order to sync and upgrade.
Seriously: other than being unable to find a less ridiculous name for it and developing ridiculously slow, there's nothing wrong with MeeGoo except it's a complete no-show so far...
...meanwhile Android is aiming a late 2010-early 2011 v3.0 release.
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