Re: [Under development] Ovi Maps - Turn by Turn Navigation
 

I am not sure who to point fingers at regarding backward compatibility or backporting. The simple fact is, other operating systems like the Android/iPhone gets the updates which run on older hardware. A few days back I saw a G1 running the latest Eclair. Nokia is probably doing something wrong since I haven't seen Fremantle running on any of the previous NITs. Please don't say it's an Internet Tablet. We are taking about software, software that is open source. Makes you wonder why we don't have a massive following like the Andriod.

Re: [Under development] Ovi Maps - Turn by Turn Navigation
 

Its not about the hardware capabilities or such. Maemo 6 (aka Harmattan) will be fully Qt based (Maemo 5 aka Fremantle is not). It makes sense for Nokia to fully pay their attention and energy towards the Harmattan release for such big and new features. You would not want them to develop code which they wont care after a new release, right. And I am almost sure that Harmattan will be officially released for the N900.

I would even go further saying that once the Qt-based Maps application is ready, even the Symbian phones will get another new update. This is the advantage of going with Qt. You develop only once but deploy on multiple OS's.

Re: [Under development] Ovi Maps - Turn by Turn Navigation
 

I have been holding off buying an N900 so far to see how it develops. I was really excited about it but I start to think that it may have been a good thing that I haven't bought one yet..

I see Nokia's dilemma, they only have have so much resources they can/want to commit to Maemo and at this point they don't want to invest too much in developing things for Mameo 5 since they have to take these resources away from Maemo 6 development.

I think it would make a lot of sense for Nokia to officially confirm that Mameo 6 will work on the N900. If they did that I would probably buy one now. If they are planing to release the device (N920?) at the end of the year they pretty much know at this point what hardware they will be using, so they know if the N900 will be able to run Mameo 6. Sure, the Mameo 6 device will have multi touch, but it is not such a huge engineering feat to design the UI framework such that it works with and without multi touch.

Come on Nokia, give the people here (who work tirelessly on improving and marketing your product.. mostly for free) some official information.

Re: [Under development] Ovi Maps - Turn by Turn Navigation
 

In the meantime, we have all purchased a half-baked product and are on our own to solve the problems until Harmattan comes along, possibly a year or more later. That is only if Harmattan is even released officially for the N900. Personally, I'm seeing too many will-fix-in-Harmattan decisions to hang around and give it a chance (out of fear it'll be the same situation all over again). I love what Maemo is, but Nokia needs to not keep us in the dark and give us a clue as to what the future holds, if they can't bring the device up to par and/or start fixing more problems today.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

17 posts have been merged from the thread [Under development] Ovi Maps - Turn by Turn Navigation

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

Now, let me summarize the situation from a technical point of view (if you are looking for a business point of view you will need to ask a business representative).

- In the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit we announced the Nokia strategy of Maemo and Symbian adopting Qt for their application frameworks in order to provide a common API. One day apps will run in Maemo and Symbian seamlessly or with little porting effort.

- A lot of information was shared in the Maemo Summit about Harmattan / Maemo 6, including OMAP3, OpenGL ES, capacitive screen support and multitouch UI. See http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2009 and feel free helping me extracting the useful information at http://wiki.maemo.org/Open_developme...dmap/Harmattan

- It is also known that the Maemo 6 API will have it's baseline in Qt, with several variables to be defined in the first Harmattan SDK releases: compatibility of plain Qt APIs, selected Qt Mobility APIs, a Web runtime running on top of Qt-WebKit and an additional framework running on top of QGraphicsView.

- There was a timeline announcing a Harmattan alpha SDK release in 1Q2010 and a beta in 2Q2010.

- It is also known that Qt 4.6 is in its way of becoming officially supported in Maemo 5. Of course this Qt release for Maemo comes also with Qt-WebKit, QGraphicsView and the rest of the official Qt release. All these components are already in Extras-devel.

- Then in the Nokia Capital Markets it was announced that a Maemo 6 product will be delivered in 2H2010.

In my opinion all this is actually a lot of information already given about 'the next product' just when 'the current product' is hitting the shelves. Customers always want to know more! - I understand that, but you need to understand that we will keep informing about next releases and products when it's the right time.

And when it's the right time?

- In order to understand the compatibility between Maemo 5 and Maemo 6 at an API level at least a Harmattan alpha release needs to be out. From that point we will be able to discuss how easy/complex is to run/port apps between Maemo 5/6. This topic is specially interesting to developers in order to organize their work.

- In order to understand the compatibility between the N900 and the Maemo 6 product coming later this year such product needs to be announced.

I recommend you to enjoy Maemo 5 and to keep helping improving it (enjoying the act of collaboration as well). It works as advertized and it has plenty of potential - a potential that in big measure depends on yourselves. If you prefer to keep speculating that's fine but it is advisable that at least you enjoy while you are at it. Really, nobody is obliged to come here to suffer. :)

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/
I beg to differ. I'm sorry, but this point on the N900 advertising page was a large reason for my initial interest and is still inaccurate. It's false advertising. Ok, technically there's nothing completely false about that: it's just a huge exaggeration, and fails to mention that "oh, by Ovi Maps, we mean a broken, half-assed version of the program known as Ovi Maps on other phones."

Generally Maemo 5 and the N900 is a good product, but this is one area where "Fixed in Harmattan" is simply not acceptable to me unless Harmattan is coming to the N900.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

<capitalization>thank you!!!!!</capitalization>

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

By "indicators" you mean, of course, the official announcement of support in Harmattan.

As for the quote from BCN, well, it's in Spanish and, no, I don't have a source handy but I was sitting next to Anidel, lcuk and VDVsx and we can all corroborate what we heard. ;)

For me, the biggest issue I have is that the reasoning that's generally been provided for not releasing Maemo 6 on the N900 is, well, bogus. Multitouch is no justification, it's a marketing reason, not a technical one.

Any business justification is, frankly, also pretty bogus. Nokia's continued insistence on jettisoning the majority of their existing customer base with each successive product release (which is a behavior that's, amazingly, getting worse each year and not better) is both short-sighted and an excellent way to counteract whatever community building efforts they've invested by making early developer-oriented releases of their R&D platform. The number of disgruntled 770 owners who will never touch Maemo again is both disheartening and astounding. Nokia's great opportunity to pull in large swaths of the free software community was squandered away by shortsighted "business" decisions. Seeing how much worse that is with the N810 and will be with the N900 is just depressing.

I love this platform and this community, but Nokia's marketing-driven platform decisions with the N900 and its successor are going to make me look elsewhere for my mobile devices in the future.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

1) What Nokia should be doing with maemo is evolving it and ensuring maemo 5 apps will run on maemo 6 without modification.

2) Ensure maemo 6 can run on the n900. QT is just another library. The gtk-based library should be regarded as legacy - and the preferred option to develop to QT. There is no technical reason why multi-touch should inhibit the ability to upgrade an older version of the OS.

3) Nokia will actually increase the volume of applications available for future devices - Apple, Google and Microsoft can do this. If nokia cannot do this then kiss the smartphone/tablet market goodbye.

4) I'm sure this will pee-off developers if they have to re-compile and tweak their software again.

I have just forked out £500 for the n900 is Nokia telling me I have to do this again to get the next OS upgrade. No thank-you I'm off to android if that is the case.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

Couldn't agree more!! GPS navigation was also a decisive feature for me to choose N900 since I was used to it on N95, and it is Nokia's obligation as a supplier to deliver what is declared on the product features. The client is not responsible for extensively research if the official statement "Ovi Maps and A-GPS included" actually is a very deficient GPS app compared to Ovi Maps 3 on Symbian.

At least regarding Ovi Maps, seems it was included intentionally before it was ready, just because GPS navigation is now a must-have feature for most phone consumers, and that would be a total lack of respect for clients...

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

I don't expect feature-parity with the Symbian version.

Even if Nokia did a .5 release that enables the free navigation would be enought for the time being.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

on the slides from maemo summit it says "multitouch on capacitive displays" and "multi-touch Gestures" on the Maemo 6 UI Framework slide
http://www.allaboutmaemo.com/news/it...the_Maemo_.php
as for n900 wont get maemo 6 quote there is no info to back that up but i really hope it does not get it.
b/c it wont be able to run same apps as say n910 without extra work to substitute for its short comings e.g no multi touch amongst other things
so it will just go largely ignored by commercial developers porting software from other platforms like from iphone.
and new software developed from scratch will be coded with the weakest link in mind to boost units distributed limiting the innovation on new maemo 6 devices if n900 gets upgraded.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

You think that's bad? What Nokia did with the N95 in my country after purchasing Navteq was nothing short of criminal. They've advertised the N95 as fully capable GPS navigation device, and that was one of the main reasons I went with Nokia after the debacle that N80 was. I even bought the voice navigation package even tho I didn't really need it. All in all, I gave almost 1000€ to Nokia (well, local retailers did get a good piece of the action) and the device worked as advertised for almost two years, and I couldn't be happier... Then one day I updated the firmware which came with the latest Maps and boom - no more maps for my country (and several surounding ones). And no way to turn back. So, they've wrecked one of the most advertised features of the N95 in my country without breaking a sweat, and even without warning people that they'll loose the feature they've purchased the N95 for if they update it. And it's been a year and a half since then, IIRC, still no maps... At least they've clearly stated that no maps are available for my country on the N900 so it's not that I'm loosing an advertised feature by the omission of the fully featured Ovi Maps...

Now don't get me wrong, N95 was a fantastic device, but that lame move from Nokia have severely shaken my decade-old trust and confidence in the company, and if N900 didn't came along I'd probably have a competitors device in my hands right now, and I wouldn't look back. I'm not sure that Nokia can afford to f-up with the N900, too, at least not from my perspective (as a user, and a developer).

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

I disagree with this on many levels.

The only apps it won't be able to run properly are multi-touch apps.... the entire android line of phones seem to work just fine without it.. and even if Android 2.1+ get it, it's not like all the previous phones suddenly become void.

If M6 were to come to the N900 it is still the same basic framework as M6 for the 910... exactly the same OS with one difference: Driver for the touchscreen. All QT or whatever apps coded for the one will run on the other (assuming an ARMEL device), or PyQt4 or whatever - just some may not be 100% functional without the touchscreen.. and others may not work as well on the 910 without the accuracy of a resistive.

However, what I do think is it is an unbelievably horrific business practice to release a device or phone with the intention of ignoring it and making it obsolete less than 3-4 months after release. That is completely unsatisfactory that some things are marked with "harmattan" as a milestone for fix.. and it NOT coming to the N900. There was simply no reason for the N900 at all if that were to be the case.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

It seems that Nokia are not listening to us!

If they do ignore the n900 then maybe we should organise some kind of letter or petition and send it to Nokia.

I'll have my n900 over the next couple of years( I'm really happy with it) and will keep a very close eye on how Nokia treat the version of maemo 5 and the n900.

If they do consider it obsolete after a few months release and keep bumping fixes to the next version then I will not buy the their next device.

If people feel strongly about how Nokia treat them then the simple answer is don't buy the next maemo-based device

Simple.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

I really don't see why multitouch alone is an exclusion for Maemo6 on the n900. It's no different than remapping mouse gestures or keyboard shortcuts. Why does there have to be only pinch to zoom, and not the spiral zoom as well. We already have multiple ways to zoom in the n900's browser--the volume rocker, the spiral gesture, and the double tap gesture. Maemo 6 could support single- and multi-touch input simultaneously and the user could choose what to use. If the SOC is the same generation, I don't see the utility of manufacturing the n900 and with Maemo5 alongside the next n-series with Maemo6. It would be a waste of resources.

Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

After releasing Ovi maps with free navigation for symbian and ignoring maemo 5, I started to worry about N900 to be ignored and left behind even before releasing the next maemo device.
I am very impressed with N900's open nature, promising OS and this active community supporting it, and was intending to buy one, but now I can't decide because my budget is limited and I can't afford buying the next maemo device after a few months from buying N900. So, the device that I will buy will stay with me for more than a year, and I don't want it to be ignored after a couple of months. Can you help me decide? I just want to make sure that N900 will be supported for along time (With firmware updates, new apps, and even installing maemo 6 on it)

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

You're correct... and the indications so far are that won't be the case for that reason. Maintaining both *is* a waste of resources. That is why things are marked for the next release as a milestone, but not fixed for fremantle.

Thus, if the next maemo is not on the N900 - it becomes obsolete nearly as fast as it hit the market, and everyone that bought one is out the $$. It will become a decayed dinosaur like the N810, not maintained or updated by Nokia - all new devs and customers will get the new device - and it will slowly whither and die off of attrition.

If M6 comes to the N900 this is a non-issue.. as things developed for M6 will still work on the N900. They just need to add a description of "requires multitouch" in their apps if they make use of that feature.

The reverse logic is like saying Windows shouldn't run on computers with intel graphics card or ATI cards, just because some games run better with nvidia cards than ATI cards, and intel cards just suck. Nevermind the fact that some games also run better with ATI cards (resistive touch accuracy).. that's not important.. because all leadership cares about is nvidia (multitouch) specifically!

Makes no sense.

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

Time will tell. Past decisions may be changed in the future.

Quite off topic, but the N86 8MP was originally going to have Xenon. This was later changed due the designers' dislike of the look.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

Thanks for this. I probably didn't read the Barcelona threads at the time, where the "no Maemo 6 on N900" thing may have been mentioned, but I'm surprised more wasn't made of this as it seems rather a large announcement.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

It wasn't exactly a surprise, just something that was more-or-less finally made official.

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

I'm going to say yes. Not because of Ovi Maps necessarily but because it was more or less confirmed that Maemo 6 will not be coming to the N900.

Without Maemo 6 the N900 has no future.. since many things are being worked on for maemo 6 and not 5.. even current feature requests or bug reports.

So anyone buying an N900 today is effectively planning to be on their own in a short while.

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

Whatever Nokia decides about supporting N900, its lack of public commitment is just adding doubts for potential buyers like yourself... and worrying current owners like me, who don't want to feel that our money was invested wrongly in one of the most expensive devices on the market and not getting any support from its supplier

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

I think if the qt-framework will be the same on maemo6 and 5 it will still have a future. Then apps can be developed for both. Maybe some features in maemo6 can be backported to maemo 5, and maybe maemo6 can run on N900, only future will tell.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

You know, if Nokia truly cared about the community that is helping it develop the Maemo platform, they'd offer a trade-in program.

I'd be willing to trade in the N900 for the Maemo 6 device and pay a nominal fee for the upgrade. I don't want to add *another* internet tablet to my ever growing pile of Nokia devices that can't be upgraded. (Mer doesn't count seeing how slow the dev is going on that)

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

My thoughts are exactly the same as those posted thus far - in that Maemo 5 was just a 'toe in the water' exercise for Nokia. They're interested when they can stick Maemo on a mass market device and really make some cash from it. I doubt there's much money in N900 sales. The net markup can't be that good and they haven't shifted the number of units required to meet their usual targets for devices.

Support for Maemo 5 is going to dribble on for another few months and will be officially dead by late summer. Nokia haven't invested enough in community resources (like a good website) so the community won't be big enough to take over.

The positive is that most people are on 12-24 month contracts, so when that's up you can get a new phone.

I hate being an early adopter!

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

If Nokia decide to have a much higher 'minimum' spec for Maemo then yes, N900 will be completely ignored. Reasons for minimum higher spec:
- how much more hungry is Qt4.6 for CPU and memory. Nice UI and features are not free
-Competitors have already started higher spec phones. Faster processor, more physical RAM

How 'optimized' is Maemo 6 going to be such that it can run on n900 hardware IF Maemo 6 have higher hardware specs? Optimizing and writing efficient code is tough, extremely tough and requires very experience developers.

.. not to mention to resources Nokia would have to add to back-test M6 on n900. They are already behind the competition and need all resources to focus on M6.

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

$550 for a new phone every year is certainly not saving anybody any money no matter what TCO model you use...

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

Based entirely on past experience with Nokia's support of previous Internet Tablets, I think you can count on firmware updates until Maemo 5 reaches a stable state. New apps will be available for a time but developers will start to jump on Maemo 6 as it is closer to release. Whether you can Install Maemo 6 on the N900 continues to be a subject of debate. My personal take is that you won't be able to, just as I wasn't able to install Maemo 5 on my Maemo 4 device (the N810).

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

I thought when I bought this phone that hings were gonna be different then how they handled the n97, the phone I almost got instead of this one. All of the promotional videos had a feel or air about them that seem to embrace the community. And after the release it was absolutely clear that they hadn't changed at all. n900 owners are just financial funders for maemo 6, and buyer of the maemo 6 device will fund maemo7. I think once they have your money they don't care about supportting your device.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

Didn't know that they did that after acquiring Navtec, and I had maps from both Nokia and Garmin, so it was functional to me. I don't even think N95 was that great, but the information you gave just makes me more afraid about how Nokia will act with N900 customers... The main point of this discussion (on my opinion) is simply that N900 owners or potential buyers want to be sure they are not wasting their money on a short-life device.

And like you said, developers should be concerned as well, since they would not just lost their money to buy a device, but time and investments too.

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

If Nokia truly will not to allow M6 on n900, the least they can do is to open up every line of of source code in Maemo 5 (except maybe some internal phone stuff) so developers can change anything and everything themselves... its the least they could do

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

Never heard of such action from a mobile supplier... I don't think shareholders would approve!! Such move would imply in cutting some heads from Nokia's management...

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

man honestly i hate hearing about this topic. i think about it every day. the n900 was the first ever phone i spent over 500 on..and many people thought i was crazy..but i felt it was a good investment. i love this phone..but honestly..in like of the "milestone-harmattan" junk..if i could go back in time i would totally tell myself to keep the cliq for a while longer and pass this one up. it even seems like this site is dying a bit..there are rarely any new apps...nothing new on ovi..and nokia NEVER provides any feedback to any of our concerns.

its sad that a person thats (sort of) new to nokia has to learn this tha hard way..im quite sure that if we are screwed over this time that i will never buy another nokia..regardless of how cool maemo 6 looks...

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

Well agreed...but...

I'm not sure where you're based, where I am (UK) the phone is free on a £30/month contract for 18 months. This is a fairly typical deal for comparable phones. When you come to renew the contract on month 18 you get another handset free... that's just how it goes. If the thing breaks in that time you just use an old one until your contract is up and you get a new handset.

Contracts without phones have just started appearing, but they aren't really that good of a deal if you buy the handset seperately. I.e. the equivilent data/minutes for £30 with a free N900 is £20... i.e. the N900 'costs' about £150

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

This guy is very upset about his N97 . . . . . lol . . . . OMG

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dngtLBV70kM

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

@alexreed:

I'd have to agree.. I didn't think finding out M6 wasn't coming to the N900 would prevent me from getting it.. but the more I think on it it just might.

I still believe Maemo is by far the best mobile platform available... but I just can't justify giving half a grand to a company that seems to maintain little continuity, or future for any of the devices they bring out. So far, I have not seen a legitimate reason why the N900 could not run M6. We've already seen some videos of QT4.6 powered interfaces running on N900-like devices.. it's got to be powerful enough to run it. And multi-touch is just a cop out.

Maybe I'll just buy an N900 from someone who is bound to sell it after being screwed.. that way - I'm not directly paying Nokia :(. I fully support their work in the Open Source fields.. but this business model just can't stand when the competitors (here in the US) are supporting their devices for years.

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

Here you are certainly wrong. Nokia don't even have the decency to announce when they stop supporting a device, so it will not be "officially dead", only "practically dead". Look at the N810 for details.

Re: Will N900 be ignored by Nokia?
 

The N900 is free for you??? Holy **** batman!

I didn't know the N900 was subsidized even in the UK. But I am in the US.. I have no such option.