Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

I'm willing to best it'll be much more expensive than the same unit would have been without the cell phone radio. :) Do YOU know what it'll be?

You've pretty much nailed it--what I wanted is a new tablet.. not a cell phone. That's the basis for my disappointment. Here's hoping for a new TABLET to come out sooner than later.

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

I think you misunderstood the comments. :confused: There was a time when it wasn't clear that the next device would even have a keyboard. Nokia would not disclaim that the device would not have an iphone like form factor or D-pad, etc.

I don't know what you mean by "balances." Very few current generation devices (other than Maemo devices) have keys or other hardware dedicated to zoom (as distinguished from keyboard shortcuts or gestures) - Smart Q5 and TouchPro2 and Touch Diamond2 AFAIK. Nokia was signalling big changes between Maemo 4 and Maemo 5, so it was not clear that the menu key would remain essential (even if it is in fact essential) in Maemo 5.

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

I think that the potential launch of a RX-71 will depend on the success of the RX-51, so, it's better for us to stand together and try to push the platform forward the best we can in our own particular ways.

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

Oh I'm all for the maemo platform--I'm just pretty sure I'm not going to want to be behind this device. Particularly if I'm told to buy into a contract with a carrier (particularly one that isn't the one I use) or else told to pay a WHOLE lot more than it's actually going to be worth to have this dangling appendix I had to pay to carry around.

I know some of you don't like to hear that repeated, but I think there's also some of us that hoped Nokia would do something Internet-Tabletty--not cell-phoney. The maemo platform itself is quite fine and I'm increasingly happier with what the maemo group is doing. Don't mistake my disappointment for Nokia as disappointment for maemo.

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

Has Nokia been known for locking people into a contract with a carrier? I don't know, I'm not from the US and I've never owned a mobile phone. But my impression from reading the comments on this forum is that Nokia doesn't tend to play that game (and some people here say that it has hurt sales in the US)...

It seems to me that a Linux phone would be even less likely to be locked-in than a closed OS system, especially if the whole telephony stack is open, from the modem driver upwards. Looks like the UI is the only thing that won't be open, but we know that from the SDK.


http://qole.org/images/oFono-architecture.png


Again, I'm no expert here, and someone will probably point out that it is easy to lock down a phone even when everything is GPL like that...

It just doesn't seem likely that they're going to be locking anything down, considering the direction Nokia is going with Maemo.

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

I think what we're going to see is Internet-Tabletty just with the added bonus of not needing to tether it to a cell phone to use it as it was intended (like a lot of people, myself included, do).

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

Not necessarily, but carriers will lock you into a phone (i.e., US carriers typically don't resell unlocked phones, which means if you have an AT&T SIM card, it won't work in a Nokia phone from T-Mobile).

Tim

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

Though there is an FCC investigation but I don't know if it'll change anything.

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

I think all these kinds of tying arrangements are inherently anti-competitive. How can a small carrier compete? Just by virtue of its not being big, companies like AT&T and Apple (or Verizon and RIM, or ...) can make deals that exclude the small carrier. The small carrier ought to be able to compete head-to-head with AT&T on what they actually offer, on a piece by piece basis. All the carriers ought to be forced to offer a pure pipe, varying if they want on how much bandwidth is used; then they can all go head-to-head. Not forcing that on the carriers is inevitably bad for the consumers. Likewise allowing the carriers to force more than just pipe access on the consumers is anti-competitive.

If you had real Adam Smith capitalism, with hundreds of carriers, then some carrier would independently decide to offer a pure pipe as a means to compete against the ones who don't. But with only several carriers, there's an oligopoly and none of them find it worthwhile to compete that way, even if it's what customers most want. Instead they differentiate themselves by choosing what combination of crap they force on the consumers, and they make believe that's real competition. For many years, the American system generally has shown no interest in interfering with oligopolistic/monopolistic behavior, but it hasn't been so bad for a hundred years as it was under Bush. The current Supreme Court tilts pro-monopoly, too.

Maybe under Obama things will get better. It's a better FCC for one thing. We can hope (with more reason than we had a year ago for hoping).

Re: RX-51 Tablet picture released at Engadget
 

Are those really in the same market as your supposed tablet though? 3 out of the 5 quoted devices are media players 'first', before 'tablet' computers. All those 3 also depend on some sort of DRM in their content delivery mechanism. AND.. out of the 5 samples you gave, there are only 2 real and 'proven' products.. which are both within this so-called the DRM-ed media player category: iPod Touch and Archos. Well, I don't really know about Archos' numbers.. but at least they've managed to sustain and rehash their product lines for a few gen.