Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

So, I have a lot of appreciation for Nokia's ability to keep things under wraps now. Yesterday, I put up a firmware image to show to the SmartQ5 people and put it on mer-chatter as well for the other SmartQ5 developer to have - and 12 hours later it's on blogs with pictures (http://www.jiongtang.com/blog/digita...firmware-beta/ ) , heavy discussions, finding kernel source, boot loader, etc..

Those chinese are efficient.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Isn't this a good thing?
Edit: -
http://n2.nabble.com/Leakage-of-Smar...td2862533.html
I see that you don't think so. Does it harm the project from your point of view?

Thanks for the links too. Mer Chatter is one that passed me by and it good to know about.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Yeah .. I guess i overreacted a bit. I just hope the company sees it as a good thing - they should be able to sell more devices - but i did pull the image for now as it is testing and not for release.

Would much prefer it to be associated with Mer and no rumours that it's the famed Maemo5 for the N900 or the likes. :)

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Yeah, someone over on UMPC Portal said "from maemo".

So I pointed out "technically, it's Mer, not Maemo". I hope that confusion doesn't end up hurting Maemo, Mer, nor Nokia.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

It's hard even for Nokia even with closed source stuff and a legal staff. Unfortunately, for OSS from small project, it's pretty much open season.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

The biggest problem is the people that report from the hip without reading up on the subject...

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Perhaps this is a case in point in support of penguinbait’s proposal to separate off Hackers from Maemo.

Having different forums with different names , that way there is no such confusion.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Nah, it's not - the confusion stems from Mer being on wiki.maemo.org and being a maemo.org project - nothing to deal with Talk :) - people are probably confused about maemo.org vs Maemo outside of these forums.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Hell, i border on confused at times...

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Lucky you to be on the border and only sometimes.

With regards
Totally confused, bemused and obtused in SE14

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

cute, looks like the smartq7's bluetooth is by dongle...

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

hmm, I thought it was supposed to be built in? Where did you see this?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

umpcportal, chippy just got one from china.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Thanks TSO,

I was just searching youtube.com for any videos on the Smart Q7. I even watched the videos on their Q5 reviews.

Here's the link:
http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/05/sm...unboxing-video

But, he also claims that Flash support doesn't exist for ARM based processors. So, his statement about Bluetooth could be wrong too.

Oh, and now that I'm watching the video, it shows "Bluetooth Manager" on the desktop. Not that this means it isn't by dongle.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Yeah, but there's a bluetooth dongle in the package, a very tiny one, fits in the USB port probably..

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

I didn't think the performance of the Smart Q 7 was too bad actually (from that unboxing video). Not really fair to compare it with other MIDs with their big memories, and fast processors (and 3h battery life).

Certainly the web browser seemed to be snappier than what we have atm.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

do you include tear and/or webkit-eal in that?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

I've been an N800 user for a couple of years and just joined talk.maemo.org today.

I have ordered a Q5 and Q7 and would like to help out with these devices. I hope to get them in early June.

Stskeeps, could you use a tester for Mer on either model?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

o.O

thats nice hardware :)
would love to play.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

When they arrive would you mind keeping us updated with your impressions, please?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Rebski,

I would be happy to share my impressions.

in the meantime, anyone wanting immediate gratification should check out Chippy's terrific video hands-on over at umpcportal--including a browser test against an N8x0.

His longest video is here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1530937. Other videos available include unboxing, FBReader use, and a look inside.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Yes, of course - Mer is a open project and testers are always welcome.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

celtica96, thanks for the video link, I missed that one. The side by side comparison with the N810 is interesting. For starters the Q7 screen looks massive. It surprised me to see that the browser page loading speed on the Q7 is so much faster.

As Chippy explains, the Q7 processor is 50% more powerful so really this is all looking very good. The Q7, while not by an order of magnitude, is nonetheless faster than the NIT.

The media capability out of the box is poor but the device need not be judged harshly by this as it appears that these issues can be dealt with via software drivers and the like. Interestingly it seems that hardware codecs are present.

Chippy is playing divx files encoded at 1500kbps, my N800 is not comfortable with much more than 700kbps so even without software optimisation it is better out of the box than the NIT?

This seems to be to be a great project for that Mer magic.

I really am sorry but I have no programming skills and can’t contribute but if it helps to have a few devices around for testing purposes then I am fully prepared to order one of these if that would be useful.

Now that Nokia’s intentions as regards the Tablets seems to have been clarified, we are free to focus on alternatives and the SmartQ devices lend themselves perfectly for contention.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

chippy is still using microb on the N810, i would love seeing him test tear or webkit-eal, but so far i have gotten no response on that request...

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

How hard is it to put Mer on the Smart Q5 or Q7? I have been very interested in Mer for quite some time, and this seems like an ideal platform for it. I would be glad to purchase one of these devices and be a tester for Mer. I would need some guidance on installing the Mer OS on the hardware though. Any thoughts, or suggestions?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

It's easy. Put Mer SmartQ5 image as 'SmartQ5' on vfat, first partition on a SD card, hold down + key and plug in charger..

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Hi, Just joined and again happy to purchase the smartq7 primarily as a reader for epub/pdf and internet browsing. If I can be of any assistance in testing out anything, particulalry fbreader I would be glad to.

Two questions:

1. Does the smartq5 mer image work on Q7 already ?
2. Does the plan include getting flash working ?

Thanks

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

1. I don't have a Q7 so I don't know for sure. I do have kernel and bootloader sources for it

2. Flash is a matter of can't distribute - gnash might be a replacement?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

http://shop.ebay.com/items/__SmartQ-...286.m104.l1198

3 available.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

I got one from the electroworld guy that a lot of people got it from. I got one with a beta english firmware. it was awful. desktop OS. everything was too small. it also ran pretty slowly. i updated the sources list, added xournal from the repositories so i could write notes to myself. when i rebooted the machine, it gave me an unexpected login screen after an autologin failure. with no way to type or hit <enter> or anything, i was stuck. developer told me tough luck. i shouldn't have installed anything. apparently there is little room in the usr folder and if you add anything this is the consequence. he told me to reinstall. but of course there is no english firmware available yet. so i installed Mer. much snappier, so far, but i can't connect to the internet. the instructions to add wifi drivers didn't work for me. the device couldn't find the sd card.

"special device /dev/mmcblk1p1 does not exist"

so i'm stuck.

any help would be appreciated.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Come on irc.freenode.net #mer (use www.mibbit.com) and we'll figure it out. :)

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

The Q5 kernel will not work on the Q7. At least the LCD won't work (with maybe even a small chance that it will be damaged) and the keys are slightly different. The kernel needs to be compiled with the hhs3c6410_7_defconfig instead of the hhs3c6410_4_3_defconfig. It should not be too hard to make a kernel that works on both, but it was not done yet.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Possibly your card is unpartitioned. What is the output from

cat /proc/partitions

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Today, Chippy at umpcportal published a full review of the Q7 with a new video focusing on the installed applications (Midori, FBReader, Evince). Plus, he is very pleased with its remote desktop capabilities. Overall, he sees the device as a very cost effective casual-use computer.

The link is http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/05/sm...dle-and-crunch

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Hmmmm ... now that we can fear that the next tablet will have a small screen, Q5 & Q7 would be very intersting ... does Maemo actually run on it ?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

To be specific, Mer runs on the Q5, yes. (As mentioned and discussed throughout much of this thread.) The Q7 is, I guess, still kind of experimental, and there are no released images for it.

If the only thing annoying you about the N800 is the "small" 4" screen and/or poor video performance, the Q5 and Q7 could be the solution, but in some ways they're a step back. No d-pad is one of the big things people are getting excited about (and definitely the biggest problem for me), and the bigger screens (particularly 7") could easily support way more pixels, so the smartQs don't look so hot from here. I'm also an N810 hardware-keyboard convert, so it'd be a bit annoying going back to soft-keyboard only, but no deal-breaker.

Still, the price and capabilities are impressive, and if you're after a bigger screen at the same resolution, or more performance, why not?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

I'm very sorry to hear that. But since we're baring all, I'm a recent touch screen convert. I've always gone for the lightest and the smallest that meets my needs, and the hardware keyboard's time is up in my handheld arena. I think I've even figured out how to make a no-look d-pad on an iPod touch.

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

hmm, seeing how the keyboard behaves on the default distro im starting to wonder if its possible to set its wm to behave more like the maemo one...

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

Matan,

Are they working on a core that works on both Q5 and Q7.

The Q7 is what really interests me. Should this thread be renamed to include the Q7 or will that end up having a separate thread ?

Re: Moses SmartQ 5
 

The Q7 seems lame to me. It's lost in the middle. For the same reason the 800x480 7" eee went away, so should this. I wonder if that's where they're getting the screens from. If it's older technology, combine that with its size and it might suck more battery than you want. Hold out for better resolution in that form factor.