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).