Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

So what? If maemo is going to replace symbian Symbian still have a long road before the last 10€ nokia phone runs the last S70 OS version. It makes total sense for me that Nokia forces Symbian to its limits like they did with N97 and then start moving people from Symbian team to maemo side.

Symbian's problem is the same that Windows Mobile problem. It never was indented to be a Computers operating system. Than means that it is not likely going to run in a multiprocessor computer or that it is never going to be able to talk with all printers in the market or many other things that linux-maemo can/could do right now.

iPhone runs on Darwin so they can do it. If Steve Jobs presents the next iPrint device which is a simple Wifi to USB device intended to connect any printer to your phone. How is Symbian going to counter attack? Linux runs in the main supercomputers around the globe and in few refrigerators. It is the best OS to run N99 because it is capable to do things that Symbian cannot.

For example: Imagine that while mobiles become more and more robust handheld computers, Apple invents their tablet which is a simple 12" screen you plug your iPhone into and becomes a bigger touchable computer.

Technically it is very easy for Apple to do so. Their software stack is used in notebooks that are attached to bigger screens when in office. Linux can do it too. And windows XP. But not Symbian. No program from symbian is resizable and surely symbian apis never considered such refresh possibility.

Maemo should be the normal Symbian replacement even when that replacement is not going to be done in a year. Maybe 10 years.

It makes total sense to buy Symbian put a lot of momentum on it and then start moving assets from that team to the maemo one.

Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

Ok, hm, so assuming the last item is too big in each case, and taking the via media, it'll be 300g, 15mm thick, with qwerty, and it will be silver. ;) :D

Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

Not sure how relevant the multiprocessor issue is yet, but it's probably true. (Neither could Linux, before 2.0... it's not impossible to add such stuff, especially if there were a relevant multiprocessor platform) As for printers, why in the world should Symbian not be able to talk to any printer over a network? Maemo, FWIW, can't either, because the functionality has been deliberately limited to that deemed suitable for a mobile device; adding printing support consists of adding a filters, and optionally a daemon, for either platform. The hard part is getting applications to integrate it, which applies equally to both.

But you haven't mentioned a shortcoming of Symbian that _prevents_ it from doing any of these except supercomputers; it seems you're arguing that it can't be made to do things because it hasn't been made to do them yet. Would you have argued in 2004 that Symbian could not support touchscreens, and they'd need a different OS for that?

I'm no Symbian expert, but from what I know, I think you're seriously underestimating Symbian here. Remember, Symbian is the descendant of EPOC, which was developed for the Psion handhelds and netbooks.

I tend to agree that switching to Maemo is better eventually, but that's not because Maemo is more capable than Symbian, but because it uses existing portable components to attain the same capabilities; for example, we use X11 for display; this doesn't mean we can do some things that Symbian or Android can't, but it does mean we can run X11 apps with much less extensive porting.

Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

Linux is more capable than Symbian. You are right I don't know Symbian enough. And you are right everything is possible. But time to market is extremelly different when you have all code done and you only have to make it work in your hardware than when you have to do it all from scrath with a system that was not intended to do so.

As I understand, maemo new 3d features will surely come from KDE4/compiz/openGL. Surely most of the code is rewritten/cut/deleted. But the important thing is that it is already there.

For the printers example, you simply have to compile CUPS and copy its webserver controled interface. I hope you agree the amount of time you'll need to compile CUPS on OMAP3/Linux is a fraction of what it would take for Nokia to compile CUPS for Symbian and create a new interface to control it.

In fact compiling CUPS should be easy enough so an external company can do it if their enterprise needs it, while recreating CUPS for symbian... well I wouldn't recommend it.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the big problem for symbian is not going to be one of the two examples I've given. It is surely going to be something I don't know, nor I can imagine. But I thing Linux Based reaction is always going to be fastest and more durable that Symbian one.

And that's a defensive approach. Imagine if Nokia takes really seriously Maemo and applies all filters of GIMP to the photos program of next Maemo Device.

Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

You'd be surprised. Ask Nokia how much time and money it took to get Debian to fit into the the tablets. ;)

Clutter, actually.

Problem is, CUPS is really heavy.

Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

Symbian will be able to run on multiple processors:

http://www.symbian.com/symbianos/os_smp.asp

There is no way Maemo is going to replace Symbian! The Symbian foundation is just getting stronger and stronger, as we can already see from MWC. Symbian has way more money, and backing from all the big players. No contest.

But the thing about Nokia is, as they kept repeating in their MWC keynote, they love a diverse portfolio! They might make maemo phones, but only where they want to make something radically different to their symbian devices.

And thats a good thing, because Maemo isn't for everybody... and I sincerely doubt you'd want it to be :)

Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

You mean replace S60; and that won't happen any time soon.

Look where x86-32 came from. Linux was never meant to run on mobile devices either when it was first started. Neither was Mac, Darwin or NextStep, MacOSX.

The nice thing we see with S60 and Maemo is that more and more they are getting compatible. You can use Python on both, for example. And Qt on both. This compatibility is only getting better next years, so you can expect more Qt and *NIX applications ported to S60 as well. You can also expect Nokia (and various other corporations) to create online platforms for services like Google and Apple do; for Nokia that is Ovi, and Nokia will also have an AppStore equiv.

Which APIs are you referring to. Symbian has tons of APIs for all kind of *NIX compatibilities such as C and POSIX. Give some examples please... I don't see why S60 can't have touch capabilities. Or have an AppStore... oh... wait........... it has or will have very soon... :)

Re: Mobile world congress 2009 status
 

Then how about educating yourself before you call it inferior?
All I can say is: http://www.symbian.com/symbianos/os_smp.asp - if you had ever visited symbian.com, you would have seen a huge banner for this on the front page itself. Pretty much impossible to miss, really.
You are aware that that is simply due to the lack of drivers, right? Symbian has supported PictBridge printing via USB/Bluetooth for ages, and HP offers a driver which you can use to print stuff from quite a few apps already.
http://www.chromewalker.com/cw_six/?p=525
First of all: that statement makes no sense. Symbian has (at least up to now) nothing to do with the GUI frontend. There were S60 (by Nokia, used by Samsung, LG & SE, by far the dominant one), UIQ (initally by Symbian itself, then bought by SE & Motorola, now abandoned) and MOAP (created by Japanese device manufacturers/operators, now abandoned afaik) as different frontends. And now, with the upcoming Symbian Foundation OS, S60 will form the base of a unified UI, enhanced by bits and pieces of both UIQ and MOAP. So much for a bit of basic knowledge.
Now to the point: S60 has been very much able to handle different resolutions since v2 FP3 (available on devices in 2005) - every native app uses SVG to draw its UI since then, which is obviously resizable. Point in case? The 5500 has a 208x208px square screen, the E90 a 800x352px super-wide screen. Both run the same OS/UI version, and the same app works just fine on both if properly designed.
See http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/libr...C15E.html.html

Also, Nokia just received a 500 Million € fund from the EIB to further develop Symbian and the Symbian Foundation a few days ago - it's not going away anytime soon.