WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

As per title, PM me.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

I'm next in line please

ps: to avoid any bidding war, i am not buying until vi_ gets his/refuses your offer.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

You do know that all of them are owned by Nokia? They've only been loaned out to developers.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

You know all money in the UK technically belongs to the crown and can be recalled at any time?

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Same.
I'm third in line for succession after ysss.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

So these are like the General Motors EV1 electric cars that GM only LEASED but never sold and refused to let anyone buy any of them, preferring instead to destroy them and deny leaseholders the option to ever buy one? :)

Good way to tease people with something revolutionary and cool, then destroy it out of existence to made sure there are NO traces of said innovation. :P

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Nothing wrong with setting up fishing nets when we know the thing exists and roaming about out there :)

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

There were at least 300 serious offers. Price: commit to develop at least one open source application for it.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Ah, so.. you DO get to keep them afterwards? You don't have to send them back after all?

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

I can get one through my contact at Nokia. But only if I can at least showcase 1 decent project and some signs of coding skills. Unfortunately, I can't code so I am not able to take one off their hands yet. Someone please inject me a needle with coding skills formula so I can get one! =(

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/MeeGo/

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Interesting, does this mean there are some left for developers to 'develop' on?

Do they accept crap made with QT creator? Something obviously gay like a moon phase predictor or tide time table?

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

I don't know if they'll ever ask for them back (I think most N900 "loan" recipients still have those, or repair replacements), but IIRC the worst case scenario according to the loan terms is that you pay an extra EUR 500 if you fail to return it.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Well, a device can be lost in a pub, after having some really good bier!

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Yeah, some really good beer since it will cost you 500 Euros.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

I foresee a lot of pubs being graced with "missing" N950...

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

I assume any "lost" N950s will be reported stolen and their IMEIs blacklisted making them useless as phones in most places. Any "finders-keepers" also risk a criminal record if caught in possession of stolen property.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Yeah, that's the main reason not to bother trying to get one...

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Silly me, I thought the main reason would be that it's wrong.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Yes, but what Nokia is doing (or rather Elop) also feels very wrong (not to mention what they did to all those devs who no longer work there).

Wanting just 500 EUR if it is lost is just asking for it :)

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

If I know exactly how, then I would be pursuing that venue instead.

This is an open offer. Consider it a brainstorming session ;)

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Bbbbbaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmppppppp

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

If I can only steal my brother's N950! :( :(

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

My N900 has just bit the dust, so I am now double keen.

To the guy who keeps asking me for $1250, just pm me you bank account number, sort code, date of birth, country of origin, CC number and I will forward the monies to you immediately.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

I don't understand it. If you wanted it that bad, why didn't you go the developer way. Gone through the list of those who will get it and I think yes, it would be enough to make some "gay crap".
If you can't do this, the phone could be useless for you.
I don't think it's wrong (nobody is hurt), but blacklisted IMEI is a point. And if Nokia wants the N950 back to killall Harmattan when the winphone is ready (and gives out 250 developer winphones) you'll have a very exclusive mp3 player.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Nah, I don't think so. The only time it'd be an issue is if Nokia asked for the devices back in a couple of years. At which point, it'd be free money. But, 500EUR is enough that people won't just be 'losing' their devices as soon as they get them, and buying as many replacements as they can. And this is on top of the whole NDA/agreement not to sell it etc.

I do know that if it was cheaper, I might be interested in losing mine if it started to break instead of sending it in for warranty, so I'd have spare parts for next time. But I'd never ever sell it; I agreed to the damn agreement after all!

That being said, I'm not so sure why people want them - Near as I can tell, it'll be many months before it's 'usable': No file manager, no OC-able kernel, none of the important bits that make the N900 so valuable. So... why not just get a couple of(cheap) N900s, OC the ****** out of them, and simply know they won't last as long?
If you do a custom OC voltage profile you can probably get most N900s up to at least 1ghz; swap tweaks and such can solve the problem of memory, and EasyDebian can help with nonexistent apps.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

After all that is going on with the mobile market I now did exactly that. got me a second n900 as hardware backup. This way I hope I can sit out the next two years of mobile madness and hopefully there will be other hardware available then that can be used with an (mostly) open source OS like maemo or similar.

Next I need to mirror all repos and get me burn me some DVD containing the binary stuff. then I sit back, relax and wait for some light at the end of the tunnel ...

My personal friend atm is more or less HTC, they let customers now remove the bootloader signature checks so that custom kernels and thus custom systems can be booted, I hope that there will be further steps into this (in my personal opinion right) direction.

And yes - I would take an n950 if i could get it ;) But I simply doubt that will happen, in my opinion Nokia does not want that and will also try to avoid it whereever possible, so I won;t waste anymore resources on that - this comment is all the time I invested now and it is enough.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Seems like there already are 2 or 3 file managers availlable for Harmattan :p

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

*Sigh* If we had hardware-upgradeable phones we wouldn't have to grovel for blackmarket N950s. (Speaking of, if anyone's selling and everyone else in line is satisfied/passing, I'm just going to put it out there that I wouldn't be against sending some agreed upon sum of money if you were to 'lose' your N950 inside a package addressed to me.)

But in the grander scheme of things - seriously, upgrade-able phone/tablet hardware? Anyone with me? With me as in start-up-a-cell-phone-hardware-manufacturer-with-me-in-the-next-couple-of-years with me, which would do the above and ideally conform somewhat well to this community's standards of open development and the like? We probably would have to go with MeeGo or some other Linux derivative for the OS if it ever was done, but nothing says we can't unofficially support Maemo ports if enough of the Maemo binary blobs are reverse-engineered....

Of course, I've written on the sheer unrealistic-ness of scattered community members making a cellphone manufacturing company themselves, especially in the BS shitstorm of patent system lawsuits, on top of the actual costs of hardware development (though I do genuinely believe the software development can be strongly community-sourced, with only a handful of paid staff for some extra work/expertise where volunteer efforts or direction is lacking), but the idea has been bouncing around in my head for like half a year now, and while it's not a short-term achievable goal, I do think it's doable, would just require some very committed people, as well as the nasty affair of fishing for investors and/or business loans and/or putting up our own money on the line.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Forget it - we've not even got upgradable laptops, and those are far simpler to make upgradable than phones/tablets.

Phones are precision designed - every component is carefully selected based on physical size, thermal output, etc. and there's thousands of man-hours of work involved to get everything fitted into the smallest possible volume without anything overheating/shorting out.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Hardware is upgrade-able on laptops. At least, all the laptops I've dealt with. Now, it's not AS upgrade-able as a desktop, but you can get higher capacity RAM chips, bigger harddrives, etc.

See, I know that, but I also think that you could sacrifice some slimness/compactness for up-gradable components and there would be a good amount of market for that if the OS was good and the feature was marketed right. (I mean, commercials almost write themselves - show person frustrated by their phone being outdated 6 months after they get it - BAM - show happy customer with upgrade-able phone.)

To be clear, my contemplation about this had it starting as providing either replacement motherboards or replacement SoCs and flash storage (if the storage is separate from the motherboard/SoC respectively, the OS could be made to check the storage for a backup image of the SoC's storage when booting on a blank SoC, and the SoC could theoretically be used to store at least basic settings and the like when you swap the storage, though you'd have to use other storage for the rest of the data). You wouldn't be replacing RAM/CPU by itself, because that WOULD cost a shitload in R&D to develop right without it being huge, and you'd need to make your own hardware at that point, but I think replaceable motherboards/storage/antennas (upgrade from penta-band to whatever if you need more, upgrade to a 4G or 5G antenna when your carrier rolls that **** out, etc), that would be a start. I think it's genuinely doable, even for a start-up, if you manage to get just a handful of skilled embedded device hardware engineers, some good marketing, and a ****-ton of money for the hardware contacts with various factories.

So, like I said, even if serious discussion and intent started now, it'd probably take a couple of years to get to the point where you could get this off the ground, but as much as I realize it's not at all an easy concept, I think there's a small but realistic chance to make something like this work, and it sure as **** will be even less likely come to us from the large established companies out there.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

True - and you can upgrade the sd card in your phone (which is the equivalent of the hard drive). I agree, making memory upgradable should be doable, but it took quite a while for laptops to start doing it as well.

I suspect that the costs won't work out. Even with laptops nowadays it's rarely worth upgrading the memory after purchase - by that time a new laptop is not much more expensive and far more powerful. Having the option for more memory initially would certainly be an improvement though!

I think you ought to talk to a skilled embedded device hardware engineer first. It certainly sounds a reasonable idea but I suspect the situation's far more complicated than it looks to a layman.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

agreed. I do upgrade parts of my laptops, but it's just like buying extra batteries and sd for my phones.

What you could do is to try to define a standard form factor for a range of mobile mother cards and screens, a produce bodies that can accomodate them.
This way you could have some kind of customization, and you could change the MB/screen from time to time, or the body (w/ w/o hwk, extra space for battery, etc..)

But I think there is no way you can change the main component of the MB (CPU, GPU, ram and any other chip) without loosing lots of space and efficiency.

Maybe some king of micro PCIe could be added to the MB too, so you could add compass/gps or fancy things like that, that have small impact on tdp/volume.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

@eredon: right, screens too, both the display and the touch processing part (ideally giving users options of resistive and capactive, ideally with the stantum screens if that's close to affordable). That's basically what I was thinking it would have to be if it got that far - you make the cell-phone body, use mass-market SoCs, flash storage chips, and sensors, and the only custom part would have to be the motherboard, which would just need to fit, along with all the possible 'expansion' slots (for if/when some new fancy sensor technology comes out, like gyroscopes being all the rage now), within the shape of the housing. What this would mean though, is that you can offer both 'build-it-yourself' sort of ordering for the device to begin with, and of course future upgrade-ability to users who want to take tiny screw-drivers to their expensive mobile electronics.

Well, SD card is one thing, but I think they'd be slower than a more 'proper' flash storage chip. Probably goes back to the talk-to-a-skilled-embedded-device-engineer-first point, since I don't know how much faster than microSD card you could make the bus of a freely end-user upgrade-able chip.

Well... I think you're right, but I think that's mainly a carrier-subsidized-phones-on-contract issue for embedded devices. Because at least in the US where I'm based, the biggest problem is that you could no doubt make it cheaper than the newest-hardware-phone, but you probably won't be able to make it cheaper than getting a new contract + upgrade phone. On the other hand, I'm hoping that if something like this ever got off the ground, enough effort would be put into making the OS and devices damn good, to the point where you'd rather keep the current device instead of upgrading to a whole new device. On the other hand, I'm also not saying the upgrade-able hardware 'feature' needs to be the defining and primary point of the devices made in this hypothetical openly-developed cell phone manufacturer. Focusing on delivering a great phone for the end-users with all the power user freedoms of a proper Linux stack and all the versatility of a desktop OS (out-of-the-box USB/bluetooth mouse/kb/printing support, full office suite based on Open/Libre Office with a finger-friendly UI, etc), now THAT would be the main goal, at least in my mind if I ever got enough people interested to get this off the ground. The hardware upgrade-ability would be nice, but I'm willing to admit that is niche enough of a concept that it may take a while to catch on, and if I ever had the opportunity to be involved in a project like what we're discussing, I wouldn't risk sinking the startup before it gets off the ground properly by pushing too much for the hardware upgrade-ability. I think there's a demand for that too, and it should be met eventually, but the devices wouldn't take off regardless of their hardware advantages if the OS wasn't something amazing or at least good (of course, one of the advantages of a truly open development process, if done right, is that community involvement would make the OS far more amazing than the company itself could, as we've seen with the N900, and probably the previous Nxx0s, but I wasn't around for those).[/quote]

I agree (joerg, you there? We need your genius in this field). Though, I ALSO don't see this as happening immediately, especially if I'm the only person who has any serious interest in doing this. On my own I'm sure as hell not raising enough funds in the upcoming year or too - if it looked like there was a real chance of it happened I'd put in everything I could, but as a college student who has an okay paid internship now (and may or may not be able to continue working part time for the same people over the college year that's about to start and in the future), I would currently be a drop in the bucket on the financial side of things if hardware needs to be acquired, built, tested, people hired, servers/site/etc set up.... 'course, I'd do a shitload for free, but until my coding gets better (which, realistically, it would fast if this started up full steam), that makes me a drop in the bucket there too.

/me wonders if I'm just giving this idea and myself bad PR by having mentioned it at this stage. The dominant reason I said nothing so far all the times it has come up in my head is that I know there's a very very small margin for error in pitching ideas like this, even into the anonymous mass that is forum readers. Currently it's a vision I think is realistic, but I know I can't get it off the ground myself for years, and probably would still need a couple of years even with significant rallying around the idea. I suppose I don't like all this depressing sentiment that has taken hold here lately, that Maemo is dead, we can't hope for MeeGo to be anything anytime soon due to lack of hardware maker support, and all that's left for so many of us to be happy with our devices is cling to stocked up second hand N900s and hope something free-enough comes around some day soon.

I know there's plenty of people here, and PLENTY of people everywhere if they think about all the little things they'd be happy to have in their devices, who can agree with the general gist of the visio: a mobile device line and OS to go with it that doesn't treat the user like a prisoner, maintains a good level of non-tech-savvy surface simplicity and ease while providing normal-computer functionality that phones could EASILY have (i.e. printing-to-any-usb/bluetooth printer, from normal user-space programs, out-of-the-box or from available-from-the-get-go-to-install-packages), while leaving the underlying power and flexibility of the full Linux stack and open source development available for those who want it.

Making that a reality has to start somewhere, so I might as well try throwing it out there now.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Certainly, at least TABLETS should be upgradeable.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Did ysss and vi get their n950s? I seem to be getting offers.

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

not me..
that last one seems pretty questionable if you ask me ;(

Re: WTB: 1 x N950, serious offers only.
 

Whoever is sending those offers, can please stop spamming my YouTube account. Maybe I need to put the No in larger font size...