Originally Posted by fatalsaint

Acceptable response.. but something to consider:

Look at the plethora of Android ROM's out there.. this could go to my total lack of understanding of the very very very low-levels of Android.. but how can they build ROM's for Devices without the drivers?

Now.. I'd understand if the core kernel/linux/drivers stay the same when you flash an android ROM and you just update the Davlik-Half-asked-sucky-Java VM on top.. but I don't think that's the case.

In my understand you are flashing a whole kernel and everything.. and the only thing any of the android guys have gotten in trouble for (to my knowledge) was Cyanogen distributing Google's stuff. So they have to be getting their drivers from somewhere..

(Although, and there's a caveat here: I do remember having to jump through hoops to update the radio on the G1 for things like the DANGER-SPL...)

Originally Posted by attila77

Ovi Maps can't go in vanilla MeeGo (just as Google Maps can't go into plain Android, but it's a long story...). The point is that you can even open-source the code of the application and give it everybody, the actual product is the data, which is very heavily controlled, with Navteq/Teleatlas on the kill-switch. And data is super-expensive to obtain and keep up-to-date. Don't let the fact that you as a customer don't pay extra, it's just being financed by other means. Unless you're talking about Ovi Maps using openstreetmap as a back-end, but would you really trust that as reliable source for navigation ?