Why Nokia does not support OS upgrades (not meaning OS patches) on existing devices, and keep the old "If you want new OS, buy the new Hardware" strategy. I know this mean more revenue but obviously last 2-3 years cell phone market is changed. More people will leave after they realize their 5 month old device is not new anymore. Developers are getting confused too. While they are getting used to this OS, with available libraries, suddenly new OS with different support libraries comes. Should they take the risk to keep development on old OS?

Stability and consistency is the key in software world. But Nokia like to keep releasing demo OS on new shiny devices.

PS. I ordered N900 5 days ago, still waiting the package. I am not a hater but thats how I see.

Qt is developed openly both for stable and unstable releases. The Qt team usually decides what platforms *they* target to stabilize and benchmark their releases but it is not their responsibility to decide when platform X will ship a new version of Qt. Also, any OS can contribute to the development of Qt supporting their own platform.

It is Nokia's interest to have a cross-compatible Qt layer and API available both in MeeGo and Symbian, but it's the MeeGo project and the Symbian Foundation who ultimately decide what version of Qt goes on every release and also the timing of each release. And it is up to device vendors to choose the MeeGo/symbian release that suits better for their plans.

Even if the explanation sounds complex, in practice I don't see this becoming an issue. Do you have a specific concern?

And I'm glad you guys did answer the question. A "no" at least removes ambiguity and lingering false hope.

Fair enough. Sounds like what you're saying it "it is what it is, so take it or leave it". Direct and honest. I like that.

So what is the point of the MeeGo-Harmattan community edition? Is it just a testbed for QT? Does no support mean no effort? That if it requires any effort to get the UX to work on the N900 that you won't do it?

I don't want a situation where consumers have to purchase new Nokia phone because a qt upgrade wasn't delivered to the n900.

To be fair about this jump from Maemo 5 to MeeGo/MeeGo-Harmattan, it is a big step that end users and developers might well consider a brand new OS. Qt is being really useful bridging the gap with its cross-compatible API.

Are there precedents in the industry of a device vendor supporting officially such radical upgrade?

The MeeGo project will have an evolutionary open source platform with regular and public release plans. There will be different vendors shipping MeeGo devices, and users will be in a better position when choosing the purchase that will give them the vendor software and support they are looking for. Nokia is a core promoter of this plan.

Qt 4.6, the current stable release, is official for Maemo 5 since yesterday and the Qt team has shown already active interest pushing Qt 4.7.

The first MeeGo release targets Qt 4.6. More when the MeeGo project announces the plans for the 2010 Q4 release.

The last news about MeeGo-Harmattan is that it will be based on Qt 4.6.

All in all it looks like the N900 is currently one of the best mobile devices when it comes to Qt support.

Why won't the BME be open-source?

I honestly believe at this point this question is more technical and more related about project resources than anything. But don't quote me on this one because I honestly don't know the details and latest status.

If you want to get a meaningful answer and even contribute to your desired scenario, I recommend you to move away from a busy end-user focused thread like this one, go to the meego-dev mailing list and formulate the question in constructive terms like:

What is the plan to handle power management in the MeeGo stack? Will there be an open component available or is this supposed to come as binary blobs for specific hardware/vendors? This question is specifically relevant to the current N900 support (apparently relying totally on Nokia's closed BME to charge the battery) and the ARM architecture in general. Thank you.

2007HE and 2008He were released by Nokia for the 770, not the community.

I disagree with your last sentence. I think that a lot of work and effort has been put into the community OS efforts - Mer and Nitdroid in particular.

The issue is the number of people (or lack of)with the skill and motivation to get involved in a serious way to make these projects come to completion, and building a new OS able to compete and replace Maemo4 or Maemo5 is a massive task, and there are lots of bits still closed and kept by Nokia.

While the N900 will still work perfectly well, like my N800 and N810 do, I do think that it is now a dead end. I would not expect to see any more major updates. I also do would not expect to see a fully polished version of meego for it able to replace Maemo5.

Deja Vu.

Not only Qt, It has -

-More codec support
-Highly customisable Home screens
-Very good 3D graphics
-The BEST browser among all the devices.

The things which an ideal mobile user looks in a device are -

-Facebook/Twitter, N900 has the best browser to experience the social networking making the apps for FB/Twitter redundant.
-IM client , N900 has it integrated which is an additional compliment. Skype video call/Google video call. N900 is the first device to have it natively.
-Browser, I am sure that this is where every N900 user agree that It is the best among all of the devices.
-Audio/Video, As i said above, IMO N900 is the only device to support so many codecs.
-All basic phone features. MMS comes with fMMS so no longer an issue.
-File sharing through OVI, flickr, FB etc.
-Koffice for Documents. third party like docs to go is also available. Also there is open office.
-Exchange support.

I dont know what else a person look for in a device but that is pretty much what I look for in a device and N900 has it.

N900 is the best piece of Hardware around and whatever apps are in the repositories, each and every one makes sense in pure logical terms (Not like fart and boobs apps). Did anyone ever noticed, How useful apps like Simple brightness, Led notification changer, Health check, CPU usage etc are.

Neither the Android, nor the Apple have them and that is why Nokia is the Leader in Innovation and i mean it


No company out there has ever made OS upgrades available to their users. Nokia atleast is trying to do that and we blame them for silly reasons. Plans for Harmattan has been clear since 1.5 years back and even if Nokia plans to drop Meego-Harmattan support for N900, they can do it because they never promised it

Lets stop whining. Play with your N900 and be prepared to be amazed every day as it teaches a new thing everyday.

N900 is complete in all respect IMO.

And the credit goes to Nokia (Qgil, Harri)and those guys in the community like stskeeps (I dont know the names exactly) who are working day in and day out for making our beloved N900 hardware compatible to Meego as I think getting a UX wont be that diifficult as compared to getting the necessary hardware to copmliment that UX.

Three cheers to the Nokia and their Hardware adaptation team!

Thank you Nokia!

Quite a long post
Sorry