With what they've learned trying to cultivate their own 'community' to develop maemo, I think Nokia would be foolish not to adopt Android and join the mobs (with their pitchforks and torches) in taking down the current king (apple).

I just want to chime in and recommend against the HTC Hero. It really is outdated, basically it is using 1st gen iphone hardware in a really pretty package with a slick(but slow) OS. The Creative Zii is really where it's at wrt the future of Android. Imagine cramming that awesome processor into a Hero with HTCs custom UI on top. It would be, bar none, the best smartphone. Until then, I think getting it is a mistake.

As for the Open Source argument, well first of all all these devices are running on open source linuxbsd. They all use Open GL, they all use an open source web browser(webkit). Compared to windows mobile, all the current smartphones are much more open.

Android is by far the most open and the iPhone is the least open, but they are all built on open source technology.

I downloaded the WebOS SDK to see what it is like in the emulator, and I love the interface. I would say it is better than android and much better than the iphone. Apple basically has no multitasking, the n800 has really crappy multitasking, and WebOS is perfection. It is really just so nice to have all those "cards" open and just flick through them.

The only things apple has going for it is the app store and better hardware. The Pre has some hardware issues, and the lcd is smaller than the one on the iphone. If the hardware keyboard was as good as a crackberry, the small lcd would be fine. Unfortunately, it just isn't.

I found that I typed best on android though, the predictive text is really great. I picked it up for the first time and just started hitting it and all i got was gibberish, but the predictive text guessed the right word even though I missed every single letter, and even before I finished typing it!

It is really unfortunate that the n800 has basically become a brick now. The LCD is just gorgeous, and every single smartphone in the market is a downgrade. Of course, the silky smooth scrolling, zooming, scaling of web pages on the other devices is a huge step up from the clunky, jittery, jaggedy, frustrating experience on the n800.

I am going to get an iPod Touch in September when they do the refresh. I couldn't imagine myself saying this a year ago(who wants to browse on a 320x480 display?), but right now there aren't any real viable alternatives to the iPhone. I will wait until there is an Android or Palm device that is actually as good as the iphone, and hopefully from sprint or T-Mobile so I don't have to pay AT&T any more money.

And yet... and yet...

http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com...rting-us-wifi/

Please explain that statement. IME all released tablets multitask very well.

Technically, multitasking works fine, but there is no easy way to switch between tasks. I wasn't referring to the capability, but the user interface implementation. Really, 75% of the problem is the lack of tabbed browsing(midori doesn't count).

With the Pre you can just do a gesture to move between cards, side to side, or gesture up to zoom out and see a bunch of cards next to each other and tap one to maximize it. It is just so much more intuitive and it just sort of flows. With the n800 I always get the feeling that the OS is getting in my way.

Like I said, the SDK is free and comes with a really nice emulator, try it out for yourself if you want to get an idea.

BTW, I took side by side pictures of my n800 display compared to a simulated iphone display on my desktop LCD to see the difference in resolution. Obviously it isn't apples to apples, and the technique isn't perfect, but I think the difference is big enough that it is still a useful comparison.

If anyone is interested, the pic is here http://omploader.org/vMjIyYw (3MB)

I think page 17 of Kate's presentation alludes to task switching problems that are "Fixed in Fremantle." In the end, I think Maemo has been a bad multi-tasking marriage with the n8x0's. The screen and input freezing I experience regularly would be unacceptable on all other devices/platforms that I use. Maybe we've all put up with it because we still can't believe that someone actually created these cool Linux-based devices. But the honeymoon's over.

YMMV

@drizek: (re: comparison) it's almost like comparing movies through still pictures though. The iPhone has such a fluid interface that you can use to manipulate the object almost effortlessly to zoom in\out and pan around to find the areas of interest (be it webpages or pdf files, office files, etc) while the n800 displays a very high resolution but quite cumbersome to manipulate.

Of course, I personally cannot wait til we can get the best of both world.

Uhm... you have the taskbar and a hardware button dedicated to task switching. I find it very easy to switch around multiple programs running at the same time personally.

That has nothing to do with multitasking though.

That refers to the various applets being dlls and taking down the whole hildon desktop when they crash. As we can see in beta2 statusbar applets are still dlls in Fremantle, but they are loaded into a different process so they can only crash the statusbar. Nothing to do with task switching either.

As long as you stay within the device's limits it multitasks fine, and it's nice to be able to stretch the limits when you want to (but the old adage about Unix giving you enough rope to hang yourself is still true).

Whatever other problems Maemo may have, I have no problem switching between tasks in Maemo. It is really really easy, easier than in Symbian/S60.

What does this have to do with task switching? A tabbed browser is a single task. Also, I am not sure if you know it, but by pressing the hardware button with two little intersecting rectangles you can get a list of all open browser windows. It is just like tabs.

In other words, you just want a Palm Pre. I do not see what the problem is then: buy yourself a Pre and be happy with all the sliding action.

I can tell you without any pictures that 480x320 at 163ppi will look shittier than 800x480 at 225ppi.