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The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

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Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#31
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the SIM holder lock is broken meaning I have to hold the SIM in to use it for calls Why not just tape it in place?

There's a spring mechanism that pushes it out. It worked by pressing in to lock it and then pressing in again to unlock it. The cover is recessed relative to the case, so it would be a bit difficult to secure it with tape unfortunately.

I had to end up using a small drop of superglue.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#32

I loved the Nokia N900's design, that hardware keyboard that made it so easy to do remote system administration over SSH, or keep doing everything that I want to do in Emacs just like on my laptop or desktop computers. Also like all Nokia phones of the time, it was nearly indestructible and could easily survive drops that would destroy a modern smartphone’s screen or casing. However, in retrospect not all was rosy. A…

it was a great phone for light remote admin! The ~ was in a weird location though ;)

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#33
I remember building simple PyQT apps on the N900, and then C++/Qt. At one point I was very tempted to start my own business and become a real developer for the platform while it was still "young", but it became apparent very quickly that Nokia was not seriously invested in it, and in any case they were not interested in small devs (getting an account for their joke of a store was a byzantine process, and expensive too iirc).

I attended an event with an "evangelist" here in Manchester, I was all fired up. It was some dude from Finland on a UK tour, and from the start it was all about the transition to QT on Symbian - this was to an audience full of people already working on iOS, to whom Symbian was a bad joke. He kept going on about the marvels of QT - which at that point was already a decade old and hardly a novelty, but clearly it had just reached Finland or something. Maemo was a footnote, "oh yeah we have that too", it was absolutely clear he just didn't care for it - the future was QT on Symbian. People were snickering; I wanted to strangle him. I reckon he single-handedly destroyed any local interest in developing for Nokia. I gave up shortly afterwards, and then the burning-platform memo happened and that was it.

My N900 is now an mp3 player for my 9yo son. The MicroUSB-B socket is a bit loose, iirc that was common with early adopters of that standard. The backlit keys have yellowed, or maybe the LEDs have. Everything else still works fine, although the software is obviously obsolete. My kid wonders why he has to press the screen that hard, and I feel like someone trying to explain ancient history.

What a waste, Nokia, what a waste.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#36
I still hope some viable and fully open Linux option will emerge that's not Android. And have good quality devices with that. Google did a major disservice to Linux at large by the rift it caused.

I don't want bionic with Surface Flinger. Give me a Wayland compositor and a normal Linux stack.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#38
post #27

There's a pmOS effort to make the N900 hardware usable with modern kernel: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Nokia_N900_(nokia-n900) There was also a project to replace the hardware: https://neo900.org/ When trying out various Linux handheld options before pmOS, I wasn't able to get N900 hardware at a good price, but I did get a few N810 units. Then I was dismayed to find that a lot of the once-public open source an…

> a lot of the once-public open source and tools for N810 had simply been removed from the Internet

Nokia insisted in hosting everything themselves, and obsessed with maintaining control of the platform while trying to "do opensource right" on some philosophical level. IIRC it resulted in a constant struggle with the community on really stupid issues, which dragged down the overall development speed. And then they pivoted to the Intel partnership just like that, from one day to the next, which meant jettisoning a massive amount of effort from the community (deb to rpm, effectively abandoning Qt, etc).

It was really a strange relationship. They kept writing rivers of (digital) ink on their love for OSS and blablabla, but then took all major decisions behind closed doors.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#39

I loved the Nokia N900's design, that hardware keyboard that made it so easy to do remote system administration over SSH, or keep doing everything that I want to do in Emacs just like on my laptop or desktop computers. Also like all Nokia phones of the time, it was nearly indestructible and could easily survive drops that would destroy a modern smartphone’s screen or casing. However, in retrospect not all was rosy. A…

Maemo Fremantle may be stuck on 2.6, but N900 is not - it's pretty well supported in mainline kernel. Also, the cellular modem (Rapuyama - BB5) on N900 isn't connected to main memory, it's pretty much a separate component (which was used as a main CPU on some other Nokia phones).

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#40
post #13

I had a Nokia N800 "Internet Tablet" and loved that device. Android was a huge downgrade compared to what you could do with that in every way except interface, and the interface wasn't too bad.

I had the older 770, and loved it with all its limitations. I recall downloading Google maps images of a desired area trough a 3rd party tool that would also stitch them together, then and using them on the 770 with an external GPS receiver to have sort of a live map while driving. And the LCARS Star Trek styled screen gave a nice touch too. Nokia was developing great products back then, then one day Microsoft came and ended it all.
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