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 to…
The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
61–70 of 182 posts
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Largely the same thing happened at Blackberry. Because the iPhone was an AT&T exclusive in the US, Verizon pressured Blackberry to rush the release of their first touchscreen device, the BB Storm. It was released as a Verizon exclusive in late 2008, and coincided with the release of HTC/Tmobile G1, the first Android phone. BB tried to argue that BBOS6 was a click trackball based OS and would not transition to touch w…
Verizon was pretty hilarious with denial early on. I recall them coming to talk about what a piece of garbage the iPhone was to our CIO, and how BlackBerry would bury them, etc. Then the CIO pulls out his iPhone and demos it. Lol. One of the reps flipped to AT&T a few weeks later. It’s really a shame actually, the BB was a great device and had an unbeatable security model for enterprises for a long time. iPhone is ju…
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#63So, several devices originally earmarked for Maemo/Meego (the name changed at some point) actually shipped with Symbian instead.
Some fun facts about Maemo:
Shipped in 2006 with the N770. Had a tablet UI based on X and GTK, a mozilla based browser and was based on Debian. You could build your own packages, add your own apt repositories, and people basically built most of Debian from source to run on it. E.g. I had a JVM running on it and a full LAMP stack at some point.
The N800 was for a time the only device that could run Android (dual boot) and basically shared large parts of the kernel with it. Google used this device for early Android testing and probably owes a lot to Nokia engineers contributing patches to the Linux kernel. The first Nexus phone shipped quite late in the Android development process.
Development of Meego saw several strategy changes that ultimately delayed products for a long time. One of those unfortunate decisions was the decision to swap out GTK for QT; effectively retiring all of the user facing UI. That set back the clock by years. And it got slowed down further by a simultaneous attempt to get Symbian on QT as well. That trainwreck of course ended up sucking up all the resources and failed to ultimately deliver the goods. This was in the middle of Nokia's realization that "oh fuck this iphone thing is real; we need a touch screen UI". It killed at least two touch screen platforms that it had before it came to that realization.
Technically, the N800 was running circles around the first iphone in terms of what you could do on it. All it needed was a bit of hardware polish and a phone stack. Early Android had nothing on Meego. Even the UX was clumsy and it was slow and limited as well. But unlike Meego, Google shipped it and supported it and persisted in developing it. Nokia instead threw out the baby with the bathwater betting on several other horses before ultimately walking away from the whole phone business.
Nokia declined to combine a phone stack + SIM card with the N770 and N800 deeming it to risky; they were protecting their deals with operators to basically cripple phones in favor of crappy operating services. E.g. bundling Skype with the n800 was controversial. It even did video calls with Skype. In 2007. The N800 was a tablet before the iphone, ipad or Android were a thing. There was not a lot else in the market at that point. That thing with a phone stack would have been a killer product despite its many limitations.
The N900 and the later N9 were both labelled as developer phones and cut off from any serious marketing effort. The N9 technically was a decent phone but by the time it shipped, the team had been layed off, the platform cancelled and Nokia was endorsing Windows Phone. It also shipped an Android phone around the same time, leaving the ugly job of cancelling that product to Microsoft after the acquisition.
Samsung's Bada is a direct decendent of Meego. It never really gained any market share against Android and it seems Samsung pretty much gave up on it.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#64Thom makes a really insightful point: "people who want a true Linux computer in their pocket". I wanted a more open iPhone and I hated the N900 because it was terrible as a smartphone. Between the stylus, unconstrained multitasking, desktop Firefox, and Flash it's like they were trying to prove Steve Jobs right. The G2 was so much better because it had an actual phone OS.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#65Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#66Seriously, the device was just so attractive both for users and programmers. If Nokia were able to stay the course, they could pull off a bestseller.
Their nosedive into the ground under Stephen Elop is a stuff of dark legends.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#67Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#68I was a Symbian developer at that time. The fate of N900 is a grim reminder that engineering brilliance will still lose out to managerial incompetence. Seriously, the device was just so attractive both for users and programmers. If Nokia were able to stay the course, they could pull off a bestseller. Their nosedive into the ground under Stephen Elop is a stuff of dark legends.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#69> the touch screen is resistive and requires a stylus. It does not require a stylus, and is superior to capacitive touchscreens in every way.
Maybe I wouldn't say "every way" (it doesn't age very well, several of my N900s have developed issues with their digitizers by now), but I do agree that it's superior. Much more accurate and pleasant to use than today's touchscreens; and way less prone to accidental touches. I have switched to a Librem 5 now, but I miss the N900's resistive screen.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had released the N9 and there was a developer only N950. I'm still using my N9 even today though the lock mechanism on the SIM holder no longer works.
Wow, I had to abandon my N9 after all of my fixes including buying a new SIM holder failed. I still have my N9 and my N900. I really wish Nokia had stuck it out with the N9 OS a bit longer. It easily beat all of the Android phones at that time. I would still be using it if the CAs hadn't expired and the SIM holder wasn't horked.
Lately the "main" button has been failing, and since tapping the screen doesn't get it out of sleep anymore, I can't pick up calls anymore. So to access the phone, I get out the SIM and re-insert it.
It's time to abandon it here too, but it was an excellent phone in use for almost 10y.