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Retiring from TabletBlog

First, I want to congratulate Nokia and the Maemo team on the excellent progression of Maemo over the years. It looks amazing.

Maemo has taken on a totally different direction with the recent release. What started as a hacker-friendly, reasonably priced mobile computer has grown into a high-performance, luxury phone. Maemo tablets have gone from "having no competition in the class" to "taking on the big smartphone market." The Maemo team is proud of what they have created and they should be. From what I have seen and read, the N900 looks like a fantastic phone.

With that, I am retiring from TabletBlog.com. I don't have the time, energy, or money to keep up with the world of luxury smartphone competition. I am seeking new ownership for the TabletBlog.com domain name and will find some way to archive and mirror the content as it is under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

N900 and bundled apps

I haven't played with the N900 yet so I do not know this answer - but will the N900 come with any community-created apps? What's bundled inside?

N900 - Sticker shock (updated by readers)

**UPDATE** Read the comments for better perspective!

All the posts about the N900 are swirling around. It is indeed a VERY sexy device and I am proud maemo development team for producing such an amazing piece of technology.

The price ... What can I say? 500 British pounds = 812.5 U.S. dollars

What's the target market for the N900 at that rate? This may be status quo for luxury devices in some parts of the world, but Nseries phones never took off in the US. My guess: Wealthy hackers who aren't already fascinated by iPhones or Android phones. I am sure both of them will be thrilled to buy it. For perspective, here is some more stuff you can buy for US $800:

Electronics: (prices as of today from bestbuy.com)
A Dell Studio Core2Duo T6500, 4GB, DVDRW, 17" Widescreen, 320GB HDD.
An LG 42" 1080p LCD HDTV
Three Asus Eee 900 netbooks

I suppose cutting-edge technology deserves a cutting-edge price, but the US consumer luxury device is lower than it has been in a long time. It's a good thing for Nokia that they don't focus on the US for their success.

Nokia N900 - Beyond the Specs

In this first impression post, I'll be talking about the hardware changes only. I have yet to use Maemo 5, so I cannot really comment on it yet.

The release announcement of the Nokia N900 has been reported by just about every blog already. The spec page shows plenty of changes - but what do they all mean? Let's break it down:

• 3.5" touchscreen, 800x480 resolution. The screen shrinks from the N810's 4.13" but keeps the same resolution. Software won't take a big hit on this since the resolution is the same, but applications that rely on very precise touchscreen use may be more difficult.
• TI OMAP 3430 ARM Cortex-A8 CPU at 600 MHz. This is a massive upgrade over the TI OMAP 2420 at 400 MHz. Faster faster!
• Up to 1GB Application Memory. This is a plus but not as big as it looks. There's only 256 MB of "real" RAM and the rest is attributed to swap. Still - the RAM amount is doubled over the N810 and the usable swap is six times the size.
• 32 GB storage. Wow. That's massive. This puts the N900 squarely in the "multimedia computer" space and even has more storage than some SSD netbooks. The N810 had only 2GB internal. Both support MicroSD (through a MiniSD adapter on the N810)
  
• Size: About 113 cubic centimeters and 181 grams. That's down from about 129 cubic centimeters and 228 grams. it will feel better in your hand as a phone.
• 3-row Keyboard. This part took the biggest hit. The large D-pad and four-row keyboard was replaced by a three row keyboard with a squashed spacebar and arrow keys that can't easily be used for gaming (not that the N810 ever did much of that.)
• Wireless connectivity: This is the first Maemo tablet that is actually a PHONE. With that, we get 3.5G HSPA, GPRS, EDGE,WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1. That's a major boost over the WiFi/Bluetooth that the N810 gave us.
  
• Additional Communication: The N900 now includes TV out, an FM transmitter, a real A-GPS receiver (hopefully destroying the long lock times that the N810 suffered) and a micro-USB connector. The N810 had micro-USB and a GPS. The new features are fun toys, but won't be massive selling points.
  
• Last but not least: CAMERA: The new camera features represent a massive shift from the previous generation tablets. The N800 had a cute pop-out rotating webcam that worked badly. The N810 had a front-facing webcam that worked badly. The N900 has a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with a digital zoom, dual-LED flash, macro mode, and MPEG4 recording up to 848x480 at up to 25FPS. The Maemo tablets are now on par with high-end Nokia Nseries devices and soundly beat the pants off iPhones and Blackberries.
  

Coming soon (as soon as I can see it in action) - Impressions of Maemo 5!

TabletBlog content licensing opened

In addition to removing all ads from TabletBlog.com -

Except where specifically noted, all content created for TabletBlog.com and UltraMobileGeek.com are now covered by the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0. This includes all videos hosted under the ThoughtFix YouTube channel and all images hosted under ThoughtFix accounts on Picasa and Flickr linked from these blogs.

All advertising removed from TabletBlog.com

Since this blog isn't even passing payout thresholds for AdSense and Chitika anymore, I've decided to simply remove both advertising elements from the site. The future of the actual TabletBlog content will be determined by mid-September.

Nokia: Taking a stand on usability and freedom

Early September. That's when all the cards hit the table.

Nokia is the #1 global smartphone provider, but Apple's chipping away at them. Nokia makes superior hardware, technological leaps ahead, and open software platforms. Apple makes "pretty" hardware and an all-in-one solution for hardware, software, music/video management, and applications.

iPhone users have a hard time using Nokia products due to the lack of a cohesive management interface. Users feel like the Nokia PC Suite and Ovi suite apps are far behind iTunes in music/video management, music/media store, app store, and interface cohesion. In my personal experience, the N97 software is about as stable as an egg. On a flag pole. During an earthquake.

Nokia users have a hard time using Apple products because the hardware is inferior, has fewer features, and has no opportunity for homebrew applications. Nokia users are accustomed to using any application they can find and download instead of just those approved by the application store. They're used to 5 megapixel images with video and flash. They have options for keyboards, touchscreens, candybar phones, sliders, and more.

Maemo is cut from a different cloth than Symbian. It started out as a proof-of-concept project for Nokia on the 770 Internet Tablet and grew into a global collaboration of some of the brightest people on the planet. From this "fresh start," the Maemo 5 tablet (phone!) has to capitalize on all the strengths of other Nokia devices, compensate for all shortcomings, and smack Apple head-on. If it were just up to the developers, I'd have no doubt that it would carve up the iPhone fans. However, a successful smartphone/media phone/Internet device relies on developers as well as business partnerships, lifestyle integration, and finding the right key points for market penetration.

What happens now?

Two things will happen in early September:
Nokia World 2009. Given how many "leaked" shots of the Maemo 5 tablet have already surfaced, the sensible press date for official release will be at this September 2-3 event. That gives the media and developers plenty of time past the NDA to properly discuss the tablet openly before the 2009 Maemo Summit a month later. Announcing at the Maemo summit will be too late as developers would have no time to properly present their latest attractions on the new platform.

Apple's special event on Sept 9. If there's an Apple tablet incoming (as often rumored) the Sept 9 event may be just in time to get the thing out by Christmas. It seems a little late to announce such a thing, but it's certainly possible. At the very least, it will give the competition something to play against during the upcoming holiday season.

Pardon me. I'm going to go hold my breath for a few weeks.

LJPRX-51 shows up on FCC site. Next tablet incoming!

As usual, the FCC knows about Internet Tablets first. The only thing interesting in the filing articles are requests for confidentiality (filed Jul 14) and a silhouette of the device. It was initially submitted for testing on Jun 8.

It is a phone - showing tests on GSM 850, GSM 1900, and WCDMA 1700 ranges. The published documents show "Slide closed" indicating that it may have a similar form factor to the current N810.

Tested modes were:
2-slot GPRS50
WCDMA 1700/2100
3-slot GPRS1900
WLAN 2450
2-slot GPRS850+WLAN2450
WCDMA 1700/2100 + WLAN2450
3-slot GPRS1900 + WLAN2450

The 1700/2100 band confirms T-Mobile as the target US market.

Of course the designation of LJPRX-51 is not news to the maemo community: they've been talking about it since December.

On Qt, Android, Maemo, and Symbian

By now, all readers of this blog have heard that Nokia announced that Qt (instead of GTK+) will be the base of the next development platform for Maemo Harmattan. What does this mean to the non-developer? First: the next generation of Maemo WILL NOT have this change yet. Fremantle is still on track to be more GTK+ based than Qt based. Second: Qt has a long history of attracting developers to make coding life easier across platforms. Qt based apps will be easier to port across tablets, phones, and PCs. While it's not exactly "Code once, run everywhere" it will be much closer than it has ever been before. To the consumer - it means more available apps.

For a more in-depth look, check out Quim Gil's presentation (slides and audio) as he goes into great detail on the subject.

Also in the news: There are rampaging rumors that Nokia will be turning to Android for phones. Nokia officially denied this. I can see why, too. Nokia spent a lot of time and money first creating the Maemo platform, then buying Trolltech for the Qt experience and finally buying Symbian to reformulate it as open-source. In each of those platforms, they have a far more mature code base and developer reach.

The problem, however, is that Nokia has some catching up to do. The N810 is in the 21st month and the interface has not changed much since release. While it was exceptional at the time, competitors like Palm, Apple, and Google have cropped up. Each of those competitors have worked hard to make their OS intuitive, fast-responding, and pretty. The demonstrations I've seen of Fremantle and Harmattan are far closer, but those are not in a product yet. The longer we wait for them, the less traction Nokia has on competition.

On a related note: The Nokia N97 is the finest piece of mobile hardware I've used - but the software needs some serious help. Old dogs in Symbian make the phone less intuitive (thus less desirable) to use. Examples:

• The system defines every potential Internet connection as an "access point" and applications ask which one to use. It should be improved to have applications automatically use WiFi when recognized hotspots are available and fail back to the carrier's data network.
• The 32GB of storage is fantastic, but the "phone memory" (of which there is only 74MB) is segmented from the 32GB "Mass Storage" memory. Applications store data in the 74MB "drive" and it fills fast. The phone should instead present itself as one large 32GB volume and save the confusion.
• There just aren't enough applications for S60v5 yet. The "touch" version of Symbian needs more supported applications to be desirable in face of competition.

Nokia is aware of ALL of these. They just need to accept that they have the best hardware and focus more time and money on code.