Confused by Nokia's dual-platform,
Maemo 5 and
S60 5th Edition smartphone choices? You're not alone. Fortunately, things are starting to become a bit more clear thanks to some loose-lipped members of Maemo's marketing team attending an official
N900 meet-up in London last night. According to
The Really Mobile Project, Nokia will drop S60 from all of its flagship N-series consumer devices in favor of Maemo. Apparently, Nokia has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the N900 OS even though the enthusiast package is not quite ready for mass-market appeal. Mind you, the transition won't be instantaneous as anyone with an N900 (and a clear mind) can attest -- the OS, services, and apps just can't compare to the mature S60 platform regardless of Maemo 5's superior user experience. As such, we'll continue to see N-Series handsets already in development pop with S60 on board alongside mass-market Maemo devices as
the platform matures to the point that Nokia can make the full switch by 2012. Assuming, of course, Nokia doesn't end up
adding webOS to its portfolio somewhere along the way.
Update: The
Nokia Blog has what it claims is an
official response from Nokia on this delicate matter. As you'd expect, Nokia says it remains "firmly committed to Symbian as our smartphone platform of choice." It then added this little gem: "Maemo is our software of choice for devices based on technology that you'd typically find inside a desktop computer. It delivers a different user experience and enables us to widen the market we can address." Perhaps you're even reading this on an ARM Cortex-A8 desktop PC right now?
[Thanks, Sockatume]
posted Nov 18th 2009 5:22AM
"Nokia has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the N900 OS..."
eventually we aren't (as enthusiastic ), we are just depressed by the s60 5.0th. So when NOKIA came out with anything different, we thought it would be the savior...
What-so-ever they should really think about a superior user experience platform besides the s60, it's not the worst (yet), but NOKIA just needed something new for the company (own opinion)
Confused by Nokia's dual platform? what is there to be confused by? Two seperate platforms. Maemo has only previously been used on Tablets and now only the N900 is utilising it. Simple.
I just dont understand the reason for this post. While it is appreciated that we now we have confirmation where Nokia is heading, it just doesnt do justice to this news when this article opens with a judgement (which i dont think many people feel) about Nokia.
If Nokia was to permanently maintain and support two seperate platforosm - surely it is only a good thing that we have diversity - two platforms with different strengths and marketted towards different locations/users etc. Some PC's run on Linux, some on Windows. If a user makes a decision to puchange a machine with a certain OS - they know what they are getting.
Not all of us phone geeks need a uniform, single OS. I quite like that we have so much competition that Nokia has had to step up and face the growing demands for a better OS.
It is a little bit of a Captian Obvious, but at some point you have to start with a clean sheet of paper - S60 is mature, but also shows signs of unchecked organic growth going back to a time when the landscape was very different. I'd like to think Nokia can capitalize on Maemo - time will tell, but yes, it's positive now.
I'm curious as to what would happen to the excellent non-touch devices like the N86 / N85 / N79 though - Maemo's designed to rely on a touch screen...I'd hate to see them disappear.
I find it interesting that the focus here is on Nseries devices. So they would migrate over to Maemo but what about Eseries? Are they going to stick with the evolved Symbian platforms (Symbian^4 or whatever it will be called then)?
Good point Omagus.
I'm gonna be furious if they pull this crap. I happen to like S60 5th despite what people say, and I'm not happy with all the shortcomings of Maemo as it exists right now (no MMS support, no audio equalizers, lack of ringer profiles, no voice dialing, NO PORTRAIT screen orientation for anything except the phone application, lack of more options for video recording settings, and I'm sure there's more). I'm not saying S60 5th is perfect. By all means, it isn't. But if the double tap to open things was removed and replaced with a tap and hold for an options menu when needed, if it had a few more homescreens you could customize, and if the hardware supporting the OS were improved to help it work faster, it would be much much better. I could care less about fancy screen transitions, and the colors of S60 5th I like, and if you don't, there's themes for that.
If they fix all the things wrong with Maemo right now, add the things S60 has and can do that it's missing, keep a home/menu button on the phone (call it the Maemo key in remembrance of the Symbian key), and don't remove the calling buttons from future phones, I'm pretty much game for it. I say pretty much because software is nothing without great hardware accompanying it, and I refuse to buy a phone without both.
Oh, almost forgot about that ridiculous looking three row on-screen keyboard that replicates the hardware one from the N900. Yeah, that's gotta go. Put a normal looking keyboard in there.
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