[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next date => thread => ]
On Mon, 31 May 2010, Simon Williams wrote:
On 27/04/10 18:03, Julian Hall wrote:'The first handset to use the Symbian operating system since it became open source has been announced by Nokia.' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8646715.stmImportant question to ask before buying an open source phone. Can I just read the code or can I actually get modifications onto my device?I started asking this on the symbian forums when it went open source. The resounding answer was no. You need a developer version.
I'm pretty sure they (or someone in the OS community) was working on making a properly open environment for it - one of the issues as I recall was lack of a suitable open source compiler...
So afaik, the N900 is the only consumer phone which is truly open (it's possible that Nokia will use the N900 ideal on Symbian phones, but I don't hold out a lot of hope). All other devices are closed for business without serious hackery or a developer version. This is why I wish the Linux kernel was GPLv3.
What happened to the openmoko project http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page looks like it's still going, but...
And I'm not sure the N900 is properly open - applications like the "phone" application isn't open source - however, I understand the hardware spec is more or less open, so anyone could write their own version...
And from what I'm hearing, the current release of N900 OS might be the last if they move to meego... Still, it's an intersting concept and one that I think would scale to a tablet sized thing. Take a tablet the size of the Joggler - now that would be usable, I think. Easy to carry and use (I tried playing with a cardboard cut-out of the iPad and I thought it was just too big) and has the potential for a decent sized battery, therefore life... My n900 easilly goes for more than a day now with moderate use of the fancies - what kills it is keeping Wi-Fi on in active mode. (so if I leave the SIP clients online I get less than 24 hours out of the battery before starting to actually make calls!)
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html