I owned a Nokia n770 and a n800 long before the smartphone market went ballistic. Basically, the n770/n800 were tiny, underpowered PC's with an open
source Linux OS customized with std nested menus, WiFi and a stylus.
The n770/n800 had no phone, no keyboard and they were instantly relegated to my personal tech museum once the iPhone came along, they sit on the shelf right next to my Helio (another epic FAIL). Neither the n770 or the n800 could make traditional calls, though the n800 did sport a webcam and a skype client over WiFi. Ever try to roam over WiFi?
And while neither of the two Nokia's would hold its own next to an iPhone today, in a pre iPhone / netbook world (circa 2005-2007), they were "cool to have" geek toys, if Nokia only added a phone to them. But adding a phone would have conflicted with the Nokia n95 and they could not allow anything to muddy the waters of the S60 based flagship Noika, the n95 (again, epic FAIL).
Enough Nokia history, now we have the n900 and the sad news is, while the n900 now sports a Phone and is the most impressive Nokia ever, it is also just a test mule while Nokia ever increases it's position and exposure to the aging and weak Symbian S60 OS.
Nokia has never invested to much into the Linux platform and as stated by Nokia, the n900 is just another high end, early adopter, geek toy, and not a full out change in OS strategy and direction toward Linux, which IMHO the company desperately needs. I hate to be disappointed with such cool bit of kit, but n900 is just another in a long line of Linux test beds for Nokia, each one only slightly better than the last, as the company halfheartedly weighs its smartphone options, yet again. So let's keep this in mind as I go further into the details of the n900.
This does not represent a new Nokia OS philosophy.
"This is just a test!"
The n770/n800 had no phone, no keyboard and they were instantly relegated to my personal tech museum once the iPhone came along, they sit on the shelf right next to my Helio (another epic FAIL). Neither the n770 or the n800 could make traditional calls, though the n800 did sport a webcam and a skype client over WiFi. Ever try to roam over WiFi?
And while neither of the two Nokia's would hold its own next to an iPhone today, in a pre iPhone / netbook world (circa 2005-2007), they were "cool to have" geek toys, if Nokia only added a phone to them. But adding a phone would have conflicted with the Nokia n95 and they could not allow anything to muddy the waters of the S60 based flagship Noika, the n95 (again, epic FAIL).
Enough Nokia history, now we have the n900 and the sad news is, while the n900 now sports a Phone and is the most impressive Nokia ever, it is also just a test mule while Nokia ever increases it's position and exposure to the aging and weak Symbian S60 OS.
Nokia has never invested to much into the Linux platform and as stated by Nokia, the n900 is just another high end, early adopter, geek toy, and not a full out change in OS strategy and direction toward Linux, which IMHO the company desperately needs. I hate to be disappointed with such cool bit of kit, but n900 is just another in a long line of Linux test beds for Nokia, each one only slightly better than the last, as the company halfheartedly weighs its smartphone options, yet again. So let's keep this in mind as I go further into the details of the n900.
This does not represent a new Nokia OS philosophy.
"This is just a test!"
I have not held an n900 yet, but I have seen it in action on video and I will say this, it is about time Nokia got something right in this space. Nokia's touch enabled "Maemo OS" is a happy departure from the company's embarrassing Symbian OS for smartphones called the "S60". But like most Nokia innovation, the n900 is incremental, not revolutionary.
Not a bad video demo, I am impressed. However the only thing I ask is, what here is different from the iPhone or Android? Please tell me Nokia has more up its sleeve than a new touch gesture for zooming.
Let's be fair, there are 3 things that differentiate the n900 from the industry benchmark the iPhone:
1) Keyboard: While "a nice to have", you quickly realize you don't use one as often once you get into using touch controls. Even the Nokia guy says in the above video "I don't type much". The introduction of touch gestures into the interface changes how users choose to do tasks.
2) Backgound Apps: Apple does not allow background apps and probably won't till the next processor upgrade for 3 reasons:
- performance
- performance
- performance
The n900 has the same processor as the iPhone 3Gs, the ARM Cortex-A8 running at near the same speed (~600MHz), any faster and the Cortex-A8 starts to show what is called "leakage", an industry term that refers to how efficiently a processor handles power consumption while idle (most mobile devices spend the majority of the time idle). And the ARM Cortex-A8 is VERY efficent while idle in the ~600MHz configuration.
My Point? All things equal, both the n900 and the 3Gs will have near identical performance and power efficiency (mW/MHz <0.59). And here is where the iPhone shines, the ARM Cortex-A8 in the 3Gs, on average will run in low power, low leakage mode far more often if it does not have to handle requests from some chatty, network happy, third party app, just to give an example. And there is the trade off, if you want background apps you need to run the processor/radio more often, at the cost of draw on batteries. There is no free lunch.
The iPhone could easily allow background apps tomorrow with just a software update from Apple (hacked iPhones run background apps all the time). However Apple has very particular standards and in their analysis, the average user needs more hours between charges than a real time last.fm audio scrobbler or foursquare background process eating their batteries up. I have every confidence that as the hardware and battery technologies catch up to users smartphone demands, background processes will be implemented on the iPhone, just like Apple allows on all Mac Laptops and Desktop.
3) Flash: Who cares? This is a proprietary Adobe technology and there is nothing I can't do on my iPhone, where I have never had Flash and as HTML5, H264 and the O3D API take over, rich UI plugins like Flash will be left by the wayside. besides, have you ever tried to navigate a Flash site designed for 800x600 on a phone? forget it, you give up before you even get close to what you wanted. 90% of Flash sites are just not designed for the experience of small screens, yet alone touch. Nope, we are entering a new world and all that pre-iphone content is either getting a HTML5 refresh or will be desktop viewable only.
There are my three, there are more, but those are the big ones.
So if I am a consumer , for 500 euros (around $712), I can have an n900 that costs $413 more than a iPhone 3Gs ($299 for 32gig) and offers at most 1/4 of the functionality of an iPhone application wise.
hummm?
To be fair, the above comparison requires a 2-year AT&T contract, but Apple also offers an iPhone 3G (8GB) for as little as $99 with contract or $299 without. And while the iPhone 3Gs (32GB) costs $699 outright, sans AT&T, it is still more usable, productive, fun and $13 bucks cheaper than the n900. Plus, this iPhone / App Store platform is available today from thousands retail stores in the US or in any of the 90 countries Apple also supports and in my choice of 29 languages.
WHOA!
As a consumer just looking for the best deal and usability, it is not a tough decision. $99 bucks all in! And my public WiFi traffic stats from New York City Parks (I started the free public WiFi movement here in 2000 as part of nycw) show that this is exactly what consumers are doing. More than 50% of the devices connecting to my Public WiFi networks are either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Nokia is not even on the list and Android and Palm make up less than 1% of connecting devices.
I really hate to sounding like an an alarmist, but what is Nokia doing over there?
A note on Maemo OS: The time it takes to develop an OS from scratch takes years. Not to mention the time it takes to deliver the secondary tools, frameworks (SDK) and development environment (IDE) that allow for 3rd party apps to flourish in ernest. Maemo has both an SDK and IDE but they are both immature. As a result, Nokia has no foot hold in the developer world. Nokia has the money to spend their way through this, but it will take YEARS. That is, years with an "s".
I wrote in a blog post from 5/08:
"The level of integration and optimization that Apple has achieved has taken nearly a decade and probably another decade on top of that of mistakes with OS 7, 8 and 9 just to know what not to do. There is no single company currently out there with the intellectual property, culture, man power or OS experience to even hope to produce a competing platform as extensive and well thought out as the iPhone for at least several years. Even Google's Android is several years behind the iPhone and it is the single best hope out there. However, the lack of Androids HW integration leaves me to think it may be too late for them as well. Nokia certainly does not currently have the infrastructure and culture in place to write an entire OS and frameworks from scratch in-house."
More from that article here:
http://www.technolosophy.com/2008/05/iphone-sdk-ftw.html
A note on performance and battery life: The iPhone 3Gs is blazing fast with OpenGL ES acceleration. I am talking full 3D gaming with zero lag. App load times are in the single digit seconds vs. 30+ for the iPhone 3G and near instant full platform data searches (mail, address book, music and application data). As I noted above, superior processor performance of the n900 is a red herring, all things being equal they preform identical.
However, all things are not equal between Nokia and Apple, Apple has some of the tightest hardware and software integration ever seen in mass production consumer electronics of this class and hence the best battery management in the industry. Even so, iPhone 3Gs can barely get more than single day out of it's 1219 mAh battery under normal usage as a phone, ipod, web, mail and a hole or two of Tiger Woods Golf. The n900's battery has only a slightly larger capacity at 1320mAh (+101mAh), but with background processes running I think the n900 will be measurable less battery efficient over a day. At least the the n900's battery is user removable, unlike the iPhones.
Just in case anyone thought the n900 may have an performance advantage after reading Nokia's PR, here is a demo of the excellent game Tiger Woods PGA Tour in 3D on a iPhone 3Gs. It is very addictive.
Here is an impressive real world example of how much more powerful the 3Gs is over the 3G loading a very popular game called "Rolando":
As for the n900, Nokia has finally received the message that software matters. But, there is already a $99 iPhone available and it won't be long until a smartphone (maybe some version of an iPhone) becomes the standard handset for most everyone with a new contract, leaving Nokia with classic candybar phones for the third world and our grandparents. Or, in other words, hardware, Nokia's special sauce, has become such a commodity now, that it is a race to the bottom on cost.
From my chair, for the foreseeable future, true value creation is in software and the sad truth is, Nokia simply does not have the software culture required to compete on the same level as players like Apple and Google.
Lastly, and I can't stress this enough, the biggest trick Apple has ever pulled off was convincing the competition it was a hardware company. However, the truth is that Apple is a software company. Software is where Apple focuses a majority of its talent. Their programmers are among the brightest in the world and the innovation is baked into the software at the lowest levels, not added on top like frosting. Software is where the consumer battle is being won. It is in the User Interface and in the quality of the code base that runs the OS and apps. Nokia is a hardware company that buys their software and they will be hard pressed to compete against Apple with this strategy. You have to roll your own if you plan to smoke with the big boys.
I appreciate your honest assessment of the N900. But, I have to disagree with you on what exactly the strong and week points of the N900 are, especially in relation to the iPhone. I actually wrote an article about it. You can find it here:
http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/nokian900-not-just-an-itoy/
This other article goes into quite a bit more detail in what the N900 is a is not, and who should be getting it.
http://www.themaemo.com/and-now-for-something-completely-different-the-n900-and-its-killer-feature/
Basically, as you say, the N900 is not geared to the general consumer. But, contrary to what you say, it is a sign of strength and courage on the part of Nokia and it shows that they "get it" and that they are in the right path to retake the high end from Apple.
Yes it's sad that Maemo 5 is indeed a partly test bed(just like first iphone Android 1.0 with as much limites), BUT i think you are very wrong about saying it will not be strong part of Nokias future.
Nokia aim is to sell +45 million Maemo phones in 2011(first full year with Maemo 6)said in the annual Nokia Capital Markets Day some weeks ago so i don't know what more would you want. Symbian has been moving to mid tier for long time and new badge of Symbian phones make it ever so obvious with phones like 6700 slide. Symbian will be heavily eating S40 sales looking at the pie for 2011 they showed again in the Capital Markets Day.
Maemo 6/harmattan has been in the works same time as Maemo 5 and is very important part of Nokias future with the Qt future of Symbian Foundation(Symbian^4) and Maemo(Maemo 6/Harmattan). Synergy that Nokia needs with these two platforms when they both go full Qt.
I don't know if you know, but Apple is stronly investing to become hardware company. It has have it's own chip plant in China for several years and it has been growing rapidly for pat 2 years. Rumour is that this will show stronly with new iphone. Compared to current that's pretty much entirely build from Samsung stuff.
Thanks for your comments, i know you have strong feelings about Nokia and Maemo. I do too. That said, I have been watching Nokia for a long time, used nearly all their products, worked with them and know their culture from the inside and i just don't see the writing on the wall for them with regards to Uber phones. Nokia has way too much baggage.
I will be happy to see Maemo in the wild, just don't think it is a real competitor as much as an alternative to the iPhone. Apple has nailed the UI and the eco-system. you have to ask yourself, what the heck has Nokia been doing over there? they not only missed the first mover advantage with Uber phones, but they missed the the concept of integrating media and developers. i mean it is obvious, that their approach to the ENTIRE market was just plain wrong and they missed the boat. how can anyone deny they have lacked the vision to "see it". i think it is the corporate culture that made them miss the mark, and by a mile, and it is that same corporate culture that is still making the decisions. it will take some serious change in vision over there to make be a believer.
as for Apple being a manufacture, they are, but don't be fooled. it is always second to software development, but they don't want you to think that. so keep on believing the miss direction and think you can win with HW.
in my final analysis, Maemo may mature into what the n770 and n800 promised, the n97 never delivered and the n900 should be. but there is already a product that delivers on that promise and it is called the iPhone. i am tried of Nokia selling me sub par HW and SW and telling me it is the best, cause it is clearly not.
when the n900 has become the flagship phone, i will be happy.
when Symbian is all but a footnote, i will be happy.
when i can get a n900 for $199 with contract, i will be happy.
when i can get all the apps i have on my iPhone on a n900, i will be happy.
when
when
when
i am waiting...
It's hard to disagree with the fact that Apple/Iphone have gotten a lot of things right, and most importantly, they have the best and most accessible apps. However, the geek in me is disgusted by the closed nature of the architecture and the "your-app-must-be-approved-by-us" policy. And I think it's a bit unfair to give Apple all the credit for their advantage; it's a bit like the VHS/Betamax situation, where some technology manages to gain momentum in the public, despite being technically inferiour. The large number of available software titles is only due to market proliferation, and not to technical excellence or any particular genius in the Apple way of doing things (except in the marketing department).
So when you say that "Apple has in their wisdom decided that users shouldn't run background apps, because it uses too much battery power", that really makes me cringe. I have no problem admitting that for most people, the Iphone is probably the best choice, but that doesn't stop me from wishing it dead and buried, replaced by open goodness! ;-)
@steinar thanks for your comment, i appreciate all comments.
as for apple, everyone has taken a swing at the HW, the closest to date was Google/HTC with the nexus one, and after the dust has settled it is pretty clear that the touch screen and touch UI is close, but not as good as the iPhones. Was that a marketing accident or simply better engineering (SW & HW)? i think i could easily argue that the success of the iphone is based not only marketing, but HW, SW, music, apps, retail and the synergistic effects of that entire ecosystem working in harmony. i sometimes have to rack my brain to see all of apples angles simultaneously. they are operating across multiple industries, in multiple verticals. make no mistake, marketing alone does not make that kind of royal flush and either can traditional open source efforts. open source is great for creativity, and innovation, but in the case of apple's success, an open source effort could never deliver the customer hand holding and homogeny required to induce mass adoption by the users young and old. to wit, apple is shipping ~3.3mm iphones a month.
as for multi tasking, recent industry leaks suggest iPhone OS4 will finally support multi tasking. now i am not a rumor man myself, but it is inevitable and i am 100% confident the designers at Apple thought long and hard about when to included it. I am also confident, competition, battery life, and processing power were part key elements in the debate of when to include it.
you my cringe, but if it were not for the apples halo effect, there would not be an uber phone market and the best option out there would still be symbian based or dare i suggest a helio or danger based unit.
First, I have to admit that I've never actually used an iPhone :-). Second, my comment may obscure it, but I agree that the iPhones success is more than just marketing. In my view however, the iPhone is not unique in its design choices; it is only the latest (and perhaps most successful) example of a software design philosophy that has existed for a long time already. Given the guiding principles of this philosophy, the iPhone is most certainly a well designed product. It is simple and easy to use, pretty to look at, and it solves many different tasks in a very elegant manner. However, evidence suggests that it is nearly impossible to combine this kind of simple, elegant design with the kind of flexible power and freedom that I always look for in my products. All I'm basically saying is that I'm one of those people that love to tinker, and that's not what the iPhone was made for.
@steinar now that is a point i can't contest. this is not a tinkers phone, unless you want to code in objective C. i have built some simple apps and never submitted them to the app store, I install them on my and my friends iPhones via Adhoc and we have a fun playing around. not sure if that is the kind of tinkering your looking for, but it circumvents apple's approval process for small distribution and while limited in scope and it requires some certificate wrangling, it gets my blood running cause we can use private classes and do all sorts of fun things that are not in the app store.
for street cred, nothing trumps an iphone vanity app you wrote that makes your iphone do things no one else's can. the looks i get are priceless.
but that is coding, not OS tinkering.
I'm not much of a programmer, although I've tried my hand at some J2ME (Hello world and some moving sprites). Here's my problem: I want to buy a phone (with great HW of course) where I can enjoy the results of other people's tinkering. The more people that get into tinkering with this particular phone/OS, the more interesting things will I be able to do with my phone, and the more free stuff will be available.
However, there is a limited number of "tinkerers" in this world, and they have a limited amount of time to tinker. There are several elements that effect a certain technology's ability to attract tinkerers; technical excellence, easy entry, freedom from censorship, popularity/proliferation and economic model. Although the iPhone does great on the last two, I'm annoyed that it's stealing the wind from devices that could potentially do well in all categories.
Of course, part of that annoyance comes from the fact that although other technically excellent devices exist, none have so far managed to match the iPhone in those vital areas.