The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Nokia says no plan to switch phones to Linux

What is a mobile phone, exactly?

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Despite reports to the contrary, Nokia is not embracing Linux as a platform for its mobile phones. The Finnish giant insists that comments reported by Reuters and others were quoted out of context and that nothing has changed.

Speculation started when comments from Rick Simonson, Nokia's Financial Director, that the mobile phone giant was "well on the way" towards using Linux on mobile phones, and prompted speculation about a tie-up with Google's Android platform.

Except, says Nokia, it has no such plan. The confusion comes from the definition of a mobile phone, and what constitutes a phone handset. Nokia already uses Linux on its internet tablet class of devices, exemplified by the Nokia N810, and is planning to expand that class into more feature-rich devices.

The N810 already features VoIP, including a Skype client, but so far those have only been usable when logged on to a Wi-Fi hotspot. But in the US Nokia has announced and demonstrated a version of the N810 with WiMAX support, which will give it the always-on connectivity that traditionally defines a mobile phone.

So here is a handset, from Nokia, which can make and receive calls as long as it remains within a WiMAX network which is intended to be ubiquitous, eventually. So can one say Nokia are planning to release mobile phones based on Linux?

This kind of confusion is only going to get worse, as more classes of device come into existence, and more of them feature constant connectivity - the only conclusion one can draw from this is that Nokia doesn't think Symbian is suitable for internet tablet devices. ®

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Latest Comments

the only conclusion... Nokia doesn't think Symbian is suitable for internet tablet devices"

Or, you can conclude that Nokia doesn't think Linux is suitable for mobile phones.

0
0

Trying to ease the confusion.

I once used this analogy and it seemed to have worked then to clarify. It's far from perfect, but meh...

Symbian: Underlying OS, think linux

S60, UIQ etc: Front End, think gnome, KDE

If you had to go through 7 menu items to play a game, would you blame the OS or the GUI?

UIQ was awesome, way ahead of it's time. There was a huge user community years ago for the advanced devices like the (admittedly oversized) Motorola A920, then A925 and A1000, and the P9xx series as mentioned above. We (The Moto crowd) waited and waited for Motorola to bring out a new edition. Foma got a half-hearted upgrade and then Moto had the RAZR - and they forgot that they made any other phones. Was a terrible shame. Through desperation and love of Symbian I bought an S60 phone, as UIQ was going nowhere. It's ok, better than average, but still nothing in comparison.

I think SE have since tried to revitalise UIQ with a 3rd edition, but the vast majority of the devout have given up now. What once was a thriving user community is now basically static pages.

0
0

@Danyal

Ummm... SonyEricsson smartphones use UIQ on Symbian as opposed to S60 on Symbian.

0
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Pttow! Ofcom kicks hams out of MoD bands
Geet off my land, you, you ... 'secondary user'
 breaking news
Now you can use your phone instead of your wallet at the ATM, too
Blimey, these little paper towels out of the vending machine are really expensive
 breaking news
UK.gov's £530m bumpkin broadband rollout: 'Train crash waiting to happen'
Whitehall whispers of damning watchdog report next month
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
MySpace zaps millions of teens' tearful rants, causes wave of angst
'Your crappy redesign SUCKS, I wanna read my blogs' screech users
 breaking news
Microsoft Office 365 on iPhone NOW: No, we're not making this up
Word, Excel, Powerpoint for your pocket-stroker
 breaking news
EU signs off on eCall emergency-phone-in-every-car plan
GPS and a mobe in every car - do you suppose the NSA would fancy that?
 breaking news
White Space wonga time: White House tips $100m into next-gen comms
Empty frequencies right place for tomorrow's mics, phones and fridges