I don’t think people looking to Maemo as their mobile operating system should be surprised by this. I think Nokia’s and others pushing of Maemo as open source has somehow clouded peoples’ thinking that no evil DRM style technology will ever come to Maemo. Thruth is that Maemo has always had at least 20% of its software stack under closed source, kept only to Nokia. This is truth for Maemo 5 and will be same for Maemo 6. Nokia needs to assure mobile operators that certain use cases and parts of the device are protected for them to allow these devices to operate at their networks and of course Nokia itself wants to protect some of their investment & innovation to Maemo OS. Nokia itself gives these use cases as driver for closed mode, DRM enabled mode:

• Commercial applications use via any mechanism, download, memory card etc
• Ovi Store and commercial content (apps, ringtones, themes etc) downloading & use
• Commercial games use cases
• Comes with Music from Nokia on Maemo (now using Windows PlayReady DRM)
  • Nokia specifically mentioned Microsoft Windows PlayReady DRM support in Maemo 6

I wanted to show to you all how much and what components of the Maemo OS are closed source even though image below is huge. All red ones are closed components, Nokia only territory. I hope we don’t have that A’HA-OMG feeling that Android community had few weeks ago when they realized parts of the Android OS are very similarly closed Google source.

Link to the big image to see it much better.

Technically this trusted, closed, DRM-enabled (yep, it will have many names) is based on hardware and software changes to Maemo devices and Maemo OS. Nokia is planning to use at HW level ARM’s Trusted Zone technology that protects certain pieces of key data like certificates, licenses, checksums. On the SW side of things it does not look that bad. Nokia is following least privileges principal where applications are by default able to access only minimal set of safe functionality, when they need access to secured ‘things’ they need to ask it via declaring already in the SW package what resources it requires. In addition good thing is that seems like Maemo will not go security API crazy and instead rely on apps asking for access to secure parts via manifest files, SW package level text files.

See Nokia’s slides on the topic.

• QT driven UI components
• QT framework for application development
• Multi-touch capable UI, Nokia has lots of patents for multi-touch, not just Apple domain
• Capacitive technology for screen, now we have resistive in N900
• ‘Closed’ application environment for mainstream, commercial and DRMed content
  • Looks like you either boot to open mode or closed mode. In closed mode kernel and lots of other parts of the system are protected and DRM is enabled so you can consume DRM protected content
• Support for Microsoft PlayReady DRM – support for example for Ovi Store and Nokia Music’s Comes with Music services
• Nokia Web Runtime
• Gesture support via QT for applications
• Comprehensive support for horizontal and landscape operation
• Canvas concept for homescreen, larger content area than visible, pan screen to show various areas of virtual homescreen

Concept of the Maemo 6 homescreen canvas.

Lot of things also stay the same, like these:

• OMAP 3 platform, this is somewhat disappointing, does this mean Maemo 6 will not support for example OMAP 4 multi-core platform?
• WVGA resolution, 800*480 pixels
• Open GL ES driven graphics

Nokia used this slogan for Maemo 6: “Iconic user experience and integrated Internet services in an aesthetic package”.

I see Maemo 5 stepping stone to Maemo 6 which is much more rounder package with much better readiness for mainstream markets and average smartphone crowd. Maemo 5 is for early adopters and geeks looking for mobile computer and willing to work around some rough edges and omissions like no MMS, no DRM support, lacking phone capabilities like multiple profiles, lack of full support for portrait mode etc etc.

Highlight 1: Rock star Fremantle apps presented their Maemo 5 versions

• eCoach
  • GPS Tracking for recording your sports activities (similar to Sports Tracker on Symbian)
  • Support for bluetooth heart rate monitors
  • More information
• Mauku 2.0
  • Micro-blogging client for e.g. Twitter
  • New back-end with open plug-in architecture (for Identi.ca, Qaiku and more coming)
  • More information

• Liqbase
  • Graphical playground – “Faster than paper”
  • More information
• OM Weather
  • See our OM Weather developer interview
• OSM2GO
  • Client for viewing, editing and creating maps for OpenStreetMap.org
  • Make your mapping contributions directly from N900 with OSM2GO

• GPXView
  • Geocaching application
  • More information

Highlight 2: Maemo Browser introduction

Maemo Browser has been introduced many times in the hands-on videos from community as well as from Nokia. In the summit, they went a bit more technical and explained the nuts and bolts behind the amazing browsing experience witnessed in the videos. Maemo browser is based on Mozilla Gecko and runs full Flash (9.4) content. Design and engineering goals have been around desktop-like performance, high resolution usage (full screen) and the various interaction modes (like the “mouse pointer” mode).

Highlight 3: Maemo security framework

Maemo has two running modes: open and closed. Open is the current way of total freedom to do/hack/break anything you wish with full root access. Closed mode checks for integrity on boot ROM and user level and thus allows commercial and e.g. DRM content and applications to “protect” themselves. User can switch between these two modes (and I hope the operators will keep it so indefinitely and not disable the open access…).

Highlight 4: KOffice

Office document viewing is enabled in Maemo by the venerable KOffice familiar from desktop Linux versions. It can handle almost any MS Office files (including the Office 2007 file formats). Nice practical use case is e.g. managing a work related Powerpoint presentation with KOffice and the N900’s video-out capability, without lugging your 7-pound Windows laptop along. See video at Suresh Chande’s blog.

Highlight 5: Telepathy

N900 does not (yet) enable telepathic capabilities for its users, but this particular Telepathy is still communication on steroids. It is basically a framework layer, glueing many communication protocols together. Or as the Telepathy website puts it: “Telepathy is a flexible, modular communications framework that enables real-time communication via pluggable protocol backends”. Very powerful and promising, but the future implementations will be ones showing its true capabilities in practical daily usage. Telepathy website has good documentation.

Highlight 6: Hugs and kisses

Maemo Summit brought together people who rarely see each other in person and communicate mostly online with each other. It was a great opportunity for the Maemo community to meet old friends, create new ones and get excited again for the future of Maemo platform. Nokia made also some serious leaps into transparency and community involvement (I wonder when we will see this level of smooching with community in the Symbian side of things?)

Only one year left to the next summit…

Highlight 0: Maemo Summit Party

Maemo Summit Party was held on the evening of day one. Participants had great time and many declared it the best conference party ever. Special thanks went to Russ Chimes for the music.

Highlight 1: New Maemo Community Council members introduced

The Maemo Community Council is a five-person body chosen by the “Maemo community”. The Council’s primary purpose is to represent the views and opinions of the Maemo Community to Nokia, and vice versa. New council members are Randall Arnold, Alan Bruce, Graham Cobb, Matthew Lewis and Valério Valério. More details in the Maemo wiki.

Highlight 2: Blender software introduced as a successful open-source project for building software and community around challenging and complex 3D creation needs.

Highlight 3: Maemo UI Design

Design principles behind the Maemo UI were discussed. One example being that the “x-button” to close windows is small on the screen, but the actual responsive finger touch area is larger: better usability without cluttering the screen. Maemo UI is also designed to have “soul”, distinctive from other user interfaces (like Nokia’s Symbian heritage) to make it easier for users to relate to. Simplification has been another major driver too.

Highlight 4: Maemo Personalization

Sound and Visual personalization is quite free in the Maemo platform. Examples are e.g. the continuous four-screen panroamic desktop background (by using four images). Theme Maker is available here.

Highlight 5: Qt framework development for Maemo 5 and 6 were discussed in details

Highlight 6: Maemo Co-creation session results

Maemo Co-creation session was held just before the summit, where community participants joined Nokia for co-creating ideas and concepts for future software and services.See the concept diagrams in e.g. Tim Samoff’s Twitpic stream.

Highlight 7: BlueMaemo presentation

Bluetooth support for Maemo devices in hard core manner:

• Use N900 as a keyboard to other PCs, mobile phones and other bluetooth enabled devices
• Use N900 as a touchpad (mouse) for other PCs, mobile phones and other bluetooth enabled devices
• Use N900 as a Sony Playstation 3 controller
• Control presentation
• Control Media (slideshows, music, video)

Highlight 8: UPnP support

UPnP (and DLNA) are those promising and cool technologies, which don’t really seem to catch up. Maybe it has been too hard to configure, maybe there hasn’t been real mass market need etc. Anyway, lately the standard has been adopted by more and more home electronics and N900 has basic support for it from day one on a open-source stack implementation. Advanced features are in development (like streaming your TV via UPnP).

Highlight 9: Canola media player

Canola is already a rock star application in Maemo community for earlier versions of Maemo. Maemo 5 version was reviewed and the good looks, plug-in architecture (e.g. Twitter, Picasa, Youtube, Flickr and many community created extensions) and general awesomeness continues.

Highlight 10: Lots of Maemo Summit pictures taken with new N900s

See the Flickr stream.

Maemo Summit – gathering of Nokia’s Maemo team and the Maemo community started today. Day One was the “Nokia day”, agenda filled mostly by Nokia employees giving presentations in various keynotes and panels.

Highlight 1: Nokia loans N900 device for 6 months use to all summit participants

OK, maybe not a technological highlight as such, but sure made the non-summit-goers jealous worldwide. Also further proves the point that Nokia is serious in its attempt to engage the larger community for software co-creation and building up community buzz. Check umpcportal.com’s video about “a few” people unboxing their N900s.

Highlight 2: Maemo 6 concept revealed

More official details about the next generation Maemo platform (6 aka Harmattan) concept were published. It will include support for e.g. multi-touch and capacitive screens. Another interesting concept was the “canvas” where the desktop is larger than mobile screen and user pans across the canvas for viewing the out-of-screen elements. Check photos from the Nokia presentation slides at umpcportal.com.

Highlight 3: Quote of the day – Jim Zemlin from Linux Foundation

Apple: New products need to be free OR fabulous to succeed

Jim: New products need to be free AND fabulous to succeed

We agree, open-source FTW. While I happily pay for great software, open-source is the future for most, if not all, mobile computing needs.

Highlight 4: Official Qt 4.6 preview for Maemo 5 available now, beta soon and final version released in 1Q/2010

As Maemo 6 moves the Maemo platform to “full Qt world”, developing for it becomes a core skill for the community developers. Being able to join the official Qt bandwagon soon with Maemo 5 too is widely welcomed. Also Qt being multi-platform framework, development on it will provide larger user base in the future, making it even more attractive. Tech preview available at maemo.org.

Highlight 5: Maemo Select open now, Ovi Store for Maemo coming later this year

Maemo Select is opened today and will feature the best free applications for Maemo platform. Ovi Store for Maemo apps will be coming later.

Highlight 6: Portrait browsing coming the first SW update (Christmas 2009)

In the current version, portrait mode is reserved for calls and other applications are not build for/allowed to utilized the portrait mode. This is going to change in the first major Maemo 5 update coming around Christmas 2009.

Highlight 7: Live blogging from the Maemo Summit

Excellent collaborative live blogging with pictures (using the snazzy Coveritlive.com) from Maemo Summit by  Rafe from AllAboutMaemo.com, Reggie from Maemo Talk and Mark from The Nokia Blog. Invaluable source for all of us who cannot join the summit in person. Thanks guys!

Let’s begin our discussion with John.

1. Why do you develop for Nokia’s Maemo platform?

I develop for Maemo because it’s an open platform built on top of familiar open source software, which makes it relatively straightforward to get started in developing on the Maemo platform, particularly if you have done some GTK+ development in the past.

2. Can you describe Maemo Mapper to all of us?

Maemo Mapper is a geolocational program that downloads raster maps from the internet and displays them with other data (such as your position) overlaid on top of those raster maps. It uses OpenStreetMap.org maps by default, and it also supports navigation use cases, including voice navigation.

3. What was the most difficult development part for your application?

The most difficult part of developing Maemo Mapper was learning the mathematical theory behind geographic projection of the earth’s spherical surface onto a two-dimensional screen. I had no formal cartographic experience prior to beginning development.

4. Do you have anything (and what) on the plans for future releases of this application?

As far as I’m concerned, Maemo Mapper is more-or-less feature-complete. In fact, it already includes more features than I ever wanted, thanks to contributions from the community. At this point, my involvement with Maemo Mapper is limited to basic maintenance, including critical bug fixes and porting to new Maemo platforms (such as Fremantle).

5. Have you developed Maemo Mapper by yourself or with a group of contributors?

Maemo Mapper started as a one-man operation, and it continued that way for a long time, with nearly all external contributions coming in the form of translations for other languages. That gradually changed as others became more and more interested in adding features to Maemo Mapper, and lately it has been receiving more love from the community than it has from me.

6. Have you utilized upstream software or components in your application? Which ones have been the most beneficial for your development?

Maemo Mapper depends on many open source technologies; aside from the standard GTK-based infrastructure, the most beneficial upstream software has been gpsd, gdbm, sqlite3, and flite.

7. Are you participating in any other open-source Maemo projects?

I maintained a couple of minor side projects, but for the most part, my entire Maemo development experience has been with Maemo Mapper.

8. What kind of tools you use in different development phases?

Aside from the Maemo SDK itself, I code with vim in a bash shell, including some shell scripts to make release packaging and deployment a bit easier.

9. What is it that makes a professional & excellent usability Maemo application?

That’s an interesting question, because the answer has changed significantly since the inception of Maemo (and Maemo Mapper). Originally, Maemo was a stylus-driven operating system, and much of Maemo Mapper’s UI was developed with that in mind. Lately, Maemo has gone in the direction of finger-driven UIs, and unfortunately I have not had the motivation to change Maemo Mapper’s UI to account for that. That will probably change with Fremantle.

So, today, an excellent usability experience in Maemo depends on controls that are easy to operate with fingers, as opposed to styluses.

10. What kind of application you would like to see in Maemo that is now missing or not fantastically implemented?

For me, I think the answer to this question has been the same now as it was when Maemo was introduced: PIM software. I really liked the work that OpenedHand had started before they were acquired, now called pimlico if I recall correctly, but there needs to be some more support from Nokia here for a clean, polished PIM experience.

As part of that, and in particular as internet-enabled devices become more and more social, I think it is important that contact management be a focal point. The contact manager in Maemo needs to be easy to use, easy to access from other applications, and easily syncable with online contact stores. I have high hopes for Fremantle in this regard.

11. How do you feel about QT coming to Maemo?

I’ve always been a Gnome guy (my online alias is GNUite, after all), but I also understand that choice is a big part of open source, and there are a lot of people who develop with QT. I appreciate that QT is coming to Maemo, because it opens doors for many other developers (as GTK+ opened doors for me), but I am less thrilled about GTK+ being relegated to legacy status by Nokia.

12. Any hints or feedback to other Maemo Developers? Tips or guidance for beginners?

When Maemo was conceived, programming for it was challenging because everyone was blazing their own trail through the infant framework. Eventually, conventions and patterns emerged, but for a long time, a lot of people were trying a lot of things that didn’t work very well. My advice to you is to not waste time on that same arduous task – look to other, well-known and well-respected Maemo projects for examples of cleanly-written codebases.

13. How do you feel about coming Nokia N900?

One of my biggest fears during the early Maemo years was the seemingly-impending transition of Nokia’s internet tablet into a cellular phone. Each new iteration of the internet tablet included rumors (before its unveiling) of a cellular radio built into it. Now that it’s finally happening, I’m actually surprised at how excited I am about it. The device looks incredibly versatile, but at the same time it’s also moving into a competitive landscape that is getting more and more crowded, so it almost _has_ to do everything if it wants to be successful.

14. What are you views on open-source vs. closed-source commercial applications on Maemo platform?

Obviously, I prefer the concept behind open source, but I’m a hobbyist – I understand that the software development process of some companies makes open source development prohibitive. I appreciate Nokia’s contribution to open source, and while I would prefer that they open source as much of Maemo as possible, I understand that (particularly when cellular carriers are involved) some software simply cannot be open sourced without significant risk.

15. How do you connect with Maemo community? Forums, Twitter, something else?

I try to answer questions and address concerns in both talk.maemo.org forums and in Maemo’s Garage forums. Some users also reach out to me directly via email, and I do my best to answer them as quickly as possible.

For contact details and more information about John, visit his Google profile page.

Developers are the true kings and queens in any open-source community, including Maemo. In the coming weeks, MaemoNews is going to run a series of interviews with Maemo developers. We are covering topics like open-source vs. commercial, development environments and thoughts about N900 as a new device to develop for.

Our first community king is Vlad Vasilyev and his team, the developers of the great OM Weather application. In the Maemo.org downloads section, OM Weather is currently the number one with more than 158.000 downloads. It is also one of the three featured applications in the Maemo Select teaser page at maemo.nokia.com.

Let’s begin our discussion with Vlad.

1. Why do you develop for Nokia’s Maemo platform?

One way or another for the last ten years I have had to do with introducing open-source solutions at the enterprise and I was always short of a free platform for mobile solutions. In addition I always wanted to be engaged in programming of any open-source project. My friend Ed Bartosh said: There is a new wonderful platform Maemo and it is short of programs. And I tried to deal with it. Maemo is a very attractive mobile linux platform for porting and creating programs. Having a good Maemo community makes it possible to apply my creative potential fully.

2. Can you describe OM Weather application and functionalities to all of us?

The main goal of our project is weather forecast display in Maemo devices. We wished to create a very convenient program for users. I think we have made it. One more aim is the full usage of the Maemo platform features in the program. OM Weather for Diablo has the following main features:

• The program can show Weather forecast for 10 days and current weather
• Temperature, humidity, pressure, wind, gust and other parameters are displayed
• There is a possibility to choose various units for parameters:
  • Imperial units, Metric units
  • Parameters for weather forecast update are flexible
  • GPS for automatic selection of weather station is used
  • There are many other configurable options

There is one more important feature: Flexibility of applet external outlook which includes

• 5 layouts
• 6 icon sets
• 5 variants of icon size
• The number of displayed icons is changeable
• There are 5 possible positions of the text around icons
• The transparency for applet background is widely ranged. It may be transparent, semitransparent or opaque.
• The font size and the font color may be chosen

In connection with the fact that Maemo will be a mass market platform we’ve changed the paradigm beginning with Fremantle. Now the OMWeather has the minimum of users’ settings and it is very simple for using. Now we’ll wait for the users’ reaction for such a change. Currently we have only source of weather forecasts, but in the nearest future we’ll add some more. The program can be used as widget(applet) of Desktop as well as an application.

3. What was the most difficult development part for your application?

Language C and problem of the following memory leaks. It’s a joke. In reality no super complicated algorithms and no difficult to handle technologies are used in the program. The problem is that the program is an applet. And Nokia is changing interface in Hildon as well as in Hildon Desktop in every new release. Till recent time we tried to keep in one code all four main Maemo platforms: Greagle, Bora, Chinook and Diablo. It was really a problem but after the appearance of Fremantle we stopped to support old releases(Greagle and Bora). Fremantle has principle distinctions from early versions of Maemo.

4. Do you have anything (and what) on the plans for future releases of this application?

Surely we are not going to stop. The To Do list is very big. To begin with our designer Andrew Zhilin is not satisfied with the current design of OMWeather for Fremantle. We’ll improve it for all appearance we are going to use new hardware features, for example screen orientation. There are ideas to make icon animation in our application. Some things of the kind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKdpBKUXdCQ. We are thinking of making radars. Maybe we’ll make it possible to run the application in status bar in addition to many other of our ideas.

5. Have you developed the application by yourself or with a group of contributors?

The project team is organized according to a classical scheme, typical for open-source projects. OMWeather has a coordinator, two leading developers me and Pavel Fialko, some programmers (they did some unfinished pieces of the project in various periods). A very good designer, five translators and a technical writer who maintains help file in our team. There are some testers but the main testers are the end-users who are active enough to inform us about bugs and suggest new possibilities for the application. Coordination of work in our team is done by means the site http://garage.maemo.org on which the project hosts. The site uses the engine Gforge which fully satisfies the needs for organizing the work of middle sized open source projects. The members of the team communicate by means of e-mail, IM and VoIP. We are an international team. Our members live in 6 countries of the world. For example, our designer is from Moscow (Russia), I am from Belarus and our technical writer is from north of Finland.

6. Have you utilized upstream software or components in your application? Which ones have been the most beneficial for your development?

The program has been written from scratch. I haven’t used any ready components.

7. Are you participating in any other open-source Maemo projects?

I made small patches for the packages evince, mplayer, open-ssh, ported dictd for Maemo, took part in the porting Mnemosyne. This year this project has been presented from Nokia in GoogleSummer 09 but OM Weather development is my major work. It engorges almost all of my free time.

8. What kind of tools you use in different development phases?

May be I am old-fashioned but I use only vim, valgrind, and Google Search in my work on the project.

9. What is it that makes a professional & excellent usability Maemo application?

A good UI designer (and he is in our team), because the mobile program design differs in principle from the desktop computer design. An active community that wants to have a more convenient program (it exists in Maemo) and a strong wish to make a very good program.

10. What kind of application you would like to see in Maemo that is now missing or not fantastically implemented?

I don’t know. I am satisfied with everything, Maemo lacked PIM, it seems Fremantle has it now. I haven’t tested it yet.

11. How do you feel about QT coming to Maemo?

Thanks to Maemo I am constantly learning new technologies and tools. So I highly appreciate the appearance of a new tool. Owing to the fact that the next Maemo platform (Harmattan) will be based on QT we are going to make a full redesign source code of application and rewrite it on QT using C++ or Python.

12. Any hints or feedback to other Maemo Developers? Tips or guidance for beginners?

Maemo demands a good knowledge of Unix and programming technologies. I think that beginners should read at least one serious book on programming under Unix/Linux. I believe that beginners should have deep knowledge of this operation system. Perhaps tutorial and code examples on Maemo.org will be sufficient for those who are acquainted with programming to some extent.

13. How do you feel about coming Nokia N900?

It’s a super device, it’s my dream. It’s the first real mass market Linux phone. I think that due to mass production of this device, Maemo will have a brilliant future.

14. What are your views on open-source vs. closed-source commercial applications on Maemo platform?

I keep to Darwin’s theory on the origin of species and evolution. The better and more various programs there will be the more chances will be for the platform to survive. And there will be a sound competition among programs. As for me I use only open-source applications in my everyday life. It’s more convenient for me I can always correct the source code, if I please. However I am a developer and common users may have other appraisal criteria.

15. How do you connect with Maemo community? Forums, Twitter, something else?

On the whole I use the resource Internet Tablet Talk and garage.maemo.org. The users often write to me by e-mail.

Preview is split to 4 pages that are all long so be prepared to spend at least 30 minutes reading this preview.

In any case if you are Maemo fan and eagerly waiting for N900 do not miss this one!

Naturally this is preview not review as he had proto device and non-final v1 software on his device.

Moblin 2 is based on well known Linux distro called Fedora but of course optimized and many ways for smaller resource usage and less poweful hardware. In this second major release Moblin moved to GNOME based UI which makes Moblin and Maemo 5 in this UI respect quite close relatives. Both Maemo and Moblin are heavily open source based and rely on many openly developed major components like Dbus, Clutter, Mozilla browser engine, GStreamer, BlueZ and for example Telepathy. Take a look below at Moblin Core components and their stacking and also make sure you note that QT is shown here for the UI layer as one core UI component in addition to GTK+. You might already know that Maemo 6 will fully rely on QT for its underlying UI components and their associated functionality. So Moblin and Maemo both will have some kind of compatibility on the UI level thru QT and on almost all levels of the SW stack thru same or very similar OS components.

Recently Intel demoed at their IDF (Intel Developer Forum) 2009 conference a bit more information on latest Moblin 2.1 release and especially its new use cases in the smartphone arena.  Moblin v2.1 is slated to be available Q4 2009, likely close to the end of the year. Enhancements in v2.1 are following according to Moblin.org site.

• Support for additional nettop screen resolutions
• Myzone improvements (Myzone is Moblin’s desktop)
• IM improvements
• Better language support
• Updated kernel
• Moblin Garage
• Moblin Application Installer
• 3G data support
• Bluetooth

It is also interesting to note that ARM just and only recently joined Linux Foundation, Sep 14th 2009. ARM has always been the CPU for Maemo devices and is at the heart of N900 inside TI OMAP 3430 processor in the form of ARM Cortex-A8 CPU. Another recent (earlier this year) acquisition Intel has done is Windriver which is specialist in small handheld devices and especially their UI components. On the Nokia side we have earlier this year announcement where Nokia announced partnership and upcoming devices with Intel. Quote from this press release:  “The effort also includes technology development and cooperation in several open source software initiatives in order to develop common technologies for use in the Moblin and Maemo platform projects, which will deliver Linux-based operating systems for these future mobile computing devices.”

It is very interesting to see how Maemo and Moblin are already close relatives in many ways and how they clearly are going to be even closer in the future. We could say that why these two companies that are in their own words in “strategic relationship” in this area would continue for a long time develop their own very similar operating systems and many pieces on top of it – why not combine the efforts at some point of time. On the other hand Moblin is still more focused on small computers like MIDs and netbooks so there is room for Maemo on the more smartphone area. But clearly Moblin will also include voice and for sure wireless data capabilities in 2010 as for example in this same press release from the strategic partnership announcement it says: “The Intel and Nokia effort includes collaboration in several open source mobile Linux software projects. Intel will also acquire a Nokia HSPA/3G modem IP license for use in future products.”

Personally I’m not worried about this things I mentioned above but see them positive in the mid to long term for Maemo and its kind of devices. These two huge companies are putting a lot of resources to develop these kind of devices including hardware and software stacks and we as consumers are here to benefit from it.

Intel’s promotional video on Moblin v2.1 from IDF 2009, length 1:32.

See Moblin v2.1 UI in action, from IDF 2009 in Sep 2009, length 2:46.

See Moblin v2.1 running on MID prototype (rumored to launch mid 2010), length 3:12.

Direct retailers – full pricing

Here’s pricing info for a few online retailers, when device is purchased directly without any operator plans and subsidies:

US:

• Amazon.com: 582,99 $ (396 €)
• Buy.com: 559,99 $ (384 €)

UK:

• Nokia Online: 499 pounds (554 €)
• Play.com: 479 pounds (533 €)

Italy:

• Nokia Online: 599 €

France:

• Nokia Online: 649 €

Germany:

• Nokia Online: 599 €
• Amazon.de: 559 €
• TalkThisWay.de: 509 €
• Cyberport.de: 519 €

Finland:

• Verkkokauppa.com: 589,90 €
• Nokia Online: 599 €
• Expansys.fi: 544,99 €
• Gigantti: 579 €

Sweden:

• Expansys: 5615 SEK (555 €)

Spain:

• Expansys: 539 €

Poland:

• Nokia Online: 602,50 €

Operator pricing

Here’s three examples from operator subsidized pricing. Detailed comparison of operator subsidies, services and other devices i.e. the “cost-part” of the question: “Should I buy this or that for my next mobile device?” will be coming in later posts, when we have more operators revealing their pricing for Nokia N900 and it’s competitors entering the scene around the same time.

MobilePhonesDirect (UK)

• Operator: Vodafone UK
• Nokia N900 “free” with plan
• 29.39 pounds/month (32,64 €/month)
• 24 month plan
• Includes 600 minutes and unlimited SMS

DNA (Finland)

• Operator: DNA Finland
• Nokia N900 “free” with plan
• 23,90 euros/month
• 24 month plan
• Does not include free voice or SMS quotas, you pay on top of monthly fee based on usage
• 0,069 euro/voice minute, 0,069 euro/SMS
• Availability is dated for week 45

Saunalahti (Finland)

• Operator: Saunalahti Finland
• Nokia N900 “free with plan”
• 23,00 euros/month
• 24 month plan
• Service has no monthly fee, you pay as much you use (other services with included voice/SMS/data quotas available too)
• 0,066 euro/voice minute, 0,066 euro/SMS
• Availability estimated week 44