Played with it this past weekend

Story: MeeGo Brings The MagicTotal Replies: 8
Author Content
KernelShepard

Jun 03, 2010
8:14 AM EDT
I was very impressed with it. Everything seemed pretty well integrated and well polished. Very professionally done IMHO.

If a netbook distro can beat iPad, I think MeeGo will be it. Now we just need some tablets (and MeeGo is working on a tablet version) and we'll be set for those who want tablet PCs.

JaseP

Jun 03, 2010
9:35 AM EDT
There already IS a tablet version,... namely Maemo, one of the two projects that came together to form Meego. The Nokia N900 is the primary development platform.

The N900 is, in a word,... awesome. It is more a computer with phone cababilities than a phone with computer capabilities. With an ARM based processor it can; - act as a phone, be a GPS (built in chipset), - be a TV remote control (built in IR emmiter), - be a wireless keyboard/mouse for an HTPC (built in Bluetooth), or any PC w/ Blue Tooth for that matter - play 3D enabled games (OpenGL compatible/enabled graphics chipset), - be a regular camera (5 megapixel camera on back with a 3 megapixel wide-screen mode), - be a video camera (clips can be saved to its 32GB built in flash memory), - surf the web (integrated wireless g), even surf while out (3G modem built in, just slap in your sim card), - it can Skype (front facing 1.2 megapixel camera for Skype video, enabled since the last update to the firmware, and also other SIP voip & video voip apps can be run too), - it can be an MP3 player (OGG too), and blast your tunes over your car stero with its built-in FM transmitter - it has a built in FM receiver (you need the supplied headphones plugged in to act as the antenna) - It can play movies (though you might want to drop the resolution down to avoid skipping) - run office apps (Abi-Word word processor, and Gnumeric spreadsheet available in repositories, PDF viewer built in with others available) - PDA (has basic PIM applets built in and integrated pretty well, just missing some of the bigger bells and whistles such as Nth Monday of the month type repeat scheduling). - Alarm clock (pretty much standard these days on phones/PDAs)

It does all this while being not much bigger than a standard cell phone.
jdixon

Jun 03, 2010
12:26 PM EDT
> The Nokia N900...

We were a moderately early adopter of the Nokia 770, and we were very happy with it until the display finally died. :( It sounds like the 900 is a worthwhile upgrade. Don't expect Nokia to offer many official upgrades of the OS though. From what we've seen with the 770, their support tends to be rather limited. Unofficial community upgrades are another matter.
techiem2

Jun 03, 2010
5:12 PM EDT
My N900 arrived today...but I'm still at work for another hour... :( Oh the pain of being at work knowing that there's a cool new toy waiting at home to be unboxed!
Sander_Marechal

Jun 03, 2010
5:19 PM EDT
Techiem2: That's why I always had stuff delivered to my work!
techiem2

Jun 03, 2010
7:16 PM EDT
lol. I've only been working there 3 weeks. I probably shouldn't be having personal stuff delivered there yet. :P

But oh man...it's gorgeous.

My Otterbox for it gets here tomorrow (while I'm at work of course...). :)
JaseP

Jun 04, 2010
9:18 AM EDT
Oh,... one thing that I left out about it... it has on the front, near its front facing camera, a little proximity sensor that can be used to make menu changes if you download the daemon for it... VERY neat for switching between apps, if you set it up for that. Combined with the haptic feedback (it vibrates when you tap the device's screen or trigger that sensor, by default) it makes for a very satifying effect.

And other thing I left out,... It also has accelerometers. So, it can be used as a level or plumb, and the acclerometers can be used for automatically switching orietation of the browser, phone, etc. There's a neat little space shooter game called Kobo Delux that is very satisfying to control with the tilt functions. Someday, I hope someone builds an app to control the Parrot AR Drone (Google it). If they do I might just slpurge on one a few months after it's been released. Currently the Parrot AR prototype works with the iPhone as a control device. But the Parrot's API is an open, Linux based system,...
jacog

Jun 04, 2010
9:30 AM EDT
vibrating makes for very satisfying effect... gotcha
gus3

Jun 04, 2010
12:39 PM EDT
Put a little "clicker" inside a cell phone, and the buttons can be made pressure-sensitive. It's cheaper, and it reduces the number of moving parts. On my phone, a clicker would be 1 moving part, instead of 27 clicking buttons. And the feedback is indistinguishable from clicking buttons.

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