Rebski,

I would be happy to share my impressions.

in the meantime, anyone wanting immediate gratification should check out Chippy's terrific video hands-on over at umpcportal--including a browser test against an N8x0.

His longest video is here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1530937. Other videos available include unboxing, FBReader use, and a look inside.

Yes, of course - Mer is a open project and testers are always welcome.

celtica96, thanks for the video link, I missed that one. The side by side comparison with the N810 is interesting. For starters the Q7 screen looks massive. It surprised me to see that the browser page loading speed on the Q7 is so much faster.

As Chippy explains, the Q7 processor is 50% more powerful so really this is all looking very good. The Q7, while not by an order of magnitude, is nonetheless faster than the NIT.

The media capability out of the box is poor but the device need not be judged harshly by this as it appears that these issues can be dealt with via software drivers and the like. Interestingly it seems that hardware codecs are present.

Chippy is playing divx files encoded at 1500kbps, my N800 is not comfortable with much more than 700kbps so even without software optimisation it is better out of the box than the NIT?

This seems to be to be a great project for that Mer magic.

I really am sorry but I have no programming skills and can’t contribute but if it helps to have a few devices around for testing purposes then I am fully prepared to order one of these if that would be useful.

Now that Nokia’s intentions as regards the Tablets seems to have been clarified, we are free to focus on alternatives and the SmartQ devices lend themselves perfectly for contention.

chippy is still using microb on the N810, i would love seeing him test tear or webkit-eal, but so far i have gotten no response on that request...

How hard is it to put Mer on the Smart Q5 or Q7? I have been very interested in Mer for quite some time, and this seems like an ideal platform for it. I would be glad to purchase one of these devices and be a tester for Mer. I would need some guidance on installing the Mer OS on the hardware though. Any thoughts, or suggestions?

It's easy. Put Mer SmartQ5 image as 'SmartQ5' on vfat, first partition on a SD card, hold down + key and plug in charger..

Hi, Just joined and again happy to purchase the smartq7 primarily as a reader for epub/pdf and internet browsing. If I can be of any assistance in testing out anything, particulalry fbreader I would be glad to.

Two questions:

1. Does the smartq5 mer image work on Q7 already ?
2. Does the plan include getting flash working ?

Thanks

1. I don't have a Q7 so I don't know for sure. I do have kernel and bootloader sources for it

2. Flash is a matter of can't distribute - gnash might be a replacement?

http://shop.ebay.com/items/__SmartQ-...286.m104.l1198

3 available.

I got one from the electroworld guy that a lot of people got it from. I got one with a beta english firmware. it was awful. desktop OS. everything was too small. it also ran pretty slowly. i updated the sources list, added xournal from the repositories so i could write notes to myself. when i rebooted the machine, it gave me an unexpected login screen after an autologin failure. with no way to type or hit <enter> or anything, i was stuck. developer told me tough luck. i shouldn't have installed anything. apparently there is little room in the usr folder and if you add anything this is the consequence. he told me to reinstall. but of course there is no english firmware available yet. so i installed Mer. much snappier, so far, but i can't connect to the internet. the instructions to add wifi drivers didn't work for me. the device couldn't find the sd card.

"special device /dev/mmcblk1p1 does not exist"

so i'm stuck.

any help would be appreciated.