Yeah, I have a feeling the Hero ROM has a lot of goodies in it that make Android an over-all nicer platform. I'm just very against doing that (not against it in principle, against it as a practical matter of "I do system support at work, I don't want to use up my luxury time by doing system support at home, as well" -- so I tend to avoid using non-vendor supported OSes on my hardware; I use the Dell version of Ubuntu on my Mini-9, I bought a System-76 nettop for running Ubuntu on a desktop, and I use the vanilla Android on my G1).

I didn't take it as bashing. Sorry, sometimes when I'm being very rigorous and trying to eliminate ambiguities, I can come across as being very aggressive, or confrontational, or something like that. It's more that I'm trying to address/eliminate edge cases, and head off "what if's" up front so that the discussion doesn't run off in to the rough.

When I'm _arguing_ with someone, I'm exactly the opposite -- I give them as little detail, and as much ambiguity, as possible -- precisely to give them rope to hang themselves with. It's sort of the Aikidoka in me :-}

I'm of a split mind on the issue. On the one hand, you're right: to Joe Layman consumer, the "open-ness" of Android vs Maemo (or Android and Maemo vs WinMo) is pretty much up there with "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" in terms of useful and meaningful discussion.

The core Android OS is open source. We can do whatever we want with it. And, if I won the lottery (so I no longer had to care about a real job), I'd go make a hybrid Android/Maemo/Mer/Ubuntu distro that I could deploy on desktops, laptops, netbooks, smartbooks, UMPCs, tablets, MIDs, and mobile phones. I'd make sure it was ported to as many hardware platforms as I could reasonably support, and I'd figure out how to both give it away ... and somehow have a support model that would allow it to support itself if I was ever gone from the project. And it would run on batteries powered by rainbows and bunny-farts.

On the otherhand ... if we don't make the stink about open vs closed, free vs proprietary, etc. ... who will? And if no one does, then why does all of this matter, at a bigger picture level than "I run apps"? If a GPL'ed project falls in the Microsoft woods, and no one is there to hear it, is it really GPL'ed?

I'm still trying to figure out WTF Nokia is doing with the future of Maemo. I think, in some ways, so is Nokia. At least, that's what it seems like, from the outside, when Nokia says things like "everyone knows that we're not doing Android because our future is all about Symbian" (paraphrased from an actual quote, in Nokia refuting rumors about an upcoming Android phone from Nokia).

WTF!?

If they had said "Everyone knows we're not doing Android because we have Maemo", that would have made complete sense. And it doesn't say anything about Maemo vs Symbian, in terms of their status internally to Nokia. It just says "we have our version of Linux, and it's called Maemo, not Android". But the above statement is like crazy talk from Martians. If their future is all about Symbian, then why are they still developing Maemo ... AT ALL?

And it says to me that not only does Nokia look like bizarro-world to us outsiders, but it must look like bizarro-world to the people inside the company as well (because even the people who are speaking on behalf of the company don't have a coherent picture about what the company is doing).

the xperia 1 was actually made by HTC; I wonder if S-E are going to make the X3 or rebadge

I also did a double-take when I heard the Nokia PR person saying that. But think about it: he has carefully chosen his words to avoid providing any information. He's telling us what "everyone knows", not what Nokia is actually up to.

Nokia spent a lot of money acquiring TrollTech and Symbian, so they must have some kind of plan. Nothing we see from the outside has given any kind of encouragement that it's a good plan, but you never know...

One thing about products from Apple and Sony: it's always really clear what the products are supposed to do. No so with Nokia. When Nokia launched the N97, a lot of fuss was made at the presentation about the N97 being a "pocket computer". They wheeled out a few old computers and laptops to prove that they were launching it as a pocket computer. But Nokia didn't really seem to believe what they were saying, and nothing that they've done since the announcement has supported the idea of the N97 being your pocket computer, or indeed anything other than an expensive QWERTY phone.

It could have been different. When Apple introduced the iPod Touch, Nokia's PR team could have run a clear, simple campaign promoting the N800 as a touchscreen music player with stereo speakers and loads of memory capacity on removable cards. Oh, and a computer too, with a real web browser.

But what did Nokia do instead? They discontinued the N800, despite it being Amazon's best selling computer of 2007.

Regards,
Roger

I think you mean 2007

Ahead of it's time either way

Umm, yes! Thanks johnkzin.

But also: no computer sold in greater numbers than the N800 in 1907.

Roger

HI everybody...

I was searching for a topic about the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2,but here was the nesrest place for it..

My question is Can i chatt with video skype through this phone ??
And if yes,so how can i do it??

Thank you