Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Thanks for the complements,

What attracted me you your thread was the term "realistically". We can all dream of all kinds of things we would like the N900 to do, but when it comes down Nokia actually producing a device with existing technology at a price that most of us would pay, it puts a lot of restrictions on things.

That said, I can't see where an extra 128mb of ram would cost a lot, unless these things use some kind of expensive low-powered "static" ram or something like that. I also have a fear running a swap file on flash memory (especially a non removable one!) that is likely to wear out the memory. So currently I since Diablo I've tried turning off the virtual memory. I may try reconfiguring the OS to swap to the external flash because at least it is replaceable. The RAM upgrade would mostly fix this problem. 256megs should be enough for the apps that are currently on this unit, but if someone actually does try to port Openoffice over to this thing, it's going to need more.

The little comment I made about voice recognition was born out of my earlier opposition to any kind of PDA device. I felt that inputting information into one was too difficult with the tiny keyboards, poking at a tiny touch screen, or Graffiti and other attempts at handwriting recognition. It seemed to me such a device should have voice recognition instead. I actually don't know if this would work well in practice, although I seem to getting along with it pretty well on my Motorola mobile phone.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

@wartstew

My pleasure.

I understand that the DSP in the current OMAP can perform the calculations necessary (in real-time presumably) for speech to text. They advertise this capability on the TI site, but I'm not sure to what calculations they are referring. Interestingly, this functionality *should* be possible on the N8x0 right now, but it's going to take a coder with an exceptional amount of knowledge (or drive) to utilize this functionality (and understand the concepts behind this type of capability) to bring about voice recog on the tablets. It *should* be possible, however..

I find that, as tasks get more and more complex, the number of individuals that can effectively complete them tends to decrease proportionally. For example: as far as I can tell, the only member of this forum that's been able to even utilize the DSP has been lardman! I would also love to play around with the OMAP hardware, but sadly, I don't have a) the time and b) a tablet!

I *would* love to see voice recognition on the tablets, though. This would be a killer feature that would have tremendous implications.


}:^)~
YARR!

Schmapt'n

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Has anyone tried festival for speech recognition?

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Yea, the DSP code is probably something Nokia might have to pay someone to do (but please! keep it open source!). DSP's are generally tricky to program in order to get them to have anything close to the performance that they claim to be capable of. For example, I'm assuming the performance boost that Diablo enjoys with YouTube videos is from tweaking the DSP code, as in earlier versions weren't very good.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Does festival do speech recognition as well? I thought it was only speech synthesis...

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Yeah . . . no. YouTube performance boosts are due to Flash performance optimization and general browser performance. There is no DSP acceleration. :)

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

hmmmm..



[nothing more to say]

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Nice thread.

Number 1: by a wide margin is video out. Something like the mini-dvi socket apple use should fit OK. Ideally, this might have higher res than the primary screen (640*480 would be good enough for my purposes). It's probably the only thing that's going to persuade me to trade up to the N900.

Number 2: more ram - ideally enough to run OpenOffice (quick check on a mac shows it running with < 100MB resident memory, though the virtual size is around 500MB; expanding the ram to 256MB, and fixing the problems that limit swap space size to the same size as real memory, would presumably make it runnable, even if slow).

Number 3: proper PIM support - gpe is OK, but somewhat buggy:
.poor integration with alarms (though it seems to work a little better with diablo)
.limited sync options (I use erminig, but that is limited by the options that google calendar supports)
I'm guessing the "internet tablet is not a PIM" refrain from Nokia was a marketing strategy to differentiate it; but this battle has been won, both by the internet tablet, and by the iphone: no-one is likely to think of the tablet as "just another PIM" now. But there still is a demand for PIM support. A small investment by Nokia (I imagine a couple months work by someone who knows the maemo architecture inside out) would get gpe/opensync working well.

Things I don't want:
keyboard slider - when I want a keyboard, it's much more convenient to use a full-size bt keyboard.

Cheers
Bob

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Ah, yes, I meant Sphinx. Sorry. I don't know what the requirements are for any of these speech recognition codes, but would be interesting to see. Might be worth spinning this off into its own thread if people want to talk about it more.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Haha... I smell a brain a brewin'..


}:^)~
YARR!

Mr. Corrupt

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

OpenMoko have a speech recognition project for the GSOC 2008 [1]. It could be factible port it to maemo, when it's functional.

[1] http://projects.openmoko.org/projects/speech/

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Tbh what I'd like to see most is an indicator about when we can expect a N810 successor...at least some rough hint would be really nice. This year? Q3/Q4?

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

I would like Nokia to deliver us a boosted trade-off between processor 's power and battery usage. Something in the class of quantum leap..I think that besides processor and battery know how, it s a question of OS, right?

THen everything else could be made possible.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

I'm not even sure what that means, but there's not much optimization left in software. It's chiefly hardware, but since the N900 will be OMAP3xxx based, it'll be about double the performance with the same power consumption.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Well, there's always optimization left to do in software. It just depends on how crazy you're will to get with the hardware-specific hacks, and how much ever decreasing return on investment you're willing to put up with. :p

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Has this been confirmed officially?

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

I don't think so. Likely this happens when "N900" is officially announced. Typically this happens couple months before product launch.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Not AFAIK, but it's as good as certain.
Like I said:

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

As Benson says, it's damn near a certainty.

Oh, also, no need for the OMAP3xxx. It'll be the OMAP34xx and 90% sure that it'll be the OMAP3430 from there. ;)

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Yes, but I can't be troubled to remember/look up such details; I thought it was 34xx, and even typed that, but in my distrust of my brain, changed the 4 back to x...

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

3xxx, 34xx,

Nice to hear... What do we get from this that were IMPOSSIBLE with current devices?

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Well,
...for a start.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

:-)

yes, and if my aunt had b--ls, I would call her my uncle

more seriously?

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Uh, that is serious. OMAP3 offers about 2-3x the performance at the same battery consumption levels as OMAP2.

If you really want to read about all the neat features of OMAP3, I've covered it at least a half-dozen times in this thread (likely much more than that).

Here's a good start.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Thank you very much GA, I appreciate!!, I ve been away for approx 1 year and it s hard to read through such a long thread. In my opinion, this trade off (power/consumption) is the bottleneck of all such devices ( if you keep volume size and screen size the same).

2-3 x the performance IS serious improvement.

I ll go read right now. thx again.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

More flash, more CPU power (die shrink), 3d acceleration and higher resolution, none of this mini-SD crap (obsolete the day it hit shelves, SIM support (optional), screen flush with faceplate, normal mini-USB, WiMax/Wireless-N, better GPS, Better camera, thinner profile, better placement of power and lock slider keys, stripped down compiz-fusion if I can dream.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

I agree with most of the above. OpenGL or OpenGL ES is a must for the new generation of tablets.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Okay, looking at these OMAP processors (for the 1st time), here is what I see what will happen by moving from the OMAP2420 to the OMAP3430:

1) Improved video performance from 640x480@30FPS to 720x480@30FPS
Also improved CODEC performance such as the ability to decode a full DVD
video stream.

2) Improved camera capability: It can take bigger imagers and process it much
faster. In fact "DVD-quality camcorder" capability is advertised. Of course a
DVD-quality imager and lens would need to be added to make this happen
which I'm sure some compromises would have to me made here.

3) A boost in overall processor speed. Although I'm not sure how that will play
out. It seems like 2D/3D video effects will be better, perhaps some other DSP
functions as well. I'm not sure what the core "ARM" processor will be like other
than its advertised "up to 3x improvement over an ARM11" claim.

4) A decrease in power consumption, but by an unknown amount. Going from a
90nm to a 64nm die size is suppose to decrease power consumption while
increasing speed capability, but as Intel found out a few years back, this
doesn't always yield the results you hoped for. Then there is no guarantee
that Nokia then just put in a smaller battery.

I also noticed is that it should be easy (as in cheap) to add an IR to this thing, so why not do it? I know: "what will you use it for?", but some people would like to use the NIT as a fancy IR remote for their consumer electronics, or maybe use an IR remote to control the NIT.

I guess these things take "Mobil DDR" memory. I'm assuming this is nothing too expensive? I'm not sure, but it looked like the N810's OMAP2420 had 64Megs internal to the processor meaning they added 64Megs external. Hopefully there isn't a maximum address space limitation preventing larger external chips?

One thing that worries me is that it looks like it may only be able to take 1 MMC/SD device in addition to the internal NAND/NOR Flash. Can someone verify this? I would really like to see the root file system on a larger user replaceable memory device, leaving an external [full sized SDHC please] slot for hot-pluggable user data.

Other than that, the prospects of this new processor (assuming it IS chosen) leaves me salivating!

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Oh, and the ability to use and interact with the file systems while plugged in via USB.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

What exactly does "up to 3x improvement over an ARM11" not tell you? :\

No, the power consumption will likely be almost exactly the same. We're getting a lot of efficiency improvements, but it also has more horsepower. The net effect for power consumption should be about zero.

This one has been addressed several time before. How, exactly, do you expect to mount one filesystem in two places (note, there's a requirement that the filesystem you use be able to work well with mtd devices).

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Ah, this is where it pays to be an optimist. Who says in order to interact remotely with a filesystem it has to be mounted? Certainly an SSH session and an FTP session is filesystem interaction and neither requires remotely mounting the host's drive. The only requirement in these cases are cleverly implemented servers on the host.

Good one, [edit]Mutiny32[/edit], this would be a killer feature of the N900 OS, especially if there was a fancy-schmancy GUI interface for dragging files back and fourth.


}:^)~
YARR!

The Benevolent Corrupt

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Well, how do people mount network filesystems?

I doubt it is a giant technical hurdle, but people aren't screaming about it because it's no biggie either.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

See, but that's different. There are a thousand and one ways to transfer files easily between the tablet and a computer using either Wifi, Bluetooth, usbnet or, heck, serial. What he asked for was a way to interact with the filesystem, which implies mounting it directly, and you definitely can't mount jffs2 in two places.

It has nothing do to with optimism and everything to do with technical accuracy.

If his question had been "how can I transfer files between the tablet and my computer with usbnet", then I might've answered differently, but that wasn't his question.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Oh please spare me. If you want to be a pedant, then the modification of files and their locations is included in the definition of filesystem interaction. SSH, telnet, and potentially Samba extend this definition greatly.

It does have *something* to do with optimism. An optimistic individual is much more likely (in my experience) to find a solution, even against the odds, while a pessimistic individual perpetually dooms himself to stagnation.


}:^)~
YARR!

Sincerly, Capt'n

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

I've got to second the General on this one, how do you expect to do this? You can certainly do it while not plugged in by using a graphical sftp client or a sshfs mount, but if you specifically want to plug in, you'll either be wanting to mount the devices directly on the PC (as happens atm) or start up a gadget-ethernet connection and then do the same as you would over wifi?

There is a fundamental limitation with trying to masquerade as a block device, while something else is also using the device, so then you can't fool it into thinking the cards are mounted but also accessible on the IT. So then you're back to using file transfer over some network connection.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Well, there you go! A gadget-ethernet connection is an excellent idea that would likely be useful to many that desire only to push files around and/or modify their contents rather than mounting as a mass-storage device (which is what I assume is happening currently). I believe SSHFS and SFTP do not require a network connection, merely a data stream, so even if it wasn't ethernet, an ultra-simple protocol could be devised for this operation via USB (perhaps one already exists?).

In this case, you're not directly modifying the structure of the FS from the remote PC, but indirectly doing so through the aide of a intermediary host driver or server or both.

I don't think mounting is the only requirement for filesystem interaction. It is required to change the structure of information on the physical drive; a task that is handled exclusively by kernel drivers. Even a user-space shell must go through the driver to write anything to the media. The ideas above operate in a similar fashion but only a little farther removed.


}:^)~
YARR!

General Corrupt

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

(Disclaimer: I haven't read all of the 750 previous responses.)

I want the N900 to be a single-box, walking around solution for media and navigation. That's the way I use my N800. I think the general public would buy something like that.

I bought my N800 to use as a media device. I put two 16B SD cards in it with all of my music on them. Then I gave my 30GB generation 5.5 iPod to my sister. I chose the N800 over the N810 because of the two SDHC slots. This week, I replaced one of the cards with a 32GB card, moving alll music to it. Canola is the killer app for this purpose.

I also chose the N800 over the N810 because I already had a BT GPS receiver. Maemo Mapper is the killer app here.

But then I started using the N800 for e-mail. In the three or four months I've had it, I've used it more often for e-mail than my other computers. I revert to my laptop when I have to view MS Office attachments, but that's about it. The N800 would rock for e-mail if it had a great, slide out thumb board.

But wait! I found that it can do video + voice over IP. I started using it for VTCs at work. People at work were impressed enough to buy three N810s for that purpose.

The only disappointment about the N800 software is that there isn't a reliable UPnP controller program.

I don't want a phone in the tablet because I want the freedom to choose any provider. I'll use BT PAN or DUN to tether to the phone if I want to pay for a data plan.

So I see the N900 keeping the GPS, camera, and keyboard of the N810 and getting two SDHC slots. The builtin apps will include Canola, Maemo Mapper, modest/tiny mail, a single chat client that joins gtalk and pidgin, MS Word and Excel viewers, and UPnP controller.

Dave

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

This can already be done (gadget-ethernet). Perhaps you want it done more easily, with a GUI for example (which is fair enough).

It's certainly possible to devise other Gadget drivers and protocols, it simply won't happen unless there is a need (i.e. you'll have to do it yourself).

The good thing about mounting as a mass-storage device or an ethernet-gadget device is that these are generally supported out-of-the-box (with the exception of Windows, which doesn't recognise it due to being crap, and therefore needs to be told why it's wrong with linux.inf).

These work, I doubt anyone will replace them unless there is a truely compelling reason. As I said earlier, I just fire up wifi and then use ssh/sftp. I really can't see what the problem is :)

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

Argument drift? :)

There really is no problem. I was originally proposing the feasibility of file mod via USB and without 'remote' mounting. But, I agree with your points. WiFi SSH/SFTP is sufficient as is USB mass storage.

I *do* however like the idea of plugging in the tablet and having the option of modifying files without having the main fs unmounted by the host. Subtle features like these (in aggregate) greatly improve the usability of the device and make it that much more appealing to the masses, although not necessarily so to the tech-heads.

Imagine what a difference package management (for example) has on N810 adoption. How different would the tablet popularity be if all apps had to be compiled?

Simplicity counts. Usability counts.

This is one area that apple (and even MS) get it right. Users don't need to know much about hardware, software, or configuration to quickly and effectively use their products. For example, the iPhone app store has pictures, ratings, and descriptions of apps all in one easy to access location. The pictures alone make choosing and installing a far more friendly experience. You can even do this from your desktop.

In all fairness, I see tablet software tending in a similar direction: memo already seems very easy to use, Diablo has its non-destructive firmware upgrades, one click installs exist, etc. This is a good thing. Some community apps (canola, and carman) also hit it spot on.

I would like to see even more slickness, so that my girlfriend can not only pick up the tablet and start using it, but will also rave about the experience. The best part is, all of this is possible in software.


}:^)~
YARR!

Oh Capt'n

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
 

@talmage,

That was a great list. What exactly are VTCs?

I know this is not original, but I would like to see Canola packaged with the N9xx. From what I've seen, its full featured, extensible (via plugins), and very, very, slick.

Does RTCOMM support the bluetooth headset ring event? For example, will my paired BT headset *ring* when I receive a SIP call? If not, then I'd like to see this supported as well.

}:^)~
YARR!

Going for a Napt'n