Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

Nokia folks in Berlin have said there'll be no new hardware before Christmas, and the first alpha of the Fremantle SDK won't be released until at least November, with weekly updates following and eventually going beta.

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

When I got my Palm some years ago I wanted to use it for 2 things:
1) Typical PIM stuff (well, not documents, but calendar, meetings, alarms, that kind of thing)
2) As a mini-internet-laptop. I bought a wi-fi card, got email working, networked through both BT and wi-fi, got a better browser, installed ssh etc. etc.

1) worked out very well.
2) did not. Too limited, too little screen estate, and worst of all, my Palm became unstable and I ran into whitescreens so often I had to start a strict backup regime.

Then the N800 came out and I let it take over all of 2) and more. It's bad at 1) though, so now my Palm is a strict PIM device and my N800 is an internet device. My Palm has never crashed since and my N800 is way better than the Palm could ever be for 2). But the N800 can't do 1) even half as well as the Palm, so now I carry both devices.

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

Anyone know if the N900 will have two full sized sdhc card slots?

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

Hmm, they're all talking about Fremantle. We're at Diablo right now. IIRC, after Diablo will come Elephanta. That naming scheme started with OS 2007, which was Bora.

- Bora (OS 2007)
- Chinook (OS 2008)
- Diablo (OS 2008.5)
- Elephanta (maybe OS 2009?)
- Fremantle (maybe OS 2009.5 or OS 2010?)

Fremantle is said to be a big leap and comes with new hardware, so I suppose it will be OS 2010 and the device will be released sometime during Q4 2009 or Q1 2010.

This would also mean that the next major OS release (Elephanta) will run on N800, N810, and N810WE. :)

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

I still hope we'll see new hardware before Q2/2009. You see, the N800 will be more than 2 years old then. Nokia admitted themselves that the N810 was not meant to be the next generation after the N800. Even if you'd count the N810: It was announced almost 1 year ago and will be 1 1/2 years old in Q2/2009.

Not having a new device at least in Q1 will be very disappointing.

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

Maybe someone in hardware at Nokia does, but no device announcements have been made; the big device thing we know about is the HSPA access, which is important as a software issue because it means all apps can always assume internet connectivity and completely fail to work without it. (Fortunately, sane developers won't listen too well...).

Nope, Elephanta was written off some time ago. Fremantle will be Maemo 5, and while it's possible Elephanta gets brought back (was reserved?) for a substantial dot-release, it'll still be an SSU from OS2008 (Maemo 4.1), so I expect Maemo 5 on the tablets would be OS2009. (Actually, I have a vague recollection of hearing that they wouldn't be using the OSxxxx nomenclature any more...)

One possibility (again, presuming they do bring it back, i.e. they pulled it intending to reserve it for this) is that Elephanta gets used for a Maemo 5 back-port... A2DP, linux-omap, Xorg, etc. on N8x0, without being closely enough coupled to the OMAP3 version to be troublesome. Something like the HEs.

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

Elephanta was skipped. Quim said so few months ago (at the time Nokia bought Qt).

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

I would guess CES in January 2009. There is no way Nokia would wait until 2010 to release a new device, the market moves to fast. Remember the state of the hardware has nothing to do with the state of the software. For all we know the hardware is done and they are polishing the software over the next several weeks/months.

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

Well, we do know the software team doesn't have finished hardware yet, as they're using third-party hardware for testing.

And some reasonable things may be assumed, though we don't know. (Does anyone ever know anything?)

Re: Speculation on new tablet arrival?
 

The Fremantle *beta* SDK is being tentatively announced for april/may 2009, so a true "gen 5" device would be after that.

If something comes out in between it will be a stopgap, not a Fremantle device. It might have the gen 5 hardware though, waiting for a firmware upgrade.