Turning samsung galaxy note 4 into nokia n900! - maemo.org

ryu1 | # 1 | 2015-06-21, 14:41 | Report

After long time of service, my trusty nokia n900 started to have problems - battery related - lasting less than one day, turning off in the middle of the conversations, random reboots, etc.
Becase the neo900 is still under development, and i needed a phone i can use right now, i decided to look for a smartphone with top specifications and a hardware keyboard. Apart from blackberry passport (which i don't really like), i didn't found anything.
And to be realistic, we will never see smartphones with physical keyboards, unfortunately.
However there is still a chance. We can make our own qwerty equiped smartphones.
For this i decided to buy a smartphone with top specifications and see if i can build "the other half" for it.
So i got the samsung galaxy note 4, and started to search for a bluetooth keyboard. I found the Rii mini to be a good quality keyboard, and long battery life.
Apart from the keyboard i wanted a slide mechanism just like nokia n900, but even more usable, i wanted a slide and tilt mechanism like htc x9500.
So the idea i got was to sue two cases: one for the phone and one for the keyboard. The two cases were to be united by the slide mechanism.
After a weekend of building, here is the end result:

Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68Yjjv8QEw

Here is the note 4 qwerty - enabled next to a psion series 5mx and a psion series 3a:

And here is note 4 running debian xfce next to a hp jornada 720:

And here is note 4 emulating windows xp next to htc x9500 running windows 10:

In conclusion - the fact that the major smartphones manufacturers are no longer making qwerty phones, gave us the opportunity to build our own, with evenm more functionality.
For example on nokia n900 i was unable to fully control the interface using only the keyboard, i still had to touch the screen sometimes. But with this keyboard and the mousepad it has, i can fully control the phone without touching the screen.
You can see more details on how i build it here: http://simpledevices.blogspot.ro/

Nowadays they are building only a half of the phone. It is up to us to build the other half.

Last edited by ryu1; 2015-06-21 at 15:27.

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HtheB | # 2 | 2015-06-21, 15:35 | Report

Reminds me to my Project N955:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84025

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ryu1 | # 3 | 2015-06-21, 18:04 | Report

That look good, but those keyboards does not have a mousepad, so no full control over the interface.
And i forgot to mention that i found a free space in the keyboard case which i use to carry the usb host adapter

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HtheB | # 4 | 2015-06-21, 19:03 | Report

Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post

That look good, but those keyboards does not have a mousepad, so no full control over the interface.

Maybe because mine is running on Harmattan and you on crapdroid?

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pichlo | # 5 | 2015-06-21, 20:22 | Report

Well done but TBH, I feel a bit let down. The thread title has given rise to a vain hope of running Maemo on SGN4. Clearly different people have different ideas of what makes a device an N900

Last edited by pichlo; 2015-06-22 at 08:52. Reason: s/home/hope

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Android_808 | # 6 | 2015-06-21, 21:08 | Report

Well, he does run Debian so there's always a possibility of getting Hildon running in some state.

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ryu1 | # 7 | 2015-06-22, 06:59 | Report

the fact that note 4 is using android is a indeed downside, but i think that if we can emulate or even flash other operating systems, it is not that bad.
I already have debian running on the phone, and would i would like to run maemo as well. Now is there any posibility to run maemo as a live image just as i run debian?

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Wikiwide | # 8 | 2015-06-22, 23:31 | Report

The only keyword I know is Xephyr: http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...K_Installation

However, there are Maemo 5 applications running on Harmattan with chroot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIlD7NsO1QI

Maybe, you can find more than that...

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ryu1 | # 9 | 2015-06-23, 09:55 | Report

I hope i will have time this weekend to try this.
I remember i runed meego on htc x9500 some time ago, i think i will be able to do the same on note 4.

lfc22 | # 10 | 2015-06-23, 14:11 | Report

Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post

I hope i will have time this weekend to try this.
I remember i runed meego on htc x9500 some time ago, i think i will be able to do the same on note 4.

whwn you say you ran meego, do you mean harmattan?