N900 specs revealed

[SD69]

Originally Posted by johnkzin

Are you sure about that? I bet for the right price, it would certainly be available for licensing on other hardware. You just need to make the right offer to Nokia.

Yup, I'm sure that Maemo (not the Mer derivative) has not been available to others for licensing and that was not because of price. I don't know if it will be available in the future.

[zfarooq]

Originally Posted by volt

If this is a cell phone and it thrumps the N97 as Nokias most advanced smart phone... Did anyone else beside me speculate about the price for such a phone? Tablet prices are no longer relevant in such a scenario.

What are we talking about, £600?

If it has everything the N97 has, but has touch screen implemented better, better internet browsing, better OS through Maemo that has the functionality + eye candy + kinetic scrolling and good support, that price would be fine, and expected.

I am waiting for them to release the specs coz the N97 doesnt do it for me.

[johnkzin]

Originally Posted by SD69

Yup, I'm sure that Maemo (not the Mer derivative) has not been available to others for licensing and that was not because of price.

Who approached them, and was rejected?

[daperl]

More headlines fun.

It's probably a good thing that this will be an N series phone and not an O series phone. Otherwise there's the risk of something like this:

ASUS O!Play HDP-R1 media player won't likely get an O-face

[TA-t3]

Originally Posted by johnkzin

It's not about battery, it's about security. Leaving BT on all the time is just asking for trouble. (I live in an area where people routinely drive around doing wifi war-driving ... BT isn't that much more obscure, or that much harder to hack)

When BT is in 'invisible' mode it isn't transmitting at all. It is only a receiver. It would not be possible to detect that it is there unless you are at the time communicating with it, so for a 3party person it does not make any difference if it is 'on' in receiver mode, or not, when you yourself isn't currently communicating through BT.

So an attacker would first have to collect info about your phone while you're using BT actively, and could then at a later time try to connect to your listen-only BT. In both cases they would have to get close to you (10 meters) (yes I know about the special long-range narrow-angle BT cracker's antenna.. not very practical for war-driving really).

So yes, there's a possibility for breaking into your BT phone, but not as easy as war-driving for open (or wep-protected) wi-fi access points: The area of near-enough for potential break-ins is vastly larger for wi-fi than for BT, and can usually be done in one go instead of first collecting info and then coming back later.

I choose to consider that risk very low, so I ignore it and leave my BT on (in invisible mode), but of course everyone is free to judge the risk differently. (BT in visible mode is an entirely different story of course -- that can be extremely problematic. For example, a student's pub I visited tried to automatically push some kind of advertisements to every BT device visible in the building. Very annoying.)

[TA-t3]

Originally Posted by volt

ICS does not start automatically. It has to be enabled and will disable itself when not in use.

Originally Posted by sjgadsby

Ah! That's...disappointing.

Indeed. Another one ticked on my list of features not to look for in a phone.

Originally Posted by johnkzin

Got a text message; answer it. Go back to the NIT. Got another text message; answer it. Go back to the NIT. Got a phone call. Go back to the NIT. Got a text message; answer it. Go back to the NIT.

Agreed. With a usage pattern like that it could add up to a lot of juggling. Which just goes to show that there's a reason some of us end up in the one-device camp and some of us in the two-devices camp. I, for example, very rarely get messages or phone calls on the phone I use for BT connectivity, in the time windows where I actually use BT instead of wi-fi (I get most of those calls when I'm in places where there is wi-fi).

[johnkzin]

Originally Posted by TA-t3

In both cases they would have to get close to you (10 meters) (yes I know about the special long-range narrow-angle BT cracker's antenna.. not very practical for war-driving really).)

Even without special antennas... within 10 meters of where I live, charge my phone, etc., there are 6-87 other homes (and also at least have some degree of tech gadgetry, and are sophisticated enough to use better than WEP protection on their wifi access points ... and actually have it turned on). And I don't even live in any kind of ultra-high density housing -- I'm in a front/3br unit of a 4plex condominium, with two other such units close by. And this doesn't even count all of the people from the surrounding condos who park in or near my building.

Further, I'm within 10 meters of a semi-busy road (in the heart of silicon valley, not far from Ebay's headquarters ... so it wouldn't surprise me to have war-drivers going by regularly), I travel along busy roads on my commute, and I work on campus at a university ... across the parking lot from the computer science/computer engineering building (ie. every student hacker, whether they're curious vs malicious).

AND ... I work, indirectly, with personal information (I don't work with it directly, but the systems I maintain at work do store it). So, my job requires me to be diligent/paranoid about my devices being secured ... and one of my main uses for my pocketable device is: emergency remote maintenance of my servers.

10 meters is not a "safety" zone for me. If I could tell all of my BT devices to truly be a personal area network (1-1.5 meter max range), that'd be different. But 10 meters? way too big.

[johnkzin]

Originally Posted by TA-t3

Agreed. With a usage pattern like that it could add up to a lot of juggling. Which just goes to show that there's a reason some of us end up in the one-device camp and some of us in the two-devices camp. I, for example, very rarely get messages or phone calls on the phone I use for BT connectivity, in the time windows where I actually use BT instead of wi-fi (I get most of those calls when I'm in places where there is wi-fi).

I only carry the one phone. Even if I carried two (one for tethering, and one for communicating), it wouldn't change that part of the problem -- no matter which device is the voice/txt device, given my job, I have to answer it ... or at least check it to be sure it's not likely to be an important call/message. Which means juggling the tablet and phone every time I get a message/call, unless they're the same device. That got old REALLY quick.

And that doesn't mean I dismiss the multi-device camp. The Unix way is specialized systems that interconnect to leverage each other's specializations. I love and respect that. But, in order for it to work for me, only one of those devices can be my "user interface" (email, rss, web, ssh, vnc, phone, sms, im, etc.). Having a mifi/cradlepoint device* that was also an SMS gateway and SIP server with decent battery life, and having a tablet that supports that mode of operation, would in fact be very compelling to me (assuming strong enough security between the devices). Other compelling pieces of such an environment would be a pocket-wireless-NAS (BT hard drives, for example ... which have yet to be released in the US, as far as I can tell), a Tekkeon type battery for keeping the devices charged, and a camera that can utilize/inter-operate all of those. However, several pieces of that puzzle are missing. Especially the security component.

(* it could even itself be a phone ... but the most I've seen in a phone, for fulfilling this role, is various low-security wifi data router options ... no voice/sms service routing)

[TA-t3]

I think it's pretty clear now that what we could all agree on is that Nokia should make at least 2 new devices: The phone-oriented, uber-smartphone all-in-one device (which is what we believe the "N900") is, and a no-phone, tablet-like device (it could have room for the slightly larger screen, and should be way cheaper too). Approaching the form factor from two different sides as it were.

[YoDude]

Originally Posted by johnkzin

Even without special antennas... within 10 meters of where I live, charge my phone, etc., there are 6-87 other homes (and also at least have some degree of tech gadgetry, and are sophisticated enough to use better than WEP protection on their wifi access points ... and actually have it turned on). And I don't even live in any kind of ultra-high density housing -- I'm in a front/3br unit of a 4plex condominium, with two other such units close by. And this doesn't even count all of the people from the surrounding condos who park in or near my building.

Further, I'm within 10 meters of a semi-busy road (in the heart of silicon valley, not far from Ebay's headquarters ... so it wouldn't surprise me to have war-drivers going by regularly), I travel along busy roads on my commute, and I work on campus at a university ... across the parking lot from the computer science/computer engineering building (ie. every student hacker, whether they're curious vs malicious).

AND ... I work, indirectly, with personal information (I don't work with it directly, but the systems I maintain at work do store it). So, my job requires me to be diligent/paranoid about my devices being secured ... and one of my main uses for my pocketable device is: emergency remote maintenance of my servers.

10 meters is not a "safety" zone for me. If I could tell all of my BT devices to truly be a personal area network (1-1.5 meter max range), that'd be different. But 10 meters? way too big.

MOVE! ... Just using some of your logic from the following post.

Originally Posted by johnkzin

<snip>... Go where the product you want/need/can-afford is. Vote with your feet... <more snip>

If they don't notice, or if they notice that they're losing such a small business segment that it isn't going to change how they do business, then you're not throwing money at a company that doesn't give you the devices you want, on a schedule you want, and with a level of care that you want.