Here Is Why The PR 1.2 Firmware For The Nokia N900 Is Late - Page 17 - maemo.org

NopeaJ | # 161 | 2010-05-15, 00:02 | Report

I've been reading these whining posts for quite a while now and managed to restrain myself from posting, but now I'll just have to add my 2 cents.

Not everyone bought n900 for a nerdpad. Most people in fact are not interested in learning to read code or play around with their kernels. The majority of the people on this forum maybe, but not of the whole customer base.

Generally when people buy phones (yes its a phone for most people, i doubt people carry a second device to call mommy and daddy), they expect them to work. PR. 1.1 Works. If they would release an unfinished PR 1.2, as some would like it to be, it would be disasterous. OTA updates pop up automatically when you go on the net. I would assume 100% of the users would update. Yet maybe 1% know how to reflash their device. Imagine the troubles that would create.

Yes, Linux releases unfinished stuff. It is mainly used by people from the IT field. And its free. Even though the majority of people on this forum have some relationship with the IT field, you need to take your heads out of your bums and realise that there's a world outside maemo.org. And in that world n900 is a phone.

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Laughing Man | # 162 | 2010-05-15, 00:26 | Report

Originally Posted by ysss View Post

I don't blame nokia. I think they fully understand that 'mistakes' like this will be forgotten immediately and that the users are generally a forgetful bunch once they're full and happy.

That only applies for companies that know what they are doing (Apple, Google).

One reason I am thankful for Meego not only being in Nokia's hands is... well for that reason. It isn't in Nokia's hands.

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felbutss | # 163 | 2010-05-15, 00:27 | Report

no man. you want a phone i would never never never never never ever ever ever tell anyone to get a n900. thats asking for trouble and my balls to get brokn for support. ill say just get an iphone. the n900 is special

Matan | # 164 | 2010-05-15, 09:27 | Report

Originally Posted by NopeaJ View Post

I've been reading these whining posts for quite a while now and managed to restrain myself from posting, but now I'll just have to add my 2 cents.

Not everyone bought n900 for a nerdpad. Most people in fact are not interested in learning to read code or play around with their kernels. The majority of the people on this forum maybe, but not of the whole customer base.

Generally when people buy phones (yes its a phone for most people, i doubt people carry a second device to call mommy and daddy), they expect them to work. PR. 1.1 Works. If they would release an unfinished PR 1.2, as some would like it to be, it would be disasterous. OTA updates pop up automatically when you go on the net. I would assume 100% of the users would update. Yet maybe 1% know how to reflash their device. Imagine the troubles that would create.

Yes, Linux releases unfinished stuff. It is mainly used by people from the IT field. And its free. Even though the majority of people on this forum have some relationship with the IT field, you need to take your heads out of your bums and realise that there's a world outside maemo.org. And in that world n900 is a phone.

People who bought this phone discovered that it is not really a phone, since it cannot call some numbers.

Nokia has a partial solution for this since at least January, do you think it is reasonable to sit on this fix that provides basic functionality that every GSM cellular phone has for four months (at least)?

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mindfaq | # 165 | 2010-05-15, 12:04 | Report

Originally Posted by NopeaJ View Post

PR. 1.1 Works. If they would release an unfinished PR 1.2, as some would like it to be, it would be disasterous. OTA updates pop up automatically when you go on the net. I would assume 100% of the users would update. Yet maybe 1% know how to reflash their device. Imagine the troubles that would create.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. No one wants Nokia to push unstable software to the devices of unexperienced users. When I talk about creating an unstable branch it has to be a seperate repository that one has to explicitly enable through an entry in your APT sources.list. Again Fedora as an Example. While the majority of the userbase is using the stable Fedora 12, willing testers could install pre-release version of Fedora 13 as soon as 12 became finished although it won't get officially released before the end of May. You can even switch to "rawhide" and run what will become Fedora 14 eventually. It doesn't harm normal users as those don't run it and probably don't even know they can. When you visit the Fedora download page the stable version is offered to you. Pre-release versions are for those who want to experience the latest development progress and who want to help to make the actual product better. It's a well-proven concept in the software industry, not only in the open source sector. Microsoft does it too, as do most developers of nearly any big software project.

Yeah, for phones it is quite uncommon. But in the past, the software running on those couldn't do crap. Now Maemo is a full-blown Linux operating system stack no less complex as any other Linux distribution. If I want to have a phone, I'd get one for ten bucks. Paying 500+ is only justified by the fact that it isn't some phone but a powerful mobile computer. The software development model should take that into account.

I don't whine for not having PR 1.2. My N900 runs fine and I don't have any problem with it. For me it's about working towards a vivid software community around Maemo/MeeGo. I think Nokia realized these issues too and therefore announced that the development of MeeGo will happen in the open.

Last edited by mindfaq; 2010-05-15 at 19:42.

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nicola.mfb | # 166 | 2010-05-15, 12:05 | Report

Originally Posted by casper27 View Post

All these speculations when the reason is simple.
Eero Tamminen, one of Nokia's principal Maemo engineers, has outlined some of the reasons why the forthcoming update to Maemo 5, PR1.2, has been delayed: "
As one example, when we optified some of the rootfs content to make more space on it (for SSUs), we had to deal with the slowdowns coming from those packages being now on eMMC (which is slower than rootfs especially when the device is swapping). This required quite a lot of iteration on what to optify, SSU issues, policy & memory locking finetuning, otherwise optimizing slow things etc.

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...ay/026132.html

No smoke and dagger or conspiracy there.

was the N900 launched in HK without those? is it not PR 1.2?

maurelio79 | # 167 | 2010-05-15, 23:47 | Report

Ok, i trust in nokia and maemo and i'm fine with current FW.... but is 1.2 something real or not?? Today is May 16.... :-)

geneven | # 168 | 2010-05-16, 00:20 | Report

Don't software companies push unstable releases all the time? They call them betas, last I heard. They aren't uncommon.

In fact, the leaked PR1.2 should have been released as a beta immediately after being leaked. Then Nokia, because of their great concern for the users, could have at least certified that it wasn't infected by the evil Nokia employee hypothesized by some.

Whatever, this can't be the best way to handle it.

jakiman | # 169 | 2010-05-16, 00:49 | Report

Originally Posted by NopeaJ View Post

Generally when people buy phones (yes its a phone for most people, i doubt people carry a second device to call mommy and daddy), they expect them to work. PR. 1.1 Works. If they would release an unfinished PR 1.2, as some would like it to be, it would be disasterous. OTA updates pop up automatically when you go on the net. I would assume 100% of the users would update. Yet maybe 1% know how to reflash their device. Imagine the troubles that would create.

PR 1.0 was buggy. PR 1.1 was buggy. PR 1.1.1 is still very buggy. I know what you are trying to say but you know also that PR 1.2 will be buggy. OTA update is definitely a concern but really, they cannot cater for everyone as some will have 100+ apps installed. Many from extras-devel.

So why not release 1.1.2 , 1.1.3, 1.1.4, 1.1.5 weekly or daily builds like Fennec? Nokia can easily make a different repository for the daily/weekly builds if they are worried about every mums and dads updating. Heck, I don't care if they don't provide OTA update for these pre-mature builds. I'm willing to fully reflash my phone with every new alpha/beta update if it's worth it.

Definitely better than waiting 4+ months to get a fix/enhancement which was completed 3-4 months ago.....

Last edited by jakiman; 2010-05-16 at 00:57.

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sophocha | # 170 | 2010-05-16, 00:58 | Report

They better add Flash 10.1 on PR1.2, otherwise the waiting will not worth it!