Palm admitted that a Linux-based version of its operating system will not be available until 2008, while Symbian said “Enterprises will not adopt mobile Linux because it is too fragmented and “completely unfeasible”. “You would have to have a rock-solid business case to do that,” he added.
Too late
I was seriously considering holding off on getting a new smartphone until later this year, since the prospect of a Treo running this fabled new Linux based PalmOS X looked interesting. The end of the year was doable, but some vague 2008 time frame puts a Treo out of the running. At least I don’t have to wait to decide between the iPhone or a Blackberry.
…meet the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project.
What’s wrong with symbian that linux solves?
Nothing, except that Symbian requires fewer resources and it was created from day-1 as an embedded platform. It also has a better battery life — at least until recently. On the other hand, Symbian has other problems, that Linux has solved, e.g. a good development support. So, it’s always a trade-off, depending on the kind of product you want to build.
That’s exactly why Linux is popping up everywhere, it’s the vodka of operating systems, you can put it in anything or anyone. I also suspect that Palm may be looking for a common base for their PDA/phone OS and their new Foleo stuff.
You mean a competitor is saying their linux offering is gonna fail?
I just can’t imagine a competitor saying that, of all people…
“You would have to have a rock-solid business case to do that,”
As opposed to?
It’s nice to know that Symbian apparently venture into projects that mostly aren’t rock solid….
Symbian simply doesn’t scale to the requirements of modern phones. Everyone who is in cellphone telephony is trying to find a way to replace it.
Linux doesn’t scale down to the requirements of modern phones. Everyone who is playing with it is trying to make it smaller, lighter, and more power efficient.
Palm never really had a Linux play. They just got tired of waiting for PalmSource (now Access America) to deliver, but needed a Linux story for the analysts.
Maybe they’ll do a Linux phone. Maybe they’ll see all the other players shaking out of the market and never ship one.
the only reason why palmos is still holding on today is because of the UI (which I think breaks down with advanced use such as the file system). If they just stick linux without caring about the UI, they won’t have much of anything left.
So, stick the symbian GUI on Linux? it’s not bloody tricky.
(Heck, they could use Maemo. Maemo wouldn’t need many changes to behave similarly, and then they’d be sharing a common base with Nokia and others)
That’s the whole reason I’ve been holding out hope on PalmOS, the UI, and I’m hoping that it stays around even with the Linux base. While Windows mobile isn’t quite my taste, but Blackberry is looking good, and the iPhone looks great too. I know it sounds like an odd complaint about a phone os, but Symbian is just to phonish for my liking. I really just want a nice mobile device that happens to make phone calls.
The obvious choice is for Palm to throw some manpower at Haiku, and build their new phone OS on top of it.
đ
Linux on phones is totally fragmented, but I doubt the enterprise market will care one way or the other. My experience is that IT departments tend to standardize on one particular product, not a platform. So if a company decides to only support the Palm XYZ phone then they probably won’t care if Palm Linux is totally incompatible with Motorola Linux. After all, Symbian, Palm OS, WinCE, and BlackBerry are already incompatible, so what’s the harm in a few more flavors?
what’s the harm in a few more flavors?
For of the shelf market surely if does, and that’s why WinCE wins.
hanging around — in Palm’s Windows Mobile phones.
The PalmOS UI doesn’t scale very well either. It was exactly the right compromise for early PDAs, and largely why Palm was so successful with that market, but some of the clever features — like the way the find command works — don’t scale well to devices with memory hierarchies and the scrolling icon approach to presenting top-level choices runs out of steam fairly quickly on higher resolution screens. Fortunately for Palm, it scales better than the commonly used WinMob UI on other winmob consumer devices.
âMobile Linuxâ is only âfragmentedâ if you attempt to treat it as a single product, much as trying to lump all desktop or server distributions together makes about as much sense as talking about âUNIXâ or even âoperating systemsâ as a collective.
This is largely blustering on Symbian’s part: if they can’t talk specifics, it’s difficult to see their statement as anything other than lacking substance.