The future is mobile. That much we know for sure. But it seems that the operating system world in this market is being rapidly taken over by –again– Microsoft. The new smart phones are are using WinCE, Symbian or Palm. Linux has barely 1% of this new, smartphone market.If Linux visionaries had seen the writing on the wall in early 2000 (e.g. MontaVista, Red Hat’s embedded division and even Familiar) and contribute towards a united, powerful, usable and most importantly, properly marketed Linux phone/PDA edition, things might have been different now.
The desktop operating system door was already closed with the release of Windows 95 in 1995. Alternative OSes can work hard to capture 4-5% of the global market share but they will never manage to overcome the legacy of Windows and its monopoly — for well-known reasons that have been discussed everywhere and by everyone.
But the phone OS door was open. It was wide open and it was waiting for its next big predator. And Microsoft jumped into the opportunity taking over PalmOS year after year and Symbian is next.
Where was Linux all this time? Is the fact that Linux is driven by hobbyists had a role to play to this strict embedded market that has its own rules and needs? Or is it the moderately high requirements of Linux (at least 208 Mhz, 32 MB RAM) put a dead stop to integrators while PalmOS/Symbian/WinCE can run on 104 Mhz (or less) in full graphics mode with minimum memory requirements at 8-16 MB?
Here are a few new features coming next month with Windows Mobile 2005 according to MSMobiles:
* Powered by Windows CE 5.x not by Windows CE 4.x as the second edition
* .NET Compact Framework 2.0 pre-installed
* No distinction between smartphone and Pocket PC – Windows Mobile will run both Pocket PC 2003 and Smartphone 2003 programs
* direct support for Qwerty keyboards, so that new products from HTC, Motorola, HP and Samsung will be better usable just through the Qwerty keyboard
* support for new push functionalities of Exchange, but not only for e-mails but also for contacts and calendar events
* Wi-Fi support for smartphones (devices without touch screen)
* “Storage” – a place in memory that doesn’t dissapear even without battery – now will be available also for Pocket PC
* improved Pocket office applications like Excel and Word; Pocket PowerPoint added
* improved Windows Media Player 10
Symbian 9.0 comes with a slew of new features too, and PalmOS has always version 6.1 under its sleeve, just in case. Where is Linux (or QNX for that matter) right now? Why has no company stepped up to really help Familiar optimize/develop mobile Linux further and make it a better contender? Linux is more powerful than any of these other phone OSes, what it needs is polishing and real backing behind it with a serious-enough company to drive the way ahead by creating a powerful mobile distro.
Is it really a good idea to put an Unix clone in a phone ?
Why not OS/390 in a watch.
Why not?
“Is it a good idea to put a Unix on a desktop?”
Yes, Apple did it. Same goes for embedded systems. QNX is unix-like too, just like Linux, and it works just fine. The user will never see a command line anyway.
My phone…the LG6000 camera phone.
I paid $75 for it with a 2year Verizon contract. It does everything that I need, including dialing someone’s phone number, allowing me to talk to them via vocal communications and allowing me to answer incoming phone calls. It even doubles as a pager so I can recieve pages when systems at work have issues.
It’s great!
It also comes with a shitload of stuff that i never use, camera phone, addressbook, games, text messaging, etc. Also, it comes with a nice bright colored LCD that i would never use if I didn’t have to.
Now why do I want to run outlook? IE? Word? Anything but basic phone functionality? Why does my phone need 64MB+ of RAM? Flash storage over 1MB? What’s the point?
I’m a huge fan of many simple devices doing what they do well. I don’t want a PDA in my phone, nor do i want a phone in my PDA. I don’t want to browse the web on either of them. I have a laptop for that.
My mobile office has 3 components and they all fit in a courier bag, a small courier bag. It’s not convenient, it’s not even heavy. I’m sorry, I just don’t understand this desire to have EVERYTHING on one device. One device that could get lost, stolen, dropped, broken, wet, batteries could die, service could get lost, etc…
It’s not convenient, it’s not even heavy
I mean “It’s not inconvenient”
I think it mostly comes down to subsidizing. Microsoft doesn’t have to do anything better than its competitors. All they need to do is butter the bread of OEMs and cell companies.
I recall reading an article where microsoft basically PAID a cell company in Asia to use their mobile software… negating the need for the company to pay for licenses or developers to mold linux to work on their phones. Basically, the tactic here… is to pay people to use your product, get them hooked, then the other players end up joining in…
This is a perfect example of a monopoly that has gotten way out of hand. Even with the lawsuits and fines, they’re still essentially the same beast. They don’t need to change their practices, anyway; a fine is basically an investment into themselves. (In America, the remainder of a microsoft settlement was to be donated to public education IT budgets. — this went right back to Microsoft, as the schools ended up buying more MS Windows licenses.)
Well great, but most people that have a need for a phone and palm-like device don’t want to have to lug around two devices (in addition to wallet, mp3 player and all the other junk). Especially people that use both devices daily. It also means have to sync your contacts and other information between the two devices all the time (such as contacts).
Most people want one simple device that does all it needs (phone, contact manager, writing emails, listening to mp3s, todo list, quick camera, VOIP, etc…) and it dosn’t take far to look that instead of 3-4 devices that a regular buissness person would use you can use one.
So you don’t need one? Great! Don’t buy one.
Right now I do have a choice. But how much longer can I buy a cell phone with MS software? Symbian Software?
From whom will i be able to do this? Right now I can’t buy a desktop from Dell without Windows, I can’t buy one from Gateway or IBM without one either. So what do I do?
I can build a computer, I can’t build a cell phone.
I don’t need shit that sucks down 64MB of memory for an embedded device. I don’t need something that has 3 hours of talk time. With batteries the way they are now, if I don’t use a Color LCD, constant flash access or anything else I should be able to get 7+ hours of talk time…days of standby.
you don’t need them either.
No one does. You think you do because you’re a lemming and a sheep, who buys into market speak! Congrats, you’re my boss.
The all-in-one deal is pretty inevitable. As technology keeps shrinking and manufacturing processes become more efficient, there’s no reason not to integrate more features in a handheld.
Basically… you use what you need, and that’s it. Kind of like a desktop computer. I don’t hear anyone complaining that their computer is too fast and capable, when all they do is play Yahoo! games and use MS Word.
Essentially, it’s just more cost-effective to use modern parts.. and modern parts are more capable, by default, than old parts. So integrating more functions take advantage of modern hardware.
For example – you would never *GO OUT AND BUY* a really old motherboard, 800 meg hard drive, 32meg SIMMs, and an old Pentium Classic… just to run a word processor and web browser. You could get a decent Duron rig with more horse power, ram, and hard drive space for roughly the same price.
Not here its not…
Most people I know have phones with a recognisable, branded OS on them. One, thats ONE, of them has a Windows Mobile phone. The rest, almost all of them, are running Symbian
That may be down to Nokia’s stranglehold on the Irish handset market, but Windows Mobile is behind GEOS in what people I know are using on their cellphone..
While I agree, I tend to think that I right now, my phone works great for what I do. But it’s dying. Soon I will need to buy another one. One that gets worse battery life than this one, and soon I will be pining for the days when my phone was a phone. Not a word processor, camera, game machine, instant messenger, movie player, walkie talkie, etc.
Unfortunately that is becoming rarer and rarer each year. I don’t see the point. I already have a really good PDA. Why would I want a mediocre one in my phone? I have a really good web browser on my laptop…why do I need a mediocre on one a small 3×4 or 6×7 screen?
You’re trading really really good for the mediocre. Does this make sense at all? not to me.
You are saying MS Mobile is overtaking Symbian in the smart phone market? Some numbers please because all the numbers I have seen shows nothing of the kind.
Now, the latest version of Symbian OS is 9, that’s what both UIQ v3 and Series 60 v3 is based off so your note about 8 being the latest is wrong.
Do you really think the major cell phone manufacturers are going to give up controlling their own operating system in favour of using Microsofts offerings?
As far as I can tell Symbian OS will creep down from smart phones to midrange phones, increasing it’s market share. Linux phones will go big in China due to government funding for Linux in cell phones. How Microsoft Mobile will fit in to this I don’t know. It’s neither the technically superiour offering nor the one that makes most economical sense in the long term but I am sure you can outline your reasons beyond “PocketPC destroyed Palm and Microsoft has lots of money”.
If Microsoft really becomes the market leader in mobile phones, that’s just another sign that someone finally has to stop them from using their desktop OS monopoly to create new ones. PalmOS and Symbian are no worse than WinCE (e.g., it’s well known that Documents to Go can even read and write Microsoft Word documents better than PocketWord) and nevertheless Microsoft begins to overtake them (according to Eugenia).
Ok, maybe a phone-Linux would have had a chance if it had been as good as WinCE, but can it be true that you can only compete with Microsoft if you offer a better (or at least as good) application for FREE? If that’s the case, something has to be done. Quickly.
Or is it the moderately high requirements of Linux (at least 208 Mhz, 32 MB RAM)
My ageing 25 MHz 486 doesn’t think so.
while PalmOS/Symbian/WinCE can run on 104 Mhz (or less) in full graphics mode with minimum memory requirements at 8-16 MB?
Perhaps you mean X not linux? There’s no reason a company (eg Trolltech) can’t develop some other graphical environment that runs on linux.
In agreement with the poster above, Symbian 9 is the latest version. 8.0 was, from memory, just 7.0 with UMTS support, and no other functional changes.
There’s no reason a company (eg Trolltech) can’t develop some other graphical environment that runs on linux.
They already have developed one: http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia/index.html
It’s a framebuffer run interface as opposed to X based
>It’s a framebuffer run interface as opposed to X based
and it also requires 32 MB.
and it also requires 32 MB.
which is why i don’t want it on my phone. You can’t get a decent framebuffer, linux or windows based, that are worth putting 32MB into a phone.
It’s just not worth it, period.
The Unix principle is to create an application that does only one job – but it does this job the best way possible.
That doesn’t fit to “phones” with 1000 functions.
Maybe I’m too conversative, but I like phones which are able to… yeah, ring somebody up. Maybe text messaging. But that’s everything a phone needs IMO. If I want to take photos, I’ll buy a digital camera (whose photos are much better anyway), if I want to receive mails, I go into an internet café or something (or better: I go home) and check my mails.
I remember my Palm m105 running on a 16 MHz Motorola processor with 8 MB RAM and 2 MB ROM. Mighty fast for all my needs.
>>Where was Linux all this time? Is the fact that Linux is driven by hobbyists had a role to play to this strict embedded market that has its own rules and needs?
The fact that Linux isn’t the product of any one company means innovation is scattered around and there is no marketing divisions to show the hardware vendors a product they could use. This answer is so easy. Please tell me the article is meant as a paper for his freshman essay class and not seriously for osnews.
my point exactly.
just for laughs, here’s my “requirements” list for a cellphone:
– good battery lifetime, both talking and standby
– good reception in poorly covered areas
– must be possible to voice-dial via bluetooth headset
– must be possible to connect it to my laptop by means of bluetooth, usb cable, or infrared, to comfortably edit the adressbook, put ringtones on it without paying for jamba bullshit, and to use it as a modem (AT commands of course!!)
– as stated above, customizable ringtones. if you’ve ever seen how 20++ suits grab all their pockets because somewhere in the tram there was a nokia default ringtone beeping…
nothing less. and above all, NOTHING MORE!!
>>I’m a huge fan of many simple devices doing what they do well. I don’t want a PDA in my phone, nor do i want a phone in my PDA. I don’t want to browse the web on either of them. I have a laptop for that.
Excellent point! But irrelevent because phone companies see it as a way of justifying a longer service contract out of us so its forced on us basically just like digital cable and other technologies like that.
>This answer is so easy.
The question was rhetorical. If a company was to pick up the pieces and properly market Linux embedded to this sector, things would have been different.
>I don’t want to browse the web on either of them
I browser the net with them all the time. Clearly, our needs are different. The PDA-Phone combo is not going to attract everyone, but it is going to attract a lot of people. And this creates a market division of its own that Linux COULD be bigger. That was the point of the editorial.
If we want linux on a phone, then some of us will make it happen and the rest of us will use it, just as it has happened on the server and desktop arena.
By and large people don’t really want smartphones just yet, least of all, the typical linux user. so it shoudn’t be much of a surprise that linux on smartphones is not really happening.
The “mini-editorial” is asking why Linux didn’t try harder to seize the cell phone market, not why cell phones are over-powerful. While it would be nice to have a phone that focuses more on calls and longer battery life, but that’s not really the point.
I think it would be nice to have more Linux-based phones, and not for more powerful software on a phone. It would be nice to enhance Linux as a platform, increasing its versatility even further.
Further, why should Microsoft be dominating another platform? Why NOT Linux? If we have to “suffer” by being forced to use “too-powerful” phones, at least it could be Linux running the show.
>If we want linux on a phone, then some of us will make it happen and the rest of us will use it
It doesn’t work like that in the phone world. Phones are not flashable or user-installable.
No linux smartphones ??!! See
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9423084269.html
and many other electronic equipments:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/
If M$ is ahead numerically is because M$ PAYS for mobile phone manufacturers to include M$ software.
Eugenia, do you believe Opie ( http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9592191929.html ) interface is worser than M$ WinCE or SymbianOS ?
The truth is that top mobile phones with WinCE and other operating systems are a commercial failure. They are much expensive and people prefer to have distinct equipments for diferent functions.
THANK YOU Dan! That’s exactly the point!
People starting saying “but I don’t need this or that”, but that’s not the point because there are others who do (especially business men). And for these others, there is a NEW MARKET forming! And it was an open door for Linux to jump to the opportunity to dominate to this new market, but instead nothing happened. Now, it’s — again — too late. Between Symbian and Windows, there is only a bit of room for PalmOS and the occasional Linux phone. Sad.
Yes phones are flashable with a JTAG system.
Just like TIVOs are flashable and most other embedded devices.
Yes phones are flashable with a JTAG system.
Just like TIVOs are flashable and most other embedded devices.
Linux smartphones will take of in China – Datung is suporting Linux. The massive chinese wireless market may well give Linux the edge to catch up in the smartphone market in the west. Maybe next year.
>No linux smartphones ??!! See
Who said that there are no linux smartphones at all? No one did. The author just said that it only has 1% of the smartphone market and it’s not going to get better because Windows have already started their domination (along with symbian).
…guess I must have been imagining running Linux with X on my P100 with 16MB of RAM.
It’s an editorial, and it shows. It lacks research and reference to sources. If $editor in question would spend a few minutes looking outside the limiting box she apparently lives in, she’d notice that sofar microsoft is hardly a player on the cellphone market, and is losing out bigtime in the generic embedded market….not all embedded devices need a GUI, yaknow.
Anyway, I have a “smartphone”, and all I know is that it does something with Java. I couldn’t care less what OS lies underneath it, and neither should you. It’s a tool, not a religion.
>Yes phones are flashable with a JTAG system.
Asiamum, you are not realistic. Do you really think that a generic linux distro for phones can work as well as the real thing when each carrier has its own needs and quirks? It’s not gonna happen. And if it is, it only gonna work well for a handful of phones only.
The point is, there is no way Linux can play the same trick it played for desktops: installable side by side with windows, or completely on its own on an ex-Windows machine. If there are only 2-3% of linux desktop systems today, expect less than 0.2% of people doing the same thing on phones. It’s just not the same thing. People don’t want to screw up their phone contracts.
I will say it again: to really have a foothold in the embedded market, the product must be closely tight to the hardware/carrier. A generic distro can not achieve this. It won’t work as well this time for Linux.
Just like a standard distribution of linux couldn’t work with iPaqs and other PDAs…or the iPod or the Nintendo DS or anything else that is embedded.
It IS realistic Eugenia. Just because it isn’t mainstream and in your realm of knowledge does NOT mean it’s not possible or even happening right now underneath your nose.
> or anything else that is embedded.
You AGAIN missing my point that I made clear above. A phone is not the same a PDA or a self-run NDS/iPod/PS2. Phones have contracts. Phones work with carriers that each has its OWN quirks. And in fact, even the PDA versions of Familiar are not supporting all functions of iPaq and battery usage is worse than Windows.
> and in your realm of knowledge
Your tone is unacceptable and unfair. You don’t know what I know and what I don’t, because you don’t know me. I am very familiar with Linux’s (and other OSes) usage in the embedded space.
There are quite a few linux phones in the works. Most of them will run Trolltech’s Qtopia Phone, and will start being released in China first this year. And that’s just the start!
There are also the Motorola phones that run linux, their own gui, and are available now.
The reason why linux hasn’t taken off till now is that no one wrote a phone gui. It has taken Motorola a few years to release their linux phones. Likewise, it has taken Trolltech a while to create Qtopia Phone, which is only the gui system!
Linux is not a business, it’s not a product, it has no mission to destroy or compete with Microsoft or anyone else.
It’s simply a resource that is expanded and refined over time that people use to solve problems. They are using it now to solve the problem of buggy or expensive OS’s and expensive workstations and servers and supercomputing clusters.
They will use it again to solve the next problem.
There is no CEO to push Linux into new markets because that’s not what it’s about. There are no “missed opportunities” for Linux, only new problems to be solved by those who wish to try.
>There is no CEO to push Linux into new markets
No, but there are DISTRO COMPANIES that do that. And the article asks exactly that: why none stepped up?
“The new smart phones are mostly using WinCE and a smaller percentage of these are using Symbian or Palm.”
Symbian have the big part of the market
The reason why linux requires more memory than PalmOS/Symbian/WinCE, is that linux has more functionality, such as the now common in desktop computers multitasking.
Take PalmOS/Symbian/WinCE and make them multitasking, give them full os functionality like linux has such as multimedia playback/capture, and the memory requirements are the same as linux, if not more.
As far as the framebuffer being slow is concerned, thats just plain wrong, if you use an _accelerated_ frambuffer.
Why cannot I not mark you, Eugenia, down for abuse? Are you above all of this because you wrote this piece of shit?
Hey! Calm down! If you don’t like OSNews, then why waste your time flaming people for rational, thought-out, and knowledgable comments. Don’t harass the community if you insist on being immature. Eugenia has done a lot for the open source and Internet community, while you have done nothing but complain. If you hate the system so much, then why don’t you write a better one and offer it up as a replacement?
And to all the people saying “smartphones are dumb because I don’t use or need one,” I can point to many of my friends who love their smartphones and a few who would voluntarily buy a Linux smartphone if it were available. I know the Sharp Zaurus was running Qtopia, and there were even a few variants such as Opie. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possiblity to build a phone that would have all the functions of a PDA and still be running a modded Qtopia-type OS. I suspect that as more and more embedded devices begin to use Linux (such a movement is evident in recent times in devices for audio, network, routers, etc.) Linux may begin to be considered for use in a smartphone. I certainly will buy one if and when it comes out.
Good job, Eugenia, on pointing out another niche market for Linux fill.
Right here:
“they will never”
When you say never like that, without backing it up, you lose credibility.
The basic flaw in the editorial is the lack of understanding of how commercial RTOS providers sell to their customers.
How do cell phone manufacturers (like Ericsson and Nokia) create their embedded OS’es? They licenced commercial RTOS kernels from WindRiver’s VxWorks, Enea’s OSE RTOS and QSSL’s QNX.
http://www.enea.com/templates/Page____158.aspx
It’s like how Cisco keeps on talking about the new generation of their IOS operating system — but Cisco doesn’t really talk about how they based their new IOS OS on a RTOS kernel licensed from QNX.
It’s like how GM’s OnStar unit keeps on saying that their OnStar system is much better than other telematics systems such as Chrysler’s QNX-based system or Microsoft’s telematics system. The funny thing is that the OnStar system is based on QNX as well, but QSSL is prevented by NDA to talk about that.
It is highly likely that Symbian is based on some commercial RTOS kernel as well — but the RTOS kernel provider can’t talk about that too.
Jon > No, but there are DISTRO COMPANIES that do that. And the article asks exactly that: why none stepped up?
Most of the big name DISTRO COMPANIES are concentrating on the Enterprise market. There are only a few companies that actually bundle Linux on Desktop PCs, Laptops and PDAs. There seems to be no huge demand from customers to have Linux on their PC, Laptop or PDA. So why should DISTRO COMPANIES invest money right now to push Linux on SmartPhones?
Another question to ask is what advantages does Linux have that other OSes do not for SmartPhones? Just like in programming, there are advantages for using C++ or using Java for the project. Just because something is free doesn’t make it suitable for every particular market.
Actually, Symbian is EPOC of Psion fame. It is not only “based on”, it is direct descendand and Psion was founding member of the Symbian consortium. Last EPOC release was 5.x, first Symbian release was 6.0.
>There seems to be no huge demand from customers
>to have Linux on their PC
In the beginning there was no huge demand for symbian or MS either, but these companies decided to press the matter and stay focused and then flourish when the time was right for smartphones: 2004+.
It was important that such a linux company existed for at least 4-5 years developing the solution and then boom when the time was right. Yes, there was some risk involved, but the risk was the same for Symbian too.
Besides, no one can deny that the future is mobile. The company that was there early, developing the solution and explode when the time was right did the right move. Palm did it, MS did it, Symbian did it too. There was no such company for Linux though and that’s why I wrote the editorial.
Hehe. I can tell you the feeling I got from reading these comments. It looks (to me at least) like some of you Linux zealots are angry, because Linux is not used on phones so you must point out how you (a) don’t need a OS powered phone or (b) how there are 3 (ok, 4) Linux powered phones on the market.
While obviously most of you are missing the point of this editorial. It doesn’t matter how useless you think these things are, what matters is that the Linux community had a straight chance of proving itself on the mobile market and it failed.
Take PalmOS/Symbian/WinCE and make them multitasking, give them full os functionality like linux has such as multimedia playback/capture, and the memory requirements are the same as linux, if not more.
Symbian has been fully multitasking for years. Version 6 on the Nokia 9210 ran inside 8MB RAM and on a 50Mhz proc. It was also able to playback music/video etc on a system of that spec. The latest incarnation in the 9500 has a 150Mhz CPU and 64MB RAM, though the OS uses little more resources than it used to. So far competing Windoze and Linux systems currently need much faster and more powerhungry hardware. Which makes it slightly obvious why all the major phone companies are shareholders in Symbian and support/churn out loads of phones running the OS. It’s just much better suited to mobile devices.
I’ll agree the notion of Linux on a phone has stumbled off the blocks, but we are in an area where people on average don’t realise there is any kind of OS as they see Windoze. At the moment at least 53% of mobile devices (smartphones/PDAs/etc) sold run Symbian OS, based on information from Canalys here: http://www.canalys.com/pr/2005/r2005012.htm
Finding details of the just the phone sector seems harder, but with most of Microsoft’s main market being the PocketPC rather than phones it’s likely to push the Symbian dominance up toward 70-80% of the market. Showing that Microsoft are very far from taking over this area as the first article suggests, especially when reports show Symbian’s market share growing quarter after quarter.
Short of a major phone manufacterer grabbing a Linux distro and cramming it into a phone, then getting other manufacterers to take it on board, the market is likely to remain dominated by Symbian. All the major players are on board, the OS is light, stable, easy to use and most of all you are truely mobile with a device where the battery won’t go flat if you use it as an MP3 player all day, interspersed with web-browsing, calling, texting, emailing, etc etc etc throughout your day.
As someone pointed out, you cannot build a cellphone-so you take whatever is on it. The success of Linux on servers and now desktops has succeeded in spite of the corporate behwemoths telling us “IBM recommends Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional.” etc.
Why? Because we can. On a cellphone, which has formerly been a single use device, we are pretty much locked out. We don’t expect much from a cell phone other than speaking, so it’s not important that it’s not running an embedded Linux.
As for handheld multi-use devices, there are some excellent Linux projects, for those who are interested. Those involved with Linux projects have not targeted hand helds, perhaps, but that’s their business, we still have plenty of choice.
http://www.handhelds.org/minihowto/
I do not think it is the job of Linux professionals to target hand helds, or target anything for that matter. The projects grow as interested programmers start pet projects. The attack at all costs mode- that sort of mentality is for Microsoft.
I am sure that going forward, Linux will be as big in the hand held as it is elswhere. It’s a natural evolution, not a scheming strategy. All improvements in Linux generally will trickle down to handhelds, so in reality, the Linux handheld concept is not really behind at all…it’s as current at 2.6.11 and going forward!
Hey don’t forget Microware OS9. Some of us have to deal with it on a day to day basis!
These arguments that linux has excessive hardware requirements for mobile phones and PDAs is stupid. You see new WinCE PDAs with Intel ARM 32 bits running at 624MHz:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpdirect/shopping/scripts/generi…
It can run linux perfectly. Use such powerfull hardware to run an stupid and limited operating system like WinCE is put money on trash.
I have and old iPAQ running linux and there are no technical obstacles to put linux on any ARM-based PDA or mobile phone, only M$ marketing and money to convince hardware manufacturers.
cute editorial eugenia, atleast if you wanted a flamefest
the question one must first ask oneself is, what is a smartphone. is it a phone with pda like abilitys or a pda with phone electronics? if its the former then the first smartphone was a nokia i think, a big brick that you folded out to get access to a keyboard. if its the latter then it just recently that they have shown up (blackberry, palm treo).
now then lets look at the diffrent brand of “phones” on the market:
-qtek have some, all wince based.
-hp is starting to make some by mutating their pdas. here we are talking wince again as basicly thats what have allways been used for the ipaq (atleast that i can recall)
-palmone to is mutating their pdas by sticking phone electronics into them. they use palmos but palmsource is looking into using linux as the backend for its next gen palmos. and it complicates matters that there is 2 diffrent corporations, one that makes the hardware, one that makes the os as one dont know what os plamone will use in the future.
-you have blackberry, a newcommer (and i dont know what they are using).
-nokia have some, first using their own os and then going symbian (that one can argue is based on the existing nokia phone os).
-sonyericsson have the Pxxx line. they are running symbian. but its the only SE series of phones that use it.
-siemens have none that i can think of (unless the symbian based ones can be called a smartphone).
-motorola have some that use wince and have done some development on using linux in phones (this was stared before the smartphone got “defined”).
those are what i can think of that have smartphones out.
still, linux on the pda is going strong, and thats where qtopia was first aimed. sharp have a series of pdas based on linux and using qtopia (alltho they originaly used a inhouse os). i dont recall if any of those have phone ability. but as phones move closer to pda and pda moves closer to phone then it may well be that linux can simply jump the gap when the pda and the phone becomes one and the same.
the thing is that there isnt any newcomers thats pushing linux, but there are establised brands that are looking into using linux to speed their development (motorola, sharp, palm). others are going the easy route and licence wince, slap it into a device with some phone electronics and thats it (qtek, hp).
the thing is that unlike the desktop pc, the phone and the pda have allways pushed features over os. hell, the only reason that wince started showing up on phones was that microsoft allowed the hardware companys to make changes to it that would would be unheard of if it was windows on a desktop pc.
i allso want to poke that comment about the desktop war being lost with the release of win95. i dont think so. more and more tasks can be done on the linux desktop. and we are seeing people moving/returning to the mac. the thing is that if all you want is a desktop with office, mail, browser and im ability then a preinstalled linux box can serve you well. people as less asking about “can i run this app?” and more about “can i access this page, my mail or these files? can i do task X?”. basicly the desktop pc is turning into a overgrown pda
So no company stepped up and made a Linux phone (with serious commitment behind it). First of all, that is completely than trying and failing.
“Hey, there was a race today, and you didn’t win, therefore you failed” is not valid if you were never interested in participating.
I’m a fan of Linux on the PC, but on a phone, I couldn’t care less. On the PC, Linux gives me advantages, because it works better for me than any other OS. The tasks I need to do on my cellphone are so simple, there is no way Linux would provide any advantage. It’d be nice if the software was free, and it should be, since its so simple, but from a functionality standpoint, theres no difference. Will Linux allow me to dial a number faster? Store contacts faster? Make snazzier ringtones? No. So I couldn’t care less about it running on a phone.
So no company stepped up and made a Linux phone (with serious commitment behind it). First of all, that is completely than trying and failing.
“Hey, there was a race today, and you didn’t win, therefore you failed” is not valid if you were never interested in participating.
No, but “There was a race today and you didn’t show up. You failed”, is. Think of it more like, 5 years (probably sooner) from now there will be a huge market of PDAs and smart phones and I can see everyone complaining when Microsoft (or some other proprietary company) “owns” that market. Then the Linux community will try to catch on but will have the same difficulties of gaining market share as it has now on the desktop.
I’m a fan of Linux on the PC, but on a phone, I couldn’t care less. On the PC, Linux gives me advantages, because it works better for me than any other OS.
So what if Linux would work better on a phone than any other OS? (btw, I’m not saying it currently works better on the desktop as any other OS, you are)
It’d be nice if the software was free, and it should be, since its so simple, but from a functionality standpoint, theres no difference.
The software is not simple. And it should only be free if the author decides so. But that’s a debate for some other time.
Point is, the world is becoming more and more mobile.
The commentary is flawed on two counts:
1. Symbian already has by far the highest marketshare, and while this marketshare is expected to drop, it will still maintain its dominance for the foreseeable future.
2. Palm has made a commitment “to offer future versions of Palm OS Cobalt as a software layer on top of Linux (specifically, on the Linux kernel plus selected Linux services appropriate to mobile devices).” Therefore, it is likely that within 3 years Linux’s marketshare of the smartphone OS will approach 10%, simply because of this move by Palm. Any other adoptions/use of Linux by Motorola, Chinese manufacturers and so forth, will only add to that figure.
There are plenty of web sites listing the facts about smartphone OS marketshare. For example:
http://www.pdastreet.com/articles/2004/6/2004-6-3-Overview-Symbian-…
For the Palm and Linux announcement, see:
http://www.palmsource.com/about/cms_linuxletter.html
From the country of the mobile phones, Japan, I tell you, there is only one (from Vodafone) and the rest are just nonMS OS. Those mobile phones can do more than most PDAs actually, and therefore are most a full replacement of PDAs.
MS is a 0 player here. Nobody cares, they just want (and get) cheap mobile phones.
Count me in the Guys who want my Devices not to be running multiple things. For example I too have a verizon wireless phone with 2 year contract and a samsung BLABLA( Who Cares) series phone. It has a color screen which bothers me because it feels warm when I have to talk for long. Another irritating technology that the phone has ii called text messaging. How can someone use 10 keys to write 26 characters. Another irritation is the flip thingy I have to struggle every time I get a phone call to open the phone.
I guess it all boils to which age group and nationality the phone manufacturers are trying to target.
Why would someone not want the same cool windows interface which is dominant on desktop, laptop and PDAs.
The kind of integration WinCE provides with exchange based servers is phenomenoal. Only integrated solutions attact people now a days and Microsoft is far better than any *NIX in this department.
why not use a free OS rather than a licenced OS? if linux can perform the duties of a PDA for FREE or little cost, then why use an expensive OS like WinCE?? symbian and palm are much cheaper and those devices are very popular, and memory requirements are lower than WinCE but some people want to play videos on their phone and play games and whatnot so WinCE is the current choice.
Linux would be a good choice, but something that a phone company can develope in house for little cost or sponser a community of linux people to develope an open phone distro.
Another irritating technology that the phone has ii called text messaging. How can someone use 10 keys to write 26 characters.
That’s the first time I’ve encountered anyone saying text messaging is irritating. Well first time since 4 years back when I got my Nokia 3210 and my mate struggled with the then new predictive text feature.
Why would someone not want the same cool windows interface which is dominant on desktop, laptop and PDAs. …… The kind of integration WinCE provides with exchange based servers is phenomenoal.
On the interface, it’s not the interface that’s really the problem. It’s the large code that’s slow and unstable meaning the phone battery goes flat quickly and it has ludicrous hardware requirements that push the cost of the handset up. I know a few people who have tried Microsoft powered phones, and each one has ended up binning it, citing those above reasons.
Exchange integration is no longer a Microsoft only thing when they licensed it out to Symbian, but then if your leading competitor did have 4 times the market share you do, you would license things rather than limit competitors access.
If you don’t want a phone with all the features, don’t get one. When my girlfriend signed up with Cingular she got a free cameraphone with all the features. She uses all of them. When I signed up with Cingular, I got a free phone too. It is a flip phone with a color screen, text messaging, and no other fancy features. Some of you say that’s too much. You sound like my mom… she picked the non-flip with the low resolution screen. It’s not like they don’t make these phones anymore. Stop complaining.
If someone can combine my phone, iPod, camera, and laptop… more power to them. If it’s easy to use, I’ll get one. If it runs Linux, that’s just another plus for a Linux geek like me.
Linux is not the only thing missing on the SmartPhone market.
The recent decision by Mozilla-Foundation to drop the Suite is, in this regard, a bad move either I think.
The Mozilla Application Suite is a communications suite, providing a full application development framework. Wouldn’t it be nice if one could just continue using Mozilla after touching a hyperlink on his smartphones welcome page ? Isn’t that welcome page like a web-page already ? Mozilla offers SVG soon, fantastic for small screens. It would allow writing “embedded” application, far from window managers, that, IMO, are not a real need for SmartPhones. With WindowManagers I meant those, that add a windowing interface with window borders and window widgets. On such a small screen all must be very neat and “embedded” with the rest.
Mozilla also has LDAP connectivity (store your bookmarks & contacts at home on an LDAP server) and much more.
Linux & a modified Mozilla Suite would be my primer choice for SmartPhone.
Motorola has shipped more than one million Linux phones in Asia. Linux on mobile phones is just getting started.
Sorry, I don’t want to have to recompile the kernel for my phone and use a command line to install a new mobile app.
when it come to these things ,but the thing I don’t get is why nobody is using things like MenuetOS on these little devices,maybe i’m missing something but that OS along with the QNX 1.44MB demo disk havvvve alwaqys impressed me as to how much goodness can be crammed into such a small space,Lunix has always seemed such a huge thing
Integrated solutions? Are you a marketing major?
Text messaging is annoying. In fact, I loathe it. I continually have to delete messages from people because I have a few I like to save; my phone seems to offer no way to have a protected folder and an inbox to repeatedly empty. Also, for some reason it seems to be alloted about 8K for text messages; whoever decided a phone with 1.6MB of flash memory dedicated for personal images and voice data should use 8K for text messages …
Also, I just can’t keep up with people. They type a lot faster than I do on the stinkin thing, and it hurts ma fingers!
Plus, people will sit there and text while you are talking to them or out with them. That’s SOOOO annoying! Ladies, don’t answer texts on a first date, it’s a good way to show you are completely unable to detach from your life for 2 bloody hours!
#End RANT
Firefox portable http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/
Centralizing… decentralizing… centralizing… decentralizing… decen……
“What a nonsense, a phone is just for making a call!
I would like it to have an addressbook, keep track of missing calls.
A small todo list or agenda would be nice, just for reminders. Wouldn’t it be sweet if it can play some music while not on the phone. When i’am bored i could watch a videoclip on it. The phone only needs a little bigger screen.
Hmm. While in a conversation its not very handy to make notes in the agenda. I better make a seperate device for that. That will carry my always in reach emails. That personal assistent just doesn’t have the power to work with my databases. I have to take my notebook with me.”
iam too lazy to continu the story lol. all madness.
and of course mswindows is sooo easy, we just let microsoft do all the thinking.
putting/experimenting with “linux” (aka any other os) on a device needs brains and time, which are both not available or _costs_ too much.
you dont need microsoft to crash your phone. nokia has experience with that too.
> Linux is not a business, it’s not a product, it has no mission to destroy or compete with Microsoft or anyone else.
Wrong. Linus Torvalds said recently (in the Linux/Solaris 10 discussion) that one of this goal was to make Sun to disapear. This is another proof that open souce is sometime an industrial terrorism form.
MenuetOS only runs on x86 systems — and cell phones don’t run on x86 chips.
You know that if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket you’ll be absolutely sure that not one gets away – that’s because each crab that’s trying to break out is pulled down by another one that want to get out as well. The net result is none of them can get out. The same’s the case for Linux – too many vendors trying to break out and each one pulls the other one down – MonteVista tries to break out but Redhat or Trolltec pulls it back. If Timesys tries to make a break, MV or some other outfit pulls it down.
The problem is that not one of the embedded systems vendor can actually claim they have a feature that the other guy doesn’t and we get a bunch of linux guys belittling each other and the customer ends up going with Palm or Symbian or Microsoft or RIM. A saying goes: a fight between the lions over a kill always results in the Hyena having a feast.
I continually have to delete messages from people because I have a few I like to save; my phone seems to offer no way to have a protected folder and an inbox to repeatedly empty
Most Sony Ericsson phones have both an “inbox” and a “message archive”. That way u can move stuff you will want to keep to the archive, and then just nuke the whole inbox occasionally.
portable firefox is firefox for a thumbdrive not firefox for a pda/phone environment. it is the normal firefox release bundled for use from a usb thumb drive rather than have to install it to the hard drive on every machine you use.
The real power of Linux comes from the GNU userland stuff. Running it on smart phones is a bit problematic. Symbian and other OSs go to ridiculous lengths to consume as little energy as possible. They also are very anal about running out of memory. These features can be added to Linux-based solutions, but it is most likely costly and time consuming, and therefore not worth it from a business perspective.
That said I know a few people who work for a large mobile phone manufacturer. They have told me of several internal pilot projects on running Linux on smart phones. My guess is that Linux has been run on almost every single modern smart phone somewhere deep in the basements of corporate R&D departments.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4669946597.html
At least in the country with the most cellphones per-capita.
I’m writing from italy, and I’ve NEVER seen a MS based phone, except for the lonely one in stores.
Nobody buys smartphones (in general) and the few who do buy symbian, since Nokias are symbian (series60). A lot of people who have symbian based phones still use them as normal phones, and normally don’t know about the os or apps.
Nokia sells smartphones only because they market them as NORMAL phones and some of them don’t cost too much.
Nobody wants smartphones, actually, and surely not MS ones: it is fery difficult to even find one.
Now i’m pretty sick of all that “omg, x os takes y% of market share!” Do we have to care about market shares all the time? Do we have to follow this “market share” paradigm? AFAICR GNU/Linux was never ever made with intention to take a market share.
I still don’t have a Linux that’ll run on my NEC Mobile Pro (that I’m aware of). That’d be sweet.
No, but there are DISTRO COMPANIES that do that. And the article asks exactly that: why none stepped up?
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Because no one really cares all that much?
Besides, no one can deny that the future is mobile. The company that was there early, developing the solution and explode when the time was right did the right move. Palm did it, MS did it, Symbian did it too. There was no such company for Linux though and that’s why I wrote the editorial.
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Sure they can deny it. Especially when more and more laws are passed regarding the useage of mobile devices because of idiots like you who drive while talking on them, use them to invade people’s privacy (ever hear of upskirting) and the like?
We’re already seeing the useage of mobile devices like cell phones being banned in places like public libraries which is a *VERY* welcomed development.
Or is it the moderately high requirements of Linux (at least 208 Mhz, 32 MB RAM)
What ? Again, I ask: what ? Hell, someone here really needs a reality check here.
First, please, please forget what today people “think” of the so called “linux as a desktop” when you want to use Linux for embedded devices, phones, pdas and the like.
Second, please remember (forgetting Linux for a 3line moment here), there exist implementations of even realtime audio streaming applications which run on a C64.
Third, you probably never ran any Linux on computers which seem to today’s people like crap, meaning 386-486-pI category. I did. It can be done, and it can be used. You don’t need to have multihundred mhz chips under the hood to achieve pretty good usability _for_ _the_ _targeted_ area. Hell, my first x86 PC ever was a 386dx40 with 16 megs of memory and it ran Slackware for quite a while.
http://home.earthlink.net/~solovam/linux-on-clie/linux-on-clie.html
http://www.uclinux.org/ucsimm/
Did you just pull those specs out of your ass?
lighten up…eugenia has as much right to post her opinion as you have right to post yours.
don’t go to the easy out of criticizing a person personally, it’s a lazy attempt at debating and worthless reading.
as far as talking about smartphones and linux, either cell phone companies can do their own work and create a linux-based phone or rely on someone else to do it for them. I doubt these companies are going to do their own work and I doubt that they are comfortable at this point relying on linux distro’s. i feel that companies rely on microsoft because it is easy for them…easy adoption with a large company backing. i would say that would be the case for palm and symbian.
i think when linux can have large gains in the desktop market, is when we’ll start seeing more adoption. i would argue that windows based pda and phone devices are around is because users are familiar with windows on the desktop.
in the end, it’s all speculation.
Consider an example, the Sharp Zaurus, it takes four minutes to boot! does anyone really want that on a cell phone? Why not focus on eCos which is also open source and clearly more suitable for mobile devices. This linux everywere attitude really annoys me. Take win ce for example, at fist MS tried to trim down and adapt the nt kernel to mobile devices, no matter how much they tried it was allways too big, it just wasn’t designed for that purpose, it’s like trying to fit an elephant into a fridge, same as linux on these small devices.
Actually I might be wrong about Linux on the NEC Mobile Pro. Here’s a guy who has a Linux Kernel almost working on an NEC Mobile Pro 400 after only a couple months work.
http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/arpanet/47/lince.html
There is not a chance that manufacturers (especially those like Nokia and network operators) will throw their lot in with Microsoft. The numbers that Microsoft quote for their domination are highly dubious. Microsoft gets their OS on phones through bribery. How many Windows phones do you see in you local mobile shop, and how many people actually think it’s cool to buy one? None, that’s how many. There is the business market, but it’s actually fairly insignificant to the widespread consumer mobile market. It’s new territory for Microsoft, and one where they think their name means something – it doesn’t. Large amounts of R & D will ensure Symbian is always in a good position, but Microsoft’s technology lock-in tactics are something they’ll have to get used to. I digress slightly though.
Companies like Nokia will probably never use Linux-based devices, but those in the far-east actually do (and that’s probably Linux’s best chance). If you can give them a unified framework then they’ll take to it like a duck to water. That market is probably limited in western countries because of the installed inertia, but there is a large opportunity over there. There is a huge in-built hatred, especially of Microsoft, that is almost difficult to put into word that will help immensely. They will not tolerate Windows or even Symbian on a widespread basis.
Out here in New Mexico we still use smoke signals and carry green cards.
Seriously, I have no need of a cell phone and those that carry them are a hazard to driving and annoy others in quiet classrooms.
If you can boot linux within an hour on a 486 it should be ok for a PDA. I don’t see how boot time is important, considering that you DON’T REBOOT PDA’s. You only reboot when you get it locked up or something; the important question is how well it runs on it not how well it boots.
I’d love to have a shell on a pda; I would actually be more likely to get a PDA if I could run all my same console applications. Imagine using pine on your pda and pine on your desktop! Ah the integration inherent in the same application
.
But yea, I can see why OS’s designed for them are probably much better for it; but most people don’t care about having bash on their PDA…..
The article is BS. Lack of data, misconception about phone/pda market, confusion between linux (a technology) and WinMobile/Symbian (solutions).
But the funniest part is that any of comments is about usability. Comments are worst than the article. Usability is the main problem on smart-phones. How to provide lot of feature with a small keyboard and a small screen ? The only thing that help to sell smart-phone are games on consumer market and mail portal for business (blackberry seems to have a good one for this with their own system).
The smart-phone business for consumer PDA replacement is not here (yet). The average market for smart-phone is 10% worldwide and growing, but this is mainly from phone replacement than technology related.
Last check, Motorola was planning on using linux on many of their new smartphones, and last check again, Motorola wasn’t that small a company making cell phones. The whole smart phone market doesn’t need to be dominated by any one distro or system seeing as the smartphone market will get fine tooled to specific tasks. I really don’t feel as though there will be this need to read and send e-mails from their 3″x5″ screen (generous), especially when your doing it on a device that is a phone(i.e. call the person instead). What people want is a device that can sync with their desktop, hold addresses and reminders. Right now, phones can do that, and some do run linux. At my place of business, we use simple LG cell phones that do all of this, and we carry laptops around, so if we do need that quick computing need, it’s avail. All of this looks to me like another consumerism ploy to move hardware.
Linux need not worry, because in the end, all the services requested from this “smartphone” will probably be served up by linux servers anyways, and there’s were the real satisfaction should come from.
The simple answer is that Linux is not yet compatible iwth the smartphone market because the vendors rely upon custom hardware and the competitive edge of a closed proprietary solution. Put Linux in there, and vendors are obliged to offer GPL source code, and what’ll happen is that a competitor will take the source code and use it, leveraging the work for no cost. There’s no compelling argument for a vendor to use Linux.
there are some important diffrences between the smartphone and the pc market. the first and formost is that 90% of the features of a smartphone is related to standards set by a third party, you have to be able to talk to the same phone network as all the others, you have to be able to handle sms and mms messages and so on. about the only time you get into proprietary troubles is when the phone trys to interact with the desktop pc world, office files, address book sync and so on. phone to phone it doesnt matter what os you have as long as it can work with the established standards of the phone world.
this is why linux as a desktop os is a uphill battle, it have to play nice with windows, and windows dont want to play nice. but on the phone windows is just another player in the field, there is no active directory that you have to be able to integrate with and so on.
i do wonder what will happen when/if novells latest move realy gathers momentum. or is active directory to entrenched in the corporate world?
Does this look like a 206MHz CPU or 32MB of RAM???
http://palm-linux.sourceforge.net/
Do your research so you don’t look like an idiot when you post your smack.
>Does this look like a 206MHz CPU or 32MB of RAM???
That is an ancient version without a gui mate. You don’t plan to use that on a pda are you?
on my 486 w/ 12MB of ram so why the hell not?
you really need to get your facts straight before you post editorials, your opinion is just way too wrong way too often.
See, this is the problem. We just simply MUST have the latest and greatest all singing mobile phone that in reality does a whole heap of shit that most of us don’t really need.
People – look up the definition for Phone. Please. What is its primary purpose? Why are we continually adding crap onto a device like this? I don’t want a !#$!#! all singing, dancing pile of crap. I want a phone. I make calls. I answer calls. It has voicemail. That’s all. Nothing else. As someone else posted earlier – it’s getting to the point where i’m *forced* buy one of these new crappy devices – where is my choice? I want a simple phone. Nothing more, and nothing less.
My Nokia 6610 – i’ve *never* used the Calendar in like nearly 3 years. Never played a game on it in the same time. Used the alarm clock for a few days when my usual alarm clock had died. Let me see…I missed a call? OK, then why doesn’t it tell me when that call called me? It has everything else under the sun, but what I really want to know. This is what happens when you let dumbass marketing phreaks dictate the technology at hand. You get a mess.
Dave