Wireless Archive

David Beers was in attendance at LinuxWorld San Francisco where PalmSource was exhibiting the Access Linux Platform. PalmSource also held a full day of hands-on tutorials in which they built and debugged native applications for mobile Linux. In this article David brings us up to date on ALP, its progress and other details on and what was being presented about ALP at LinuxWorld.

Telephia released some very interesting research numbers on mobile web browsing in USA (both on feature phones and smartphones). Openwave (free simulator) leads with 27% and together with Motorola they make over 50% of the US mobile browsing market. Apparently, Americans mostly care about Mail, Weather and Sports when it comes to mobile browsing. Opera Mini is pretty popular lately, but it seems that Telephia only counted the pre-installed browsers in their survey. When we are talking worldwide numbers and only about smartphones though, Nokia's S60/80/90 phones are beating everyone else with over 64% of the smartphone worldwide market share (please note though that smartphones make up only about ~10% of the overall phone market but their numbers are growing fast).

Sony's newly announced Mylo WiFi handheld multi-function device will run a Linux OS, along with Trolltech's Qtopia app framework and Opera's device-oriented web browser, LinuxDevices is reporting.

Last week we had a news item about a T9-like technology for PalmOS and PocketPC that its version 1.0 was released for free. Xrgomics, the company behind TenGO, sent us the new full version of the software, v2.0, plus TenGO Thumb for a quick review. Check it out!

Cnet did an interesting comparison: Samsung's recently released UMPC, vs. the... Apple Newton. "Fans will tell you that the Apple Newton was years ahead of its time. Ten years on we're going to put that claim to the test. We're pitting a vintage Apple Newton against the brand-new Samsung Q1 ultra-mobile PC in a head-to-head battle." What's more suprising is the winner, however.

Hi-Mobile.net sent us over for a review the first ever phone that ships with UIQ 3.0: the Sony Ericsson M600i. This 3G SymbianOS 9.1 smartphone is one of the most popular this summer (selling at below 375 USD) and so we decided to give it a whirl too. Read on for more info, pictures, screenshots and a video of the device, the P990's little brother.

Developers interested in porting applications to PalmSource's Linux implementation for mobile phones are invited to a special "PalmSource Developer Day" at this year's LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco. Attendees will receive early access to the Access Linux Platform, and get hands-on experience building applications for the platform.

The Shared Source Device Emulator is a compressed archive of the source code to the Device Emulator V1.0, buildable using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The Device Emulator is a software simulation of an ARM CPU and motherboard, that runs the Windows CE and Windows Mobile operating systems. This source release can be used as an research and experimentation platform: the CPU emulator can be modified or replaced, as can the motherboard, peripheral devices, and emulator UI. If ported to Unix it will make easier the development, debugging and testing of ARM-compiled Qtopia and Linux-based applications for phones/PDAs.

Symbian Limited has just announced a new version of its very widely used operating system for smartphones. The most significant new features in Symbian OS 9.3 are native support for Wi-Fi wireless networking and USB 2.0 on-the-go. It also offers shorter start-up times for phones and key applications as well as improved memory management, resulting in more responsive devices. For the most part, though, Symbian OS 9.3 is an incremental upgrade to the previous version with no major improvements.

The OpenZaurus Project has released a new version of its Linux-based software stack for Sharp Zaurus PDAs. OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1 is based on a 2.6.16 Linux kernel, and includes some 13,000 "ready-to-install" packages. Nine Zaurus models are fully supported, while others can be updated selectively.

BlogBeebe, who has reviewed the Nokia 770 before, now reviews the 2006 version of the 770 OS. "I was not happy to find out I'd paid my USD 360 to become a captive beta tester. I find there's still a lot that needs to be cleaned up, enhanced, or just plain deleted. I suppose, over time, it will continue to advance and improve, and I'll upgrade (more carefully, after the Beta 2006 fiasco) as the enhancements emerge. But for personal as well as professional use I'm going to think long and hard before recommending Nokia."

Following a beta release on June 9, Nokia has released a highly anticipated Linux operating system update for the 770 Internet Tablet. The Tablet OS 2006 update is now available for download by 770 owners on Nokia's website. The Tablet OS 2006 upgrade apparently completely wipes out all Tablet OS 2005 applications. Specifically, the Nokia 770 upgrade page states, "Installed applications designed for OS 2005 will not be compatible with OS 2006 edition and will not be restored even from backup."

In an effort to save Palm OS, work has been started on an open source clone of the operating system. The author aims to make the clone OS binary and source compatible with Palm OS 5 wherever possible while still moving the OS forward with features like memory protection and multi-tasking. The project is at its infancy (it does not have a website yet), but the person behind it is asking for help.

Silicon Valley startup a la Mobile has announced what it calls the industry's first 'complete' Linux-based smartphone operating system. The Convergent Linux Platform will enter a field crowded with alternatives from MontaVista, Trolltech, ACCESS/PalmSource, and Wind River, among others.