The Nokia N9 is the first and last phone the company plans to make running the MeeGo Linux operating system. That might be enough to convince you not to buy the phone, since any apps you purchase probably won’t be able to run on the next phone you buy in a few years. But it’s still nice to have a chocie, because the N9 looks like a pretty awesome phone.

Unfortunately if you’re in the US, the choice is pretty simple — because Engadget reports Nokia won’t be offering the N9 in the States. There’s also mounting evidence that the N9 won’t be available in the UK either.

The Nokia N9 has a 3.9 inch, 854 x 480 pixel curved AMOLED display and a 1 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 processor. The phone’s camera has an 8MP sensor and a wide-angle 28mm lens.

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Nokia has been working on a new Linux-based smartphone operating system for a couple of years. Originally called Maemo, the project merged with the Moblin netbook Linux project a while back to become MeeGo, a customizable, robust touch-friendly Linux-based operating system. Eventually the plan was to use MeeGo instead of Symbian in high-end smartphones. But then Nokia decided to sign a partnership with Microsoft to use Windows Phone 7 instead and most people figured that was the end of Nokia’s MeeGo ambitions.

But it turns out Nokia will launch one consumer device based on MeeGo. The company has unveiled a new smartphone called the Nokia N9. It’s a slick looking smartphone with the specs to match including a 3.9 inch, 854 x 480 pixel curved AMOLED display, a 1 GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor, and an 8MP camera with a wide-angle 28mm lens.

The phone runs a new finger-friendly version of MeeGo which looks absolutely wonderful in the demo videos (although that’s kind of what demo videos are for). There’s a Webkit-based browser, a maps application with turn-by-turn navigation, and a user interface designed for fingure input including support for swipe-from-the-screen-edge gestures to switch between functions.

Overall it looks like a great phone and it’s a shame that because it’s likely to be the first and last MeeGo phone from Nokia it’s unlikely that you’ll see a huge push for third party apps or other new features for the phone. That said, MeeGo is open source software and it’s possible that we could see other developers pick up the torch and carry on.

Nokia is also releasing a new phone aimed at developers called the Nokia N950. It’s similar to the N9 in many respects, but it has a slide-out keyboard and a 4 inch display. This model won’t be sold at retail, but instead will be made available to MeeGo developers.

via The Nokia Blog

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Nokia still sells more phones than any other company on the planet. But the company’s market share is rapidly declining and the Symbian smartphone operating system which powers Nokia’s high-end devices has been seriously lagging behind iOS and Android in development. Today Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced the company is going to take pretty drastic action in an attempt to turn things around: it’s dropping Symbian and partnering with Microsoft to design Windows Phone 7 devices.

It sounds like Nokia is also stepping back from its commitment to MeeGo Linux. In other words, Nokia will be dropping two open source mobile operating systems and replacing them with one of the most closed ecosystems available. I’m sure geeks are going to love that.

But the move isn’t really about geeks. It’s about offering phones that appeal to the masses. In recent years the iPhone and a number of Android phones have become the exciting, must-have devices, while Nokia’s offerings in the smartphone space have failed to gain much traction.

Windows Phone seems like a strange choice, because the fledgling operating system is still very young and hasn’t gained much traction either. But that might be exactly why Nokia and Microsoft are working together: they might just need each other. Microsoft benefits by partnering with the biggest phone maker in the world to expand its reach, while Nokia gets to work with the largest software company in the world… one which is trying desperately to make up for the fact that its Windows Mobile operating system hardly changed from 2000 to 2010.

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You know what the best way is to run Android apps on your phone? Buy a phone running the Google Android operating system. But pretty soon it might not be the only way. A company called Myriad has announced a new tool called Alien Dalvik which allows phone makers, operators, and others to offer Android applications for non-Android phones. The company will demonstrated the technology at Mobile World Congress next week.

If Dalvik sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the Java platform Google uses for Android. In fact, the Android OS is basically a Linux kernel and the Dalvik Java virtual machine. Apps actually run on Dalvik, which means that if you can get Dalvik running properly on another operating system there’s little to prevent you from running Android apps. That’s why there’s a rumor going around that the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet might be able to run Android apps — because all Research in Motion would have to do would be to choose Dalvik as the Java virtual machine for the operating system.

Anyway, back to Myriad’s Alien Dalvik, the platform is designed to let most Android apps run unmodified on other operating systems. All you have to do is repackage the Android APK installer files. That way software makers, app stores, and other folks looking to distribute apps could essentially provide the same apps for Android and other platforms with little to no extra coding.

From an end user standpoint, you’ll be able to install and run apps the same was as any other native app. You won’t really be able to tell the difference between say, a MeeGo app or an Android app once its installed — although the UI may or may not be designed to take advantage of the hardware buttons on your phone. That’s why you’ll see Home and Back software buttons at the bottom of the screen.

The first platform Myriad will support will be MeeGo, with a commercially available version of Alien Dalvik expected to launch for MeeGo later this year.

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I started covering modern smartphone operating systems, it’s that someone out there is trying to get every single one to run on the HTC HD2. While the phone ships with Windows Mobile 6.5, we seen users figure out how to install Windows Phone 7, Google Android, and even Ubuntu 10.10. Now it looks like we can add MeeGo Linux to that list.

Developer Steven Toughton-Smith has managed to get MeeGo working on the HD2. The project is still a work in progress, but the operating system loads and applications run. The touchscreen and WiFi are both working, although not perfectly at the moment.

via PocketNow

Nokia has released a new plug-in for the Nokia Qt SDK which allows third party app developers to enable native push notifications. In plain English, that means apps like news apps, instant messengers, or social networking tools will be able to let you know when there’s an update more easily.

Because the API now supports native push notifications, it means that apps won’t have to constantly run in the background or constantly poll for data using your phone’s wireless communications to get updates. This should reduce the battery drain these apps use.

Nokia recently took over development of the Symbian platform, and announced that updates would be made through the Qt developer tools, and it looks like this is one of the first major such changes, applying to both Symbian and MeeGo devices using Nokia’s platform.

via GottaBeMobile

MeeGo 1.1

The folks behind the new MeeGo operating system for smartphones have announced the minimum hardware requirements to run the upcoming MeeGo 1.2 operating system. Basically in order to play, a handset will need a 600MHz or faster ARM v7 or x86 processor, 512MB or more of RAM, and 512MB or more of storage space.

Most higher end smartphones released in the last year or two already meet those specifications, so it doesn’t look like MeeGo is shooting for the stars here. But by making it clear that MeeGo 1.2 won’t support less powerful devices, the developers can focus on developing a user experience that should work well on all supported devices.

MeeGo 1.2 is due out in April.

This week at the MeeGo Conference in Dublin, developers of the mobile operating system showed off the latest builds of MeeGo 1.1 for smartphones. The software is based on the same Linux core as MeeGo for netbooks, tablets, and other devices, but the UI has been completely retooled for smartphones — although it’s still a work in progress.

Chippy from CarryPad shot a video fo the demo, which you can check out after the break.

Right now there’s a home screen which provides quick access to your most frequently used applications, and a button to open the program launcher with all of your other apps. The Quick launch bard with access to the browser, phone app, and music player is visible on both the main screen and the launcher.

The user experience looks pretty decent, but what’s really going to matter more than anything is how well the core apps work and how successful MeeGo becomes as a platform for third party apps. If it can run Facebook, Pandora, and Netflix apps, there’s no reason MeeGo couldn’t take its place among the dominant smartphone platforms. On the other hand, if that’s all it does, there won’t be much to differentiate MeeGo from other platforms, aside from its open source development platform which might appeal to some enthusiasts.

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