back to article Intel and Nokia's brave new world

Intel and Nokia today announced a long-term relationship focused on future mobile products, then hosted a conference call with reporters and analysts to discuss why, what, when, where, and how. You can be sure that Redmond is listening closely. Today's discussion was long on why, cagey on what, and noncommittal on when, where …

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  1. Mark Burton
    Linux

    I look forward to my water cooled mobile

    I see them trying to create some kind of super-smart phone and in the attempt owning the whole stack. Devices the size of a large smart phone, but with more cpu + accelerator grunt. Could really stir things up

    Maybe goodnight and goodbye SymbianOS.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Why Linux?

    Because they haven't got their own OS, and it's the least worst option.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    Dreaming

    "...today's announcement adds fuel to speculation that the "brave new world" of mobile computing devices won't be ruled by Redmond"

    You are kidding. What's said for the press and what takes place behind closed doors are entirely different. Intel are wedded to Microsoft. AMD are floundering, there is no competition so Intel may feel they can be vocally brave, however, they will counteract any Nokia influence on Linux - the former paper manufacturer are suffering and are the minority partner in all this.

    Nice to have the dream but MS on mobiles will continue and HTC and the like will continue to churn out products with this disability.

  4. Andus McCoatover
    Pint

    Maybe goodnight and goodbye Sybian OS

    Oops, my mis-spelling...Meant SyMbian. Possibly. Both are for wan*kers.

    In other news......

    Whoohoo! New Icons!! - Esp. the "new keyboard"!

    RESPEKT, Natch!! Thanks!

    Of course, it means Paris won't get used so often. Hope she doesn't mind.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Why? What good can or will it do?

    It seems that hardware is going, leaping and abounding into the future but telcos?

    Aren't the telcos stuck in a mid-1990's sort of rut that means no matter what the hardware can do or is capable of doing the very important bit in the middle provided by telcos is going to stop it happening.

    Maybe one reason the iPhone dragged and is still having to drag telcos into 21st century is clout, brawn, brains and muscle taken to force a chosen and contractually committed telco into this brave new day?

    Face it yes?

    The hardware is going nowhere with fossilised telcos wanting to stick to outmoded, outdated and jurassic working models.

    Good luck guys - you'll need it!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nokia and linux is a bad combination.

    A linux geek myself, I spent a long time trying to cope with Maemo (on an "internet tablet"), and I was amazed at how seamlessly Nokia had managed to stuff the worst aspects of Windows 98 into a crippled, locked-down shell that they called a "linux distro" because, allegedly, there was indeed a linux kernel buried somewhere underneath the suck. By contrast, my S60 phone basically... well, pretty much actually works.

    Linux would be nice if Nokia could find some people who actually know anything about linux to do the implementation... otherwise, they really ought to just make a better Communicator and not muck about with stuff they're so obviously incompetent at.

  7. Gene Cash Silver badge
    FAIL

    Maemo & Nokia suck

    Yeah, I agree with the AC. They managed to screw up a Debian distribution with apt and packages, yet to upgrade you had to reflash your ROMs and lose all your apps and customizations! In the last rev, they finally realized "oh yeah, we can do that package thing" - it took 'em 4 OS revs to figure that out.

    Plus, instead of good ol' debugged crond, they went to some sort of alarm daemon that died frequently, meaning you lost alarms and reminders a LOT. That should tell you the "not invented here" mentality we're dealing with.

    Also in the last rev, they went to HUGE ICONS IN THE START MENU. They're so large that you can only get 5 menu items, which pretty much eliminates any user-friendlyness. The excuse was "people can't hit the old menu items with the fingers" - A) there was no complaints, at least on internettablettalk.com, B) I had no such problems, and C) that's what the stylus is for!

    Later, we discovered that the guy that did the touchscreen stuff left, and the new guys didn't know how to use the pressure readings system, so they screwed up the GUI to match.

    Then they announced another rev called Freemantle about 11 months ago. However "it won't be compatible with the N800/N810" and will need an unspecified new device. Then the tumbleweeds appeared and we haven't heard anything since.

    I believe Nokia has laid off all its Maemo developer staff as there's been NO new development, no maemo.com upgrades and no new news on internettablettalk.com. The last news articles on ITT have been about the Kindle and the fact you can't delete blog posts, for cryin' out loud!

    And of course I'm sure El Reg remembers the epic bag of fail that is Ovi.

    This is sad, because I wrote a nice bunch of useful (at least to me) apps in Python and pyGTK.

    They're still not nearly as bad as Palm though. The hardware actually works, and I've never had an issue with the touchscreen, plus I regularly get 2 weeks between charges with some pretty heavy use.

  8. Bonnie
    Paris Hilton

    Am I the only one to see that...

    ...Nokia and Intel are trying to offset Google and their Android here? Merging Moblin and Maemo is survival tactics. In these days of application stores there isn't any room for marginal platforms.

  9. Shonko Kid
    FAIL

    Brave New World?

    One in which ARM never existed presumably?

    This sort of thrashing I expect from Intel, who are desperate to remain relevant in the mobile world, but Nokia? Why are they even giving them the time of day? All I can imagine is that it's in return for some ready-to-roll netbook reference designs.

  10. Big Softie
    Headmaster

    This is all about Nokia....

    ..... digging themselves out of the hole they're in.

    Many moons ago Nokia "collaborated" with Texas Instruments to build the next generation high-end/Smartphone architecture, and so was born OMAP. Sound familiar?

    OMAP was a runaway success for TI and has powered the majority of Nokia phones ever since. The trouble is times are hard and the end user market still expects more and more for less money. It's nigh impossible to reduce the BOM of your handsets when you're tied in to a sole source supplier for your key semiconductor platform. Meanwhile Nokia is hurting like hell. R&D is hellish expensive, and they bought out the rest of Symbian with the intention of giving the software away for free. They're now culling all those Symbian employees left, right, and centre.

    What's the solution - where are the big dollars gonna come from to fund further R&D and get Nokia out of their single source supply trap? Please step forward any large company with deep pockets, and lots of money in the bank to invest. Arrogant candidates exhibiting intense desperation to be in small factor devices will be viewed favourably.

  11. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Penny Black Thoughts for $terling Deeds

    "today's announcement adds fuel to speculation that the "brave new world" of mobile computing devices won't be ruled by Redmond."

    Sadly for Microsoft Redmond, did they never Dare to Creatively Imagine that Possibility for Assured Probability ...... although they can/could easily jump to the front of the Virtualisation Methodology Queue, with their Penchant Habit of Purchasing Lead Pioneers for Corporate Assimilation. ........ which leaves them Virtually Open to Transparent Semantic Rogue Research and Stealth Market TakeOver and AIMakeOver.

    A Priceless Virtual Program is always a Pleasure to Cost as every Payment is Immaculately Perfect and Relative to Perceived Real Worth ........ and its Value is in Spending its Capitalisation/Liquidity, rather than it be Used and Abused to Create Debt Systems with Bankers in Control of Money Supply to Third Party Dodgy Friends for Failed and failing LOVE Affairs ...... Live Operational Virtualised Environments....... Politicised Realities.

  12. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Black Helicopters

    Re: Why Linux?

    "Because they haven't got their own OS, and it's the least worst option."

    Well yes, but the evidence is that hardware vendors who have no OS not only choose Linux but also then pour a huge amount of effort into making a proprietary distro that eliminates all the advantages. There must be something about Linux. It seems to attract highly competent software types and utterly clueless hardware executives.

    BTW: The new icons are nice but there's still no evil penguin.

  13. spencer
    Linux

    why not ARM?

    if it's running linux (and not windows) then why does intel even need to be involved?

  14. W
    Badgers

    "Over 64 billion web pages exist today"

    What does that even mean any more? Measuring the internet in web pages only tells half the story of how the web is being. It might be a vaguely useful metric for something like Geocities (RIP) or maybe Wikipedia. But when we have constantly updating pages like a gmail inbox, facebook homepage, online RSS readers, etc And that's without mentioning twitter, last.fm and other widgets, plus online office doc and image editors. So quantifying the web in terms of page numbers is to miss the point somewhat.

    And while we're on the subject of Web 2.0 being made of badgers' paws...

    These new icons: Where's the Good Google / Bad Google? Are Schmidt/Brin/Page not recognisable enough? Afraid of copyright probs if you use the G from the logo? What about a bad Tux icon?

  15. hj
    Black Helicopters

    Re: Why Linux?

    They do not want linux, just good conditions from Microsoft. (i am afraid)

  16. Number6

    Italics

    Was he speaking italics or did his voice just go a bit wobbly?

    As for ARM processors, Intel used to be able to produce their own but sold that bit of the business to Marvell.

  17. Wonderbird
    Linux

    Might be QT related?

    Nokia bought out TrollTech not too long ago... The QT toolkit is one of the BEST cross-platform development frameworks out there... (How this fits in I'm not yet sure...)

  18. Rex Alfie Lee
    Linux

    Power, Miniaturised Power

    The problem here is to have a complete & practical solution that runs on a micro-computer (not to be confused with the old micro-computers which were about the size of 3 of todays home comps). A real Windows Mobile OS (almost an oxymoron in itself) will never run that well on these micro-environments & Intel has no say in how the OS can be optimised & they want to remain relevant. I do believe that the Atom 1.6 is a far better CPU than that offered by the other attempts at a micro-environment CPU. It runs remarkably well with Linux on-board & I can run even eclipse quite nicely, thank you.

    So Intel has a real reason to be there & the likelihood that Windows Mobile will remain competitive is doubtful. They can't get it working well now let alone later with a full hardware list & memory-sucking software resources. Compared with a stream-lined Linux version (I'm not sure that maemo is the ideal choice & perhaps Nokia should jump on the gOS bandwagon), but either way I think it's obvious that none of the mobile operators really want to be stuck with Windows as they can see what's happened with the iPhone & the Android options.

    Up until recently M$'s Mindows Wobble has had minimal competitors other than Symbian but suddenly along came the Blackberry & flouted an argument that M$ couldn't debate bcoz the customers loved it. Then came the iPhone & the Wobble began. Now with the onslaught of various versions of gOS on many phones about to collectively overwhelm the market, even Apple is biting its nails.

    M$'s Mindows Wobble is nearing the dustbin & as soon as a competitor to Outlook is complete which won't be long there will be no reason to stick with Microsucks.

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