LINux on MOBile - LiMoLINMOB.net is a blog about LINux on MOBile devices. With the PinePhone (Pro) and Librem 5 shipping it is back to report on GNU+Linux on mobile devices.Zola2011-10-04T18:43:00+00:00https://linmob.net/tags/limo/feed.xmlMer - again!2011-10-04T18:43:00+00:002011-10-04T18:43:00+00:00https://linmob.net/mer-again/<p>Remember Mer? That attempt to build a free Maemo distribution by replacing the closed source parts of Maemo (yes, there were some), which was halted when MeeGo was introduced? Remember that Mer stood for “Maemo Reconstructed? Well, if you don't remember that, I didn't remember the second part, either.</p>
<p>Now that MeeGo is, say, abandoned, Mer is live again. </p>
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<p>It's a little complicated to understand all this. First of all, there wasn't just one “MeeGo” distribution, there were at least two—the open source project, Nokias MeeGo (Harmattan (N9, N950)) and so on. Talking of releases, this becomes a mess, so I don't want to go into detail.</p>
<p>Now that Intel, The Linux Foundation and the LiMo Foundation (that backed the MeeGo competitor “LiMo” before, which is better defined as a set of technologies or a middleware than as a mobile OS (unlike Android, ..)) moved on to build something new again, which they call “Tizen”, there are (naturally) some MeeGo developers - or to put it differently—some persons in the MeeGo community, that don't really like this move (towards HTML5, towards yet another platform initiative) and want to go on with MeeGo. For all these people, Mer is a vehicle.</p>
<p>As I may be not all correct with this post, I highly recommend you to read <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/meego-dev@meego.com/msg10749.html">Carsten Munks Mailing List post</a>.</p>
<p>Make sure to check out <a href="http://mer-l-in.blogspot.com/2011/08/restructure-meego-by-installments.html">this Mer blog</a>, too.</p>
Breaking news: TIZEN is LiMo+MeeGo+HTML52011-09-28T11:07:00+00:002011-09-28T11:07:00+00:00https://linmob.net/breaking-news-tizen-is-limo-meego-html5/<p><em>It's a nice day, the weather in Munich is awesome, but I am staying in during lunch break to write this article on what just happened today.</em></p>
<p>Today <a href="http://www.tizen.org">Tizen</a> was announced. Tizen is yet another Linux based operating system, which replaces (read: probably merges) <a href="http://limofoundation.org/">LiMo</a> and <a href="http://www.meego.com">MeeGo</a> into one common platform which is supposed to be optimized for HTML5 apps. </p>
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<img style="clear:left;float:left;margin-right:1em;margin-bottom:1em" height="101" width="316" src="tizen.gif" />
While MeeGo relying pretty heavily on Qt and LiMo was known for it's use of GTK+ (in its fourth release GTK+ was joined by <abbr title="Enlightenment Foundation Libraries">EFL</abbr>, but as there are no known devices build around the LiMo r4 platform, let's forget this here ;) ), this is a change to, let's call it “Linux + Something (doesn't really matter, as all of the afore mentioned Toolkits/Frameworks include their own flavour of WebKit) + WebKit.
<p>The first release of Tizen, which is backed by Intel, Samsung, The Linux Foundation and most likely other players is going to be released alongside an SDK in the <strong>first quarter of 2012</strong>. Tizen is meant to run on a variety of different classes of devices, namely Smartphones, Tablets, Netbooks, In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems and Smart TVs. </p>
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<p>I am not really sure what to make out of all this. It feels like an insane stunt. While it certainly makes sense to merge two foundering platforms, the HTML5 move seems odd and nothing else, considering that webOS, which was build using these exact technologies, is dying, partly because of its extensive use of these technologies which simply aren't that mature yet (webOS always had speed issues). There is one more concern: Is there the room for yet another platform? With Windows 8 coming to ARM, Android being really huge and still growing (despite all the issues it is facing), there is not that much room for another player, as Apple has a large share of the market, too.And then there is Chrome OS, which is basically a glorified web browser, a competitor which may be (when first mass market aimed Tizen devices will surface, it will likely be late 2012 or 2013) different and stronger than we expect it to be right now.</p>
<p>However, I wish the new Tizen project the very best luck and success, because I believe that the market and the users need a truly open alternative. Tizen could fill this vacancy, let's hope it will do!</p>
<p><strong>SOURCES:</strong> <a href="https://www.tizen.org/blogs/dawnfoster/2011/welcome-tizen">Tizen.org</a>, <a href="https://meego.com/community/blogs/imad/2011/whats-next-meego">MeeGo</a>, <a href="http://limofoundation.org/en/limotizen.html">LiMo</a></p>
Android 2.3.3 on the Samsung GT-i83202011-05-10T15:40:00+00:002011-05-10T15:40:00+00:00https://linmob.net/android-2-3-3-on-the-samsung-gt-i8320/<p>It's not a huge step and I haven`t tried this out myself yet, but I am very happy to see some Gingerbread coming to the <b>Samsung GT-i8320</b> (you know, that's this mid-2009 phone with WVGA AMOLED screen, TI OMAP 3430 which ran a LiMo compliant OS OOTB) - as there is little ..err.. no evidence that anyone is porting over 2.3.x to the Acer Stream it is nice to have one device that runs the most beautiful iteration of Android for smartphones yet at faster than G1 speeds.
<p>Don't expect this to be perfectly reliable yet, there are a few things that simply don't work yet:</p>
</p><ul><li>GPRS / 3G data</li><li> Cameras </li><li>GPS</li><li>SMS are said to be unreliable</li><li>apparently there are (almost random?) restarts</li></ul>Still, it's great to see this project improving. Kudos to everyone involved, especially to <i>mephisto</i>, the chinese mastermind behind this port.
<p><a href="http://code.google.com/p/h1droid/">h1droid Project page (Google Code)</a>
<a href="http://samsungi8320.freeforums.org/index.php">Samsung i8320 Forums</a></p>
Samsung GT-i8320 - Impressions of the LiMo compliant Vodafone 360 OS2011-03-27T17:35:00+00:002011-03-27T17:35:00+00:00https://linmob.net/samsung-gt-i8320-impressions-of-the-limo-compliant/<p>Of course I didn't get the Samsung H1 / GT-i8320 to use it with the preinstalled system, a LiMo compliant system made customized for the 360 service of Vodafone (an European operator), I bought one to play with the original software, bought it to try MeeGo, Android, SHR and other software on this. </p>
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<p>But right now I am using it with the original LiMo compliant software - features like FM Radio or the quite ok camera don't work on Android yet (H1droid, which, btw, was sluggish from time to time (not due to RAM shortage)) and they are nice to have.</p>
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<p>In fact, the original OS on the H1 is not too bad. Its UI is certainly not for business use, rather for the young, social animal. Nontheless the Facebook application for the 360 platform is disappointing, and I didn't find a twitter client (and there won't be one, as the 360 platform has been discontinued by Vodafone).</p>
<p>It's not the first time that I want to write: “Good ideas poorly carried out.” In a way this is different though. As there is no public SDK for native software (only a SDK for widgets), you don't find much software - some doesn't work (I tried to run a chinese FBreader port, which didn't install).. nontheless, out there are tons of applications that could run on this LiMo r2 compliant software platform, as it is build around GTK+ and clutter. And that's not all: Some J2ME apps don't run well, permission settings for these are crippled and makes using some of these painful (read: those requiring permissions, e.g. for web access).</p>
<p>Think of Abiword embedded, fbreader-gtk, pidgin or gwibber or the GPE PIM apps - great opportunities missed due to the closed nature of a platform, that was sold as a smartphone platform, but in reality, as it exists, offers no more than a feature phone platform would. </p>
<p>As you may have guessed already, I will spend my free time (as soon as I will have free time again) to try porting those FOSS applications to the LiMo compliant 360 OS.</p>
<p>If you love videos, I <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR99GXSpSgE">recommend this video review by phonearena.com</a>.</p>
Samsung GT-i8320 - one day, plenty results2011-03-23T09:15:00+00:002011-03-23T09:15:00+00:00https://linmob.net/samsung-gt-i8320-one-day-plenty-results/<p>Yesterday I finally received the smartphone I planned to buy since february: The Samsung GT-i8320, a TI OMAP 3430, WVGA AMOLED phone which was sold by Vodafone running a LiMo r2 compliant OS. </p>
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<p>While there is an Android port on the way (which I didn't try yet), I felt like trying some other open source software that is less popular and thus hadn't been run by anybody on this hardware before (at least I couldn't find traces of such attempts on the web).</p>
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<p>The first software I had to try out was of course <a href="http://shr-project.org/trac">SHR</a>, which stands for “Stable Hybrid Release” and is an open source mobile distribution which was created for the Openmoko Neo Freerunner and since has been ported to different, more powerful, newer hardware platforms such as the HTC Dream, the Palm Pre or the Nokia N900.
And guess what: <a href="http://h1.pargon.nl/wiki/index.php?title=MeeGo">Using instructions and files which were made to run Meego 1.0</a> on the Samsung GT-i8320 plus some original firmware files taken from a LiMo rom, I managed to boot into SHR — first I had touchscreen issues, but after deleting /etc/ts.conf and /etc/pointercal.xinput it ran just fine, even though it was noticeable that this very version of SHR isn´t quite optimized for capacative touchscreens.</p>
<p>After this early success (of course SHR isn't really usable on this hardware as of now, as the GT-i8320 modem hardware (QC MSM6290) is not supported by the underlying FreeSmartphone.Org middleware), I tried to run <a href="http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/builds/1.1.80/1.1.90.7.20110315.10/handset/images/">MeeGo 1.1.90.7</a>, but I wasn't successful — and as I can't read the last error message (I tried to capture it on with my Palm Pre Plus, but it's unreadable there, too) I am unable to state what exactly is going wrong. The last screenshot shows the bootscreen of <a href="http://www.hackable1.org/">Hackable1</a>/<a href="http://www.defora.org/">Defora OS</a> — if the SD card used wasn't a slow no name one (having used up all the good ones for SHR and MeeGo) it might have worked — I might have seen a successful boot up.</p>
<p>Watch my short video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0CSJ-hdw0I">SHR on Samsung GT-i8320 H1</a>.</p>
<p><i>Stay tuned for more.</i></p>
3 x TI OMAP 3 powered devices to be reviewed here soon2011-03-14T16:54:00+00:002011-03-14T16:54:00+00:00https://linmob.net/3-x-ti-omap-3-powered-devices-to-be-reviewed-here-soon/<p>Right now there are three devices on their way to me, and oddly enough, they all run on the same, dated SoC. Besides that, the three are pretty different: One runs Android (2.1), one webOS (2.1.0) and the third one a LiMo compliant operating system. Display resolutions differ, too: QVGA, HVGA and WVGA, while display sizes vary from 2.8” to 3.5”. </p>
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<p>While there are tons of posts on my “to be done” list that I can write without a single new device, I felt like I would need some new hardware in my hands as the stuff I have is half dead—at CeBIT my G1's hardware keyboard broke, and my Pre (minus) has a broken headset jack and will be picked up for repair soon.</p>
<p>Wasting some money on low cost devices feels awkward—but well, for the money I spent on these three devices I could have bought one cheap (non dual-core) super phone, that's why I chose this option.</p>
A day at CeBIT. Again.2011-03-04T08:11:00+00:002011-03-04T08:11:00+00:00https://linmob.net/a-day-at-cebit-again/<p>I am starting this very subjective write up sitting on a chair in the Webciety’s Bloggers Lounge and I feel pretty tired and exhausted - it's just as it has been the years before. You walk around all day and spend time out there, go hands on with the few devices you are interested here, talk to booth people… There are great moments and less great - this time there were few less great ones, even the sun was shining all the time, which I never experienced in CeBIT seasons Hannover.</p>
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<p>After having strolled around many booths in many halls, I visited a place that is a must for a guy writing about Linux, the Open Source park, which is a rather small area full of people that show off their more or less popular projects. Among many business related projects (including some I've never heard of, as I am a little bit ashamed to admit) and more popular ones like Firefox 4 and LibreOffice I stumbled on a small Enlightenment corner and there on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsten_Haitzler">Carsten "raster" Haitzler</a>, who, as some of you may remember, was once involved into the Openmoko project. I talked to him for quite some time, first in german (as his father's german) then in english about Linux, Android, toolkits on mobile devices. As you can read on his <a href="http://www.rasterman.com/index.php?page=News">website </a>as well, he's with Samsung now, who are investing heavily into Enlightenment to build a platform on - which will actually be <a href="https://linmob.net/2011/02/mwc2011-day-1.html">LiMo r4</a> compliant (there is EFL in LiMo r4, not only GTK+, cairo, clutter and so on). He showed me some EFL demos on an obviously Samsung built device on par with Galaxy S (using Hummingbird and an (approx.) 3.7" WVGA screen) - most likely a developer model of the never released<a href="http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-i8330-aka-vodafone-h2-limo-phone-leaks-2687073/"> Samsung H2 / GT-i8330 hardware</a>, which was supposed to be released during last summer, but didn't make it (at least on Vodafone in Europe). I think I will write a dedicated article about what we talked about as soon as possible, because it really was great to talk about the downfall of MeeGo (back to Moblin, mostly - a fact he wasn't too unhappy about, working on LiMo, which is certainly a rival to MeeGo on handsets.</p>
<p>Besides that, I didn't hang out for too long in CeBIT's OpenSource paradise (it was so crowded!) and headed on to webciety to get a little rest while listening to some panels I didn't plan to listen too (at the one I had on my schedule, one about tablets with the MeetMobility guys + 2 others (a Qualcomm representive + @petweetpetweet) I arrived late, just to get a rest after all these tablet hands ons (in fact I used my partly broken (headset jack) Palm Pre to capture a hands on with the Hanvon A116 tablet, but I will have to edit it before uploading, so don't expect that before saturday) and walking (I liked both ASUS Android tablets I wrote about recently (the MeMO and the Transformer, of which the latter really features amazing build quality and a really great finish), and then went on to have a look at some more devices before coming back late to the panel I just mentioned. After that, I managed to talk to<a href="http://twitter.com/sascha_p"> @sascha_p</a> for a few minutes, exchange business cards and head on to Huawei, were I had a look at their Android devices, entry level and up before "winning" a Vodafone 246 dumb phone at the stand of a popular german PC magazine, which was about the last thing I did before heading out to catch my train.</p>
<p>If you want to, have a look at the photos I took:</p>
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<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0047.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0047.f02fa1c4fe49c847.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0049.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0049.c5e7d48832bc27e2.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0050.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0050.a438143d690f8620.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0051.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0051.61b177b5c30f0c55.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0052.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0052.77cb00f132401883.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0053.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0053.e691a00fba4819d0.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0054.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0054.b3e21e781e11b27d.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0056.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0056.b499f42102134f10.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0057.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0057.8da88bcc4cd7dc76.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/CIMG0058.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/CIMG0058.ea78b55b05ab4c80.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_155828.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_155828.8e9d90ccf0ff1df9.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_160324.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_160324.64f040a3ec159440.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_162739.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_162739.9465cba7dbe68adb.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_163555.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_163555.a77f617613b0a2a0.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_165310.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_165310.1f4d422420a50575.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_165332.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_165332.57eb80981d596b0b.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_165621.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_165621.42e1a9d9e1df7c7a.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_165713.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_165713.8740fd1c98702f59.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_165803.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_165803.e7dfbb40146c1af3.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_165809.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_165809.391f17200ba2571c.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_170044.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_170044.c405fa3800c1f703.jpg" />
<img style="margin: 5px;" alt="/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/IMG_20110303_170326.jpg" src="https://linmob.net/processed_images/IMG_20110303_170326.cbb36c80599fe9a8.jpg" />
<p>Edit 2023-07-23: Turns out, I also took a video of some Windows Phone device:
<video src="https://media.linmob.net/2011-03-04-a-day-at-cebit-again/cimg0048.mp4" alt="Windows Phone 7?" style="margin:0 auto" controls></video></p>
MWC2011: Day 12011-02-14T23:25:00+00:002011-02-14T23:25:00+00:00https://linmob.net/mwc2011-day-1/<h3 id="platforms-software">Platforms (software):</h3>
<ul>
<li>Intel show off MeeGo tablet UX on ExoPC/WeTab platform (Atom N450): mobile bloggers not too impressed: Lot of potentital, but not much progress on UX side since Computex (probably because Intel and Nokia focused on the “below UX” parts of the platform first): Impressions on <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/14/intel-shows-off-more-of-its-meego-tablet-ui-still-needs-lots-of/">Engadget</a>, <a href="http://www.carrypad.com/2011/02/14/intel-launches-meego-tablet-user-experience/">Carrypad</a>, <a href="http://blog.laptopmag.com/intel-shows-off-meego-tablet-ux-complete-with-panel-based-home-screen">Laptopmag</a>, @chippy's audioboo <a href="http://boo.fm/b277783">1</a> <a href="http://boo.fm/b277788">2</a></li>
<li>Intel furthermore stated that there will be a Medfield phone this year—the device they showed ran Android, though: <a href="http://www.carrypad.com/2011/02/14/intel-shows-medfield-phone-running-android-at-mwc/">Carrypad</a></li>
<li><a href="http://armdevices.net/2011/02/14/honeycomb-will-work-on-cheaper-tablets/">@charbax (ARMDevices.net) was told by an unnamed source that Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) will also run on cheap tablets (ARM11)</a>. It remains to be confirmed, but due to Androids open nature this sounds highly likely and it is nice to see that those initial “Honeycomb will only work on Dual Core ARMv7” bullshit rumors are what they are: Bullshit. Furthermore, this makes cheaper tablets like the SmartQ N7 a lot more interesting.</li>
<li>Alien Dalvik by Myriad apparently running quite nicely on MeeGo: <a href="http://boo.fm/b277957">@chippy's audioboo</a> Isn't going to be available for end users (due to its rather low level nature and monetization, I assume), but I am sure that once it shipped on a device or leaks out people will try to integrate it into webOS or LiMo, too.</li>
<li>LiMo foundation announce the 4th release of their platform, featuring multi touch and 3D effects, while going on to build on GNOME software—first devices to be out in summer: <a href="http://www.limofoundation.org/en/Press-Releases/limo-foundation-unveils-limo-4.html">press release</a> </li>
<li>Windows Phone 7 2011 future: CDMA, Copy and paste in March (<a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/14/windows-phone-7-update-with-copy-and-paste-cdma-support-coming/">engadget</a>); IE9, multi-tasking, twitter integration later this year (<a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/14/microsoft-shows-off-windows-phone-7s-future-with-multitasking/">engadget</a>)—multi-tasking UI looks surprisingly like webOS's cards, well, Microsoft have always been good at reimplementing the ideas others had before, haven't they? Adding the recent Nokia partnership to this, counting out this platform would be overhasty.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="noteworthy-devices">(Noteworthy) Devices:</h3>
<ul>
<li>LG Optimus 3D, OMAP 4, 4,3” glasses free 3D smartphone: <a href="http://armdevices.net/2011/02/14/lg-optimus-3d/">ARMdevices.net</a></li>
<li>Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, nVidia Tegra 2 based Google experience tablet: <a href="http://armdevices.net/2011/02/14/honeycomb-on-the-samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1/">ARMdevices.net</a></li>
<li>Samsung Galaxy S2, 4.3” WVGA, 1GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos Cortex A9 with ARM Mali 400 graphics: <a href="http://armdevices.net/2011/02/14/samsung-galaxy-s2/">ARMdevices.net</a></li>
</ul>
<p><em>More tomorrow.</em></p>
CeBIT 2k9: report of a short visit2009-03-07T16:24:00+00:002009-03-07T16:24:00+00:00https://linmob.net/cebit-2k9-report-of-a-short-visit/<p>After I didn't manage to get up early enough for a <a href="http://cebit.de/">CeBIT</a> visit on while going to my parents, I was up quite early on friday, so that I could be at the CeBIT gates at 9:30 a.m. after two hours of train journey.</p>
<p>I won't write about all the halls I visited, as I guess that this doesn't help anybody—and often I just walked through those halls without looking at lots of things. But I can tell you, that I stayed in hall 6 for the most time, as the OpenSource area and the so called Webciety are located there.</p>
<p>Webciety is rather boring, not that interesting, even good old T-Systems is among the companys that have a stand there.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Some of the talks there (pre:publica) were not at all uninteresting, but you have to say that it were often the same opinions you've heard before in podcasts or blogs—it is aimed at normal people, that don't read blogs all day—I'd guess.</p>
<p>OpenSource Area was nice, no <a href="http://www.openmoko.com/">OpenMoko</a> booth (or something like a booth for mobile Linux with OpenMoko, just desktop stuff, but hey, better than nothing. Even Linpus has just netbooks, last year they had a PDA like device, too.</p>
<p>In Hall 9, B39 I found the (probably) only OpenMoko devices at CeBIT, presented by some guys of the<a href="http://www.tfh-wildau.de/index.html"> TFH Wildau</a>, a technical university of applied sciences, located in Brandenburg. I showed them my keyboard and we had a short talk about Openmoko, the potentials and weaknesses of the platform.</p>
<p>The talk about <a href="http://www.limofoundation.org/">LiMo</a> i enjoyed more or accidentally than planned was great, as I finally understood what the LiMo Foundation really does: Just a middleware. Just a place to share patents. So you can't really compare LiMo Foundation to OHA or Symbian Foundation from a user perspective, but you can do so from a business perspective. From the user perspective can compare LiMo compliant platforms like <a href="http://alp.access-company.com/">Access Linux Platform</a> or <a href="http://www.azingo.com/">Azingo's platform</a> to others like like Android, not LiMo itself, which is rather a place for companys to share knowledge. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">I talked to Garmin officials about the<a href="http://www.garminasus.com/garminasus/cms/site/home/lang/en/phones"> garmin-asus nüviphone G60</a>, which is confirmed to be Linux powered, but I couldn't find out whether they use „Software we know“—the officials didn't know. From the looks it isn't something I know, to say the least. Most likely a proprietary UI, like the one garmin runs on it's navigation solutions, which did run well besides hickups which were to appear when you wanted to use the keyboard—at least that's what I could observe. Start up time wasn't very fast too. But the thing is about to be launched in september (or even later) so they'll surely fix the issues until then, for those who really want the G60 (I wouldn't buy it as WQVGA on 3,5“ isn't looking great and is outdated in my opinion). And I was told (as others were told before) that we will probably see Android powered Garmin/Asus devices in the future.</p>
<p>Went to ASUS booth, guys over there (at least those I talked to) didn't know more than the Garmin guys—unsurprisingly. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Short talks to people at OS booths, just saying thanks for their great work, as I believe that this important.</p>
<p>Met the „german netbook king“ (he was called so by <a href="http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/status/1108438732">Robert Scoble</a>) <a href="http://twitter.com/sascha_p">Sascha Pallenberg</a> (<a href="http://www.netbooknews.de">netbooknews.de</a>). We talked about netbooks and stuff, then “mobile meetup” at 5pm at hall 6 5pm. It is a funny situation to sit there with lots of guys you've already read, heared on podcasts or seen on video reviews. Showed my Openmoko keyboard to <a href="http://twitter.com/chippy">Steven Paine</a> (<a href="http://www.umpcportal.com/">umpcportal.com</a>), while 3 UMPCs are on the table, later 3 UMPCs vs. 3. netbooks…</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Then I had a nice time at a party (Barcamp?) in the webciety area, taking most of the time to the guys that run <a href="http://ndevil.com/">ndevil.com</a> before I had to leave in order to get the last train home—a good end for a day full of walking from one location to another.</p>
<p>After all I have to say, that I didn't see lots of devices, I missed a hands-on on the <a href="http://ndevil.com/12659/">Umid M1</a> and the <a href="http://www.road.de/en/index.html">Road handyPC S101</a> (I didn have it on my list, as it was announced in 2006) e.g., but like this CeBIT wasn't like hell, it was more fun. I saw what I absolutely had to see (the garmin-asus G60 and the HTC Magic which might become a top seller, listened to a talk about LiMo which helped me to understand the LiMo platform a lot better than before—that's it, basically. I tried to stay relaxed all the time, taking the time to talk to people, to look at some things—if I hurried, I could have seen more things, e.g. the Green IT area I missed too, but I believe that this wouldn't have made the whole thing more awful.</p>
<p>Next year I will visit the CeBIT again, possibly for more than one day, even if it might be even less interesting considering mobile devices. And I might visit some more fairs… We'll see.</p>
<p><em>(Pictures will follow tomorrow.)</em></p>
Weekly linmob round up (2): Not much Android on MWC2009-02-21T08:10:00+00:002009-02-21T08:10:00+00:00https://linmob.net/weekly-linmob-round-up-2-not-much-android-on-mwc/<p>Time for another quick roundup of what happened this week in the world of mobile Linux - it wasn't that much considering that this was the “Mobile World Congress” week</p>
<p>The Android-powered phones being announced are easy to name, as they are few:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.engadget.com/tag/HtcMagic/">HTC Magic</a> (likely to be T-Mobile G2 in US, will be sold by Vodafone in Europe)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/02/18/general-mobiles-dstl1-android-phone-eyes-on/">General Mobile DSTL1</a> (glossy, WQVGA (resistive touch) Marvell PXA3xx powered dual-SIM)</li>
</ul>
<p>...and then there was a chinese QVGA device running Android I saw on video this week, but I can't find it right now.</p>
<p>Additionally (ex E-TEN) <a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/02/17/acer-working-on-two-android-phones-to-launch-this-year/">Acer</a> (who reintroduced the Glofiish/gnufiish DX900) and <a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/02/17/samsung-at-least-three-android-phones-and-a-limo-handset-in-200/">Samsung</a> announced to be working on Android devices to be launched this year, while presenting solutions running other mobile OSes.</p>
<p>Aside from these Android running devices, there is still the LiMo foundation and platform—which I, to be honest, don't like a lot, as it just appears to be interesting for the industry, which shares knowledge in it (like “how to take a way the power from the user” ;-) ), but not for the user who looks for a great, extensible platform—which <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090215005131&newsLang=en">announced to grow even more</a>.</p>
<p>Astonishing: <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/16/gsm-palm-pre-spotted-with-vodafone-sim-card/">No GSM variant of the Palm Pre was announced</a>.</p>
<p>When you have a look at mobile Linux platforms, you have to have (at least when you are about to become a businessman one day, like I do ;-) ) a look at the competitors on the markets. On the market for smartphones, which are about to feature a rich internet experience as well, these are certainly the Symbian Foundation and Windows Mobile.</p>
<p>Besides adding new members, there were some <a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/tag/SymbianFoundation/">rather nice Symbian handsets</a> from Samsung (Omnia HD), Sony-Ericsson, LG and of course Nokia, who have made the Symbian Foundation possible—another hard competitor for Microsofts aging Windows Mobile, which is e.g. in my opinion really bad at multimedia and internet performance.</p>
<p>Of course Microsoft knows that their OS has its weaknesses, but as Windows Mobile 7 isn't ready yet, the “being forced to do something to avoid a huge loss of market share” <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/feb09/02-16MWCPR.mspx">Microsoft guys announced Windows Mobile 6.5</a>, which is at least an improvement - I wasn't at MWC, but a friend of mine has a 6.5 rom on his good old HTC BlueAngel, so I'd say that I can talk about this. But I won't do that now, maybe later, as it isn't sensational anyway.</p>
<p>Besides this there has been a bunch of Microsoft powered new devices to be announced at MWC, of which I will mention the devices that actually were interesting, if they didn't run Windows Mobile.</p>
<p>HTC, a smartphone maker gaining more and more market share, has announced the <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/product/touchdiamond2/overview.html">Touch Diamond2</a> and its keyboarded, more business aimed brother, the <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/product/touchpro2/overview.html">Touch Pro2</a> (which is in fact in my opinion a grandchild of the HTC Universal). Most interesting change you will notice while comparing them to their predecessors: They both got bigger screens - a 0.4” increase on the Diamond, and a 0.8” raise on the Pro (while adding 160x480 pixels in terms of resolution) - a fact I like, as bigger screens makes the devices more finger friendly.</p>
<p>The other manufacturer, who's devices weren't that hyped in press, which is quite new to the market, Acer, showed up some devices with bigger screens, too. Namely these are the <a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/02/17/acer-f900-m900-x960-and-dx900-hands-on-with-video/">F900 and its keyboarded brother M900</a>, both featuring WVGA 3.8” screens, and the same SoC like the <a href="http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA03">Openmoko GTA03</a> will most likely feature: <a href="http://semicon.samsung.de/applicationprocessors/spec.aspx">Samsung S3C6410</a>. So what about some more <a href="http://www.gnufiish.org/">gnufiish</a>?</p>
<p><em>Hope to see you again next week…</em></p>