Ubuntu running on P990i?

Put your sleuthing caps on dear readers, we've got a new case for you. A blurry video has surfaced of a Sony Ericsson P990i running a mobile version of Ubuntu. With the aid of a soldering gun and "special software," someone by the name of Wizolabo (already credited with a homemade theremin) seems to have produced a working copy of the favored Linux distro running on the favored SE superphone. It all looks promising enough, but it's not the first time we've seen video edited and choreographed to look like final product. Made all the more dubious from a dearth of instructions or detail. Check the video after the break and let us know what you think.

[Via Techeblog]

[REDbULL Runner @ Apr 16th 2007 8:40AM]

Im sorry... but that just looks so fake.

Look at the way he moves the stylus around and it does nothing, and the way he taps so many times in some places but it does nothing.

If it is fake... he did a bad job at his movements

[Chrisphillers @ Apr 16th 2007 9:05AM]

Seconded

[Ahmed Essam @ Apr 17th 2007 11:31AM]

It is more than amazing.

[pos @ Apr 16th 2007 9:00AM]

Just what I was thinking, notice how he solders as well? What good is joining those two plates and a little chip going to do?

None the less, if it is genuine, well done (but it doesn't quite cut it)

[circuitmonkey @ Apr 16th 2007 10:07AM]

It looks to me to be a fake, soldering was truely awfull and the OS was far to quick, symbian isn't exactly bloated but even that runs fairly slow on my 990

[Olivier @ Apr 16th 2007 9:09AM]

He's probably taping multiple times because the software is so unresponsive on such a little machine.

[Will @ Apr 16th 2007 9:17AM]

3rd for the BS vote... looks like a presentation of slides with many mis taps!

[orvtech @ Apr 16th 2007 9:25AM]

i would have to show here the B.S. flag. that thing is booting to fast for an embedded OS with X running. i do have gentoo optimized for my NSLU2 running on http://www.orvtech.com (which i just notice is down due to a crappycalistic ISP), no X no nothing and it boots almost at the same speed as that one does.

[Karl Viklund @ Apr 16th 2007 9:40AM]

FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE AND FAKE.
If they can't provide a picture that does not look like it's taken with a crappy camera from 95 and washed 30 times no one is going to believe them. Why is every picture blurry? Can't they use a camera? This is just stupid.

[Standingfast @ Apr 16th 2007 9:59AM]

The menu starts to come down before he even gets close to the screen with the stylus! Also, why is he covering up the top left corner of the phone with his thumb during boot up...

[Chris @ Apr 16th 2007 10:13AM]

I'd call fake to. I have no idea what that soldering was supposed to do. the 4 silvers pads there could have been a JTAG interface though, and Linux could probably be loaded on it via that, but it takes more than 2 wires. And with an ARM9 208Mhz, there's not enough power to have animated menus like that, and not enough to laod pictures that fast either. the thumbnails there were instant, and even loading cached thumbnails from disk would be slower than that. And on Flash media where space is a premium, you normaly would not enable the thumbnail caching, or even turn them on at all on such a small screen.

yeah, too many reasons to be BS. If the post a bootloader, or bootstrap instructions, that can be verified, then I'll believe it. you don't JUST post a video.

[Mr. Picklesworth @ Apr 16th 2007 10:18AM]

Loads faster than my 1.8 gHz box, menus slide in instead of just appearing (?!), instantly full-screen image viewer, power off applet powers off without a dialog...

Unless this guy spent a lot of time messing with parts of the distro that needn't be messed with... No.
If he could prove it that would be great, but I very much doubt this.

[snowglyder @ Apr 16th 2007 11:39AM]

If I get one thing out of this video, it's how much better I feel about my soldering jobs...

[mvip @ Apr 16th 2007 3:14PM]

Looks like fake indeed. Wish it was true thought. UIQ3 that is currently running on the P990 sucks. Not only is there a lack of good software, but the system itself is crappy. Not AS crappy as Windows Mobile though. If someone could hack the P990 to run Linux with support for the camera and to make phone-calls (d'oh), i'd be the first in line.

[dpryo @ Apr 16th 2007 12:30PM]

It has been done on Nokia N70 aswell!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1UJsgTusdg

[christoffer.arstrand @ Apr 16th 2007 6:20PM]

The soldering could be for disabling some lock to allow writing to some low level boot loader. Note that the solder points are quite small, so he didn't do that bad of a job, it simply looks really bad through a magnifier glass.

However, I don't see how this could prove anything at all. It's not very hard to create a program that gives you full screen access and can emulate the look and feel of Ubuntu showed in the video...

[christoffer.arstrand @ Apr 16th 2007 6:21PM]

The soldering could be for disabling some lock to allow writing to some low level boot loader. Note that the solder points are quite small, so he didn't do that bad of a job, it simply looks really bad through a magnifier glass.

However, I don't see how this could prove anything at all. It's not very hard to create a program that gives you full screen access and can emulate the look and feel of Ubuntu showed in the video...

[Momo @ Apr 16th 2007 8:07PM]

"Check the video after the break and let us know what you think."

HEY ENGADGET! YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT I THINK ABOUT UBUNTU RUNNING ON P990I ! HUH! YOU WANNA!! I'LL TELL YOU WANT I THINK!!! I THINK......... I have absolutey no idea what you're talking about.

[Beken One @ Apr 21st 2007 3:24AM]

so...let me get this right.
your now using X11.
its gots to be either SVGAlib or DirectFB?
ive done this before in many devices in the past, but
that boot screen was way too fast (ARM,SHARC what ever..there slow).
it looks like its in single user mode.
if it was me I would drop PANGO,METACITY.
use some thing small like OPENBOX,or FLUXBOX.
you might need GTK and QT for all those Pretty Apps people like.
better yet, rebuild the whole thing from skratch...its quite easy.
It just takes like forever!!
repackage it, share it and give it a new name.
thats if this IS real?