Nokia RX-51 tablet captured in the wild
By Ross Miller 
posted Aug 8th 2009 12:54PM
posted Aug 8th 2009 12:54PM
[Via Mobile Bulgaria; thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
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looks like the HTC touch.
bleh.
Thought this got OMAP3, 3D hardware acceleration and that 5mp camera that still on a bit different level on the major manufacturers compared to HTC.
It will have Maemo 5 that we haven't really seen and that will be the real dealbraker.
Thankgod it's now finally confirmed that this will be a phone.
Yeah, hopefully maemo5 will be better than the bulky symbian OSes...
Indeed, but hopefully it uses the faster OMAP36xx instead of the OMAP34xx but I guess in the end it doesn't matter much considering the iPhone and the Pre are the only devices out on the market with a Cortex-A8.
The biggest draw to this thing is probably the updated Maemo OS that *FINALLY* has native graphics acceleration and has a decent interface. That was long overdo, and will finally make the UI fluid and responsive, not to mention it should really help with making for a smooth web browsing experience. I have long avoided anything Nokia because of their lame UIs on Symbian and Maemo, and this thing might change my mind.
That said, this has been on the drawing board forever, and I think it was a HUGE mistake to let the Cortex-A8/PowerVR SGX iPhone 3GS come out first, not to mention the new iPod Touch will be out soon.
Actually,
if you look closely this pic http://www.mobilebulgaria.com/uploads/news_pics/2009/08/p2_6837.jpg
it says ARM Cortex A8 | 32Gb
Or at least that's what it looks to me. And I can tell you now that this is my next phone. Good hardware + pure Linux. It means that this device has active support from the community for years. Plus all apps etc.
afaik my omnia HD has a cortex A8 SoC too =)
This device looks like something the N97 should have been all along, the design is stunning, put in a good processor inside, capacitative and it'll be one heck of a device.
Still not a fan of the 3 rowed keyboard... that thing could house 4-5 rows easily.
Rover/N900 will use omap3430 wich is cortex a8. Same as on Pre.
omap 36xx is die shrinked omap 34xx with higher frequencies.
No way to know which is inside.
On the + note, if omap 34xx and 36xx have same pinouts then even if its 34xx it might be possible to swap to 36xx. Now is the time to start practicing BGA soldering...
Keyboard looks ok wish the screen was on in the pic. My only thinking is why T-mobile?
(ignoring iPoop)
@Gavin, T-Mobile, because Nokia hates CDMA almost as much as Apple, and AT&T wouldn't carry this for any number of reasons (when was the last time they offered/subsidized a high end Nokia phone?)
Umm... right now? The E71x they have
Other then the E71x none. I'm not saying that this would be better on AT&T cause the restrictions they have on their 3G network is crazy. I'd rather see it on sprint, price and soled are better. But I'm stuck with, and addicted to my 3GS.
@Ryan-- Well, Nokia DID try a Sprint-'4g' N810 variant.
That... didn't go so well for them due to the network not turning on... for a while. I can't blame them for feeling burned, if that's what it is.
For me, it's not so much the device itself as much as it is whether or not the device will feature firmware fluidity and apps...
Without firmware updates and an apps store... The beauty of a device does little for me...
I expect a device to have firmware updates... Otherwise it's an unwise investment...
The Zune has firmware updates. The PSP has firmware updates. The iPod Touch has firmware updates...
And the firmware has to actually add features!!!
Have you used maemo? They had an 'App Store' Way before the other manufactureres caught on. I can't think of features that are added to maemo by a formware update, the extra functionality is provided by applications, the system isn't locked down.
Maemo's Application Manager is a far cry from an "App Store"... you have to add, remove and manage repositories for instance. That's a big difference. It's more akin to adding/removing apps in Ubuntu than the iTunes Store... or even Ovi for that matter.
However, let's be frank. Nokia doesn't support the Maemo platform past two iterations per device.
770 - OS 2005, OS 2006 (Gregale, Bora) - the rest were unofficial/hacker editions
N800 - OS 2007, OS 2008 (Chinook. Diablo) - it's dead in the water
N810 - OS 2008, OS 2008 with SSU (Chinook, Diablo) - it's dead in the water
And this RX-51 runs Fremantle, which will have it's GTK+ UI bits removed by Qt in Harmattan, which will break all of the existing dev/apps for the most part and if the past serves an indicator, any/all major changes in OS usually means a new device. See above.
Nokia hasn't been consistent on the updates other than quickly abandoning it. Sad when the original iPhone can run (albeit a bit slower) the newest firmware. You can't say the same for the 770. And soon, not the same for the N810.
But the Maemo Application Manager is nothing, NOTHING like iTunes Music Store.
I've been using Nokia products for years. Some guy will always pop up and mention Nokia was first in this or that, it happens all the time. What they fail to mention to you, is that while Nokia is usually first in many things, they are also the most half-assed implementers of anything. So yeah there will be an app store but it will sucks donkey balls, just like their OVI store: sucks donkey balls.
Now whether they can actually draw the attention of developers and help the platform get some nice useful apps, remains to be seen. I hate to be so discouraging at the outset but Nokia's track record on software is pathetic.
Move to Qt from GTK+ doesn't have to mean anything. Fremantle can use Qt apps and Harmattan can use GTK+ apps.
Of course UI might change (and probably will) but the old apps will still work.
That is very much the Linux-way of doing things, there's nothing wrong with it. It is truly open platform (unlike Android, iPhone etc.)
@sr, saying that something 'sucks donkey balls' is the most half-assed argument ever.
Granted, there are some issues involving the insane scale of devices and customers Ovi has to cover. Also some people are complaining that they can't buy before they log in etc. but those hardly make an app store 'suck donkey balls', whatever that even means. Of course you just might be one of those very few unlucky ones who, unfortunately, get plagued by a lot of technical issues, but personally my experiences with the Ovi Store have been positive.
I don't agree with the reasoning behind your first statement about how Nokia comes up with stuff first (maybe at the mass production scale, but rarely 'a worlds first') and then implements it poorly. Usually, when Nokia comes up with a new technical feature it has been polished to a very sophisticated level. After the hard work done by Nokia other manufactures are then able to reproduce it at the same level of mass production.
Nokia and its track record on software is another story, and you are right about that.
Ah, sr. I wouldn't worry too much about him.
What happens if your download should fail?
Nokia WILL NOT let you redownload the app ever. Once you download a program you must backup the app because nobody is going to help you get it again short of paying for it again.
Besides the store is filled with little ringtones and trinkets. The level of development is nowhere near what it is for the iPhone or pretty much any other platform. Now Maemo may be different, but Nokia doesn't have a track record of attracting developers EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE THE NUMBER ONE USED SMARTPHONE PLATFORM IN THE WORLD. Your potential market for an app on S60 is 4-5 times what it is for the iPhone and they still can't developers interested enough.
I wish them luck, because I like to see some competition in this space, but I don't have high hopes for Maemo either. Between Android, WebOS and iPhone OS, Nokia will have a hard time competing in this space.
@ Sir
umm... Symbian used to have a massive developer following. Same situation with iPhone Apps; where 90% of the apps are fart or wet t-shirt apps. Those are synonymous with a new developing platform. Over the years those inconsequential and rather useless "apps" start dissappearing and making way for fewer but more useful applications. Quick Office and such are an example of apps that survive that first wave. In several years time, iphone apps will dwindle to a very small pool of apps unless apple decides not to take them down.
What you are essentially saying is that it is somehow a redeeming quality that fart apps and wet t-shirt apps are abundant in the thousands. This will eventually mostly die out as the platform matures. Symbian went through exactly the same thing.
Ovi is not just an app store. It's the equivilent of MobileMe except its free; free mobile mail, free media share, free mobile synch, free file share etc... And on the topic of failed apps downloads... Outside the NA market where services are reliable, you shouldn't ever fail a download of apps that are only 150 kb to 1mb files that only take 3-5 seconds to download. You can also backup your install apps OR download it as a sis file for storage. I fail to see how this is an impediment to the user.
We're talking about Maemo not Symbian. All the apps on Maemo.org are free. The site is pretty well organized and can't really be called a store because they give stuff away.
Way to totally fuck the device by putting a shitty keyboard on it. I don't care if there's a Core i7 in that thing. With that keyboard, it will be useless.
Why can't Nokia put spacebars in the middle of a keyboard?
They can actually, check the E90.
Try an N97 for example. The space bar (the most used key) is placed under your thumb, perfectly.
I don't want space bars in the middle anymore, I want to reach them without reaching :)
Screw the space bar im impressed they included arrow buttons.
looks thickish tho.. tegra inside?
Depending on the battery life I can see this being my next phone. I love my N800 except for the lack of keyboard and no telephone functionality.
Me too. At the moment I carry an N800 and an N95 8GB. My pockets can't take it for much longer!
my gripe is the keyboard looks too much like the N810s.... i had one of those (lent it to my dad) and could barely type on the thing for some reason :\
Please have long battery life, the N800's was to short.
I know this is supposedly for T-Mobile, but I sure hope it has compatible 3G bands with ATT. I'd replace my N97 in a heartbeat with this. Hell, even if it's just EDGE I might...
unfortunately it isnt compatible with ATT 3G network as the 3G network on Tmobile is on different frequency than ATT.
And if you do retire your N97 Ill gladly take it off your hands :)
Finally its here my N810 can now get ready to RIP!
What about Europe?
As usual, we wont have to worry about being ripped off by a carrier, as we can just buy it off the shelf.
WoW that looks much better than the N97 !!! They should have put a xenon in this though... would have made it the ine phone to rule them all :D Put the camera and sensor from the N86 8MP and damn.. they have the best phone in the world !
Maemo target renders looked really promising lets see how well the OS actually performs....
According to the read link it has a flash of some kind, I doubt they'd stick some LEDs on such a high end device so it's fairly safe to assume it would have a proper flash.
What makes this a tablet exactly ? Isn't it just a smartphone ?
It runs Nokia's Tablet OS, Maemo 5. But this device will blur the lines between tablet & smartphone.
I agree. They keep calling this a tablet. Looks like just another boring phone to me. When I think of a tablet I think of a 10-12 inch paper sized computer running a full blown desktop class OS that you use a stylus with. This is just an oversized smart phone.
Tablet in this case is the equivilant of a MID, not a tablet pc.
Wheres the screen...
I still prefer the term MID... or may i suggest; Tadaaaa!!!.... presenting the new term THUMBTOP!!!!
I will also be made in Korea but proto is made in Finland , did a detailed analysis of the pics at
http://senseapplied.com/index.php/nokia-rx-51-live-in-flesh/
Farhan
Ok here are the features of the this phone:
1. 3.5 inch resistive touch screen with a flush screen
2. 800 x 480 resolution
3. 32 gb inbuilt memory
4. Support for additional memory (micro/mini)
5. Fm receiver and transmitter
6. Gsm + Gprs + Hspa 1700/2100(t- mobile) + wlan + Bluetooth with a2dp
7. Cpu ARM cortex A8 @ 600mhz (similar to palm pre)
8. 256 mb ram
9. Support for open gl 2.0
10. Video out
11. Charging via usb
12. 5 Mpx dual flash back facing camera.
13. Low resolution web cam in the front
14. 3 row keyboard.
15. Accelerometer
16. Gps
17. Ambient light sensor.
18. Os - maemo 5 - 80% open source
19. Application manager with 99% free applications and popular ports of desktop Linux applications.
20. Kick stand.
Now compare that with an iphone and choose which is the best for your use case!
iono man, how can anyone possibly compete with these super innovative features.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvJk1DVkIYI
Thanks for full run dowm
Wishlist:
OLED capacitative screen
14.
How fricken hard is it to put a number row on a keyboard? The Touch Pro2 is the only one doing so right now (correct me if I'm wrong) but the 9300i by Nokia themselves proved you could pack a very usable *5*-row dual-thumb-board into a reasonably compact size.
I've never been happy with HTC phones hardware-wise (gave up at the S620 and the Tytn II) which is my comparatively ancient Communicators (really surprisingly - or maybe not, given Apple's usual hype over substance - Opera Mini on even the 9300i loads up web pages *over GPRS* quicker in many cases than my iPhone 3G's showing 3G) are still with me.
Anyone know of a non-HTC current phone with a 4-row keyboard?
@ lockstocked: By not playing baby music in all of your company's advertisements, of course.
The must have device of the year for me....
This thing has basically the same specs as the Always Innovating Touch Book netbook/tablet.
Maemo is a much more conventional Linux distro compared to Android and WebOS. It runs a X server and can run regular linux desktop apps. It can probably run Firefox 3.5 for example, or maybe even OpenOffice.org. The major limiting factor of course being that it only has 256 MB of RAM.
Qt is also a good move for Maemo. The old GTK+ apps will still run, but Qt has much better cross platform support. It means that a developer can write for Qt and have her/his app run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X on the desktop, and on Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and Maemo in the mobile space. Nokia purchased Qt to act as a sort of bridge for developers moving from S60 to Maemo.
As much as I love Nokia, the S60 UI is dated, and after seeing plenty of video reviews for the 5800 and N97, definitely not touch optimize. The capacitive touch screen only makes it worse. Can't wait for the flurry of Android 2.0 phones.
I meant resistive... LOL
It has a different nokia os called maemo. It is very different from the s60 OS. Maemo is a variant of linux.
@rajuvamsi007: Thanks for pointing that out. I was looking at the Maemo UI videos, and still feels it's not touch optimized. It's still stylus oriented, with small check boxes, tiny scrolling bars, tiny icons, etc.
The videos u saw are 2.5 year old OS which came along with the previous internet tablets. The newer OS called Maemo 5 has been in development for the last 2 years and it is compltely finger compatible. There are no videos yet of Maemo 5 OS yet.
Pika2000: i know the feeling. They have no concept of making a device finger friendly. A predominantly finger friendly OS with thrown in little checkboxes and tiny elements is par for the Nokia course.
The last released version of Maemo changed it's touchscreen input depending of if you were using a finger or stylus...
Dude, there are videos of Maemo 5 beta and alpha SDK on youtube, that will give some idea of maemo 5 OS.
It looks good to me.
How is an E-71 "high end"? A two year old BB Curve will do anything the E71 does, usually easier. And just to disclaim, yes, I have an E71 which I got because I like Symbian and it was cheap. I'll be returning this phone immediately. It was obviously targeted at small girls and spider monkeys judging by the unusably-small buttons/keyboard. The internet speed is slower than my old EDGE E62..and I have 5 bars of rock-solid 3G at home (my friends iPhone blazes here). What a total letdown.
People who have never used a 5800 or N97 shouldn't be commenting about how the "almighty" capacitive screen on the Iphone is sooo much easier to use then the one on the previously mentioned devices. A good resistive touch screen works just as well for most coordinated users with some practice. I can definitely type much faster with me 5800XM's keyboard (with no stupid autocorrect) then I can with my Iphone 3g. While I probably can't finger paint, or play stupid phone games as well, uh... who cares.
Capacitive is fun and more accurate for media devices and prosumer phones like the I-phone. The problem is, Nokia for the most part designs their phone with world perspective in mind and for business.. I can do everything on the phone I need to with my fingers, other then things that are designed to be used with some kind of input device. Often times, there are things I need to do on my phone that require input more precision then one can generate with a finger (Nokia Graphic calc for example) try writing a complex equation using your finger. Or when I travel to cold areas and am using gloves ect.... While capacitive does offer pretty sweet response, I found after a couple of days of getting used to it, my 5800 XM is just as functional, and I have the added benefit that resistive allows multiple input.
Also, while S60 isn't as pretty as the other OSs, so many businesses have applications they paid to develop on the S60 framework, Nokia has been urged time and time again by their prime demo to stay the course. Obviously for the same reasons almost all enterprise businesses are still running Windows XP, despite it's age, it's what their platform and infrastructure works on, so thats what they do. Nokia S60 is spartan, but functional, and the useful applications available for the phone (that doesn't require any unlocking btw) are numerous. It's not a which phone is better, each phone platform has their strong markets and weak markets. The needs of the techno yuppie and the teenie bopper mean shit on the global scale. Businesses that buy phones by the pallet for distribution are where Nokia's bread is buttered, and while their market share has been falling somewhat due to a new crop of competition, there is a reason they are and have been for some time the world leader in market share.
I always kind of laugh at people who assume because a company doesn't bother with an app store their platform has no apps. Use google, hell it's the reason why WinMo and S60 users haven't needed one forever, because the platform has been around for years and their are apps everywhere.
I'm not here to defend the 5800, or knock the Iphone, I own both, but I know that s60 phones come from a totally different pedigree. The 5800 XM probably couldn't stand in the same room as the Iphone for a non tech person as a media device/personal cellphone, but on the same token, the Iphone has absolutely no ground to stand on when being compared to the 5800 as a tool for global business. One is a dynamite media/communication device, the other is a work horse with years of infrastructure and a variety of hardware implementations to back it up.
Although, I sure do love my FM tuner, my Joikuspot tethering, my TV out, and my battery that lasts like 4 days (never turning off 3.5G like I did on my Iphone). Maybe it's not as pretty, but when I'm shuffling through airport after airport trying to get work done, I'll tell you which phone I pick up out of my briefcase, and it's not the Iphone.
I completely agree with tampacobra.
For any given piece of hardware, I will pay roughly twice as much to change the preinstalled operating system from a Microsoft product to an OS X or Linux based platform.
At Least It Better Looking Than The So Called "Mini" N97, And Has A Better(Faster?) Processor As Well... Hope It's Cheaper Too!!
It will never be cheaper. Its larger and a better spec than the N97 and has a new os. This is going to be £800 at least.
Someone in Indonesia sold this very merchandise for around USD880, and that was about a month ago. Expect (much) lower prices in North America.
A OVER Z AGAIN?
So so so happy to see this. Definately my next phone upon uk launch. A beauty.
So, a E72 at the beggining of the next month, or a Rover at the end of the year?
Decisions, decisions.
The rover as far as i know would be announced on september 2nd at the nokia event and released on october 10th the maemo summit.
I would go for the rover..... it is the most complete phone to date.
Yeah, I know about the possible announcement at the Nokia Workd in Sep, but... it guarantees a release in October? I was expecting this beast for Dec.
Maemo is truely the best OS I have ever used. Winmo, symbian, touch wiz, etc just don't work like maemo. The OS just needs a bit of work and it will truely be the best. I have been waiting for this thing for aboot 6 months now and I cannot wait to see how well it works
Can not wait to get this, been waiting since Dec 08 for this to replace my HTC TouchCruise. Having Phone+3G and Maemo touch screen functionality all in one device will be phenominal.
Going to install my old N800 in my BMWs console. Maemo OS2008 running Wayfinder is better than any TomTom/GPS out there, you get traffic and speed trap alerts. Nokia should look at adapting this slightly to a in-car platform. Great for watching movies, listing to tunes and Skype while travelling through Europe.
Oh and I highly recommend buying a Bluetooth OBD2 and installing Carman.
http://openbossa.indt.org/carman/using_carman.html
This isnt a Maemo 5 device. This device will revive the MID line to a N97 standard. Expect the first Maemo 5 devices QT4 2010.
Wishful thinking though